The farmers are recruited by being paid what it would take them a decade to earn. They’re moved around, often blindfolded, by men in masks. They launch from remote spots. They all cooperate with the DOJ but they basically know nothing by design. Read “The Floating Guantanamos,” NYT 2017. /2

There is a long running program called PanEx where they interdict these boats and bring them to the US for prosecution. I represented dozens of these cases as a federal public defender. To make a complex story short, the boats are operated by destitute rural farmers. /1

The ninth footnote in the Harvard v. US order is incredible. Judge Burroughs really captures a lot of the sentiment at the district court level right now.

That’s fair. I don’t have data to support my thought that the same people who would vote in these complete assholes are less well equipped than I am to navigate the situation they’re putting us in. It’s just a theory.

Ok! Then we are making different but related points: you’re highlighting that it will harm everyone, and I’m highlighting that it will disproportionately harm the people that voted in the regime putting us in this position.

I can make it even shorter: the morons that voted in these anti-science conservatives are the most vulnerable to the problems that come with eliminating the FDA. Leopards/faces.

I follow, but you asked if *I* am advocating for that. Absolutely not. My point is that getting rid of an org that does independent reviews of testing promulgated by drug companies will shift the onus to individuals and small groups to understand the results of the testing and disfavors the dumb.

Nope, not at all, not advocating for getting rid of the FDA even remotely. I’m addressing my comment that, in this dystopian climate, individuals taking charge of their own care in the absence of the FDA would disproportionately harm the anti-science crowd. That’s what my original comment was about.

We are talking about untested drugs going to market, no? Someone taking something like ivermectin isn’t a threat to me directly, that’s my point. Those folks overlap heavily with the folks who won’t vaccinate so there may be a net positive if they exercise their “freedom” to try experimental meds.

On the other hand, if my doctor said “there is this new med and while we don’t have an FDA now, everyone in our medical group reviewed the extensive testing promulgated by the drug company and we feel like the risks are low and potential rewards are high” then that is less of a crapshoot.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for this. But people choosing to try novel, untested treatments on themselves isn’t as serious a threat to those of us who are smart and science-oriented as something like vaccine abstinence is. It’s a bit Darwinian to choose the mystery meds because you read a blog.

Sure, but we have existing tested treatments across the medical spectrum that we currently use, so we still have access to those. Drug companies do their own testing and submit it to the FDA, so doctors would need to analyze that data directly and advise patients on new treatment developments.

Maybe, except that it seems like those of us that understand the basics of biology won’t experiment on ourselves with untested treatments, and would instead rely on trustworthy professionals like our established doctors to make treatment decisions.

There are worse ways to speed up the demise of the anti-science crowd.

I had a boss that was a Trump carbon copy in a job that I loved deeply, but eventually left because of how exhausting and difficult it was. That took up 2021-2023. To go from that experience right into this administration is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

Yes, and also police of all kinds have behaved this way for a long time. Warrant to search for marijuana? They smash apart the pantry, bust open the dresser, and slit every mattress. It’s a disgusting, longstanding part of police culture and it’s deeply contrary to the spirit of the 4th Amendment.

That is how people earn their way to spend time outside, or have a job (a privilege), or take classes. And this is woman skipped the line over all the other women who have been working toward better living conditions but didn’t commit crimes that made national news or implicated the President. /3

What should bother people about this is that people in prison (men and women) have to work diligently over a long period of time to move away from the most oppressive and restrictive housing sections to different areas or other prisons. /2

Yeah, as a Floridian I find it very difficult to imagine that there is somehow *more* gerrymandering left in the well.