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Thursday, March 20, 2025

Venezuela's Maduro wants his thugs back

It's almost like he lost a division.

Venezuela's socialist dictator, Nicolas Maduro, has stepped forward with a bizarre mixture of rage and crocodile tears, whimpering about all theVenezuelan criminals shipped by the U.S. to El Salvador this weekend for a stretch in President Nayyib Bukele's famously strict prisons.

According to CNN:

Venezuela’s leader has described the deportation of more than 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants sent by the United States to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador as a “kidnapping,” and denied they are criminals while backing calls for their return.
“Nayib Bukele should not be an accomplice to this kidnapping, because our boys did not commit any crime in the United States, none,” Nicolas Maduro told supporters Wednesday, referencing El Salvador’s leader, who has struck a deal with US President Donald Trump.
“They were not brought to trial, they were not given the right to a defense, the right to due process, they were deceived, handcuffed, put on a plane, kidnapped, and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador,” Maduro added.

It's as good an argument as any I've ever seen that President Trump was right in invoking the Alien Enemy Act in deporting the Venezuelan illegals involved with Tren de Aragua gang from the U.S.

Maduro is suddenly insisting that he wants these people back in Venezuela -- after emptying his prisons of them and telling them to head to el norte.

Crazier still, the prisoners were sent to El Salvador precisely because Maduro refused to take a repatriation flight of them to Venezuela.

He didn't want them back earlier, but now he wants them back now? He's offering to send migrant "dignity" flights, borrowing from the language of the pope, when just yesterday, he didn't want them back inside his country?

Too late, it was off to San Salvador for them as a result of that decision, where they are sure to cause no problems to anyone, such is the security of the prisons there.

Sound like there might have been a mission all along? Sound like he lost his army sent to loot and pillage the hated gringo?

Well, it does to me.

Note how he denies that any of them are criminals, which he would very cynically know is not true. Maduro knows exactly who he sent to the U.S. to wreak havoc -- which his mentor, Hugo Chavez, openly spoke of when he was alive -- and now that he finds them in El Salvador's fearsome prison out of the reach of anyone, whether Venezuelan or U.S. American, he's out an army.

Of course there was a plan -- and it's been thwarted, badly, by President Trump and President Bukele.

It's very well known that Maduro, drugs, and Tren de Aragua are closely connected and work in sync as Chavista thug enforcers.

Here's a very good history (you have to hit Google translate, but it's worth it) on the intertwined involvement between Maduro and the Tren de Aragua criminal organization:

CNN has a decent backgrounder here.

Now he's pretending he's cared about the migrants all along, despite driving them from his country. Sure, he's probably trying to score points with Democrats, who are making similar arguments to allow Tren de Aragua's thugs to stay in the states -- raising questions about their involvement with him. But more likely, he's most upset about his "poor man's weapon" of illegal immigration to inflict harm on the U.S.

Trump got rid of it, and since he didn't welcome them back, they're out of circulation now. The only thing this really suggests is that Trump was right about the Alien Enemies Act and Maduro's been caught with his pants down.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/venezuela_s_maduro_wants_his_thugs_back.html

Enough’s enough, Supremes — slap down judges’ delusions

Who should have more power: the president of the United States, or a federal district judge — one of nearly 700 — in a courthouse anywhere in the nation?

The answer is obvious, and pure common sense.

The president is elected by millions, empowered by the US Constitution to ensure “the laws be faithfully executed,” conduct foreign policy and command the nation’s armed forces.

Most district court judges get there because they know somebody who knows somebody in the president’s party.

Their role on the bench is generally limited to deciding the case before them based on existing law.

Yet across the country, highly partisan district judges are using legal ploys to bulldoze Trump, stymie his agenda — and set national, even international, policy.

In dozens of cases since Jan. 20, federal district judges — the lowest on the ladder — have issued nationwide injunctions halting Trump’s suspension of foreign aid, his deportation of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members, his layoffs and spending cuts in federal departments and agencies, his prohibitions on discriminatory diversity programs in higher education and government hiring, and more.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, DC, issued a nationwide injunction barring the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order excluding transgender individuals from the military. Reyes said she foresees a “heated public debate” and appeals.

But Emperor Reyes is taking it upon herself to decide the issue for the entire nation, in defiance of the commander-in-chief who actually heads the military — before any evidence is heard.

She is freezing in place a policy the president opposes, for all the months and years it may take for the lawsuit to be decided and for appeals to be made, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.

Ridiculous.

The misuse of national injunctions by politically motivated federal judges is not an entirely new problem, nor is it 100% one-sided.

During Trump’s first term, they were used 64 times to delay his initiatives.

They were also used 14 times against the Biden administration, per a Harvard Law Review survey.

All the more reason the Supreme Court should crack down without delay.

Justice Elena Kagan has sharply criticized this abuse.

“It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal process,” she told a Northwestern University Law School audience in 2022.

During the first Trump administration, Kagan observed, activist groups “used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years they go to Texas” — “shopping” for a judge willing to issue a national injunction in line with the plaintiff’s wishes.

Her comments came as a district judge for the Northern District of Texas imposed a nationwide injunction ordering the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of mifepristone, an abortion drug.

How can a single judge in a small courthouse in Amarillo have such power?

Angry abortion activists demanded.

Good question.

Until the Supreme Court acts, Trump is caught in an arduous game of whack-a-mole, pleading with federal appeals courts all over the nation to overturn the endless injunctions and get his stalled policy initiatives up and running again.

It’s one victory at a time: Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit lifted the freeze on Trump’s executive order ending discriminatory DEI rules in government contracting, grant-making and hiring.

But lefty district court judges are still waging lawfare against Trump — and the high court isn’t doing its job.

On March 5, a divided Supreme Court turned down Trump’s request to lift a district court order compelling the State Department and the US Agency for International Development to pay $2 billion in foreign aid, in defiance of the president’s policies.

Justice Samuel Alito issued a blistering dissent.

“Does a single district-court judge . . . have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” he thundered.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No’.”

Trump’s Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris is undeterred.

On March 13, she made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, warning these injunctions have reached “epidemic proportions.”

This brand of lawfare “stops the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions,” she argued.

Harris made her request within the context of the birthright-citizenship cases now before the court — yet another Trump choice that’s been judicially handcuffed.

But the court needs to do more than weigh in on Trump’s policies on children born to illegal residents.

It’s time — past time — to restrain these district court judges who act like kings.

Harris called it a “modest” request, but in fact the progress of Trump’s entire agenda — and the hopes of Americans who voted for him — depend on it.

As Harris told the court, “Enough is enough.”

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/20/opinion/enoughs-enough-supremes-slap-down-delusional-judges/

DOJ Moves To Drop Lawsuit Seeking to Block Texas Officers From Arresting Illegal Immigrants

by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has notified a court that it wants a lawsuit against a Texas immigration law dismissed.

“Plaintiff the United States of America hereby voluntarily dismisses the above-captioned action,” lawyers for the DOJ said in a March 18 filing.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

Under President Joe Biden, the DOJ in 2024 sued Texas over a state law that enabled state police officers to arrest and deport illegal immigrants.

“Texas cannot disregard the United States Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Brian M. Boynton, the principal deputy assistant attorney general at the time, said in a Jan. 4 statement on the suit.
“We have brought this action to ensure that Texas adheres to the framework adopted by Congress and the Constitution for regulation of immigration.”

Senate Bill 4, the law, created state crimes for illegally entering the United States, authorized state judges to order the deportation of some illegal immigrants, and required state officials to carry out the orders.

The legal challenge resulted in the law being blocked as courts weighed the case brought by the DOJ.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, who entered an injunction against the statute, said in his February 2024 order that states under the U.S. Constitution “may not exercise immigration enforcement power except as authorized by the federal government.”

More recently, on Jan. 31, Ezra said that in light of developments, Texas law enforcement is permitted “to cooperate with and act under the direction of Federal authorities in the apprehension, arrest, and detention of undocumented persons found within the borders of the State of Texas without legal authorization from the United States Government.”

He also said that Texas judges and officers still cannot deport illegal immigrants and that other portions of the injunction remain in effect.

The developments included two executive orders from President Donald Trump, one of which stated that it was his administration’s policy to deter and prevent illegal immigrants from entering the United States and promptly remove all immigrants who illegally enter or are in the country in violation of federal law.

The other said that the U.S. secretary of homeland security will work with state and local officials to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants.

The DOJ previously dropped Biden-era lawsuits that challenged state immigration laws in Oklahoma and Iowa. Similar to the Texas case, officials under Biden had said that the laws violated the U.S. Constitution because they created state-level immigration systems that ran afoul of the federal system.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/doj-moves-drop-lawsuit-seeking-block-texas-officers-arresting-illegal-immigrants

US vaccine advisory meeting rescheduled for April

A panel of immunization experts that advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control will convene in April after a previous meeting had been postponed, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in an email on Thursday.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices had been originally set to meet in February. The April meeting will include a measles update, the email said.

https://www.investing.com/news/general-news/us-vaccine-advisory-meeting-rescheduled-for-april-3940875

J&J TREMFYA potential to be 1st and only intravenous and SC induction therapy in ulcerative colitis

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ ) today announced data from the Phase 3 ASTRO study of TREMFYA^® (guselkumab) subcutaneous (SC) induction therapy in adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis (UC) at the 20th Congress of the European Crohn's and Colitis Organization (ECCO). Study findings through Week 12 showed statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements compared to placebo across all clinical and endoscopic measures consistent with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved intravenous (IV) induction regimen in this population

"The Week 12 results from the ASTRO study build on data from the QUASAR study demonstrating that both guselkumab SC and IV induction achieved clinically differentiated results in patients with moderately to severely active UC," said Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet, M.D., Ph.D., Head of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Unit at Nancy University Hospital in France and study investigator.^a "The flexibility of a fully SC treatment regimen would be a welcome option for many patients, especially those with busy and active lifestyles."

At Week 12, significantly greater proportions of patients treated with TREMFYA^® 400 mg SC induction compared with patients receiving placebo achieved all of the following multiplicity-controlled endpoints:

Clinical remission (27.6% vs 6.5%; P<0.001) ^b
Clinical response (65.6% vs 34.5%; P<0.001) ^c
Endoscopic improvement (37.3% vs 12.9%; P<0.001) ^d

In prespecified analyses of subpopulations defined by prior advanced therapy treatment status, TREMFYA^® demonstrated statistically significant results across endpoints in both biologic and JAK inhibitor-naïve and biologic and JAK inhibitor-refractory patients.

https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Johnson+%26+Johnson+%28JNJ%29%3A+TREMFYA+subcutaneous+%28SC%29+induction+data+support+potential+to+be+the+first+and+only+in+its+class+to+offer+the+option+of+both+intravenous+and+SC+induction+therapy+in+ulcerative/24382766.html

Alnylam drug gets long-awaited FDA approval in deadly heart disease

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved an Alnylam Pharmaceuticals medicine for a serious heart condition, a decision that should help the biotechnology firm secure its position as one of the sector’s most valuable companies.

The agency cleared the drug, called Amvuttra, for people with a cardiac form of the rare disease transthyretin amyloidosis. Alnylam already sells the therapy for individuals with a genetic type of the disease that causes progressive nerve damage.

Transthyretin amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy is considered deadlier than the nerve type, and often leads to hospitalizations and heart failure. It’s also thought to be more common, making it a target for drugmakers seeking a lucrative market opportunity.

In testing, treatment with Amvuttra led to a 28% lower risk of recurrent cardiovascular events or death from any cause than placebo in people with the disease. The drug similarly reduced that risk versus placebo among people who weren’t receiving another medication for the condition, Pfizer’s tafamidis, at the study’s start.

Both measures were the study’s main goals after statistical changes Alnylam made to the study a year ago.

Amvuttra labeling specifies treatment can reduce hospitalizations or death resulting from heart complications, as well as urgent visits for heart failure. That indication could help the drug’s commercial prospects, as tafamidis and the other available medication, BridgeBio Pharma’s Attruby, are also cleared for that use.

The approval provides a “new and clinically differentiated treatment option that has been shown to improve outcomes,” said CEO Yvonne Greenstreet, in a statement.

Alnylam didn’t disclose Amvuttra’s price in its press release. Tafamidis has a list price of over $250,000 while Attruby’s yearly cost is about $244,000.

Approval of Amvuttra in transthyretin amyloidosis, or ATTR, cardiomyopathy is important for the future of Alnylam, which pioneered a drugmaking method called RNA interference.

Though the company has developed four other marketed medicines — cementing itself as one of the industry’s most prolific developers — it’s still not profitable. Alnylam has accumulated a deficit of more than $7 billion since its 2002 founding, including $1.85 billion in combined net losses over the last three years, according to its most recent annual report.

Wall Street analysts and investors view approval in ATTR cardiomyopathy as Alnylam’s best opportunity yet to turn a regular profit. Historically, the disease has been underdiagnosed as it can be mistaken for other conditions. But better awareness, diagnostic tools and the availability of tafamidis since 2019 have grown the market, leading analysts to forecast annual sales for drugs that treat the condition rising to $15 billion to $20 billion over time. Global sales of tafamidis surpassed $5 billion last year.

Alnylam has sought to prove its medicines can deliver powerful benefits by “silencing” the misfolded protein implicated in the disease rather than stabilizing it like tafamidis does. The company came close to an approval with an earlier drug, Onpattro. But the FDA rejected it in 2023 after determining the supportive data weren’t meaningful enough to warrant an OK, and Alnylam abandoned seeking a clearance of Onpattro in cardiomyopathy.

The company tried again with Amvuttra, which works similarly to Onpattro but is administered through an under-the-skin injection rather than an infusion. Alnylam also ran the main trial supporting its approval for long enough to assess whether treatment could extend lives — the kind of evidence underlying tafamidis’ approval — and detected a benefit that appears to have satisfied U.S. regulators.

Amvuttra’s sales potential may not end up being as high as some on Wall Street predict, however. The drug will compete for market share tafamidis and Attruby, both of which are taken orally. The latter was approved last year and is off to a faster-than-expected start. Alnylam’s drug wasn’t tested directly against either one and, while cross-trial comparisons can be misleading, its results don’t appear strong enough to indicate vutrisiran is clearly superior. Physicians interviewed by BioPharma Dive last year said that deciding which drug to start new patients on, or switch to if one therapy stops working, will be difficult.

Given the drugs’ costs, insurers may not approve use of Amvuttra alongside tafamidis or Attruby. Generic versions of tafamidis, which could arrive later this decade, will further shift the market balance. Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Intellia Therapeutics are advancing other medicines, meanwhile.

In an interview ahead of the FDA’s decision, Chief Commercial Officer Tolga Tanguler said Amvuttra can help grow the market. While diagnosis rates have climbed since tafamidis’ initial approval, the majority of patients aren’t on treatment, leaving room for new entrants to gain share, he said.

Tanguler said Alnylam sees Amvuttra as “well positioned to become the standard of care.” He noted how adherence to the drug, which is injected four times a year, is very high in the neuropathy form of ATTR. “You don’t get that on an oral therapy,” he added. Good results “can only happen if you’re actually taking your medicine.”

Alnylam’s therapy also was tested in people who were already on other background therapies, among them tafamidis, which “set the bar very high.” Amvuttra nevertheless succeeded, with benefit reported across different subgroups.

“I have every confidence we’ll be able to communicate that very effectively to both payers and prescribers,” Tanguler said.

The company projects Amvuttra and Onpattro will generate about $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion in combined revenue this year, versus just over $1.2 billion last year. Tanguler expects Amvuttra’s usage to grow over the second half of the year and accelerate after.

https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/alnylam-vutrisiran-fda-approval-ttr-amyloidosis-cardiomyopathy/742975/

CNN’s Scott Jennings accuses Jimmy Kimmel of giving ‘marching orders’ to vandalize Teslas

CNN commentator Scott Jennings accused Jimmy Kimmel of giving his left-leaning viewers “marching orders” to destroy property on Thursday after the ABC late night comedy host appeared to sarcastically urge his viewers not to vandalize Tesla vehicles.

“The message from the American Left to conservatives is unmistakable: silence yourselves, or we will do it for you. This isn’t comedy — these are marching orders,” Jennings wrote on his X account.

The CNN pundit was reacting to video clips of Kimmel’s monologue from his ABC show on Tuesday night, when he told a cheering audience that Tesla’s stock had fallen amid a backlash against CEO Elon Musk over his role in the Trump administration.

“People have been vandalizing Tesla vehicles. New Tesla vehicle. Please don’t vandalize. Don’t ever vandalize Tesla vehicles,” Kimmel said before taking a long pause while the audience laughed.

During his Tuesday night show, Kimmel remarked humorously about Musk’s management practices and Tesla’s declining stock price.

Addressing his live studio audience, Kimmel joked: “Our co-president Elon Musk sent a SpaceX vehicle to bring the astronauts back, and when they landed, he fired them immediately upon landing.”

He followed this by highlighting Tesla’s troubling financial situation: “Tesla stock is way down, almost disastrously so,” before sarcastically instructing his viewers not to vandalize Tesla cars.

Kimmel revisited the topic on his Wednesday show — directly referencing recent violence against Tesla dealerships.

He responded to criticism from Musk, who told Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “Tesla is a peaceful company. I’ve never done anything awful. I think we just have a deranged… there is some kind of mental illness thing going on here. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Responding to Musk’s apparent confusion over the hostility directed at his company, Kimmel commented on Wednesday: “Well, let me see if I can explain it for you, when you pull out a chainsaw to celebrate firing thousands of people, they get mad.”

Kimmel then amplified his criticism, saying: “This poor guy. You do one, maybe two Nazi salutes and everybody gets all bent out of shape.”

The Post has sought comment from Kimmel and ABC.

Kimmel has lashed out at Musk in the past.

In 2022, the late night host blasted the Tesla mogul as a “piece of s–t” after he shared and later deleted a conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/20/media/jimmy-kimmel-gave-marching-orders-to-vandalize-teslas-scott-jennings/

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Thursday, March 20, 2025