Whatever Happened to Kilmar?

 You have to laugh. Democrats made Kilmar Abrego Garcia into the cause of the moment just a couple of weeks ago, which liberal Member of Congress after Liberal Member of Congress making a pilgrimage down to El Salvador for the express purpose of doing media hits where they are seen as simply being there. Now, the whole thing is pretty much done. Democrats have moved on to new shiny objects in a desperate attempt to turn people against President Donald Trump.

Abrego Garcia was always the wrong cause for Democrats to get behind. Two immigration judges had determined there was enough evidence that he was a member of MS-13 to declare it to be. There was never any question as to whether or not he was an illegal alien; he was, and there was no dispute over whether or not he should be deported – he was ordered to be.

The only issue was whether or not he could be deported back to El Salvador. 

Very late in the process, likely as a desperate ploy to avoid deportation, he claimed he was afraid for his life from what is described as a “rival gang” that was threatening his grandma’s tamale stand. 

What’s interesting here is the use of the word “rival.” For there to be a “rival” gang for someone, that someone must be in a gang themselves. Individuals can’t have rival gangs, only a gang that wants to do them harm. Maybe this is an issue with bad reporting, but it always struck me as odd to use that word. If you tell me a rival gang, the Sharks, want to kill you (or have a dance-off with you, as the case may be), I’m going to take that as a passive confession that you’re a Jet (and a Jet all the way).

Whatever the case with Kilmar, the “rival gang” he was allegedly afraid of no longer exists – El Salvador has wiped them out. While it would have been in keeping with all court orders that said he needed to be booted out of the United States and sent anywhere but El Salvador because of that fear for his life. With that fear gone, who cares where he goes as long as it’s not here?

But when President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, and with courts declaring Abrego Garcia a member of that gang, all bets were off. There’s a different set of laws for dealing with members of terrorist organizations.

Still, Democrats elevated him to hero status. They were desperate for anything, and he presented what they saw as an opening. They rallied to him like he had the cure for what ails them. Rational people would not have done this. People with something to offer the American people would deliver it, not scramble to embrace anything their opponent opposes.

Abrego Garcia, it turns out, has all sorts of baggage. His wife accused him of multiple instances of domestic violence; he was caught in a situation that sure seemed like human smuggling while driving a car, apparently registered to a human smuggler, and so on.

It’s like no Democrat thought to look into Kilmar’s background, as none of this was hidden. It was enough that Donald Trump was on one side of the issue, and that’s all that mattered.

How’d that work out?

It seems not so great. Kimlar has faded from the Sunday shows, and MSNBC-13 barely mentions him. I don’t know if there are any Democrats currently camping in a ditch outside his prison in El Salvador or even any Democrats still in El Salvador, but the fact that I don’t know is a reflection of how, even if there were, no media outlet cares to have them on. 

We’ve gone from a constant barrage of choppy, streaming videos from hotel rooms filled with breathless pledges to “bring him home” to Twitter silence and little interest in his fate. 

After weeks of declaring Kilmar our moral superior, his fate no longer matters. They wanted their picture taken with him or his wife, more than a Swiftie would love to get a selfie with Taylor and Travis, and now he’s Harvey Weinstein.

That doesn’t mean his saga is over; it just means that, after a huge pile of evidence was exposed, Democrats realized exactly what they stepped into. They went from conquering hero to worrying about whether or not they were working to get Nicole back together with OJ. I don’t know where the truth lies, but the way Democrats are acting now makes me think they do, or at least heavily suspect.

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2025/04/29/whatever-happened-to-kilmar-n2656232

We Should All Be Rooting for Rubio

 by Roger Simon

Whether you’re rooting for Marco Rubio in his dual roles of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser is a test of whether you’re a genuine American patriot, care about freedom and the free world, or are some kind of small-minded political hack obsessed with winning elections.

Actually, Mr. Rubio has more roles than just those two, significant as they are. He’s also the Acting USAID administrator and the Acting Archivist. If that’s not enough, J. D. Vance joked that there’s an opening for a Catholic male coming up in Rome, although, as Mr. Rubio himself pointed out, he’s married and is therefore disqualified for that job.

President Trump obviously has a fair amount of confidence in the articulate former Florida senator. I can understand it. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Mr. Rubio in 2015 and subsequently ended up watching some of the Super Bowl the following January with him and his children by accident of being trapped in the same snowbound New Hampshire hotel. He was great with his kids, the sure sign of a first-rate human being.

But it’s certainly not just because of that random encounter that I’m rooting for Rubio to succeed on three fronts—Russia/Ukraine, Iran and China.

I have a suspicion though that if one of the three goes on the back burner, it will be Russia/Ukraine. In fact, it already is, if you are to believe State Dept. porte parole Tammy Bruce—and I do. She was backed up by Mr. Rubio himself who practically said as much in an interview with Sean Hannity. The President is apparently fed up with the intransigence of both parties, as well he might be as they continue to destroy and murder each other into oblivion for little purpose. It’s hard to see what the President or his Secretary of State can do at this point to fix this mutual insanity.

In that same interview, Mr. Rubio was characteristically articulate on the matter of Iran that is far from resolved:

“If Iran wants a peaceful civil nuclear program, meaning they want nuclear power plants like other countries in the world have, there’s a way to do it. And that is you build the reactors and you import enriched uranium to fuel those reactors. That’s how dozens of countries around the world do it.

“The only countries in the world that enrich uranium are the ones that have nuclear weapons. Iran is at—they’re claiming they don’t want a weapon, but they would—what they’re basically asking is to be the only non-weapon country in the world that’s enriching uranium.”

Of course Rubio is taking Iran at their own words here for strategic reasons. Later in the interview he makes clear what we all know—the mullahs have been lying consistently and use the negotiations to prolong their clandestine nuclear activities.

As for what will happen should the Iranians not cooperate, Mr Rubio was equally explicit:

“And now it’s a matter of whether or not they’re going to take it. And the President was very, very clear he would lead the effort to stop them from ever achieving that nuclear weapon. And that would mean – that statement was obvious in terms of that he would use military force to destroy those facilities. We have the capacity, obviously, to do it.”

If I were to bet, I would wager the Iranians will not “take it,” although they will stonewall for as long as possible. This is true although things are looking worse and worse for their clients Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis (plus all those in between). The mullahs are more afraid of their own people than they are of anybody else, as well they should be. The Islamic regime could well unravel if they give up the possibility of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, Iran and, for that matter, Russia and especially the Chinese do not think in terms of four-year increments that parallel presidential terms. They play the so-called “long game.” This is a privilege of autocracies, if you can call it that. It also creates a serious problem for the West in doing business with tyrants.

That disadvantage should underscore how important that on these foreign policy issues Americans downgrade their partisanship for a moment and line up behind Mr. Rubio and the President. If they fail, there will be plenty of time to remonstrate with them later.

Not only is that my headline, it is the heartfelt purpose of this article. The world is at one of those epoch crossroads. Our country is unfortunately filled with people, partly because of the reactionary open door to immigrants of the previous administration, who do not wish it or us well. Too many Democrats, desperate to return to power, pander to these people at the risk of undermining the basis of Western civilization.

Sorry if that sounds like an exaggeration. It is not. A point of reference is the previous Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who was so desperate for his “team” to win he organized the 51 present and former intelligence agents to claim in a letter the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation when he and most of the signees well knew it was not. You can’t work more against the interests of your country than that.

Reading or listening to what the new Secretary of State said is reassuring for a number of reasons, not the least of which is he apparently cleaning up the State Department, moribund for decades.. Also reassured are those of us who have been somewhat skeptical of presidential envoy Steve Witkoff’s knowledge of Middle East politics and his apparent reliance on Qatar. Others have questioned Witkoff’s competence vis-à-vis Russia. The degree to which these portfolios will be in Rubio’s hands is a good thing.

All of this, of course, relates to China, as does everything these days. As I type this, we have learned the Chinese may be willing to negotiate with President Trump regarding tariffs. If so, that’s a big victory.

Another is the elevation of Marco Rubio. Let’s get behind him, fellow Americans.

https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/we-should-all-be-rooting-for-rubio

The Medicaid Shell Game Must End

 Democrats are raising alarm bells with claims that DOGE cuts to Medicaid could impact up to 80 million Americans who depend on the program for healthcare coverage. But if Democrats really want to preserve Medicaid, they’ll need to show a good-faith effort to work with Republicans to reduce the waste, mistakes, and fraud that cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars each year and have put the system in the ICU in the first place.

One of the best places to start is by closing the intergovernmental transfer (IGT) loophole that states have exploited at the expense of American taxpayers and Medicaid enrollees.

In essence, states have used IGTs to cook the books as their Medicaid programs hemorrhage taxpayer dollars. Here’s how it works.

First, a state compels a government-owned healthcare provider like county hospitals and ambulance services to temporarily transfer funds into the state’s Medicaid program. The state then returns those funds to fulfill its 50 percent reimbursement obligation to the provider. The federal government also contributes its 50 percent share of the reimbursement – which comes from American taxpayers all over the country. 

This shell game has become lucrative not only for the states, which effectively avoid having to actually pay their share, but also for these public providers as the allowable reimbursement rates have risen to over three times the cost of providing the service.

For example, unscrupulous providers use creative accounting to push the envelope on allocating operational costs like payroll, debt service, and depreciation expenses under high Medicaid utilization services. In plain English, they move costs that are tangentially related or are under the organization’s larger service provisions onto the backs of taxpayers. State Medicaid programs then report the new cost to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to get approval for higher reimbursement rates.  

IGTs have been allowed since Medicaid’s inception, with all of their inherent strengths and weaknesses. What’s really accelerated their abuse has been the Affordable Care Act’s provisions expanding Medicaid, which added 25 million people in 41 states to the program’s rolls – and increased federal matching from 50 percent to 90 percent for the expansion enrollees.

And this is where Democrats and Republicans can be on the same fiscally responsible page: Republicans want to stop abuse for taxpayers’ sake, while Democrats have a vested interest in protecting the expansion they have championed for 15 years.

The poster child for the abuse of IGTs is California, which in 2023 received CMS approval to raise the Medicaid covered reimbursement for publicly owned ambulance services by $800, tripling the previous rate. Private ambulance companies, meanwhile, have been forced to keep costs low because they haven’t received increased Medicaid base rate reimbursement since the 1990s.

Take a guess which ambulance providers California counties work with – the low-cost private companies or the expensive public ones through which they can skim profit to fill their own budget holes? And, no, Medicaid patients are not receiving three times better care even as taxpayers pay triple the cost. 

Realigning Medicaid matching policies and closing the IGT loophole will pressure states like California to adopt better budgeting practices. Those practices will likely involve allowing real competition between government and private healthcare providers. As the best providers win, so will taxpayers’ wallets and patients’ health.  

It’s too late to claw back money from states as corrupt as California without years of court battles and millions in expenses. The most expedient route to save money and improve care is to end the IGT loophole. 

Mike Feuz is an economic consultant by day and a research associate for the think tank Free the People by night.

https://amac.us/newsline/economy/opinion-the-medicaid-shell-game-must-end/

Why Won’t the FDA Act on its own Drug Safety Data?

 FDA Commissioner Martin Makary can protect healthcare costs and increase public trust in federal health agencies by policing drug labels so patients and physicians have more complete drug safety information. Updating labels with the latest science should have minimal costs to taxpayers as the FDA already collects a great deal of safety data even though both drug companies and FDA employees seem to ignore it.

For example, FDA has disregarded its own data linking antidepressants and violence, no doubt misleading too many doctors to reach for a prescription pad when patients feel down. But if Americans knew more about these drugs’ side effects, they would probably stop overusing them.

Prozac is a case study, having first come to market in early 1988 to become one of the most popular medicines in the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class of antidepressants. Fueled by a medical perception that it offered a benign side-effect profile, Prozac prescriptions rose exponentially during 1990s. But the drug took a hit to its credibility in 2006 when, spurred to act after its British counterpart banned Prozac for kids, the FDA placed a “boxed warning” on Prozac’s label to highlight risk of suicide in children, adolescents, and young adults.

Nonetheless, the World Health Organization added Prozac to its model list of essential medicines in 2007. At the height of its popularity, Prozac sales reached $2.8 billion annually, with physicians writing over 24 million prescriptions in 2022, making it the country’s 22^nd most popular drug.

Despite the black box warning, anyone looking through a public FDA database called FAERS (FDA Adverse Event Reporting System) would have serious concerns that antidepressants are neither as safe nor as effective as the FDA would have patients believe. FAERS documents physician, patient, and drug maker reports of serious side effects.

For Prozac these FAERS reports include adverse events that amount to relatively strong signals related to congenital, psychiatric, and nervous disorders.

By 2024, the FDA’s FAERS had received reports of 190 homicide-related adverse events due to Prozac use, including 96 completed homicides. On top of this, FAERS documents 4,920 suicide-related reports and 374 completed suicides reported for Prozac. FAERS also has many more reports of potential violence-triggering events for Prozac like hostility, aggression, and agitation.

The FDA claims that only 10% of adverse events get reported, so the true numbers of people harmed is likely much larger than what can be found in FAERS. We calculate the actual numbers of homicide-related adverse events due to Prozac at 19,000, with 1,000 completed homicides. Similarly, there may have been nearly 50,000 suicide-related adverse events and 3,700 completed suicides due to Prozac.

We need FAERS monitoring because adverse drug events often become known only after a drug is released on the market. During clinical trials, companies test a new drug in a small, select group of patients, but once the FDA gives approval, all kinds of people start taking them. And that’s when side effects start popping up.

For example, about seven years after the FDA approved GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) a study combined all known data and found Avandia increased risk of heart attacks and death in some people. Drug safety monitoring is an ongoing process and the signal that Avandia was causing these problems was not obvious when the FDA first approved the drug.

In the case of Prozac, FDA is expected to closely monitor the FAERS database for signals of serious side effects—risks which are now glaring and include homicide. What can be more dangerous? Similar breakdowns in safety monitoring likely exist not just for Prozac but for all antidepressants, making this problem reminiscent of the FDA's failure to warn about the dangers of opioids to reign in prescriptions that caused an epidemic.

The label for Prozac, sold generically as fluoxetine, does warn about suicide risks among young people but the boxed warning fails to alert physicians that FAERS data reveals the potential for violence in users. This omission appears to place FDA out of compliance with the federal code, which mandates the agency put this information in a black box warning:

The labeling shall be revised to include a warning as soon as there is reasonable evidence of an association of a serious hazard with a drug; a causal relationship need not have been proved…. Special problems, particularly those that may lead to death or serious injury, may be required by the Food and Drug Administration to be placed in a prominently displayed box.

Researchers affiliated with the Southern Network of Adverse Reactions (SONAR) pharmacovigilance center have uncovered dangerous side effects in blockbuster drugs and delayed safety warnings for others. For example, it took the FDA 40 years to warn the public about serious toxicities from a class of commonly prescribed antibiotics that includes Cipro. This may never have happened without patients filing FAERS reports.

Drug companies obviously are in no rush to find out if their products are causing harm once the FDA approves them for the public, because doing so hurts their bottom line. SONAR published a 2021 study in The Lancet that identified 20 serious adverse reactions in patients taking 15 different drugs. Over 750,000 patients were injured resulting in $38 billion in legal settlements.

Twelve of the medicines were mandated to add a “boxed warning” to the drug label, while another six were removed from the market. Companies that manufactured four of these products paid a combined $1.7 billion in criminal fines for failing to inform the FDA and physicians what their medicines were doing to patients. Annual sales of these drugs dropped by 84 percent or were wiped out for those pulled from shelves.

There is no justification for the FDA’s failure to provide patients and doctors a full and transparent label about the true risks and benefits of antidepressants like Prozac, one of the most widely prescribed medicines in America. Risk in users for committing violent acts exists in the FDA’s own data. True and under-highlighted risks for other drugs is known by the FDA as well.

Dr. Gretchen LeFever Watson is a clinical psychologist, academic affiliate of the University of South Carolina College of Pharmacology, and a member of the Southern Network on Adverse Event Reactions (SONAR) postmarketing pharmacovigilance initiative. She is the author Your Patient Safety Survival Guide: How to Protect Yourself and Others From Medical Errors. Contact her at gwatsonphd@gmail.com.

Linda Martin, Ph.D. is a retired healthcare executive and member of the Southern Network on Adverse Reactions (SONAR) postmarketing pharmacovigilance initiative.

https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/why-wont-the-fda-act-on-its-own-drug