WaPo Befuddled by Decline in Fentanyl

By Andrew R. Arthur

On May 31, the Washington Post examined — but failed to find a dispositive reason for — a decline in fentanyl seizures at the Southwest border. Perhaps the capital’s “newspaper of record” should read the Center’s website, and in particular an explanation for this phenomenon by my erstwhile colleague Todd Bensman in early April, after he interviewed President Trump’s acting DEA administrator.

A Uniquely Deadly Drug

Fentanyl is a uniquely deadly drug — two milligrams (similar to five to seven grains of salt), of the stuff can be lethal, “depending on a person’s body size, tolerance and past usage”.

That toxicity was blamed for an increase in drug fatalities in the United States throughout the pandemic and well into the Biden administration, with nearly 74,000 of the roughly 108,000 overdose deaths in FY 2022 (68.5 percent) traced to it.

It’s commonly accepted that most of the fentanyl that ends up in this country is produced in Mexican drug labs using precursor chemicals shipped to that country from China. Less well-examined is the role Canada also plays in production of the synthetic opioid and in the laundering of drug proceeds.

One major issue with fentanyl is that users — particularly young adults in an experimental stage — may not know that they are consuming the drug at all. Due to its potency, the drug is often mixed with other illicit substances to give them more powerful effects.

CBP statistics reveal the agency’s seizures of the drug skyrocketed along with the migrant surge at the Southwest border under the last administration, rising 89 percent between FY 2022 (14,100 pounds seized at the border and the ports) and FY 2023 (26,700 pounds).

While total CBP Southwest border seizures of fentanyl declined slightly (to 21,100 pounds) in FY 2024, Border Patrol seizures increased modestly during that period (from 2,800 pounds in FY 2023 to 2,900 pounds in 2024), a sign smugglers shifted away from the ports (where CBP officers can more easily find contraband) to the wide-open spaces between them as migrants continued to flow into the country.

Enter Candidate Donald Trump

On the 2024 campaign trail, then-candidate Donald Trump pounded the Biden-Harris administration over those fentanyl deaths.

At a campaign rally in Michigan, for example, he vowed, “We’ll bust up and dismantle the gangs, savage criminal networks, and bloodthirsty cartels. And we will stop the fentanyl.” The Republican National Convention last July featured what NBC News described as “an emotional prime-time speech from a mother who lost a child to fentanyl”.

Trump’s first campaign ad after securing the nomination — and after then-Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket:

portrays Harris dancing to hip hop at a White House party and deflecting questions during an interview about visiting the border while the narrator argues that millions of people have illegally crossed the border, and 250,000 Americans have died from fentanyl, “on Harris’s watch.”

“Trump’s War on Fentanyl Off to a Strong Start”

That focus on fentanyl wasn’t all talk from the eventual winner of the 2024 presidential race. Which brings me to an op-ed written by Bensman on April 2, 2025, headlined “Trump’s War on Fentanyl Off to a Strong Start”.

In it, Bensman examined the decline in both fentanyl seizures and overdose deaths in the early weeks of the second Trump administration, and noted that the president’s efforts to stem the drug flow actually began in the months before he was sworn in, as then-President-elect Trump “threatened devastating trade tariffs against Mexico if they did not seriously crack down on cartel production and smuggling”.

The country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, responded by sending 10,000 Mexican troops to secure her border with the United States against migrant- and drug-smugglers, and extraditing “29 alleged drug traffickers” wanted by our government to the United States in February as part of her crackdown on cartels — as well as Mexican government raids on cartel labs.

As part of his investigation, Bensman interviewed Derek Maltz, the acting DEA administrator, and as he noted: “What Maltz said ... almost defies commonly believed narratives about Mexico’s cartel crime syndicates — especially the idea that they are more impulsively violent than strategic and pragmatic.”

Apparently deciding that “Trump is bad for business”, the Mexican cartels have made a business decision to “quit smuggling” fentanyl into the United States and send it instead to Europe and elsewhere.

“What to do about the lost revenue? Easy. Make up the difference by shipping greater volumes of less politically and physiologically lethal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, Maltz said.”

Here’s how that shift has affected the fentanyl trafficking to this country: Between January and April 2024, CBP seized 6,000 pounds of fentanyl. In the same four months of 2025, seizures dropped to 3,132 pounds, a 47.8 percent decline.

“A New and Puzzling Reality”

The Post admits there has been a decline in border fentanyl seizures and that the “purity rate of fentanyl” on American streets is also going down (which suggests illicit imports of the drug are falling), but questions whether Trump should get the credit for this “new and puzzling reality” given “the decline started before Trump took office in January”.

That, of course, disregards the impacts of Trump’s pre-inauguration “activities” (read: “tariff threats”), but the Post also ignores Maltz’s explanations as it points to internecine fighting among the cartels and a decline in shipments of precursor chemicals for fentanyl production from China (for which it credits Biden) for the reduction in the flow.

As I have explained repeatedly and at length over the past four years, smugglers and cartels exploited the Biden border crisis by sending large groups of migrants (and families and kids in particular) to draw agents away from the line and (in CBP Commissioner nominee Rodney Scott’s words) “create controllable gaps in border security” that they then ran drugs through.

Now that the migrant flood at the Southwest border has slowed to a trickle, agents can focus on the drugs — fentanyl, coke, meth, whatever — that transnational criminal organizations are trying to ship, aided by Mexican military backup and a tariff-wary President Sheinbaum on the other side.

Trump’s critics may never allow him to be thought of as a “statesman”, but he’s a canny politician who recognized Americans’ fears about the drugs flooding their streets and killing their often-naïve children. Unlike many politicians, however, he’s keeping his promises, and for now the results are — well, promising.

https://cis.org/Arthur/WaPo-Befuddled-Decline-Fentanyl

Did CNN Cause the Boulder Terror Attack? (Updated)

 by Roger Simon

(UPDATE at end)

My title is deliberately salacious. Admittedly I’m in that kind of mood, given the events in Boulder June 1 and those in DC just a few days earlier. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

The Intifada is being globalized, as they say. It’s here in the USA and it’s happening in high and low places.

The low, we can assume, refers to the two events above that were apparently perpetrated by lone wolves against Jews or their Christian supporters by single actors.

But who inspires them to act that way? Many people, actually, from our educational system to extremist politicians to foreign entities to religious zealots. But our media is prominent among them. When potential terrorists see Israel continually criticized in our media, they feel encouraged, correctly or not. They can think they are in a zone of safety here in the USA, that their act will be well received by many.

Our journalists, editors and publishers have participated in globalizing the Intifada through their nearly unquestioning reporting of propaganda, notably parroting data from Hamas “health officials,” often verbatim, despite the same organs having been caught lying multiple times.

Sometimes it has been remarkably extreme as when US and foreign outlets immediately bought into a supposed Israel bombing of a Gaza hospital when it turned out the cause was an errant missile from Islamic Jihad. Even then the mortalities had been wildly inflated.

That event should have been suspicious immediately because such deceptions had been going on for years. Many of us remember the Pallywood Scandal with the postage stamps of many nations fallaciously depicting the murder of a little Palestinian boy by Israeli troops. Pallywood is thriving in Gaza now, as are the “journalists” eager to report its productions, even those so slapdash it’s embarrassing.

I awakened today, some time before the atrocities in Boulder, by a disturbing report from CNN. Here’s how Google’s AI answered my question about what occurred (caveat emptor, of course, on anything to do with AI):

“Yes, CNN has reported that multiple Gazans were shot near a food aid hub on the morning of June 1, 2025

“Eyewitnesses told CNN that they were fired upon at the ‘Al-Alam’ roundabout as they approached the aid site. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported mass casualties, including scores injured and killed from gunshots.

“It's important to note that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution center denied claims that the IDF attacked a food distribution point, contradicting some reports. CNN was also unable to independently confirm the exact numbers of casualties reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.”

Needless to say the early CNN reports made this sound like another example of, let’s be kind at this point, the IDF going a bit out of control . Actually something quite different occurred. Masked gunmen are visible on video shooting Gazans trying to obtain rations from the new US backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, something the IDF would never do. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to surmise that was Hamas itself that are very threatened by this new development that breaks their control of food distribution and hurts their finances. Gazans were shocked the food from the Americans was free.

News outlets like CNN (I could add dozens more—the AP and the BBC both at the top of the list) hide behind a facade of journalistic “impartiality” that is the thinnest of disguises for sometimes extreme bias. I find CNN particularly reprehensible because many of their lead reporters (quite a few Jewish, alas) stay on with the organization despite its lies about many matters from the Russia Hoax to Joe Biden’s senility having been widely exposed. You could say that of many of the other outlets as well.

Have they no shame? Evidently not. Why did I even ask? These people glory in Pulitzers for their lies. I would place CNN’s Jake Tapper high on this inauspicious list for running around trying to profit for his own endless dishonesty regarding Biden through sales of his new book.

Regarding the Jews and Israel, CNN and the others are creating a climate that is virtually a new, and only slightly more subtle, version of the old “Blood Libel”. The “Blood Libel,” for those unfamiliar, was a calumny from the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of murdering Christians (often children) to obtain blood to make matzah, a ludicrous physical impossibility since matzah is unleavened bread made entirely of flour and and water with sometimes a pinch of salt. Yet somehow this blood lie persisted off and on for centuries resulting in many horrible crimes. In a way, it set the stage for centuries of antisemitism. Israel has become the most lied about nation of all time.

We now have a new version of the Blood Libel whose perpetrators are not directly responsible for the heinous deeds of the likes of Mohamed Soliman (not surpassingly an Egyptian who overstayed his visa) but they help create the zeitgeist that promotes such acts.

Originally, most of these people were leftists whose utterly illogical alliance with Jihadists is well known. This is a constant on our streets and on nearly every campus in our country save a few, not just Columbia and Harvard.

Unfortunately, however, they are no longer alone. They have been joined by a coterie of what I might call Nouveau Antisemites on the right. These include notable and influential figures, one of whom I considered a friend, Tucker Carlson. (People asked me to approach Tucker about this and I did once, about the Churchill being more dangerous than Hitler absurdity, but didn’t get very far.) Also involved are podcaster Joe Rogan, a comic named Dave Smith I had never heard of previously, and of course, Candace Owen whose antisemitism is so excessive she sometimes sounds like a modern day Father Coughlin.

It’s hard to make heads or tails what motivates these people—there are others, of course—without being extremely cynical about the narcotic allure of internet popularity. (Owen exploited the sponsorship of the great Dennis Prager, now suffering from a several spinal injury, of all people before going on her bigoted tirades.)

I would like to be optimistic and think what has been going on of late would make these folks reconsider, but I am skeptical. Members of the chattering class rarely recant in a full way.

I wonder sometimes too if they would sit for the 9 1/2 hours of Claude Lanzmann’s masterful 1985 documentary “Shoah” during which the director interviews so many participants in the Holocaust… if that would move the needle at all—it devastated me—but I doubt that too. People believe what they want to believe.

My views were formed when I first encountered Hamas as I was standing on a Paris street corner circa 1988. The then new organization—actually just a Muslim Brotherhood spinoff— came down the street, chanting in English and French, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” That gave me shivers that haven’t stopped.

It might be hard to imagine, but I was once (1970s) a loose member of the group Peace Now, at least I attended some of their meetings. We were very supportive of a Palestinian state and land for peace and so forth. I even thought it was good idea, though I was nervous, when Ariel Sharon decided to give Gaza back to the “Palestinians” in 2005.

But when Hamas was voted in in 2007 and started throwing Palestinian Authority members off rooftops, my eagerness for a Palestinian state started to dwindle.. When I hear Emmanuel Macron arguing for one now, I want to do much more than slap him. The so-called Palestinians have been offered their state multiple times and have never taken it. They don’t want a two state solution, obviously, although some pretend they do. They want “the river to the sea.” I’m sure readers of this site know very well what that means. But it’s the Israelis who are supposed to be genocidal.

So I am sitting here typing while identifying with those currently in the hospital wounded by this latest terrorist/illegal alien. The victims are all mostly my age and at some point what happened to them could happen to me. I never thought about it that way before, to be honest. I was always a safe American boy. But I do now. I also worry about family and friends.

I of course support the hostages adamantly and am not shy about it. This only makes me want to demonstrate more in their behalf. Am I crazy? I certainly don’t want to let these jerks stop me.

Nevertheless, my fellow Jews and their supporters, I advise you, if you haven’t, though you probably have, to watch your backs.

And to all my colleagues in the media, right and left, who are creating this zeitgeist, this putrid atmosphere, wise up. G-d is watching.

UPDATE: Having appeared on Governor Huckabee’s TV show and having immense respect for the governor, I was pleased to read the following on Breitbart that echoes my thoughts:

“U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee demanded Monday that the New York Times, CNN, and the Associated Press, among others, retract false reporting that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian civilians at an American aid site in Gaza.

“Huckabee linked the fake news published by these outlets directly to the antisemitic terror attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, where an illegal alien shouting pro-Palestinian slogans set Jewish protesters on fire.”

https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/did-cnn-cause-the-boulder-terror

States Are Using Medicaid as a Slush Fund

 Senator Ron Johnson and others gave The Big Beautiful Bill a cold reception when it arrived in the Senate, warning that the bill will balloon deficits and debt, which are already ginormous.  Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan Chase CEO has predicted a crisis – not if, but as soon as six months from now.

There’s no greater contributor to the recent rapid growth in deficits and debt than Medicaid under the Democrats, and, thus, no more appropriate GOP target financially and politically.

Medicaid’s explosive growth results both from recently expanded enrollment and from long-running problems in the Medicaid provider tax scheme that forty-nine states employ.

The Bill controls enrollment somewhat by imposing work requirements on able-bodied single childless adults.

Yet, House Republicans punted on the Medicaid provider tax scheme, which a 2018 Senate report called a “shell game.”  The House bill simply places a moratorium on new or increased provider taxes, which CBO estimates will save only $89 billion over ten years. That’s chump change, since these fasting growing taxes amounted to $37 billion per year seven years ago, when data was last collected.

The actual amount of money involved is not known, because the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), collects insufficient data about these taxes. The Government Accountability Office has criticized CMS repeatedly for this negligence. Nor is much known about the use of provider tax money; naturally, the assumption is that it funds only Medicaid. Not so.

Here’s how provider taxes work. States tax hospitals and send most of the tax money right back to the hospitals. When the money is returned, it is labeled “Medicaid supplemental payment.” This label triggers a federal matching payment to the states.

The scheme is inherently expansionary and unbalancing. The more that states tax providers, the more federal money they can obtain, the faster the Medicaid program grows and the more the balance between federal and state funding shifts to Uncle Sam, despite that Medicaid is supposed to be a joint federal-state program. Many GAO reports have warned about this.

What is little known is that the money generated by the scheme is being used outside of the Medicaid program.

Take Connecticut.  Connecticut adopted a hospital tax in 2012. Connecticut gradually increased the tax and decreased the amount returned to hospitals until fiscal 2017, when the state faced a $2.2 billion budget deficit, and it roughly doubled the tax to $900 million. It returned only $600 million as supplemental payments, leaving hospitals $300 million to the worse and the state $300 million better off. And the state got $450 million in federal matching funds, leaving the state ahead by a cool $750 million.

The state did not use the money to fund Medicaid, but rather to close its huge budget deficit, as Connecticut hospitals charged in a lawsuit against the state. As both the payers of the provider taxes and the intended recipients of the federal money involved, the hospitals had the facts to back up their allegation. The state settled.

CMS took no action. Quite the opposite. It approved Connecticut’s scheme, which was so far above normal limits (see below) that special approval was required.

In 2020, GAO itself surveyed the states to gather data. It estimated that the states had doubled their provider taxes from 2014 to 2018 to $37 billion annually. Seven years later, that’s a very stale number.

GAO looked also at how the money was used. And here’s where it gets interesting, at least in Connecticut. GAO asked each state how much of its 2018 provider tax money was used to fund its state share of Medicaid spending. Connecticut responded that it used $690 million to make fee-for-service payments to providers, but zero to make supplemental payments to providers. Huh?

The logical interpretation is that Connecticut was using supplemental payment money for purposes other than Medicaid, as the state’s hospitals’ charged in their lawsuit.

It is a scandal that the Medicaid program supplies states untold billions to spend for non-Medicaid purposes. The scandal is ongoing because, without data, no one can prove misuse or abuse, and no one can be held accountable or culpable.

Fourteen states, including Connecticut (which just declared a financial emergency due to over-budget Medicaid spending), have expanded health care coverage to illegal immigrants. Inevitably they are using Medicaid money, some by adopting immigration-status-blind Medicaid eligibility policies and some by claiming that only state funds are used. Much of the “state money” is likely repurposed federal Medicaid money. These programs proceed with impunity, despite that it is illegal to provide federal benefits to non-citizens.

Yet, Congress itself is ultimately responsible. Congress abets the scam, with a law that directs CMS not to take enforcement action against a state if the state keeps its provider taxes below a threshold of 6% of providers’ “net patient revenues.”

If CMS does not keep proper records, how does it monitor the 6% safe-harbor threshold? It appears that CMS only approved Connecticut's overlimit tax after the hospital lawsuit. In turn, how can Congress exercise oversight?

The Senate should mandate that CMS collect data and exercise oversight. But, right now, the Senate knows enough to institute reforms: the 6% threshold should be reduced and made a hard cap, and a mandate adopted that federal Medicaid funds be used exclusively to fund Medicaid with strict reporting and penalties for violation.

Medicaid is out of control, having exploded from $600 billion to $870 billion from 2017 to 2023. Reform of the provider tax scam could potentially save many tens of billions every year, likely without hurting Medicaid. If the fourteen sanctuary states want to provide free health care to illegal immigrants, they should actually use state funds; and if states want to expand state government, they should not use federal Medicaid funds to do so.

Working Americans struggling to pay for their own health insurance should not be paying taxes to fund Medicaid coverage for single able-bodied childless adults who refuse to work. Nor, certainly, to close state budget deficits or to finance health care programs in sanctuary states for illegal immigrants. All Americans should want federal spending brought under control before we reach a crisis.

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2025/06/03/states_are_using_medicaid_as_a_slush_fund_1114226.html

CDC official resigns from COVID vaccine committee advisory role, sources say

 Paediatric infectious disease specialist Dr Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the US CDC resigned on June 3 as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on Covid-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.

Dr Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is "no longer able to help the most vulnerable members" of the US population.

In her role at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (Acip), she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.

Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a long-time vaccine sceptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC's recommended immunisation schedule.

The move was a departure from the process in which Acip experts meet and vote on changes to the immunisation schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency's director made a final call.

The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Mr Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.

Two days after Mr Kennedy's announcement, the CDC published a vaccine schedule online saying that Covid-19 vaccines remain an option for healthy children aged 6 months to 17 years when parents and doctors agree that it is needed.

It had previously recommended updated Covid-19 vaccines for everyone aged six months and older, following the guidance of the panel of outside experts.

Two sources said Dr Panagiotakopoulos did not include a specific reason for her departure. Dr Panagiotakopoulos did not return requests for comment.

"Unfortunately for me, this is a personal decision," Dr Panagiotakopoulos wrote in an email to members of the working group that was read to Reuters by a source who received it.

"My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role."

The committee is scheduled to meet on June 25 to June 27 and is expected to deliberate and vote on recommendations for use of Covid-19 vaccines, according to one of the sources who was not authorised to speak publicly.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/cdc-expert-resigns-from-covid-19-vaccines-advisory-role-sources-say

Trump set to waive some legal requirements to boost critical minerals

President Donald Trump is set to use emergency powers and slash legal requirements - including some congressional funding approvals - relating to a law aimed at lifting U.S. production of critical minerals and weapons, according to a document seen by Reuters.

Trump's action would apply to the Defense Production Act, a U.S. law that grants the president broad emergency powers to control domestic industries and resources during national security emergencies.

The move would represent the latest attempt by the White House to reshape a critical mineral industry dominated by China, the top U.S. economic rival. China is using its leverage in response to Trump's trade war, recently halting critical mineral exports and rattling global supply chains.

The document is expected to be published on the Federal Register on Wednesday, the government web site shows.

Trump invoked the Korean War-era law in March to help boost domestic production of critical minerals used to make consumer goods, computer chips, robots and advanced weaponry.

The law places some restrictions on the president's authority, such as requiring the White House to seek congressional approval for projects over $50 million and forcing project delivery dates within a one-year time frame.

The president can waive those requirements in the event of an emergency and Trump is expected to invoke those powers, according to the document seen by Reuters on Tuesday, ahead of its expected publication.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Former President Joe Biden signed similar waivers to speed up production of vaccines and medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

John Paul Helveston, a professor at George Washington University, said U.S. investments in critical minerals represent a long-term solution to the problem, leaving the nation vulnerable to China's trade policy in the short run.

"This all means that if the U.S. wants to have access to these minerals over the next 5-10 years, the U.S. will have to maintain a trade relationship with China," Helveston said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-expected-waive-defense-production-195428752.html

Dutch Government Falls After Right Quit Coalition

 

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he would offer his resignation while continuing in a caretaker government, setting the stage for a likely snap election. It comes after far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders pulled his Freedom Party out of the coalition.

Wilders left over the refusal of his three coalition partners to agree to his plans to curb migration, which included closing the border to asylum seekers, temporarily halting family reunification and returning asylum seekers to Syria. Migration has become a leading issue for Dutch voters, fueled by one of Europe’s worst housing crises and rising costs of living.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-03/dutch-government-falls-after-far-right-quit-coalition

Traws Pharma (TRAW) Releases Promising Clinical Trial Results for Rigosertib

 Traws Pharma (TRAW, Financial) has shared promising results from a significant clinical study on rigosertib, an oncology asset they are looking to develop further with commercial partners. The details, published in the British Journal of Dermatology, reveal the first clinical trial of an experimental cancer drug targeting RDEB-associated squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), a rare and complex genetic disorder. The study showed an impressive 80% overall response rate, with half of the evaluated participants experiencing complete responses.

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/2904002/traws-pharma-traw-releases-promising-clinical-trial-results-for-rigosertib-traw-stock-news