Trump Pulls Ahead in Michigan as Union, Women Voters Sour on Biden

 

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Trump Pulls Ahead in Michigan as Union, Women Voters Sour on Biden

Donald Trump has pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in must-win Michigan as voters remain pessimistic about the US economy, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll shows.

Trump led Biden 46% to 42% in the poll conducted Nov. 27-Dec. 5, after they were tied in the same survey done in October and early November. Trump’s lead is just within the poll’s margin of error of 4 percentage points. The former president now leads in the monthly tracking poll of all seven swing states that will decide the 2024 presidential election.

Biden has lost support among suburban women in Michigan and voters aged 18 to 34. And his inability to improve his standing with union households — despite being the first sitting president to join a picket line, backing the United Auto Workers — is helping Trump, the poll found.

Losing Michigan would be devastating for Biden’s reelection hopes. In 2020 he won in part by beating Trump by 154,188 votes in the state. And Michigan had been equally critical to Trump in 2016, when he won the long-time Democratic stronghold by just 10,704 votes and narrowly carried Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Inflation appears to be costing Biden support among women. They typically do more grocery shopping than men and have seen first-hand the price of necessities rise, said Sarah Miller, associate professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

“We’ve seen generally that women are less satisfied with the economy today and the price of everyday goods and services,” said Caroline Bye, a pollster and vice president at Morning Consult. “Women seem to be feeling that the economy is hitting them harder right now.”

The poll also shows Biden failing to gain traction among voters in Michigan’s union households, a critical bloc in a state that’s home to the US auto industry.

“Auto workers are more in tune with Donald Trump’s policies in terms of energy and the economy,” said Brian Pannebecker, founder of the Facebook page “Auto Workers for Trump,” sitting in a diner across from the Ford Motor Co. axle plant in Sterling Heights, where he worked for a quarter century before recently retiring. “And that’s what they’re going to vote on: Donald Trump’s policies. They’ve had a chance now to see Joe Biden in action, and I don’t think they like what they see.”

Democrats were expecting Biden, who has called himself the most pro-union president in US history, to get a boost from union voters in Michigan after the UAW secured unprecedented gains in its strike. While Biden showed his solidarity with the UAW, Trump held a rally at a nonunion shop near Detroit and said UAW members were being “sold down the river” by their leadership. The UAW leadership has not yet endorsed a candidate, but in the past they have picked the Democrat in the race.

The hope is that rank and file UAW workers will follow the recommendation of union leadership when the time comes to vote, said Nick Kottalis, UAW president for the Ford Dearborn Truck Plant west of Detroit. Kottalis said even he is aware of the shift toward Trump among some members. “I have heard that on the shop floor, and I’ve heard that in our own church,” he said, speaking from a walkway within the sprawling plant, as pickup trucks rolled off the line.

But Trump, who campaigned against trade deals that union members blame for the loss of US manufacturing jobs, has helped lure the working class to Republicans, said Jason Cabel Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. “It has less to do with the recent strikes and more to do with a range of issues and political realignments in the last decade,” Roe said.

Early polls aren’t a good indicator of the results a year from now, and the Democratic party has just started targeted messaging to help Biden in the state, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said in an interview. She expects the erosion of labor support to stop once the UAW rallies its members.“When the UAW turns its focus on this election, when labor unions all turn their focus on this election, they’ll remember that this is the president who has stood with them, and stood by them year after year, and will continue to,” Barnes said in an interview. “And they will come to the Democrats. I'm sure of that.”

Methodology

The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll surveyed 4,935 registered voters in seven swing states: 796 registered voters in Arizona, 801 in Georgia, 703 in Michigan, 451 in Nevada, 704 in North Carolina, 799 in Pennsylvania and 681 in Wisconsin. The surveys were conducted online from Nov. 27 to Dec. 6, and the aggregated data across the seven swing states were weighted to approximate a target sample of swing state registered voters based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, 2020 presidential vote and state. State-level data were weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters in the respective state based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, and 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point across the seven states; 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-pulls-ahead-michigan-union-100011942.html

Milei Must Sideline Economists, Embrace Henry Hazlitt

 It only took Javier Milei a couple of days in office to trip up. This is worrisome, both for Milei and Argentina. Think the 50% devaluation of the Argentine peso. About it, an obvious response is that peso devaluation isn't relevant given the market reality that Argentina is already in effect dollarized as this column has written, plus it's useful to point out that devaluation was acceptance of existing market reality more than anything. 

Still, it has to be asked what Milei felt the devaluation would achieve? If we ignore the negative economic implications of currency devaluation (more on them in a bit), we can’t ignore the abject stupidity of such a move. Money is but a measure. Nothing else.

As Adam Smith so pithily put it centuries ago, “the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods.” In which case, Milei’s mindless move is the equivalent of a would-be NBA player shrinking the inch in order to report greater height to NBA scouts. No scout would be fooled, and just the same no one is fooled by currency devaluation. Milei is supposed to be the antidote to inflation, yet one of his first acts is inflationary.

The reply from economists and policy types will be that Argentina has debts, and devaluation will shrink them. Ok, but Milei is supposed to know better. Yet if he knew better Milei would understand that no individual, corporation or country ever runs out of money, rather all three can only run out of investor trust.

Which just means that if Argentina is low on money, the only answer is economic freedom. Freedom correlates with prosperity, and will make settlement of debts an effortless notion. By using devaluation as a tool of default, Milei is showing either that he doesn’t get it, he’s being advised by too many economists, or both.

All of which calls for the new Argentine president to return to first principles, and in particular to a non-economist whose work Milei is likely familiar with: think Henry Hazlitt, author of Economics In One Lesson.

About Hazlitt’s essential book, easily the most important line in it is one that is never mentioned as the most important line. Still, if Milei internalizes it he’ll soon be back on track, and by extension so will Argentina be.

Hazlitt crucially wrote that “what’s harmful or disastrous to an individual must be equally harmful or disastrous to the collection of individuals who make up a nation.” Hazlitt was making the easily-glossed over point that economies aren’t blobs, or machines, or tangible objects that can be “stimulated” by the state, rather economies are just people.

Once this is understood, economics becomes much more than basic. Think about it. Reduced to the individual, it’s then easy to see why prosperity for a country’s economy is so blindingly simple. Regarding taxes, no individual has his or her economy improved the more that the state shrinks that individual’s economy via taxation.

As for regulation, no individual’s economy is improved the more that work time is spent answering up to officials of government instead of producing real value. With trade, no individual’s economy is improved if talented people across the street or on the other side of the world are not allowed to produce for that individual, or not allowed to produce alongside that individual.

With money, no individual earns dollars, pounds or Argentine pesos as much as individuals earn what dollars, pounds, or Argentine pesos can be exchanged for. Individual economy is shrunken by currency devaluation as the fruits of our work purchase less, after which the jobs we do are a consequence of investment. And when investors commit capital to ventures, they’re purchasing future returns in dollars, pounds, Argentine pesos, or name your medium. It’s just a reminder that currency devaluation is disastrous for the individual in too many ways to count.

Lastly, government spending. As Milei has preached, government has no resources. It only has what it’s taken from – yes – the individual. Which means no individual is harmed by reductions in government spending simply because the individual has to be relieved of wealth first so that the government can spend.

What’s important about these basic truths that emerge from an obscure line in Hazlitt’s book is that they require no PhD. in economics, or realistically any kind of education to understand. The non-economist in Hazlitt was just preaching common sense.

Prosperity is so simple, and it’s rooted in freeing the individuals who comprise Argentina’s economy from the bad ideas that spread like wildfire among economists and the politicians they advise. Milei’s success hinges on these truths. Let’s hope he sidelines economists in favor of Henry Hazlitt.

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, President of the Parkview Institute, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and a senior economic adviser to Applied Finance Advisors (www.appliedfinance.com). His latest book is The Money Confusion: How Illiteracy About Currencies and Inflation Sets the Stage For the Crypto Revolution.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2023/12/14/javier_milei_must_sideline_economists_embrace_henry_hazlitt_999017.html

Is This the End for Hunter and China Joe?

By John Kass 

When I was a young reporter, before getting on the elevators to head up to the the newsroom, I’d take a minute to study the lobby of the great newspaper building where I worked.

It was as if I were wandering through some ancient, gothic museum dedicated to the stern Anglo-Saxon gods. There were clues to be found there, carved in ancient script upon the walls,like this one from a Lord Macaulay:

“Where there is a free press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.”

But take a minute and look around you now. Does it seem as if these governors are living in constant awe of our opinions of them?

No, but you can dream. The problem is that living in a dream and fantasy land is the act of a madman who is living breathily in a glass menagerie fantasy.

Such dreams are for Chumbolones. You are not Chumbolones. And just by reading this, you’ve  declared yourself to be a member of the “No Chumbolone” Nation.

But that was years ago. I was a young husband and father. I must have been in some other country with strange customs and strange people.

The nation I grew up in would not have tolerated an invasion by millions upon millions of illegal migrants, young men alone of military age coming across the non-existent borders to take what they wanted while demanding money.

The land I grew up in would not have allowed the president and his federal police to portray families as potential domestic terrorists simply because they dared question the state’s role in politically indoctrinating their children at the government schools.

And in that country where I grew up would not tolerate a president and his family taking foreign payments, in effect being a paid foreign agent of our greatest adversary.

China is determined to push us off the world map and all Joe Biden and his many defenders in corporate legacy media shout “lies” about the U.S. Congressional Oversight demanded by The Constitution they say they revere.

The country I grew up in did not rush eagerly to be branded as Chumbolones (idiots, or fools) or to have the corporate legacy media cement their status as residents of Chumbolone Nation, i.e., a nation of idiots and/or fools.

Of course, the corporate media is desperate to absolve China Joe—to protect the corrupt system of Washington influence peddling, because he’s one of them–and to ridicule those would peel the corruption onion.

Their place as palace eunuchs demands it. And now that Hunter Biden has been indicted, they howl and distract. They obfuscate, like cheap magicians caught in a trick.

The corporate legacy media support of the American and world-wide left wing is not new.

When The New York Post (founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton) reported on that laptop from hell that was left at a computer repair shop by Joe Biden’s son Hunter, the corporate legacy media went into lying and censorship frenzy.

I was still at “the paper” then, still stopping in the lobby to somberly ponder Lord Macaulay’s warning about the awe the governors hold for the governed.

And when I’d get up to the newsroom and mention to some editors that I would write in support of the New York Post’s brave story or some column by the great Miranda Devine, author of “Laptop from Hell,” and here’s what happened:

A great mount of sighs and whining.

After all of Joe Biden’s lies, after all the corporate media censorship and gaslighting, an amazing thing is happening.

Democrats are greasing the skids to get rid of him. And China Joe reads the signs, and will squeal like a cornered rat, then pardon his son. Kamala Harris pardons him, after she locks in her pension. And Barack Obama or Michelle select Joe’s successor when they have locked in the Democratic delegates and it’s too late to stop them.

Call me crazy. I probably am crazy. I know that mine is not the popular view held by many conservatives who figure that no one will ever move China Joe out of there. And the left is now coming after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer with a vengeance.

But Biden’s true boss and puppet master, Barak Obama has been eerily silent. And Democrats don’t want China Joe around their necks as he sinks like a millstone after creepily sniffing the hair of young girls.

He keeps dropping in opinion polls. Despite Democrats parroting the Biden talking points endlessly on CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times, etc., there is increasing evidence that he’s corrupt.

What politician sends thousands of emails under assumed names to his Chinese business partners? What honest steward does such a thing, skulking in the shadows like an insect?

I don’t hold much for polls. I was burned by the big red wave that never happened.

Instead, I think of trends repeating. The one I keep thinking about is Democrat George McGovern and Richard Nixon in 1972. The Democrats and their media pals revenged themselves on Nixon as they’ll try to revenge themselves on former President Donald Trump.

But a new poll published Thursday from Morning Consult and Bloomberg news shows a trend .It shows that former President Donald Trump is leading Biden in seven swing states:  North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Everyday China Joe Biden is called out for his lies. He lied to the American people when the laptop story broke before his election—with help from the corporate media—and he continues to lie to this day.

He is a never-ending fountain of lies.

And Democrats and their corrupt corporate media allies have eagerly believed him because he is not Donald Trump.

If they don’t bounce the creepy old sniffer, it will be proof of one thing:

That they love being lied to. They’ll want you to love it, too. And they’ll lick it up.

https://johnkassnews.com/is-this-the-end-for-hunter-and-china-joe/

Brazil To Mandate COVID-19 Shots For Kids As Young As 6 Months

 by Augusto Zimmermann via The Epoch Times,

The Brazilian government via its Health Ministry has added the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to the country's National Immunization Program (PNI) for children six months to five years old. 

As reported by Agência Brasil, the new policy will take effect in 2024 and will require at least three doses of the vaccine.

Approved on Nov. 29 by the Senate's Committee on Social Affairs, law proposal No. 826 is currently being analysed by the Educational Commission.

With the obligation, not vaccinating children will result in fines and loss of social benefits to their families.

In addition to mandatory vaccination for young children, the Brazilian government may also introduce a compulsory vaccination program in schools. This will be the result of another bill under present consideration by the Brazilian Senate, establishing vaccine centres in the country's schools.

According to the newspaper Estadão, this law proposal states that students who do not participate in the school vaccination program would be reported to Brazilian authorities. 

"Five days after vaccination in the school unit, education professionals must send to the health unit a list with all students who did not receive the vaccination" along with the address and information of their parents or guardians.

As reported by CNN Brasil, the mandatory vaccination program also will be prioritised for other groups, including the elderly, immunocompromised, the permanently disabled, pregnant and postpartum women, health workers, those with comorbidities, Indigenous peoples, residents of long-term care facilities, the homeless, the incarcerated, and prison staff.

The Brazilian government claims the new policy is aligned with WHO recommendations. 

However, as openly acknowledged by Ethel Maciel, secretary of health surveillance of Brazil's Health Ministry, "In Brazil, we have slightly expanded the group compared to WHO's recommendations, which are more limited."

"We already have very robust evidence that indicates the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine," Mr. Maciel also said.

However, this claim is not accurate. 

For example, a comprehensive study conducted by King's College London scientists has concluded that the overall risk of children becoming severely ill or dying of COVID-19 is "extremely low.”

The conclusions reached by the King's College scientists encourages governments to be cautious when it comes to making health decisions—especially for vulnerable very young children—which, in the long run, may have adverse consequences for their health and future. 

For this reason, the United Kingdom government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has refused to endorse compulsory vaccination for children under the age of 18, stating that the benefit to them of receiving this vaccine is "virtually zero," whereas the already-known risk of serious harms are "not negligible."

Therefore, "JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks."

Just one known serious potential risk, or adverse effect of these novel vaccines, is that of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart. 

Speaking on these very vaccines, a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisations (ATAGI), acknowledges that "the more doses you get, the less benefit you derive from them, and then we start to worry about causing side effects."

A considerable number of blind-reviewed academic papers directly link these vaccines with a higher risk of myocarditis, and even Pfizer scientists now acknowledge that there have been increased cases of myocarditis after vaccination.

Charging Ahead

Despite all these serious concerns, Brazilian Health Minister Nísia Trindade has defended the new policy of mandatory vaccination on children as a matter of "children's rights."

In reality, the very opposite is true and the decision to seek to vaccinate pregnant women and small children as young as six months is wrong and not supported by scientific evidence. 

Given the already known potential harms of these vaccines, of which myocarditis is just one, and their entirely unknown long-term adverse effects, the decision of the Brazilian government to seek to vaccinate small children is not supported by scientific evidence. 

According to an article in the British Medical Journal, "From a public health standpoint, it makes poor sense to impose vaccine side-effects on people at minimal risk of severe COVID-19. The argument that it protects others is weak or contrary to evidence."

To conclude, this decision is entirely political, not a medical one. Nor is it moral or ethical to impose mandatory vaccination, because there are serious risks attached to mandating such vaccines, particularly on children and pregnant women. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/brazil-mandate-covid-19-shots-kids-young-6-months

"We're Just Uber Drivers", Border Patrol Agent Says America Is Being Destroyed

 by Brad Jones, John Fredricks via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Two older SUVs appear to come out of nowhere, slowly at first, then kicking up clouds of dust as they pick up speed along the southern side of the U.S.–Mexico border. Two white vans tail them to a gap in the border wall.

With covered faces, smugglers suspected of working for drug cartels exit the vehicles, which bear a mix of Californian and Mexican license plates. The coyotes, as they are known, glare through the slats in the 30-foot-tall border wall, while keeping an eye on their human cargo.

Within seconds, the doors on each vehicle are flung open and around 25 eager illegal immigrants jump out of each SUV and 50 from each van.

“Move it! Move it! Move it!” barks one of the coyotes as he turns his back to the wall and waves his arms toward a narrow footpath strewn with shreds of clothing and stray strands of razor wire where the wall ends at the base of a steep hill.

The illegal immigrants, a few with children, pick up their pace, dashing a few yards up an incline, around the wall, and into the United States.

The coyotes disappear into the desert as fast and efficiently as they arrive.

The chatter—mostly Spanish and some Mandarin—tapers off as U.S. Border Patrol agents, waiting on site, approach the illegal aliens along the wall to distribute plastic bracelets to them. The 150 new arrivals, mostly solemn but relieved to be out of the clutches of the cartels, march along the wall toward tents and makeshift shelters.

A Border Patrol Mobile Response Unit team stands watch over the camp near Jacumba on the southeastern fringe of San Diego County. One of three illegal immigrant encampments within about a 20-mile span along the border, Willow camp is flanked on the west by 177 camp, south of Boulevard, California, and Moon camp in Imperial County on the east.

Suspected Mexican cartel members drive SUV's containing dozens of illegal immigrants to an open gap in the U.S. border wall near Jacomba, Calif., on Dec 6, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Illegal Immigrant Surge

A small sampling of illegal immigrants at the camps say they came from China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Mauritania, Colombia, and Brazil.

Sam Schultz, whose family volunteers for a group called Border Kindness and are affiliated with the legal services organization Al Otro Lado, which means “to the other side” in Spanish, delivers food and water to the camps daily.

He told The Epoch Times on Dec. 5 he was worried about running out of supplies with so many illegal immigrants crossing that day.

Mr. Schultz said about 30 percent of the illegal immigrants in the latest wave to the Jacumba camps are from China.

Manny Bayon, a National Border Patrol Council union spokesman in San Diego, told The Epoch Times the number of illegal immigrants released into San Diego County has doubled in the last two weeks—from 400 to 500 per day to 800 to 1,000.

Dec. 5 and 6 marked two of the highest days on record for illegal immigrants apprehended at the border in a single day, although exact figures were not available, he said. About 1,000 illegal immigrants occupied the three camps on those days alone.

On Dec. 6, Senate Republicans blocked aid funding to Ukraine and Israel while asking the Biden administration to do something to halt the flow of illegal aliens across the southern border.

With detention facilities over capacity and asylum cases backlogged in the immigration courts for the next decade, Congress should force the Biden administration to secure the border, Mr. Bayon said.

“The Biden administration is not doing anything. They haven’t done anything in the last three years,” he said.

The union fully supports the move to block the budget until the border crisis is solved, Mr. Bayon said.

“They should even withhold funding to sanctuary cities."

Chicago and New York—both sanctuary cities, which shield illegal immigrants from federal immigration authorities—are now realizing the surge in illegal immigration over nearly three years is a “bigger mess,” than anyone imagined, he said.

Morale Hits ‘Rock Bottom’

Another Border Patrol agent in Arizona, who spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said most agents don’t believe they have the support of the Biden administration nor Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Border Patrol agents feel “100 percent betrayed by Mayorkas and the Biden administration,” he said.

Every patrol station is so over capacity, much of the manpower is going to process and transport illegal immigrants, which leaves fewer agents left in the field, he said.

Illegal immigrants wait outside the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, New York City, on July 31, 2023. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

Morale among agents, he said, has hit an all-time low.

“It’s rock bottom, by far the worst I’ve ever seen,” the Border Patrol agent said. “A lot of them are leaving. They’re leaving the patrol. They don’t even have a backup plan—no job. They’re just so sick and tired of having their hands tied. Guys are having a hard time even putting on their uniforms. Right now, we’re just Uber drivers. We’re just watching it all happen. We’re watching the destruction of our country.”

Although crossing the border by land anywhere but U.S. ports of entry is illegal, and illegal immigrants could be arrested and deported under current law, the Border Patrol has been told to stand down, the source said.

“We’ve been told we can’t stop anybody,” he said.

Meanwhile, the “actual bad guys,” who use illegal immigrants as their drug “mules” to smuggle fentanyl and cocaine, are evading capture.

“There’s no pulse check on that, because everybody is either ... driving, processing, or providing medical attention,” the Border Patrol agent said.

“Agents signed up to defend the border and protect our country, and we’re just not being allowed to do it.”

Drug and sex trafficking have become worse in America, leaving agents voiceless and struggling with their consciences, because they know they’re not doing enough to push back against the Mexican cartels, he said.

“This is an absolute cash grab for them. The Biden administration is really helping facilitate it and embolden the cartels, and we have to just stand by, and you’re not allowed to speak about it,” he said. “We took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. We need more people to stand up, and the American people have a right to know what’s going on.”

Manny Bayon, a Border Patrol agent listens to radio chatter near the border wall of San Diego, Calif., on May 31, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

From the moment President Joe Biden was sworn into office nearly three years ago, the message has essentially been that border is open, and now is the time for migrants to rush the southern border, he said.

On day one, the Biden administration signed executive orders and issued memos to temporarily suspend deportations of illegal aliens, reversed former President Donald Trump's ban on travel from terror-prone countries, halted border wall construction, stopped adding people to the "Remain in Mexico" program, fortified the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and released a sweeping immigration package to Congress that included amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.

“We’ve never had these kinds of numbers before. You literally have people coming in from all over the world, and in such massive numbers that it’s hard to stop,” the Border Patrol agent said.

National Security Threat

Alarmed by the number of military-age men coming into the country from all over the world, amid conflicts between Israel and Hamas, as well as Ukraine and Russia, the United States needs to tighten border security and step up its vetting process, said the border agent.

With Border Patrol arresting 172 illegal immigrants on the terrorist watchlist in fiscal year 2023, he is also worried about fighting-age men from Middle East countries entering the United States without rigorous vetting.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/were-just-uber-drivers-border-patrol-agent-says-america-being-destroyed

Wave Life Sciences Starts Phase 2 FORWARD-53 Trial of WVE-N531 in Duchenne

 FORWARD-53 is fully enrolled with potentially registrational dystrophin expression data expected in 2024

Previous clinical proof-of-concept data demonstrated highest level of exon skipping ever observed in the clinic and that WVE-N531 was present in myogenic stem cells, which are important for potential muscle regeneration

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/wave-life-sciences-announces-initiation-of-dosing-in-phase-2-forward-53-trial-of-wve-n531-in-duchenne-muscular-dystrophy/

Biden, Big Pharma Increasingly at Loggerheads in Run-Up to 2024 Election

 Is it me, or does the tension between the Biden administration and Big Pharma appear to be rising? Based on the events of the past two weeks, I’d say the White House, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Federal Trade Commission are ratcheting up pressure on the biopharma industry.

As a cynical observer of American politics, I could easily dismiss the Biden administration’s recent actions as merely posturing for the 2024 presidential election. However, President Joe Biden has long promised to stand up to Big Pharma, lower prescription drug prices and limit the power of drugmakers—a pledge he seems intent on keeping.   

Invoking the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration on Thursday said 48 drugs covered under Medicare’s Part B—including those used to treat cancer and fight infections—may be subject to inflation rebates in the first quarter of 2024. The White House noted that dozens of drugmakers will be required to pay inflation rebates back to CMS due to price gouging.

“While Republicans in Congress fight tooth and nail to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and put money back in the pockets of Big Pharma, President Biden won’t back down from the fight to lower costs for hardworking Americans and make sure every family has access to affordable health care,” the Administration said in Thursday’s announcement. Now that sounds like a campaign speech!

Last week, also in an effort to lower drug prices, the Biden administration said it will issue a framework for the National Institutes of Health to implement so-called “march-in rights” under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 to take back patents of specific expensive medicines that rely on federally funded research.

The industry, of course, argues that such intellectual property is critical to giving companies a return on their investment and expedite the development of new drugs. In response to Biden’s announcement, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) said that seizing patent rights on innovative medicines “would be yet another loss for American patients who rely on public-private sector collaboration to advance new treatments and cures” and that the Biden administration “is sending us back to a time when government research sat on a shelf, not benefitting anyone.”

We also saw the power of the Federal Trade Commission this week. Sanofi on Monday said that following the FTC’s administrative complaint and threat of a lawsuit in federal court it decided to terminate its $755 million license agreement with Maze Therapeutics. Just the threat of litigation was enough to convince Sanofi to throw in the towel—the same day the FTC said it was seeking a preliminary injunction.

The FTC charged that the Maze deal “would eliminate a nascent competitor to Sanofi in Pompe disease drugs, threatening to stall innovation and deprive patients of lower drug prices.” But once again, the biopharma industry had a different take: In explaining its decision to end the deal, Sanofi countered “it would not be in the best interests of patients to contest this litigation” as it would delay “potential advancements that could impact the lives of patients.” 

The Biden administration also put pressure on Sanofi and AstraZeneca this week, securing the companies’ commitment to provide 230,000 additional doses of their respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infant immunization Beyfortus by next month. The White House held many in-person and virtual meetings this month to identify ways that vaccine manufacturers and their partners could make more RSV shots for infants available amid a nationwide shortage.

Based on conversations with anonymous sources, Politico reported that those discussions “at times grew tense” with Biden officials “faulting company executives for underestimating demand for the shots in their initial projections” while “insisting that it would be up to them to ensure the shortfall doesn’t become severe.”

This showdown between the White House and biopharma executives capped off a contentious two weeks between the Biden administration and industry—a policy tone that will no doubt continue in 2024 on a host of issues. 

https://www.biospace.com/article/biden-big-pharma-increasingly-at-loggerheads-in-run-up-to-2024-election/