The Food and Drug Administration on Oct. 31 issued a nationwide recall of powder supplements sold at Sam’s Club after 11 salmonella infections were reported.
Health officials recalled Member’s Mark Super Greens Powder Supplements, sold at the members-only division of Walmart, after people fell ill between May and September.
Three were hospitalized and eight others reported falling ill.
Infections were mostly reported on the East Coast, such as in Florida, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia. There have also been reports of illness in Kansas and Michigan.
The supplements, sold nationwide at Sam’s Club and online, contained moringa leaf powder that health officials suspect may be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.
But FDA investigators fear that the Sam’s Club supplements may not be the only product contaminated with the problematic batch of moringa leaf powder from a farm in Johdpur, India.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention interviewed 10 of the 11 people who fell ill and even though nine of them admitted to eating powdered dietary supplements, only six reported eating Member’s Mark Super Greens Powder specifically. Three others reported consuming products containing moringa leaf powder from a different brand.
“The implicated lot of moringa powder was supplied to multiple U.S. distributors,” the FDA said.
The FDA’s recall includes all Member’s Mark Super Greens dietary supplement powder, “regardless of lot codes and best by/use before dates.”
“FDA is working to determine the point of contamination and what additional products were made with the implicated lot of moringa leaf powder,” the FDA added.
The Virginia Department of Health and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services have collected samples from two of those affected. Both tested positive for salmonella.
The product has been removed from store shelves and health officials urge Americans not to eat, sell, or serve the product. They suggest people who bought it either throw it away or return it to the store for a refund.
The Epoch Times reached out to Walmart for comment.
Symptoms of salmonella infection can occur within a few hours to several days after eating food contaminated with the harmful bacteria.
Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. It can last four to seven days.
Seniors, children under the age of five and people with weakened immune systems are more likely to have severe infections.
Salmonella is one of the most common forms of food poisoning, according to the Cleveland Clinic. More than a million people get salmonella every year, and about 420 cases are fatal.
Less than 24 hours after resigning his post as the FDA’s head drug regulator, George Tidmarsh is reportedly reconsidering his decision and vowing to fight for his name and credibility amid a probe into his “personal conduct” at the agency.
A day after tendering his resignation as the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, George Tidmarsh is reportedly reconsidering that decision.
During a meeting of supervisors Monday at the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, OND Director Mary Thanh Hai conveyed remarks from Tidmarsh to senior staffers, saying that he is on administrative leave and is not resigning, according to a person familiar with the meeting, Endpoints News reported. Tidmarsh later told Endpoints that he was “second-guessing” his decision to resign. “I’m going to fight it. It’s my name and credibility,” he told the publication on Sunday of the ongoing investigation into his “personal conduct.”
George Tidmarsh, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, resigned from his post Sunday amid an ongoing probe over his “personal conduct,” according to severalmediareports.
Tidmarsh was placed on administrative leave on Friday, a spokesperson for the Health Department told CNBC, after the agency was made aware of “serious concerns about his personal conduct.” Tidmarsh tendered his resignation Sunday morning, effective immediately.
Tidmarsh was appointed in July, bringing with him years of industry experience. He had held several executive spots at different companies, including Solano Therapeutics, La Jolla Pharmaceutical and Horizon Pharma.
The investigation that ultimately led to Tidmarsh’s resignation is connected to a complaint by Kevin Tang, who has gained a reputation in the industry because of his work snapping up and closing down struggling companies. Tang carries this out through his shell company Concentra Biosciences, which just this year has successfully bought at least three biotechs—iTeos, Cargo Therapeutics and Kronos Bio—and made a pass at a few more.
In late September, Tidmarsh attracted Tang’s ire after he singled out Aurinia Pharmaceuticals’ lupus nephritis drug Lupkynis, which the former regulator claimed was an example of the need to reevaluate the use of approvals based on surrogate endpoints. In a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Tidmarsh said that Lupkynis had “significant toxicity” and “has not been shown to provide a direct clinical benefit for patients.” Tang is the chair of Aurinia’s board of directors.
“For some diseases such as lupus nephritis companies have not run trials to demonstrate the benefit on hard clinical endpoints,” Tidmarsh wrote. The FDA signed off on Lupkynis in 2021 based on urinary protein-creatinine ratio, a biomarker indicative of kidney health. Aurinia subsequently filed data from an extension study, which led to a label update for Lupkynis, reflecting better long-term efficacy.
Following Tidmarsh’s post, Tang filed a complaint with the FDA, which the agency referred to the Office of Inspector General, according to reporting from STAT News. Aurinia filed a lawsuit on Sunday, accusing Tidmarsh of a “longstanding personal vendetta against Kevin Tang,” STAT reported.
“Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” a health department spokesperson told STAT in a statement on Sunday.
Tidmarsh’s tenure at the FDA was rocky. In an article on Sunday, The New York Times reported that Tidmarsh found the agency to be a toxic work environment—a situation that he attributed to Vinay Prasad, his counterpart at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Prasad himself was kicked out of the FDA in late July, before being reinstated 10 days later.
Speaking to STAT, Tidmarsh suggested that Prasad had a role to play in his ouster, though he did not provide additional details.
Tidmarsh’s resignation continues a string of high-profile exits at the Department of Health and Human Services. Most prominently, CDC Director Susan Monarez was given the boot after just 28 days on the job—a termination she alleges was driven by her refusal to pre-approve vaccine recommendations. Earlier this year, Prasad’s predecessor Peter Marks and Nicole Verdun, former director of the FDA’s Office of Therapeutic Products, also left the agency.
Antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour vowed to make sure Zohran Mamdani doesn’t backtrack on his radical campaign policies if he is elected mayor – and boasted that she and a Hamas-linked nonprofit helped fuel his rise.
Sarsour, a political mentor and close friend of the silver-spoon socialist, denied she would work for a potential Mamdani administration but promised she would still do whatever it takes to hold him “accountable” — boldly declaring that she won’t let him “do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.”
“I just want you all to know I’m not going to work for the Zohran administration,” Sarsour said in an Instagram livestream late Saturday, which was viewed by Fox News.
A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with Mamdani, Sarsour has been like a political mentor to Mamdani, according to reports.Linda Sarsour/ Instagram
“I’m not going to work in City Hall, because, guess what? There gotta be people like me willing to stay outside,” she said.
“Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying attention’,” she added.
In a clip from a different Sarsour speech that circulated Monday, the Hamas-supporting, Palestinian-American firebrand hinted that she would spill the beans about Mamdani’s rapid political ascent — and the flood of cash from the Council on American-Islamic Relations behind it — after Election Day.
“Once November 4th comes around, I will tell the story. The story is not just that it’s random that Zohran ascended to this place, it is our Muslim-American community,” she said while speaking at CAIR’s 2025 Leadership & Policy Conference last month.
Linda Sarsour said she will “hold Zohran accountable” to fulfill campaign promises, including dismantling an NYPD unit that polices terrorism threats, protests, and riots, if he wins the race.MediaNews Group via Getty Images
“And I’ll also say that it’s Muslim money. PACs that have supported Zohran, or a particular PAC that has supported Zohran is probably over 80% of Muslim-American donors in this country,” she said.
CAIR, which describes itself as a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is currently under scrutiny by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who have pushed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to investigate claims the nonprofit is bankrolled by Hamas. The nonprofit was allegedly provided “seed money” by the terror group, according to evidence presented in a congressional hearing.
Sarsour went on to identify the CAIR-funded Unity and Justice Fund PAC as “the largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran super PAC in New York.”
According to public records, the Unity and Justice PAC gave $120,000 total to Lower Costs, an NYC-based pro-Mamdani PAC, out of about $3 million in donations this cycle.
Sarsour, 45, an activist who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America alongside Mamdani, insisted that her posse would speak out if the Democratic nominee and front-runner in the heated race didn’t follow through with his Marxist promises.
“When he does something when he’s in City Hall and he’s wrong, I’m going to tell him he’s wrong,” Sarsour said on the Instagram livestream, according to Fox.
“Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying attention,” Sarsour continued.James Keivom
“Voting for Zohran is not, ‘We’re going to vote for Zohran and just let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.’ Our job as a movement is we have to hold whoever goes to City Hall accountable.”
Sarsour even got a head start inserting herself in City Hall affairs, dumping on Mamdani’s suggestion that he would keep NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch on, if he is elected.
“I wasn’t really happy about the news that he was going to keep Tisch on for the NYPD,” she railed.
“What’s most important is that in New York City, the police commissioner works for the mayor. They are not a separate elected official. So that means if Zohran says to Tisch, ‘You gotta do A-B-C,’ Tisch gotta do what the mayor says,” Sarsour continued.
“Now, if she doesn’t do that and goes against the mayor, then that’s when we’re going to have to go to Zohran and be like, ‘You definitely made the wrong decision here. What are you going to do to hold your police commissioner accountable to the plan?’”
Sarsour also signaled Mamdani would owe her and other supporters if he wins.
“When Zohran gets inaugurated in January, and as we move forward with this mayor, we have to be the people outside,” she said.
“Zohran is going to have to tell his own critics that are on the other side to basically say, ‘Look out that window, those people outside, these constituents, these activists, these organizers that are outside, I’m accountable to them, because they’re the ones that helped me get there.’”
Sarsour is believed to be among those who have helped shape the Queens assemblyman’s radical views, as well as his far-left hatred of Israel, according to a foreign intelligence report and critics.
Sarsour has a history of spewing contempt for the Jewish state – long before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack.
She declared in 2018 that fellow Muslims shouldn’t humanize Israelis because they’re the enemy.
Sarsour also previously spoke glowingly of notorious Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who Mamdani posed for a smiley photo with while on the campaign trail.
The Democrats shuttered the government to demand spending an additional $1.5T to return health care funding removed in the Big, Beautiful Bill. In reality, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was never affordable, federal subsidies increase insurance costs for everyone, and the BBB correctly increased state cost-sharing for accountability and deficit reduction. California and one county’s use of Medicaid funds and the BBB’s impact on their funding model illustrates why Democrats are extending the shutdown in the hopes that Trump will capitulate to their demands.
Prior to the BBB’s passage, Gavin Newsom estimated that his state-funded Medicaid illegal alien expansion would produce a $12B budget deficit. Therefore, Newsom’s approved June budget already cut California's free illegal health care program by pausing new enrollment and requiring able-bodied migrant adults to pay premiums. California was the first U.S. state to offer comprehensive Medicaid health insurance to all ages, adding migrants ages 26 to 44 in 2024, to cover 1.6M illegal aliens.
Medicaid’s original mission, health care for vulnerable populations, was derailed by Obamacare’s subsidy of Medicaid expansions, especially the federal subsidy of 90% of Medicaid-expansion costs of able-bodied adults without dependents. Some states, including California, used this program to create a provider tax loophole that used the 90/10 fed/state funding split to launder federal dollars through Medicaid using an inflated Medicaid provider tax.
The BBB reduces federal health care liability by preventing and reversing the ACA’s Medicaid expansions. First, the law freezes provider taxes at current levels, requiring broad application of all provider taxes and limiting state-directed payments to 100% of Medicare rates. Use of the provider tax loophole is eliminated. This loophole mechanism allowed CA to fund its able-bodied illegal alien Medicaid population using federal funds while claiming that the program is state-funded.
Second, the BBB targets states who participated in Medicaid expansion by increasing accountability for those 19–64 without disability or dependent children by requiring 80 hours of monthly community engagement. Those earning above certain thresholds would pay premiums. Third, the BBB requires states to verify citizenship and immigration status prior to providing coverage to prevent those ineligible from receiving benefits. Fraudulent enrollment, through double-enrollment and phantom enrollees, becomes more difficult.
Fourth, the BBB will disallow federal funds to be used for cases outside the traditional, legal Medicaid enrollees, end Biden’s ACA streamlining, and limit noncitizen access. Certain illegal groups like refugees and asylees granted temporary protected status by Biden would lose coverage. Low asset limits and income verification will be re-instituted. Finally, states with high error rates in distributing SNAP funds will be penalized.
Newsom’s goal to provide universal health care to all children, adults, and elderly “regardless of immigration status” led California to experience “unexpected” cost overruns. With Medicaid funding central to California’s funding formula that covers the bills, the BBB’s redistribution of costs harms California's financing model, a scheme that generated California $9.5B in 2023 and 2024. Despite threats of losing this subsidy, Newsom included it to balance his 2025–6 state budget. Californians pass the buck to the feds and thus can ignore Milton Friedman’s advice: “You can’t have a welfare state and open borders,” since open borders yield an infinite supply of immigrants seeking benefits, which will cause unsustainable economic costs.
Fortunately, the BBB also funds border security. Homeland Security estimates that the illegal immigrant population dropped by 2M. Though the number officially deported by Homeland Security is ~500,000, Trump declared an emergency at the southern border, enforced the Alien Registration Act, and froze funding to non-government agencies funding illegal aliens. Many are self-deporting or no longer crossing the border. If all this is true, California and other Democrat states will lose Medicaid enrollees and won’t need extra Medicaid funding.
Without large numbers of Medicaid recipients, lawful and unlawful, California can’t transform increasing amounts of federal funds into California General Fund dollars via the Medicaid provider tax loophole. The security of the southern border and the need to equitably balance provider taxes jeopardize funding for Governor Newsom’s pet projects.
Interestingly, Santa Clara County, California’s sixth largest, put an emergency proposition on the November 4 ballot to raise its county sales tax to help pay for public hospital expenses. They calculate that the county will lose $1 billion in federal Medicaid and SNAP payments over a decade. Santa Clara County (SCC) is the only California county to request a salve for BBB Medicaid cuts, and its demand mirrors the Democrat federal government shutdown demands.
Why would this single California county push an emergency ballot proposition demanding health care funding, citing the BBB as the cause? For the past six years, Santa Clara County has massively expanded its federal Medicaid revenue with associated public hospital expansion. For 150 years (or since 1876), Santa Clara County had a single county hospital. In 2019 its Board of Supervisors voted the county executive power to purchase several private hospitals to effectively double the number of county hospital beds, medical employees, and medical staff physicians. Five years later, the SCC Board of Supervisors invoked emergency powers to acquire another private hospital in San Jose in another no-bid process provoked by the need to safeguard public health when critical trauma services were being cut.
Now the SCC Board of Supervisors has authorized a Special Election to raise taxes under emergency declaration due to unforeseen federal tax cuts that threaten public safety. So far the legality of the emergency proposition has been challenged in two lawsuits: one regarding the not-a-legal-emergency to justify accelerating the ballot to a special election and another on SCC’s use of taxpayer funding to campaign for the measure. In reality, the Valley Medical hospital system runs a deficit annually, with last year’s $600M shortfall balanced from the general fund. Has SCC declared a public health emergency in the past?
From 2012 to 2025, the California Medicaid population has roughly doubled, from 7.9M to 15M, with costs increasing disproportionately to population threefold. During this time we’ve seen the state share-of-cost double but stay fairly stable from 2017 to present, whereas the federal share steadily increased with passage of Obamacare, CARES, and Biden IRA subsidies, skyrocketing with approval of the California MCO provider tax in 2023. Meanwhile, Santa Clara County’s hospital system saw a threefold revenue increase, from $625 million to $1.9 billion. The loss of federal Medicaid funding, especially through the provider tax loophole and illegal SNAP funding, has huge repercussions for Santa Clara County’s bloated public hospital system and California’s budget.
Though federal law disallows use of federal funds to pay Medicaid bills for illegals, California created dependency through redefining illegal groups, using tax loopholes, and lying about funding sources. The shutdown allowed us to learn that, plus the $147-billion annual cost for SNAP. The Medicaid cost breakdown makes clear that the growth in California Medicaid beneficiaries, including illegals’ expansion in 2022 and 2024, is entirely shouldered by the federal government.
Will SCC residents vote to pay for illegals' Medicaid and SNAP? Trump should stand firm, not releasing SNAP funds to states refusing to share SNAP data with the USDA (to verify against illegal or phantom recipients). He should also stand firm on the BBB's fiscal accountability provisions not to bolster state budgets with federal funds.
