Big Pharma’s miracle drugs have a nasty side effect



My husband has bipolar disorder. I know firsthand that the medications he takes do not merely improve his quality of life — they make our family life possible.

I am thankful for the drug companies whose products and innovations help keep my family together. But that does not mean I trust Big Pharma.

The pharmaceutical industry’s incentives are often at odds with the people it treats.

The pharmaceutical industry has helped create a culture in which Americans are taking more prescription drugs than at any point in history. Last year, more than two-thirds of Americans reported taking a prescription drug daily, and 26% said they take four or more.

No wonder the average price of prescription medications in the United States has risen by about 37% in the last decade. Many of the most popular brand-name medications have doubled in price over the past 15 years.

One study found that prescription drug prices in the United States are nearly three times higher than prices for the same medications in 32 comparable countries. Family health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored plans jumped 26% from 2020 to 2025, outpacing wage growth and inflation.

A quarter of Americans recently reported having difficulty paying for their medications. About 19% said they had skipped or rationed doses because of the cost. Research indicates that medical expenses are now the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in this country, surpassing job loss.

I understand that high prices help fund the astronomical cost of clinical trials that test and bring new drugs to market. But Americans have also seen pharmaceutical companies acquire the rights to off-patent drugs and raise prices overnight. They have watched insulin prices climb for years even though insulin is relatively cheap to produce.

Let’s face it: The pharmaceutical industry’s incentives are often at odds with the people it treats.

The same industry that helps my husband is increasingly keeping medications out of reach for many families.

Drug prices would not be so high if Big Pharma did not spend between $13 billion and $14 billion a year on direct-to-consumer advertising. They would not be so high if the pharmaceutical and health sectors did not consistently spend more on federal lobbying than any other industry.

Those efforts shape the laws and policies that allow current drug prices. The industry clearly views them as worthwhile investments.

Americans spent 12.7% more on pharmaceutical drugs last year than they did in 2024. A significant share of that increase came from popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Roughly 12% of American adults are currently taking one of these drugs, and that number is expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

I am not saying people should not take these medications. That is not for me to say. But I am deeply concerned that, culturally, we increasingly treat medication as the first line of defense for nearly every challenge before seriously exploring other options.

RELATED: Want to live to 100? Don’t expect Big Pharma to help.

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That concern comes from firsthand experience.

As someone who has battled addiction, I am acutely aware of the power substances can hold over a person’s life. That experience has left me worried about others who may develop dependencies on drugs.

I remember how the opioid crisis destroyed entire communities and caused a staggering number of deaths after companies such as Purdue Pharma aggressively pushed OxyContin while downplaying its risks. That epidemic continues today with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Is it any wonder some of us remain skeptical of pharmaceutical companies’ motives?

As a parent, I do everything in my power to ensure that my children do not become unnecessarily dependent on medications. I want them to understand that any drug they take should be used carefully and for its intended purpose.

I acknowledge the value of medicine. I deeply respect what the health care industry can do. My own family depends on it.

But respect should not require blindness.

The pharmaceutical industry should remember the families paying the bills, rationing the doses, and wondering whether the medications they need will remain within reach.

Innovation deserves reward. Exploitation does not.

Sara Gonzales reacts to documents proving Fauci lied about COVID: 'They let people die'



On her last day as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a bombshell report containing a collection of previously undisclosed communications that she says shed light on Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in the pandemic response.

“Before the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Gabbard began.

“I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents that expose exactly how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the intelligence community to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives,” she said.

Gabbard went on to explain that Fauci’s relationships within the intelligence community “enabled him to assume three key roles that shield him from scrutiny.”

“First, Dr. Fauci funded dangerous gain-of-function coronavirus research linked to Big Pharma and their pursuit of universal vaccines worth trillions of dollars,” she said.

“Second, Dr. Fauci was the behind-the-scenes adviser who … pushed the intelligence community to endorse a natural animal origin to hide his dangerous gain-of-function research that he funded using taxpayer dollars,” she explained.

“Third … he publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship using every platform available,” she added.

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is disgusted, though not surprised.

“As she was speaking, I felt like I have PTSD. In fact, maybe a lot of us do,” she says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered."

“They literally, purposely, intentionally let people die so that they could have an emergency mandate for a vaccine. They literally pushed ivermectin out of the way. … The rules all changed so that they could get everyone in America to inject themselves with an experiment,” she continues.

Following the report, the DOJ is now “weighing” a criminal case against Dr. Fauci.

“Just do it,” Gonzales comments.

“Why are we wasting another day not going after him on the things that we can go after him for?” she adds.

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‘The natural order’: Why Christian conservatives are turning AGAINST Big Pharma and Big Ag



Zach Lahn’s upset victory in Iowa's GOP gubernatorial primary has BlazeTV host Steve Deace asking whether or not the MAHA movement is becoming the foundation of a new conservative coalition.

“Iowa has the fastest-growing cancer rate in the world. We all know something is terribly wrong. But too many politicians from Washington, D.C., to Des Moines have had their heads stuck in the sand while Big Ag and Big Pharma printed money,” Lahn said in a campaign speech.

“Zach also ran on a really based immigration message — some of the most aggressive immigration messaging I’ve ever seen on Iowa airwaves,” Deace comments.

“The messaging that he combined there essentially mobilized evangelicals or Christian conservatives — in Iowa, most of those would be evangelicals — with the MAHA language that you saw … in his speech,” he continues. “So is this an omen or an outlier? Is this the grassroots coalition of the future?”


“I obviously hope so,” co-host Todd Erzen says.

Author Jon Harris points out that he sees this attitude everywhere now, especially in his own home.

“I think on the grassroots level, this is happening quite a bit. So my own wife has basically gotten all the plastic out of our kitchen. My brother was the first one to do a home birth in the family — it was actually during 2020 — and didn’t want to do any vaccines,” he explains.

“I thought that was kind of crazy at the time — that that didn’t make a lot of sense. What if there’s a complication? Don’t you need a hospital nearby?” Harris recalls.

“Well, my daughter was born, and we did the same thing that he did, and we’re very happy with it. And I never thought I’d be in a doula’s office with a bunch of hippies talking about how to bring a baby into the world. I thought that was the doctor’s job,” he says.

Harris believes the reason for this is that there are “a lot of Christians are also more connected to the natural order of things.”

“And fundamentally, MAHA, I think, is a conservative move in a way, because what they’re saying is we don’t trust the government to regulate these things. We need to have personal responsibility over our lives. And the reason is because God created this world,” he explains.

“There’s a design that we’re supposed to function by. And so if we go back to the ways our bodies should function and the nutrients that they actually need, then I think that’s a conservative move — that’s a Christian move on a fundamental level,” he continues. And at least it’s an on-ramp to those things.”

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Joy Behar’s TrumpRx rant shows how elites think



Joy Behar’s elitist meltdown on “The View” exposed exactly why disconnected celebrities fail ordinary American families. She hysterically claimed “we’re all going to die” because President Trump launched TrumpRx.gov to slash prescription drug prices.

While Behar lectures from her insulated bubble, millions of parents are choosing between groceries and lifesaving medicine for their sick children.

Reducing prescription drug prices by cutting out middlemen and forcing better pricing is not a death sentence. It is relief.

Behar warned viewers that the president uses TrumpRx to “put his name” on prescription drugs. Then, as a consequence, she declared, “we’re all going to die.”

Seriously?

Co-host Sunny Hostin piled on.

“He is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart,” Hostin told ABC’s nationwide audience. “He’s doing this to make money.”

No, President Trump does not profit from TrumpRx. The president receives no royalties, fees, or equity. TrumpRx is not a private entity. Several websites refer to it as “the government’s drug purchasing portal.” As anyone can see from the website address, trumprx.gov, it is a government operation.

TrumpRx delivers real relief through direct-to-consumer discounts, most favored nation pricing, and partnerships such as Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs, which cut out middlemen and deliver major savings.

Consider children and individuals with serious medical needs.

Regeneron’s groundbreaking gene therapy, Otarmeni, treats a rare genetic form of deafness. Under the TrumpRx deal, it is available at no cost to American families, restoring a child’s hearing without bankrupting parents.

Families facing juvenile idiopathic arthritis or pediatric Crohn’s disease can access Humira through TrumpRx for about $950 per dose instead of nearly $7,000. That life-changing savings allows children to stay active and avoid debilitating pain.

Fertility drugs like Gonal-F dropped from hundreds of dollars to as little as $168 per pen, helping families begin the journey of conceiving and starting a family. Bevespi Aerosphere, an inhaler used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, fell from $458 to $51. Airsupra, an inhaler used to treat asthma symptoms and attacks, dropped from $504 to $201. Trulicity, used to manage type 2 diabetes, fell from $987 to $389.

RELATED: ‘The View’ co-host has bizarre response to ‘lifelong progressive’ Whitney Cummings refusing to vote for pedophiles

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

For many families, those savings are immediate and concrete.

TrumpRx also lowers costs on dozens of other brand-name and generic medications for diabetes, asthma, migraines, and rare diseases that strike children and adults. Parents no longer have to skip refills because the price is impossible. Behar’s reflexive hatred of Trump blinds her to the suffering of working families crushed by prior high prices.

That is the real scandal.

The women of “The View” are not angry that medicine costs too much. They are angry that Trump found a way to cut costs and gets the credit for it. Their politics matter more than the families who benefit.

For a nurse, that is impossible to stomach. Families do not care whether a lower price arrives with Trump’s name attached to it. They care whether they can fill the prescription, pay the mortgage, and keep their child healthy.

TrumpRx is not perfect. No government program is. But reducing prescription drug prices by cutting out middlemen and forcing better pricing is not a death sentence. It is relief.

Behar and Hostin can sneer from the studio. Parents at the pharmacy counter know better.

The FDA seems to care more about celebrities than sick Americans



Last month, while many veterans celebrated Joe Rogan and President Donald Trump’s support for psychedelic drugs, those in the Huntington’s disease community like me faced another disappointment. UniQure, a company with a promising treatment, may be abandoning the U.S. market because of bureaucratic roadblocks.

I’m not the president or the world’s most popular podcaster. What I am is a daughter who has tested positive for the Huntington’s disease gene and will one day exhibit the same symptoms of this disease that ate away at my father’s personality and his mind until he took his own life.

The FDA’s answer always seems to be the same when it comes to rare disease treatments: Wait, wait, and then wait some more.

I have advocated for the Huntington’s disease community, both in my father’s memory and with the hope that my future will be different from his. The outlook is dim for those like me unless the Food & Drug Administration allows access to treatments like AMT-130, which UniQure is now advancing first in the U.K. after the FDA’s unreasonable demands pushed the United States down the priority list.

Those demands are disastrous for Huntington’s disease patients. Launching a placebo trial under the FDA’s proposed new criteria would require non-therapeutic injections into the brains of study patients — hardly aligning with medical ethics.

Even without the basic inhumanity of this type of trial, Huntington's patients simply cannot afford the years it would take to complete it. We are living on a much shorter timeline, defined by a merciless disease that is both progressive and fatal.

I’m glad that veterans are getting the attention they deserve and that they have the support of influencers like Rogan. But it raises an important question: Why should it take a celebrity and the president to push the FDA to follow basic common sense and medical best practices?

For years, the rare-disease community has done everything we were told would make a difference. We organized, advocated, and pushed for change with whatever strength we had, often while managing devastating diagnoses and worsening symptoms.

Parents of children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Sanfilippo syndrome, to name but two groups, have advocated while watching their children decline.

The FDA’s answer always seems to be the same when it comes to rare disease treatments: Wait, wait, and then wait some more. That means we’re running down hours on a clock that ticks ominously louder with every passing month. We don’t have time for years of unnecessary testing.

RELATED: Want to live to 100? Don’t expect Big Pharma to help.

Tom Merton/Getty Images

Rogan’s intervention shows that the system can move quickly when it wants to — certainly the president will listen when voices with direct access amplify a cause. Now we need to see that same urgency applied to treatments for rare diseases.

Families like mine are not looking for special treatment. We are only asking for the choice to take the risk of trying new medicines when all the old options have failed. After all, we know the future that awaits us.

President Trump already made the right move with the Right to Try Act, which gives terminally ill patients a pathway to access potentially lifesaving or life-extending treatments. It is critical that he push FDA officials to commit to the same right-to-try principles he championed in his first term.

Scientists are making incredible strides in treating rare diseases. But that innovation only matters if patients are allowed to use treatments already developed. Adults like me, and kids with terminal rare diseases whose parents approve, are absolutely willing to accept any risk that comes with trying a new therapy.

Until someone steps up to bat for people like me, our only alternative is the certaintyof an illness that will slowly, relentlessly ruin our lives and then snuff them out.

The case against ‘principled conservatism’



Frank Meyer’s fusionism combined free-market libertarianism and religion-friendly traditionalism to create the modern conservative movement. As a political alliance against the threat of communism, the movement served its purpose. But the principles that undergirded Meyer’s synthesis were not an adequate basis for attaining and sustaining national power.

The difference between the defeated Barry Goldwater faction and the victorious Ronald Reagan coalition was the vote of white Catholic Democrats alienated from their former party by its anti-anti-Communism and embrace of the three A’s: amnesty (for draft evaders), acid, and abortion.

We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

Those former Democrats did not want smaller government, so Reagan preserved, for them and the country, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with generating ever-larger deficits.

Meyer’s synthesis, however, was not as new as is often claimed: In important respects, it represented 19th-century Bourbon Democracy spruced up for the post-World War II era. What distinguished the Bourbons from the Republicans (and from the populist Democrats) was their commitment to smaller government, free trade, and cheap labor. That meant unfree labor in the 1850s and more-or-less free labor once the South was successfully “redeemed” from Republican rule and black civil rights enforcement after the Civil War.

What America needs today instead is fissionism. We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

MAGA in foreign and security matters means using American power to secure American interests. Foreign policy is not the application of abstract principles, which are worse than useless in international relations. What were Franklin Roosevelt’s principles or Andrew Jackson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s? Their guiding star in foreign policy was not principle but the ruthless pursuit of results.

As for draining the swamp, the trench warfare over DOGE and U.S. attorney appointments proves that deconstructing the administrative state requires a pro-Trump Senate. But the current Senate remains beholden to the uniparty. If you are happy with your “principled conservative” senator obstructing the president, then you are on the other side.

Against those screaming for lower taxes and less government at all costs, protective tariffs are core to MAGA — and for that matter, core to the Republican Party before it was taken over by Reagan, a former Democrat and fusionist. MAGA demands an economic policy geared toward national greatness. It means an end to regulations engineered to cripple the U.S. economy in the name of DEI, apocalyptic climate alarmism, or the latest elite neurosis.

Targeted regulations and tariffs to onshore our supply chains and rebuild the American industrial base? Absolutely. That has been Donald Trump’s consistent agenda since he first started commenting on public affairs in the 1980s. If the “principled conservatives” fail to recognize this, that exposes their own ideological blindness, not a flaw in the MAGA platform.

RELATED: Will Republicans fight for the SAVE Act — or fold again?

Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images

Fundamentally, “principled conservatives” don’t want America to be stronger and freer if it means traditional Republican governance. They prefer Bourbon Democracy: small government, cheap goods, cheap labor (citizens and noncitizens alike), and dependence on others — once Britain or the North, now China — for industry, including vital defense-related manufacturing. As for the world, China can do what it wants. Anything else would require the old guard conservatives to compromise their precious “principles.”

People who don’t want the United States to be reliant on China, as Mississippi was on Manchester in 1850, or Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1890, should see “principled conservatives” as political opponents — allies of the Democrats. They are helping to destroy Trump and everything the president stands for.

Does drawing clearer partisan lines mean shedding potential support required for electoral victory? That is a very real risk. The compensating benefit is that once we know what we want, we can accurately identify our allies and band together to address the crises of our time.

A “principled conservative” administration would have preferred Big Pharma to RFK Jr. and MAHA. A “principled conservative” administration would make no room for a Tulsi Gabbard, an Elon Musk, or any other heterodox defector who wants to restore American foreign and security policy and advance American power, national honor, and national freedom.

Fissionism means drawing clear battle lines, dividing what was once the “conservative movement.” The “principled conservatives” can keep their pristine — and currently useless — “principles.” I am on the side of America, which means the side of Trump.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Damning study of over a million kids finds myocarditis only in the vaccinated



Biden administration officials and so-called experts characterized COVID-19 vaccines as "safe and effective" during the pandemic. In the face of an avalanche of tragic evidence to the contrary, the powers that be waged costly and unsuccessful propaganda and censorship campaigns to cure Americans' skepticism.

Although the Trump administration has alternatively acknowledged the risks and fallout associated with the vaccines — the Food and Drug Administration admitting, for instance, that the vaccines killed numerous children — a coalition of medical organizations is fighting to legally force the government to keep recommending the COVID jabs to healthy kids and pregnant women.

That legal effort appears especially questionable given the finding in a recent study that children spared from the vaccine also appear to have been spared from an unfortunate health complication.

'I only feel more vindicated I didn't take the COVID shot.'

The peer-reviewed study — conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, the University of Bristol, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and published in January in the scientific journal Epidemiology — looked at the safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine in healthy children ages 5-15 following the rollout that began in late 2021.

Using data from the OpenSAFELY-TPP database with the blessing of NHS England, the researchers compared the "effectiveness and safety of: (1) the first vaccine dose versus no vaccination and (2) a second dose versus a single dose only."

Specifically, they compared 141,711 children ages 5-11 and 410,463 adolescents ages 12-15 who were given a first dose of the vaccine with equal numbers of unvaccinated children from the same age groups.

RELATED: 'Rogue' Biden judge blocks critical pieces of RFK Jr.'s vaccine reform

Photographer: Emily Elconin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The researchers found that the vaccination provided some benefits, including an "initial protective effect" that waned by 14 weeks as well as a lower incidence of emergency room visits than recorded among the unvaccinated cohort.

They noted, however, that "myocarditis and pericarditis were documented only in the vaccinated groups, with rates of 27 and 10 cases/million after the first and second doses, respectively."

As late as January 2023, the U.K. Health Security Agency said that "the reported rate for heart inflammation (myocarditis and pericarditis) was 13 per million first doses and 8 per million second doses of the monovalent Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine" among those under the age of 18.

"That there were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in the unvaccinated group does not mean that such events cannot occur without COVID-19 vaccination, only that these events were not observed in the unvaccinated groups in our specific matched analyses," the study noted.

For adolescents, the reduction in risk of COVID-19 hospitalization following vaccination was larger than the corresponding increase in risk of both myocarditis and pericarditis, said the researchers. The same could not, however, be said of younger children.

"The reduction in risk of COVID-19 hospitalization in children (−0.02 for first dose vs. unvaccinated) was lower than the increase in risk of pericarditis (0.22)," said the study.

Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who introduced legislation last month that would strip the liability shield from vaccine manufacturers, said in response to the study, "As it stands right now, families are limited as to how they can seek justice due to legal carveouts for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers."

"We ought to pass my bill, the End the Vaccine Carveouts Act, to hold pharma accountable properly," added Paul.

Turning Point USA contributor Riley Gaines said, "As more time passes, I only feel more vindicated I didn't take the COVID shot. I feel sorry for the people who did."

Last year, the FDA required Pfizer and Moderna to start noting the estimated unadjusted incidence of heart conditions following administration of the 2023-2024 formula of the BNT162b2 and Spikevax vaccines as well as the longitudinal results of a 2024 study concerning cardiac manifestations and outcomes of vaccine-associated myocarditis in American youths.

H/T Evie Magazine

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'Rogue' Biden judge blocks critical pieces of RFK Jr.'s vaccine reform



A federal judge appointed by former President Joe Biden obliged medical establishmentarians on Monday, blocking three critical elements of the Trump administration's vaccine reform.

Brian Murphy — a Boston-based U.S. district court judge who previously barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting illegal aliens — paused Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s reconstitution of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the federal panel whose vaccine recommendations become official policy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

'How much embarrassment can this Judge take?'

In addition to freezing out Kennedy's ACIP appointees prior to their planned discussion of COVID-19 vaccines this week, Murphy also halted the health secretary's reform of the child vaccination schedule as well as Kennedy's May 2025 directive rescinding the recommendation that pregnant women and healthy kids get the COVID vaccine.

The shake-up

As of early 2025, all 17 members of the ACIP were Biden appointees.

Some of the members were brazen partisans. Oliver Brooks, for instance, made a habit of donating to Democrat candidates, including failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and called for research to be "intentionally antiracist." Noel Brewer, a 2020 Biden donor, similarly demonstrated a DEI-lensed preoccupation with race.

Most members had collected small fortunes in consulting fees and research support from some of the very pharmaceutical giants whose products the panel had recommended, prompting questions about the members' loyalties and commitment to public health.

RELATED: FDA finally admits COVID-19 vaccine killed kids: 'This is a profound revelation'

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

Kennedy noted in a June 9 article, "The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine."

"It has never recommended against a vaccine — even those later withdrawn for safety reasons," continued Kennedy. "It has failed to scrutinize vaccine products given to babies and pregnant women. To make matters worse, the groups that inform ACIP meet behind closed doors, violating the legal and ethical principle of transparency crucial to maintaining public trust."

On June 10, Kennedy announced that he had canned all 17 members of the ACIP, accused the panel of "malevolent malpractice," and vowed to appoint "highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense."

Medical establishmentarians melted down over the removal of the Biden holdovers.

Susan Kressly, who was the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics at the time, said, "We are witnessing an escalating effort by the administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines."

Their fury was compounded when Kennedy announced whom he was appointing to the newly vacant panel — experts such as Dr. Robert Malone, an early pioneer in messenger RNA technology, and Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth who ruffled feathers in 2021 by criticizing ruinous mask mandates for children.

In January, the Trump administration dealt those clinging to the status quo another upset, modifying the childhood immunization schedule.

RELATED: The Conspiracy Instinct

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Whereas previously, the CDC recommended that kids get vaccines for 18 diseases — loading them up with twice as many doses as their European counterparts — the Trump administration reduced its list of vaccination recommendations for all children to jabs for the following 11 diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus, and chickenpox.

The lawsuit

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups sued the administration in July over its termination of COVID vaccine recommendations for healthy kids and pregnant women, then amended their complaint to incorporate challenges to the ACIP shake-up and changes to the immunization schedule updates.

'We will keep appealing these lawless decisions.'

Judge Murphy echoed the plaintiffs' talking points in his ruling on Monday and said, "There is a method to how these decisions [about which vaccines to make available through insurers and government programs] historically have been made — a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions."

Murphy questioned the qualifications held by the majority of current ACIP members but spared his fellow Biden appointees who previously served on the panel from such scrutiny.

He also said that the ACIP, as currently staffed, violates Congress' requirement that such committees "be fairly balanced."

Murphy, opting for stays over injunctions, stayed Kennedy's appointments of new ACIP members, all votes taken by the new ACIP members, and the January changes to the childhood immunization schedule.

The response

The medical groups behind the lawsuit celebrated Murphy's ruling.

Andrew Racine, president of the AAP, called it "a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere."

"This decision effectively means that a science-based process for developing immunization recommendations is not to be trifled with and represents a critical step to restoring scientific decision-making to federal vaccine policy that has kept children healthy for years," added Racine.

"Today's ruling is a win for public health and reaffirms that national vaccine policy should be guided by rigorous, evidence-based science, not politics," said Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians. "Scientific consensus and overwhelming evidence demonstrate that vaccines are safe and effective."

The HHS said that it will appeal the ruling.

"We look forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing," wrote HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche noted, "We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning. The question is, how much embarrassment can this Judge take?"

Dr. Robert Malone said that the "rogue judge" had "inserted himself between the elected executive branch and its constitutional authority to govern."

Malone, who faced years of abuse for questioning the safety of mRNA vaccines and the severity of COVID-19, emphasized that "the political timing of this ruling is impossible to ignore" and that "the practical consequences of Monday's ruling are serious."

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MAHA is sick: RFK’s FDA is drifting the wrong way



If Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to be true to his word and “Make America Healthy Again,” he must reform the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Vinay Prasad, whose actions thwart medical freedom, endanger the unborn, and compromise patient choice, needs to go now, not at the end of April.

Prasad is a “Bernie Sanders acolyte” who “doesn’t think patients can be trusted to make their own healthcare decisions,” as Allysia Finley put it in the Wall Street Journal. Prasad disparages the 2018 right-to-try law, which give terminal patients access to experimental treatments, calling it “terrible” and “disingenuous,” written by people who “want to weaken the FDA.”

MAHA won’t survive as a slogan alone. Behind the facade of RFK’s rhetoric is an ideological agenda at odds with key conservative values.

Prasad claims that dying patients already have access to drugs through the FDA’s expanded-use programs and blames drug companies as the “major barrier” to unapproved drugs, downplaying the government’s role in blocking patient choice.

His personal crusade against faster drug approvals has chilled medical innovation. When Prasad originally resigned in July, months into his FDA tenure, amid backlash, the market predicted a shift toward a more patient-centric “right-to-try” approach, potentially cutting the bureaucratic red tape stifling cell and gene therapies and patient access.

Prasad’s pro-abortion record is even worse. He proudly identifies as “pro-choice” and progressive, a stance fundamentally at odds with pro-life conservatism. His appointment to the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research overseeing drug development that affects pregnant women and unborn children is a direct threat to the culture of life.

Prasad consistently casts abortion as a medical issue rather than a moral issue. He also fiercely defended mifepristone, the abortion pill, when a Texas judge tried to suspend its FDA approval. Prasad called the court’s intervention a “dangerous precedent,” and applauded the Supreme Court for preserving access to the drug, framing the issue purely as protecting “FDA authority” and “scientific integrity.” To pro-life voters, that posture reads less like neutrality and more like a commitment to keeping the abortion drug regime insulated from challenge.

Small-government promises are colliding with Prasad’s big-government dogma. Conservatives assumed RFK Jr. and his FDA appointees would shrink regulatory excess in support of President Trump’s innovation agenda, but they have done the opposite. Prasad came in with a “stringent regulatory mindset.” Rather than trusting patients to weigh risks for themselves, he has tightened the FDA’s grip with paternalistic, ideological rules. He has sidelined MAHA’s promise and expanded oversight instead.

Prasad’s policies have often expanded the FDA’s reach in ways that could seriously harm timely access to treatments. He is imposing tougher requirements on industry, insisting on larger trials and refusing to rely on surrogate endpoints for approvals, which means more delays and more red tape before new solutions can reach the public.

RELATED: MAHA allies rage over Trump’s support for controversial weed-killing chemical

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The internal dynamics under Prasad reflect a top-down, bureaucratic rigidity and are under formal investigation, with the FDA retaining an outside investigator to examine workplace complaints alleging a toxic environment. Instead of signaling healthy reform, Prasad’s authoritarian rule of CBER is run on control and fear of pushback, where staff worry that dissent will be punished and experienced voices are pushed out or sidelined. Rather than “draining the swamp,” this approach fortified an insider bureaucracy loyal to Prasad’s agenda.

When the FDA held a meeting on a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher drug, the voting members were top leaders like Prasad, not the scientists who reviewed the application. Career reviewers were excluded from the vote entirely, a major break from the FDA’s long-standing practice of empowering these staffers to make the final scientific call in order to shield approvals from political pressure.

The paradox for conservatives is obvious. Kennedy and Prasad earn plaudits for pulling back certain excesses, including scaling down aggressive vaccine promotion. Yet at the same time, they are building a larger, more controlling FDA bureaucracy in other domains — one that constricts medical freedom, slows innovation, and keeps pro-life concerns at arm’s length.

MAHA won’t survive as a slogan alone. Behind the facade of RFK’s rhetoric is an ideological agenda at odds with key conservative values. Conservatives who cherish medical freedom and rapid innovation find themselves at odds with Prasad’s FDA. A few welcome policy tweaks cannot obscure the reality of an expanding bureaucracy and pro-abortion policies.

With the 2026 midterms fast approaching, continuing this pattern will hurt Republicans and erode the trust of voters, handing Democrats an easy narrative about broken promises. Such an outcome would leave MAHA dead and MAGA mortally wounded. We must do better.

'Hold Big Pharma accountable': Vaxx giants are sure to be nervous about Rand Paul's new bill



Vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer made record profits pushing experimental drugs during the pandemic that were nowhere near as "safe and effective" as marketed.

Although their vaccines allegedly left some Americans badly injured and allegedly killed others, Big Pharma giants were largely protected from civil lawsuits as the result of special liability protections that were repeatedly extended by the Biden administration.

'When it comes to vaccines, and in many cases the COVID vaccine, the rules are rigged.'

Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) introduced legislation last week that would amend the Public Health Service Act to strip the liability shield from vaccine manufacturers.

"If a drug hurts someone, you can sue the company in court," said Paul, a licensed doctor of medicine. "You can hold them responsible through the normal legal process. But when it comes to vaccines, and in many cases the COVID vaccine, the rules are rigged: You're funneled into a federal no-fault program that limits damages, restricts your options, and — in many cases — leaves people without real justice. That's cronyism."

Presently, persons seeking compensation for injuries sustained as the result of a covered vaccine must file a petition with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which is touted as a "no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions."

Those specifically injured by one of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines — which were in many jurisdictions required to remain employed, eat in public, stay in school, or visit loved ones — must file a petition with the related Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program.

RELATED: Finally: Vaccine guidelines that make sense for parents

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Parents, legal guardians, and legal representatives of those individuals who were killed by the vaccines — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admitted in December that "at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination" — can file on behalf of the decedents.

The catch is that suffering an injury or dying around the time of the receipt of a COVID jab "is not sufficient, by itself, to prove that an injury is the direct result of a covered countermeasure."

Since there is a high bar for proving causation, few Americans' petitions are successful.

'Pharma giants are hiding behind legal protections to avoid being sued.'

CICP data shows that as of Feb. 1, a total of 14,102 COVID-19 claims have been filed, 10,944 alleging injuries or death from COVID-19 vaccines and 3,158 alleging injuries or death from other COVID-19 countermeasures.

Of the total, 6,556 were rejected outright. Of the 6,649 for which decisions were made, only 93 claims were found eligible for compensation — and of the 93, only 44 petitioners have actually received compensation.

Sen. Paul's End the Vaccine Carveout Act, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and serves as a companion bill to the legislation of the same name introduced in the House in July by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), would reform the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by allowing vaccine-injured individuals or the legal representatives of those killed by vaccines to pursue direct civil action in state or federal court without having to first try their chances at the no-fault federal system.

Presently, vaccine-injured Americans are generally required to file a petition through VICP before seeking judicial relief. The Republican bill would eliminate that barrier to possible justice.

The bill would also exclude COVID-19 vaccines from the definition of "covered countermeasures," thereby ending the immunity shield that has for years protected vaccine manufacturers, distributors, and administration from vaccine injury claims.

Lee stated, "Pharma giants are hiding behind legal protections to avoid being sued by Americans experiencing serious vaccine side effects."

"Many of these patients were forced to get vaccinated or lose their jobs during the pandemic and are now dealing with permanent and very serious complications," Lee continued. "Our bill will end these unconstitutional vaccine carveouts so that all Americans can receive the justice they deserve and hold Big Pharma accountable."

Weeks after the 2024 presidential election, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra extended the liability shield for COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers through Dec. 31, 2029.

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