Better in their words…

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Welcome to the media’s most covered story. This morning, the New York Times ran its thousandth entry under the headline, “Trump’s Power Faces Test in Court and at Ballot Box. In case it wasn’t perfectly clear what they were insinuating, to ensure even Portland readers would understand, the sub-headline helpfully added, “President Trump has a lot riding on the results of Tuesday’s elections.”

That is absurdly false, of course, a monstrous lie. There are no federal elections anywhere in the country tomorrow, not even special ones. Trump personally could not have less riding on the results of today’s elections, apart from media manipulation and Democrat fever dreams of kickstarting some kind of momentum.

The Democrats are first-order poseurs. The three races they picked to be ‘bellwethers’ to test the “nation’s mood” today are all Big Blue slam-dunks: two blue-state governorships (Virginia and New Jersey), and the New York City mayor’s race, of all things. For Pete’s sake, it’s been 24 years since NYC had a real Republican mayor (Rudi Giuliani, 1994-2001).

The truth is, these three races don’t measure the nation’s mood. They only measure the state of the Democrat party. These should be easy pickups for them. Personally, I can’t wait.

The Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate in Virginia has a name tailor-made for mockery (I am already sharpening my pencils of sarcasm): Abigail “Spammy” Spanberger. You almost feel sorry for the poor lady; she must have had an awful time in middle school hauling that moniker around. And … she’s a former CIA officer. (“You never really leave the Agency.”) You can’t make this stuff up.

Virginia Democrats also crammed in a last-minute ballot initiative that would let them gerrymander away one or two more Republican districts before next year’s midterms.

🔥 New Jersey’s gubernatorial race is already the most expensive in U.S. history ($200+ million). The takeaway is that chastened New Jersey Democrats ran a “blue collar” candidate, Mickie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot. She’s practically a squishy Republican, and even at that, the race against GOP candidate Jack Ciatarelli is still neck-and-neck.

Don’t even get me started on the Big Apple’s 34-year-old muslim socialist. Here’s how the BBC —in an article dripping with gooey praise— described the unlikely candidate:

It’s an all-out socialist giveaway party, since the always-grinning Mamdani has promised gullible progressive voters free everything: free child care, free public transportation, rent control, and even low-priced, government-run supermarkets. The problem is that as mayor, Zohran the Magnificent would lack the power to manifest the magical billionaire income taxes he claims can pay for it all, since that’s the New York legislature’s job.

Being so young and inexperienced, Mamdani also has no political connections, no political machine, and no political network. How will that likely play out in NYC’s hyper-political shark tank? Prepare for a feeding frenzy.

But … Democrats. I thought you’d enjoy seeing NYC’s goofy ballot, which has Mamdani conveniently located first and fourth, with Andrew Cuomo buried down second to last out of ten:

I guess alphabetical order was too complicated or something.

There are other races to watch: California voters will endorse (or reject) Newsom’s redistricting plan to hoover up five more of the handful of remaining Republican federal districts in the Golden State, and Pennsylvanians will vote to retain or reject three woke Supreme Court justices who made citizens’ lives miserable during the pandemic.

🔥 The Times’ article also invested several column inches discussing tomorrow’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court over Trump’s critically important tariff authority. The High Court already overruled the lower court’s injunction, to let the tariffs continue in force while the case continues— a good early sign. The progressives’ parrot-like mantra is now that the case is a “legitimacy test” for SCOTUS. Whatever.

On Thursday, I’ll brief you on how the oral arguments went.

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Always-hungry Snappers will go on a diet this month, both in budgetary terms as well as calories. This morning, the Wall Street Journal ran a quick update story headlined, “U.S. to Pay Partial SNAP Benefits for November During Shutdown.” Probably wisely, considering the optics, the Trump Administration decided not to appeal a federal judge’s order requiring a multi-billion-dollar payout of the SNAP emergency funds.

The bottom line is: nobody knows when the partial payments will arrive. Soon, presumably. Apparently, some tweaks in “state systems” are required first. And there isn’t enough emergency money to pay them all. Whenever the partial payments do digitally ding into SNAP accounts, it will immediately exhaust SNAP’s emergency budget.

And then what?

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Yesterday, CBS ran a curious story headlined, “Kimberly-Clark to acquire Tylenol maker Kenvue in $48.7 billion deal.” One mystery is why anyone would want to buy the radioactive painkiller in 2025. Another fascinating wrinkle is how Trump flexed against Big Pharma and flayed their pocketbooks. Let’s connect some dots!

Yesterday, adult-diaper magnate Kimberly-Clark announced a surprise deal to buy Kenvue —Tylenol’s owner after being spun off from Johnson & Johnson— for cash and stock worth nearly $49 billion. This news must be considered in light of last week’s news announcing that Texas became the first state to file suit against the beleaguered drug:

In case you’ve been off-grid on an extended ayahuasca retreat, last month, President Trump and his entire health team (Kennedy, Bhattacharya, Makary, Dr. Oz, etc.) made a dramatic “autism announcement,” linking Tylenol not only to the childhood neurological epidemic but also to ADHD and pediatric liver injury. (Vaccines were also mentioned, though not pursued. Not yet.)

The ‘official announcement’ did not pull the popular pain pill from shelves, require new warning labels, or really change anything at all, except it prompted a flurry of social media hysteria and defiant pill-popping by progressives. It also resulted in last week’s lawsuit against both Tylenol’s current owner Kenvue and also the original owner, Johnson & Johnson.

The tsunami of negative news crashed Kenvue’s stock price, leaving it as ripe a target as a brand-new racing bike parked outside a Detroit Walmart with no lock. Kimberly-Clark’s CEO described the kingly price —which, let’s face it, would make a Saudi oil billionaire blush— as “the deal of the century.” Despite appearances, it was a steal.

As usual, timing is everything. This deal didn’t happen in a vacuum.

💉 This flurry of disastrous drug news, collapsing prospects, and big money changing hands was all provoked by a single press conference and a couple of presidential Truth Social posts.

In other words, Trump’s health team nuked Kenvue’s valuation with nothing but a microphone and a couple Truth Social posts.

Though media, including the Times, keep regurgitating the tired phrase “the results are inconclusive,” a recent scientific review by epidemiologists at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health linked acetaminophen taken during pregnancy and the development of autism and childhood ADHD. Over half of the 46 studies included in the Harvard review found ‘positive correlations’ between Tylenol use during pregnancy and various pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders. (Remember: correlation doesn’t prove causation— except when it does!)

But —and I am using math here— that necessarily means the other half of the 46 studies did not find any correlation. (This is probably the half funded by Johnson & Johnson, but I’m only guessing.)

Since 2022, private lawsuits have been underway against Kenvue over alleged Tylenol injuries. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit just put the spice in the legal mustard. Besides the direct injuries, Paxton alleges violations of Texas’s consumer protection law, arguing that J&J long knew about the risks but misrepresented the painkiller as safe anyway.

That wonderful argument puts J&J’s lawyers in a pickle jar. If they say yes we did warn about the risks of autism and ADHD, then they are admitting that Tylenol causes the two horrible conditions. If they admit to not warning customers, then logically, they also failed to disclose known harms. The case will come down to what J&J knew and when— and it’s hard to argue they were innocently clueless, since all those pesky studies might’ve provided some kind of a hint.

It’s the classic pharmaceutical paradox: either you lied, or you poisoned kids. One or the other.

So what are we to make of all this?

💉 Robert Kennedy’s appointment to run HHS alarmed Pharma, but they weren’t panicking or anything. The deep state runs very deep, far down into the classified sub-basements of the nation’s health agencies. Big Pharma rightfully expected its embedded allies to resist, by slow-walking the already glacial regulatory system and tying down reforms with rolls of bureaucratic red tape.

But what if Trump found a third way, an end-around? What if the President showed Big Pharma that he can strike anytime, right where it hurts the most: in their bank accounts. Nearly effortlessly, without a single new rule or regulation, and by drafting behind the autism controversy, Trump cleared the decks with one of the most profitable and widely used over-the-counter drugs at CVS.

Donald Trump didn’t just stage a health press conference; he weaponized the presidential bully pulpit. Pay attention, the President essentially said. I am the boss and can do this anytime I want. Consider this NPR headline, from just last month:

NPR explained that Trump’s press conference alone put rocket fuel in the existing lawsuits against Tylenol:

If you’re still unconvinced Trump did it on purpose, I’ll offer you one more dot. Take another look at whose portrait hung on the wall right behind President Trump as he took a weed wacker to Kenvue’s profits:

That, my friends, is President Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Rider who originally coined the term “bully pulpit.” A coincidence? Or was Trump ensuring they received the message? You decide. (Historical footnote: when “Roosevelt” used the word “bully,” he meant it in the sense of excellent, splendid, or first-rate. Not in the modern sense of shaking down a fifth grader by giving them a swirly.)

Trump’s “autism announcement” wasn’t actually a policy move or health notice— it was a drive-by demonstration of dominance. Big Pharma expected to fight a tedious rulemaking war of attrition, not be flattened by a thunderclap from the podium. In one afternoon, Trump wiped billions off a blue-chip balance sheet just by talking. No executive orders. No FDA memo. Just the world’s loudest microphone aimed straight at Kenvue’s stock ticker. The message to every drug CEO from Basel to Boston was crystal clear: I don’t need Congress to get to you. I don’t even need the FDA. All I need is Twitter.

By leveraging the frenetic autism controversy, Trump showed he can let the market do his dirty work— panic the shareholders, spook the insurers, and send pharma lawyers scrambling. It was the Art of the Deal meets the Art of War. And somewhere deep in Pfizer’s marble halls, a lobbyist quietly wet his wingtips.

And of course, Trump’s press conference was also an important health notice, even if some people don’t want to hear it yet. Win-win.

So.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Swing back by tomorrow morning, for an all-new roundup of essential news and commentary.

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