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Friday, September 12, 2025

Jean-Pierre admits to House panel she got talking points on Biden decline from ‘senior level’

Former Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted to House lawmakers Friday she saw no signs of diminished mental acuity from the 46th president — but acknowledged she got guidance on what to say about his condition from top White House officials.

Over nearly six hours of testimony, Jean-Pierre claimed — incredibly — that “she did not see a change in Biden’s competency from 2009 to 2025,” according to a source familiar with the interview by the House Oversight Committee.

While the ex-White House spokesperson acknowledged Biden, now 82, was “not the same speaker he was when she met him,” Jean-Pierre couldn’t attribute a reason for the “speaking change,” the source added.

Jean-Pierre — who has since departed the Democratic Party and is writing a tell-all book about the “broken” administration she served — infamously accused The Post and other outlets in June 2024 of promoting “cheap fakes” by reporting on video footage of Biden wandering away and looking confused during events with world leaders and former President Barack Obama.

The ex-press secretary told her interrogators Friday the “cheap fakes” line was added to the binder she used at every White House briefing — but she does not know who specifically put it in there, per the person familiar with the interview.

In addition, Jean-Pierre acknowledged that talking points were given to her by “various advisers, but those relating to President Biden’s health and mental acuity were handled exclusively at the senior level,” the source went on.

A former Biden White House colleague confirmed to The Post that key aides, such as senior advisers Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon, would coordinate talking points about Biden’s health — but added that few alums of the previous administration were interested in Jean-Pierre’s testimony.

“Biden people are completely ignoring her,” this person claimed, adding that response was “not a good look for the most public-facing person from the last administration, especially when she’s hawking a book.”

“If she would like to forget being a Democrat, then we would like to forget her,” the former aide concluded.

Jean-Pierre, 51, was viewed as incompetent by many West Wing compatriots, including senior Biden aides led by Dunn who attempted unsuccessfully to coax her to leave the White House in late 2023.

A second former Biden White House aide ridiculed Jean-Pierre’s testimony, telling The Post: “I would like to ask her if she has a mind of her own — she just did what was on the paper? No critical thinking.”

The press secretary generally dispensed little information at her regular briefings, and it’s unclear what new details she might spill in her forthcoming book “Independent,” due out Oct. 21.

Jean-Pierre “would not elaborate on her book when asked about its contents,” a source close to the grilling told The Post.

“We intentionally wanted Jean-Pierre to be one of the last people we bring in,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) had told reporters ahead of the interview. “We believe that she’s written some things in the book that are gonna be of interest to our entire investigation.”

Jean-Pierre declined to answer reporter questions before the interview, and behind closed doors “stated that she never spoke to anyone in the White House who was personally concerned about President Biden’s health,” the source familiar with her testimony said.

At the same time, Jean-Pierre did not specify any moments — either as president or vice president — when she had heard Biden stutter, the common excuse put forward by the Democrat’s allies for his repeated verbal slips.

‘Inconsistencies with what people have testified’

During her tenure as press secretary, Jean-Pierre frequently lashed out at detractors and even members of the media who reported on the former president’s oral gaffes and physical stumbles, once memorably scolding the press during Biden’s final year in the Oval Office that he “doesn’t need a cognitive test.”

“That is not my assessment, that is the assessment of the president’s doctor, that is also the assessment of his neurologist,” Jean-Pierre told reporters in February 2024.

“He passes a cognitive test every day — every day — as he moves from one topic to another topic, understanding the granular level of these topics,” she added.

Biden’s personal physician Kevin O’Connor — who invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions that could be incriminating before the Oversight Committee in July — never took questions from reporters about the president’s health, opting instead to release brief, written reports on Biden’s annual physicals.

None of those tests included neuro-cognitive work.

The ex-president, now 82, also did not submit to the brief Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a two-minute screening comprising around 30 questions to test for signs of dementia.

Just days before the Democratic incumbent abandoned his 2024 re-election campaign, O’Connor insisted to The Post in his only interview with a media outlet to that point that the president’s mental fitness was “excellent.”

Ex-colleagues previously dished that fellow spokesman Andrew Bates was “used” by Jean-Pierre to “attack” journalists in the final months of Biden’s term and to kill stories about a publicist she used for self-promotion while still in the White House.

Reports on the relationship only broke after Jean-Pierre and others left the Biden White House.

New emails first reported by The Post revealed that the sweeping use of the presidential autopen to commute sentences for non-violent offenders caught senior officials at the Department of Justice and even the White House off guard — with Biden appearing to only orally approve some pardons before the autopen signature was affixed.

Comer told reporters before his sitdown with Jean-Pierre that the messages “suggest that there was a process that the Biden administration was using to use the autopen that was in direct conflict with the Merrick Garland Department of Justice.”

“There are inconsistencies with what people have testified to us in these depositions and what we are seeing from these emails as far as the process that the Biden administration used for the autopen,” he added.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/12/us-news/ex-white-house-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-arrives-for-grilling-on-biden-cognitive-decline-by-house-panel/

Therapists banned from talking to kids about accepting their biological sex

After the tragic shooting at Minnesota’s Annunciation Catholic School, families across the country began asking if the shooter could have been stopped.

But Americans should also ask a related question: Why do states ban kids who think they’re transgender from even talking to therapists about accepting their biological sex?

The school shooter in Minnesota identified as transgender. Yet in half the states, including Minnesota, it’s illegal for therapists to help confused kids come to grips with who they really are.

Even bringing up this topic can put a therapist’s career at risk.

They can only tell these kids to go ahead with a sex change, pushing them toward experimental drugs and irreversible surgeries.

One brave Minnesota lawmaker is already fighting for common sense. On Aug. 30, state Rep. Drew Roach announced that he’ll introduce legislation to repeal Minnesota’s therapy ban.

As Roach said, “This inhumane law silences therapists, denies patients real options and imposes one political ideology on deeply personal medical decisions. That is not compassion — it is government overreach.”

He’s right. Kids who believe they’re born in the wrong body frequently struggle with serious mental health issues, with studies pointing to extremely high rates of anxiety, depression and other conditions.

The Minnesota shooter is a case in point. His suicide note showed signs of mental illness. He openly talked about his depression and said outright he was “tired of being trans” — a process he started at 17, if not earlier — and wished he’d “never brainwashed” himself.

Perhaps therapy could have helped him come to grips with who he was.

Studies show the vast majority of kids who believe they’re transgender ultimately realize they aren’t.

Minnesota’s law went into effect after the shooter had become a young adult, so it didn’t prevent him from receiving therapy, yet other kids who believe they’re transgender are now legally blocked from talking to a mental-health professional about accepting their biological sex.

To be clear, such therapy isn’t the “conversion therapy” that activists claim it is and that lawmakers decry when passing these laws.

Talking to a therapist about gender identity is an earnest and compassionate way to help confused kids realize who they are. There is no medical or moral reason to ban it.

In fact, in England, Sweden and Finland it’s the first-line approach.

And if anything, trying to change one’s sex seems more akin to conversion therapy, which the Minnesota law tacitly acknowledges by stating that gender transition is excluded from the definition.

Yet Minnesota isn’t alone in putting up that barrier. At least half of states, as well as Washington, DC, prohibit or restrict mental-health professionals from helping kids realize they aren’t the wrong gender.

One of my colleagues at Do No Harm, a licensed therapist in Oregon, was investigated by state authorities for talking to young patients about their gender identity.

She no longer sees patients who identify as transgender to protect herself.

Across the nation, therapists who are earnestly trying to help deeply confused kids are being threatened with the revocation of their licenses, depriving uniquely vulnerable patients from receiving real therapeutic care.

These state laws need to be repealed as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, that’s unlikely in places like Minnesota, where the Democrats in power are completely in thrall to transgender activists.

The Minneapolis mayor responded to genuine concerns about the shooter’s transgender identity by claiming that people were attacking the trans community.

But asking if confused kids need therapy isn’t an attack — it’s the definition of trying to come alongside troubled people with a helping hand.

If states like Minnesota won’t act, the federal government should.

The Trump administration has already mandated that federal health-insurance plans cover the kind of counseling that many states bar, giving federal workers and their families guaranteed access to therapy.

But the biggest hope is at the Supreme Court. On Oct. 7, the justices will hear a case challenging Colorado’s ban.

The plaintiff, a licensed counselor, says the law violates her First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.

She wants the court to restore her right to talk to deeply confused kids, and ultimately, help them accept their biological gender.

Fighting for this right isn’t the same as demonizing transgender people, despite activist claims to the contrary.

Nearly 14,000 kids received transgender treatments between 2019 and 2023 alone. It’s only human to admit that many are struggling and need real mental-health care, not drugs and surgeries.

By blocking kids from getting therapy, states like Minnesota are harming and isolating some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

It’s the opposite of compassion — and a tragedy that may beget more tragedy.

Dr. Kurt Miceli is medical director at Do No Harm.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/12/opinion/stop-banning-therapists-from-talking-to-kids-about-accepting-their-biological-sex/

IPO pops are nearing 10-year highs, and tech is leading the way

In the lead-up to its public offering, tech unicorn Figma (FIG) priced its shares at $33. When the stock closed its first trading session on July 31, the share price had rocketed up to $115.50 — 250% above where the company priced the stock.

Just two months earlier, stablecoin infrastructure operator Circle Internet Group (CRCL) priced its IPO at $31 and then closed its first day, June 5, at $83.23, marking a more than 165% increase.

These IPO "pops" are getting bigger, and tech is leading the way.

Through the first half of 2025, IPOs notched an average first-day performance of 27.5%, according to IPO advisory firm Rainmaker Securities, just below the annual first-half high-water mark of the past decade of 29.2% in 2021 and nearly double the 15% jump seen during the first half of last year. The 20 largest offerings of 2025 out of the 241 US IPOs so far this year have seen even larger gains, with first-day pops averaging 36%, according to Reuters.

The market-dominating tech sector, according to data from the NYSE, has seen the largest average first-day hike over the past year on the New York Stock Exchange, at 36.3%. The sector has also recorded the second-highest concentration of share prices opening above their expected range throughout the past 12 months, at 41%, behind only consumer goods. Compare that to more staid sectors like materials and consumer services, which have seen the majority of their IPOs in the last year open within their expected price range, according to NYSE data.

Just this week, stablecoin issuer Figure Technologies (FIGR) debuted with a delta of 44% between its IPO price and opening mark, but it gave up some of those gains before the end of its first trading session on Thursday.

Tech offerings on the NYSE have also raised the most money of any sector, at more than $13.5 billion on the year, according to data from the exchange.

Rainmaker Securities managing partner Greg Martin told Yahoo Finance that the tech sector's dominance in IPO pops is partly for fundamental reasons — it's simply harder to put a price tag on companies growing quickly in new markets.

"Because it's so much predicated on what [tech companies are] going to do in the future ... it's just a much harder exercise," Martin said. "It's much easier to value a company that's been growing at 10%, 15% for the last 20 years and will continue growing like that."

Rapid adoption and a potentially huge future market have also seen crypto-related fintech new issues this year land at the center of investor frenzies. Following on Circle's success, fintech crypto exchange Bullish (BLSH) priced in August at $37 and closed its first session at $68, a jump of more than 80%.

Bullish CEO Tom Farley, left, and Bullish chair Brendan Blumer clasp hands when the company's IPO begins trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) · ASSOCIATED PRESS

The tech and tech-adjacent IPO stimulus has pushed first-day pops upward, nearing their 10-year high-water mark. Over the past 30 years, stocks have jumped by 19% on average when they start trading. Analysts look at a range of 15%-20% as healthy and properly rewarding investors for taking the risk of betting on an unknown, far below this year's average tech IPO performance.

But to be sure, those sky-high stock prices reached by tech stocks tend to come back down to earth. Over the long run, IPOs with high enthusiasm in the run-up to the offering tend to underperform those with lower levels of hype by more than 8%, according to economist Domonkos Vamossy.

Figma, which opened at $85, is now trading lower than that mark, at around $54 as of Friday. The price is still roughly 64% higher than its IPO pricing, but it's a far cry from the stock's first-day close of $115.50.

Whether this is the natural correction of an economic inefficiency, proof that unsophisticated traders get screwed over on IPOs, or both is a question for the market.

But for at least the current season, IPO heat isn't likely to abate, Martin said. IPOs by US companies with a market cap of at least $50 million so far in 2025 have increased by 53.1% over the same time last year, according to IPO research firm Renaissance Capital, and dealmaking is opening back up.

"We're definitely in a historically higher ground than normal at this point," Martin said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ipo-pops-are-nearing-10-year-highs-and-tech-is-leading-the-way-155742294.html

Exorcism Nigh

by James Howard Kunstler,

“The point I was trying to make is how peaceful the left was. . . right before he got shot.”
- Hunter Kozak, Question-Asker at Charlie Kirk Utah Event, Sept 10
“It’s been obvious for some time that the Left has been hijacked by the modern equivalent of the Manson Family.”
- Sasha Stone

It’s been a tough week for our demon-haunted nation. First, video surfaces of the young Ukrainian woman, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, slaughtered by a homeless psychopath, one Decarlos Brown, Jr., on the Charlotte, NC, light rail — weeks after the crime happened, because Charlotte police suppressed the CC video and the legacy news media barely reported the story. Suddenly, the country is shocked by what they see: wanton murder witnessed at the scene by a half-dozen other transit riders, who don’t even react to the woman spurting blood as she topples to the floor and bleeds out.

Already stabbed, minutes to live

“Progressives” hasten to cover for the psycho. He was mentally unwell and did not get the treatment he needed. Uh-huh. . . . Yet anyone with functioning brain knew the score at once. Decarlos Brown, Jr., was “justice involved” (arrested and convicted of crimes) more than a dozen times in recent years, including a five-year stretch for armed robbery. He was on-the-loose because of how the Democratic Party manages public safety, which is not at all. It allows the criminally insane to run free, but especially if they can be sorted into the “marginalized” minority basket to be presented as sob stories (George Floyd).

The Democratic Party has this affinity for the criminally insane because the party as a whole is insane. It peddles insane policies and ideas, such as cashless bail and defunding the police. It can’t tell the truth about anything. For instance, that black people account for 37-percent of violent felonies committed in the USA, according the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, though they comprise about 13-percent of the population. And that only includes the “solved” cases, for which the “clearance rate” is a low 50- 60-percent of violent crimes — that is, more than half of violent crimes discovered go unsolved.

The Iryna Zarutska slaying set off a fury that ranged from intimations of race-war to declaring the Democratic Party a “domestic terrorist organization.” Of course, this was only days after disgruntled transgenderite Robert Westman — another product of Democratic Party ideology — shot up a catholic school in Minneapolis. Westman declared in his diaries that he’d learned to his disappointment that it is not really possible to change sexes and pretending was not good enough. That was perhaps the sole sane expression among his otherwise violently deranged writings. Westman was but one in a growing line of transgenders shooting up places, but his deed marked the end of the Democratic sex hustle, inflicting LGBTQ ideology on the schools and coercing the public to play along.

And then, Wednesday, a marksman murdered Charlie Kirk, 31-year-old rising conservative media star, whose main activity was traveling to college campuses to discuss and debate the great public issues of our time with students. Charlie Kirk was an exemplary young man, on a mission to rescue our country from bad ideas and help young adults beset by the depraved Jacobin faculty discern the difference between good ideas and bad ideas. He’d barely got going in life. I won’t belabor the encomiums to Charlie’s excellence that you can read elsewhere all over the web. He was the real deal, a man in full.

The Left has its martyr, the degenerate George Floyd, and now the right has its martyr, the righteous Charlie Kirk. Choose your hero.

The murder sickened at least half the nation to a degree we haven’t seen since the Kennedys and MLK were gunned down half a century ago, but the country is much more fragile now than it was then. Nobody knows what comes next, but you can sense it is going to be harsh. All that’s known about the shooter so far is that he might be the scraggly figure captured in a CC camera in a stairway on the Utah campus, that he might have used the Mauser 30.06 rifle found ditched in the woods nearby, that he was a darn good shot, and that the brass cartridges in the rifle’s chamber and magazine were engraved with “transgender and Antifa” slogans. Uh-oh. . . . (I wouldn’t want to be them on that dreadful day.)

Headline from The New York Times, of course

The question on everybody’s minds — those not still paralyzed by grief and rage — is what will the political Right do now, especially those currently holding the levers of power, led by President Trump? What we have lived through is an astounding cavalcade of gross insults against our country, against our history, and against common decency. The ten-year-long seditious conspiracy against Mr. Trump was a kind of self-compounding criminal cover-up for even more long-running illegality carried on routinely in the so-called Deep State or DC blob, which has been laying trips on the people of this land for decades.

It’s all coming apart now in one climactic maelstrom of discovery and retribution. Of course, there are the anticipated indictments of many well-known Deep State figures, but the captured agencies and regions of the judiciary remain infested with either ideologues determined to wreck the country (CIA, DOJ, DOD, State) or grifters making fortunes (FSA, CDC, NIH, HUD) or the simply power-crazed who have long forgotten even why they seek to be in charge of anything. And that’s just the government, not higher ed, or medicine, or the news business, or banking and finance, or Big Business, or the lively arts. What the demon-haunted country needs is an exorcism.

Good thing America elected an exorcist in 2024. I don’t know if Mr. Trump ever thought of himself that way, but it’s come to that. I suppose he will start by dismantling altogether the skein of NGOs beyond the already-demolished USAID umbrella — and there are thousands more of them — that keep money flowing into the Democratic Party, a thoroughly corrupt and treasonous faction. Start with George and Alex Soros’s operation, please, Mr T.

The Democratic Party might not survive all that especially since it has turned itself into a mere infernal machine manufacturing hoaxes and hustles against the public interest. That’s all it does, all it stands for. Americans are about to re-learn that the reason we have laws is to state clearly what sort of human behavior is okay and what is not okay. It’s not okay to be a demon and do the Devil’s work — a metaphor, admittedly, but take it as you will.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/exorcism-nigh

Pharma's UK frustrations come to a head as Lilly, Sanofi, AZ pause investments

Merck & Co.'s decision this week to walk away from a £1-billion ($1.4 billion) R&D facility in London — and pull its research activities out of the UK altogether — may have triggered a domino effect across big pharma, as Eli Lilly, Sanofi and AstraZeneca now seem to be rethinking their own investments in the country.

Following Merck's announcement, John Bell, an immunologist who was a member of the UK government's vaccine task force during the COVID-19 pandemic, appeared on the BBC Radio 4's Today podcast to warn that big pharmas are "not going to do any more investing in the UK" given how much the country spends on pharmaceuticals has fallen in recent years.

Merck's reasoning for moving its discovery efforts to mainly US-based sites was the UK's "overall undervaluation of innovative medicines and vaccines by successive UK Governments" — a sentiment that was echoed by a trio of pharmas on Friday.

An AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed to FirstWord that it's pausing a planned £200-million ($271 million) investment in its Cambridge research site. It's the second UK project the pharma has backed out of, after it scrapped plans in January for a £450-million vaccine manufacturing facility in Liverpool — altogether, effectively cancelling a £650 million commitment to the UK's life sciences sector made in 2024.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot has been an outspoken critic this year of the pharmaceutical policies in the company's home country, particularly on how little the UK spends on drug products. During an investor call in April, he contrasted how the UK spends 7% of its total healthcare budget on innovative pharmaceutical products, versus roughly 10% in continental Europe, and between 13% and 15% in the US

He later floated the idea of moving AstraZeneca's stock listing to the US, and committed to investing $50 billion in the country

Gateway Labs on pause

Lilly is also considering abandoning a planned R&D project in London. Last year, it announced that it would invest £279 million ($365 million) to build a Gateway Labs facility in the UK to support early-stage life sciences therapeutic developers by providing lab space, mentorship and potential financial backing.

Now, however, "Lilly is not yet in a position to finalise our investment in a Lilly Gateway Labs site, as we are awaiting more clarity around the UK life sciences environment," a spokesperson told FirstWord.

'Tangible improvements' needed

While there is no specific UK project on the chopping block for Sanofi, the firm is still pausing potential investments in the country.

A Sanofi spokesperson told FirstWord that while "the UK is a world-class hub for science… we need to see tangible improvements in the current commercial environment and appropriate recognition of the value of innovation before we consider any substantial investment into UK R&D."

A leader at the French drugmaker had even sharper words for what the UK's "commercial environment" is like. An article in the Guardian quoted Paul Naish, Sanofi's UK head of market access, as saying that the UK is "not a good place to do the development work for medicines. It’s an expensive place to operate, and it’s a terrible place to sell medicines."

Pricing schemes and Trump

Dissatisfaction with the UK's perceived lack of support for life sciences innovation has been brewing for years, but two recent issues seem to have brought big pharma to its boiling point.

Under the country's voluntary pricing and access scheme, companies agree to pay back the NHS a certain percentage of sales from branded drugs. That figure has typically ranged from the single digits to the mid-teens, but early this year, the UK government proposed rates between 23.5% and 35.6%.

Negotiations between drugmakers and the government to agree on a more palatable payment rate broke down last month, with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) criticising "the UK's willingness to invest in new treatments" exemplified by its "uncompetitive and punitive rebates on company revenues." UK health officials are said to be looking to reopen talks with the sector amid fallout from Merck's exit.

The ABPI went further on Friday, issuing a report that found the UK is underperforming on a number of measures in comparison to other countries' pharma sectors, including how much it invests in medicines, access to innovative medicines, and the number of Phase III studies conducted in the country.

Those issues are occurring against a backdrop of President Donald Trump trying to characterise European countries as 'free-loaders' benefitting from American life science innovations.

Trump's calls for sweeping pharmaceutical tariffs and a most favoured nation (MFN) pricing policy have been framed as ways of getting other countries, particularly those in Europe, to pay their 'fair share' for drugs — and the CEOs of AstraZeneca and Lilly are echoing that refrain.

Lilly characterised a recent price hike for its GLP-1/GIP agonist Mounjaro (tirzepatide) in the UK as a "rebalancing" in the name of "more fairly sharing the costs of breakthrough medical research," while Soriot has called on wealthier countries in Europe to "rebalance" their pharmaceutical investments given that "most innovation is funded by the US."

https://firstwordpharma.com/story/6062068

Zentiva set to change hands in €4.1bn private equity deal

Generics company Zentiva is reported to be poised for a sale by current owner Advent International to US investment group GTCR – the second private equity handover of a European drugmaker this month.

The Financial Times has said that Chicago-based GTCR has agreed a €4.1 billion (around $4.8 billion) deal to take control of the Czech Republic-headquartered company, seven years after it was sold by Sanofi to Advent for €1.9 billion – suggesting a healthy return on Advent's initial investment.

The announcement comes just days after private equity group CapVest bought a majority stake in Germany's Stada from investment groups Bain Capital and Cinven in a deal that market watchers say values it at around €10 billion.

The FT said that the handover of Zentiva to GTCR has already been signed and sealed and will be announced "in the coming days," citing people familiar with the matter, who have also suggested that GTCR was previously in talks to buy Stada.

Zentiva sells a broad range of prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, operating in more than 30 countries, and under Advent's ownership has been expanding its portfolio with a series of in-licensing deals and acquisitions.

This year alone, it bought five consumer health brands from Italian company Aboca and licensed rights to an unidentified biosimilar TNF inhibitor - still in clinical development from India's Lupin for rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases – mainly in European and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) markets.

Zentiva chief executive Steffen Saltofte, who joined the company from Acino two years ago, has been following the drive for growth started by predecessor Nick Haggar. It has doubled in size since 2020 and has expanded its geographical footprint to all of Europe, and now aims to serve one in five Europeans by the end of the decade.

That growth strategy also saw the company take a majority stake of publicly-listed German drugmaker Apontis Pharma – which specialises in developing single-pill formulations of generic medicine combinations for cardiovascular diseases – last year. The two companies have completed a full merger via a squeeze-out deal that concluded in June.

Zentiva traces its origins back more than 500 years to a small pharmacy that still exists today in the heart of Prague and now employs almost 5,000 workers across Europe.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/zentiva-set-change-hands-eu41bn-private-equity-deal

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