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@ISIDEWITH submitted…1 day1D
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to purge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shortly before being chosen as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for health secretary. Any changes he wants to make will come up against a pharmaceutical industry that pays much of the regulator's bills.Kennedy, an environmental activist who has helped sow doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, would have authority over the nation's agencies responsible for public health, government-funded health insurance plans for more than 140 million including the poor, those 65 and older, and the disabled, medical research and more if confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.Kennedy has been most vocal about the FDA, an agency that oversees nearly $3 trillion in medicines, food and tobacco products. In interviews and on social media, Kennedy has accused agency staff of doing the bidding of Big Pharma and Big Food."FDA's war on public health is about to end," Kennedy wrote on X in late October. "If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags."FDA officials were not immediately available to comment on the Kennedy nomination.Shares of vaccine makers including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), opens new tab, and Moderna (MRNA.O), opens new tab, fell after news of Kennedy's appointment and were down in after-hours trading by as much as 2%.Calling the drug industry "a crown jewel of the American economy," the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the leading industry lobby group, said in a statement it wanted to work with the Trump administration to improve health for patients.The group stressed achievements such as the elimination of polio and smallpox, both of which were accomplished through vaccination. It did not mention Kennedy by name in the statement, released after the announcement.Del Bigtree, who was director of communications for Kennedy's election campaign and remains close to the former candidate, said he expected a careful look at any FDA employee ties to industry.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…1wk1W
A federal agency has issued a directive to employees to reduce the use of their phones for work matters due to China’s recent hack of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, according to people familiar with the matter.In an email to staff sent Thursday, the chief information officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that internal and external work-related meetings and conversations that involve nonpublic data should only be held on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx and not on work-issued or personal phones.U.S. investigators believe hackers tied to a Chinese intelligence agency are responsible for the breaches and that they have targeted a wide array of senior national security and policy officials across the U.S. government in addition to politicians, the Journal has reported.The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has the authority to issue cybersecurity directives across federal civilian agencies, didn’t respond to a request for comment.“Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages,” the email said, while referencing a recent government statement acknowledging the telecommunications infrastructure attack. “While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised,” said the email, which was sent to all CFPB employees and contractors.It wasn’t clear if other federal agencies had taken similar measures or were planning to, but many U.S. officials have already curtailed their phone use due to the hack, according to a former official. “There is a general reticence to use their cellphones,” the former official said.U.S. agencies and many companies frequently send out cybersecurity tips and reminders to employees. But a directive to avoid cellphone use in response to a specific threat is rare for a government agency and reflects the level of concern among investigators about the severity of the breaches of telecommunications firms, including Verizon and AT&T. The alert added that staff shouldn’t place calls to a cellphone even if using a different communications platform, like Microsoft Teams.
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Kamala Harris's campaign ended with at least $20 million in debt, per two sources familiar. Harris raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16.Rob Flaherty, this staffer said, is currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants it to try to raise the money back. This includes other campaigns and outside groups.Flaherty is the deputy campaign manager and reports to Jen O’Malley Dillon.“Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts.” — Kamala campaign adviser told meThis source added that O’Malley Dillon did these “concerts,” like Katy Perry, Lizzo, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen et cetera at the expense of “prioritizing and spending money on social media and other campaign priorities.”Apparently a group in Georgia had to lay off 100 people because they couldn’t pay them. It’s unclear at this time if the campaign PAID the talent to perform but the cost of production for the events was “immense.”What’s more, this Kamala campaign staffer said several people who were working for the Kamala Harris for President campaign are still awaiting several overdue payments they were promised for their work. IE, they didn’t pay the staff.“People didn’t like working with her. Many people on the campaign felt like we lost because Kamala wasn’t allowed to run her campaign. They were running Joe Biden’s campaign instead of a Kamala campaign. Obnoxious and very much a gate keeper and interfering with the vice president’s people who were trying to do their job.”
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It is an extraordinary new coalition. Along the way to his decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump drew at least some Arab American and Muslim voters who are outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. He managed to do so without alienating the right-leaning American Jews who see Mr. Trump as Israel’s strongest champion.Even in an election marked by a reordering of the country’s traditional political teams, these strange bedfellows stand out. The two groups hold sharply divergent expectations for the president-elect. And both strongly pro-Israel Trump voters and some of Mr. Trump’s Arab American backers are skeptical that his ascent this week is the start of a durable cross-ideological, interfaith coalition.But in Dearborn, Mich., a majority-Arab city, Ms. Harris won just 36 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results, a roughly 34-percentage-point drop from Mr. Biden’s share of the 2020 vote in similar results released after that election. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate to the left of Ms. Harris, picked up 18 percent of the vote. But Mr. Trump’s support also jumped — to 42 percent of the vote from less than 30 percent four years ago, though turnout was lower.But in interviews throughout the campaign, Arab American and Muslim supporters said they were ready to take a chance on him anyway.Some were already aligned with the socially conservative views of the Republican Party. Many were nostalgic for the relative quiet of 2019.They also noted his efforts to campaign in Dearborn and the time spent in the area by his surrogates, especially Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump’s, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief.By contrast, they said, they saw Ms. Harris as inaccessible to the community.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2 days2D
A US congresswoman urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign for not changing the policy on arms supply to Israel."Secretary Blinken exposed his lie by announcing that there will be no change to any policy, despite admitting that the Israeli government has still failed to comply with all of their demands."Secretary Blinken has continued to lie to Congress and should resign," Rashida Tlaib said on the floor of the House of Representatives.Her remarks came after the State Department said Tuesday that the US would not change its policy on arms transfers to Israel even though the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip remains dire.A deadline was set by Washington in an Oct. 13 letter for Israel to ramp up access to aid within 30 days in the besieged Palestinian enclave or risk US military aid.Tlaib said the Biden administration continues to ignore reports that Israel is blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in violation of US and international law."The Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war," she said, showing a picture of a starving child."US law is very clear: No nation blocking US humanitarian assistance can receive US weapons. The Biden administration cannot pick and choose when they comply with our own laws."Children are forced to eat pet food and bug-infested flour, look at this and do not turn your back on again, being complicit to this war crime, but Blinken says there's no need to change our own policy. Shameful!" she added.Eight humanitarian aid organizations said in a statement that Israel has failed to meet the criteria set out by the US to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.Israel has continued its devastating offensive against Gaza since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, on Oct. 7, 2023. The onslaught has killed more than 43,700 people and rendered the enclave almost uninhabitable.Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its deadly war on Gaza.
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The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70% of the fatalities it has verified in the Gaza war were women and children, and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.The U.N. tally since the start of the war, in which Israel's…
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