“The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging conducted a hearing on February 26 to investigate why the FDA is holding up the approval of desperately needed new drugs for those with rare diseases. Many of the people suffering with these ailments are children with short life expectancies. Those with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), which is progressive muscular deterioration, end up in a wheelchair at about age 11-12, and die in their 20s. Angelina Olivera, the mother of a 14-year-old son who has DMD, who also watched her brothers die at ages 20 and 22 of the disease, told me there is only one promising new treatment for DMD but the FDA won’t approve it for her son Ryu. A study was conducted on 1,200 patients using Elevidys from Sarepta Therapeutics and revealed promising results. The gene therapy slowed disease progression by 70-73 percent compared to untreated children.” (03/02/26)
“Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, chairs and is the face of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP). A physician, Cassidy has been a vocal advocate of vaccines and even ran a vaccination campaign in his home state. ‘After seeing patients die from vaccine preventable diseases,’ Cassidy said in a speech, ‘I dedicated much of my time to vaccine research and immunization programs. … Put simply, vaccines save lives.’ He also cast a key vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a fervent anti-vaccine advocate, as HHS secretary last year. It’s not like Cassidy can claim ignorance of Kennedy’s track record. Cassidy and every other Republican who voted for Kennedy had all the information they needed to see that he would be a disaster for public health in the United States, from his decades-long crusade against vaccines to his history of fevered conspiracism.” (03/02/6)
“Amid the unfolding chaos in Mexico following the death of cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera, the Mexican government has worked to hit the cartels where it hurts, including seizing weapons. In a recent press conference, Mexican Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla announced that some 18,000 weapons have been seized since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in October 2024. Of those weapons, nearly 78 percent originated in the United States. In a separate talk, Sheinbaum addressed an even more shocking datapoint — much of the ammunition recovered in Mexico was designed for use by the U.S. military.” (03/02/26)
“I grew up with a vision of a possible instant apocalypse, inspired (if, under the circumstances, such a word can even be used) by the nuclear obliteration of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. It could happen at any moment, even if you were ‘ducking and covering’ under your school desk, as I did in those years. And I was hardly alone. That was a genuine generational nightmare of the 1950s and early 1960s — the possibility of a nuclear war between my country and the Soviet Union that might devastate my city, New York (or your city, FILL IN THE BLANK), and our world. But in those years what I never could have imagined was that, even without an atomic blast, I might already be living through the extremely slow-motion equivalent of just such an apocalypse, which should, of course, be the definition of climate change.” (03/02/26)
“We’re all familiar with the idea that actions have consequences. Parents teach it to their children as an important part of raising responsible human beings. As adults, we sometimes get harsh reminders of this truth. This principle doesn’t apply just on a personal level. Our justice system imposes consequences on people who break the law or harm others. For a society that is free, fair and just, those consequences must apply to everyone. That’s why ‘equal justice under law’ is carved in stone over the entrance to our Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Trump regime makes a mockery of that principle, insulating the president, his underlings, his friends and anyone willing to pay his price from the consequences of their lawbreaking.” (03/02/26)
“In thundering attacks on Iran’s government that started Saturday, Israel and the United States appear to have shredded what remains of the liberal, rules-based world order. The head of the United Nations – the pinnacle of that order – called the attacks a threat to international security. Yet as much as that charge might be true, President Donald Trump nonetheless has left open a door to an essential value that has sustained that order for decades. He told the Iranian people in a video that they themselves, not American soldiers with boots on the ground in Iran, must ultimately choose to be free from the regime – one that has denied basic rights, killed dissenters by the thousands, and sown terror abroad. Liberty, in other words, is first a mental commitment.” (03/01/26)
“‘Death to the dictator.’ Iranian protesters have chanted this in the direction of Ayatollah Khamenei for years now. On Saturday morning, a US-Israeli airstrike finally made good on their call to arms, killing the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic alongside several family members in a compound in the heart of Tehran. It is a truly momentous event, an inflection point in modern history. We can and must debate the wisdom and morality of this act of US-led ‘regime change’ – historical precedents don’t bode well. But we should be in no doubt as to the wretched, wicked nature of the regime the US seeks to topple.” (03/02/26)
“Kentucky has one of the highest rates in the nation of children with an incarcerated parent. Those are not statistics. Those are kids saying goodnight to pictures and running to mailboxes, hoping.” (03/02/26)
President Donald Trump has dragged America into a war of his choosing, attacking Iran with little public support, zero congressional approval and virtually no public justification. The path forward is unclear, and our self-absorbed leader is already speaking about the loss of American lives with the nonchalance one expects from a small man never held accountable for the consequences of his actions. Announcing the deaths of four U.S. service members following the attack launched Feb. 28, Trump said in a video posted to social media: ‘And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends, that’s the way it is. Likely be more.’ … He might as well have added a ‘Ho-hum,’ such is his apparent concern for the women and men he has now put in danger for … what?” (03/02/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The US-Israeli war on Iran rages on. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Iran has been hammering US military bases in the region with missiles and drones, and oil prices are already beginning to rise as the IRGC cuts off the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the attacks. US soldiers have already begun to die. US Central Command reports that three American service members were killed in combat, with five seriously wounded — and it should here be noted that ‘seriously wounded’ can mean permanently brain damaged, comatose, or otherwise rendered severely handicapped for the rest of their lives. … I have said it before and I will say it again: every single American soldier who dies in this war was killed by Trump and Netanyahu.” (03/02/26)
