#executive order

A judge has temporarily blocked President Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship.

Judge Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, said:

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

The 14th Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868, granting citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the United States — including formerly enslaved Black people. This bill also provided all U.S. citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” marking a critical turning point in the fight for civil rights.

157 years later, the 14th Amendment is under attack. In January, President Trump issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. Activists and public officials fought back in at least 20 states, temporarily blocking the order.

But two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that lower federal courts do not have the power to block a nationwide order. This decision could put more than 150,000 people born in this country every year at risk of being denied their constitutional rights — including the right to vote.

The president should not get to take away rights the Constitution granted us over 100 years ago.

Modern American politics, Part 1

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

Donald Trump has a long history of racism, from excusing the actions of Nazis to promoting the racist birther conspiracy theory. Trump also surrounds himself with racist advisers like Stephen Miller, who is currently formulating the administration’s harsh immigration policy. Trump continued this approach in the first few days of his second presidency by issuing a series of executive orders meant to undo past actions by the U.S. government to address the harmful effects of racism. Trump and his fellow Republicans have for years attacked programs meant to counter racism and encourage diversity, attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. They have falsely claimed that these programs prioritize mediocrity over qualified individuals and decision making. But in reality, the anti-DEI crusade has been a smokescreen for rolling back civil rights.

In his executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” the Trump administration made this posture clear. The order explicitly rescinds Executive Order 11246, which President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1965—an order Johnson used to desegregate federal contracting. As the Department of Labor website explains (for now, at least), the Johnson order “reinforced the requirement that federal contractors not discriminate in employment and take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity based on race, color, religion, and national origin.” The department also notes that the Johnson order—now gone, thanks to Trump’s actions—were a “key landmark in a series of federal actions aimed at ending racial, religious and ethnic discrimination.” Reversing an order meant to attack racism and pro-segregation policies was described by the Trump administration in a release as “protecting civil rights and expanding individual opportunity.”

[...] The administration issued an order instructing the Department of Transportation and the FAA to “immediately stop Biden DEI hiring programs and return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring.” The order claimed without evidence that increasing diversity in transportation programs somehow makes travel more dangerous for Americans. As evidence, the administration pointed to a January 2023 FAA outage as “an illustration of the importance of FAA competence.” But in reality, as the FAA determined at the time of the outage, the cause was a corrupted database issue that occurred when files were deleted by mistake by a contractor. That’s not exactly a diversity issue.

Racist-in-Chief kills LBJ’s 1965 EO that desegregated federal contracting as part of his racist quest to end DEI programs.

See Also:

Vox: Trump’s sweeping new order tries to dismantle DEI in government — and the private sector

Woke up to this news and im angered beyond belief. Libraries are part of the lifeblood of our democracy and this is pure facsim. Plain and simple.

Im attaching some links below of petitions and emails to send.

Stay informed. Stay alert. Stay strong.