The Senate early Thursday approved President Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory.

The Senate voted 51-48 in favor of Trump’s request to cut $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress.

Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had voted Tuesday against proceeding to the bill, forcing a Vice President JD Vance tiebreaking vote, but ultimately voted for the package Thursday morning.

Most of the cuts are to programs to assist foreign countries suffering from disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates all $1.1 billion the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as suffering from anti-right bias.

Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. 

The $9 billion at stake is extremely small in the context of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, and represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

As of mid-June, Trump was blocking $425 billion in funding that had already been appropriated and previously approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.

However, Trump and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.

The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation without altering Trump’s request by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.

But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programs, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that PEPFAR, a global program to fight HIV/AIDS launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, was being exempted.

The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9 billion from $9.4 billion, requiring another House vote before the measure can be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law.

The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House will be required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.

Republican ‘No’ Votes

Murkowski and Collins joined Democrats in voting against the legislation.

“You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Murkowski said in a Senate speech.

She said the Trump administration also had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Most of all, Murkowski said, Congress must assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity.”

Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans earlier this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3 trillion to the nation’s $36.2 trillion debt.

Democrats charged Republicans with giving up Congress’ constitutionally mandated control of federal spending.

“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said.

“Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later,” Schumer said.

The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut now could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by September 30 to avoid a shutdown.

Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate, but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democrat support.

Newsmax

Hunter: Dems Lost Due to Not Staying ‘Loyal’ to My Dad

Democrats lost in the past November election because it broke from former President Joe Biden and “did not remain loyal to the leader of the party,” according to Hunter Biden.

“You know what, we are going to fight amongst ourselves for the next three years until there’s a nominee,” Hunter Biden told former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison’s podcast, The Hill reported Wednesday. “And then with the nominee, we better as hell get behind that nominee.”

“And I will tell you why we lost the last election. We lost the election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party. That’s my position,” said Hunter Biden.

Democrats “melted down” by not respecting then-President Biden and the power of incumbency, he added.

“We had the advantage of incumbency, we had advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down,” he said.

Hunter Biden’s remarks come as his pardon has come into question over use of the autopen, but Biden was “consciously aware” of the autopen pardons, and The New York Times reported that the son’s pardon was the lone lame-duck period pardon to be signed by the president’s own hand.

The remarks also come just days after the one-year anniversary of the shooting of then-candidate Donald Trump that ultimately forced Biden out of the presidential race, handing the Democrat nomination to then-Vice President Kamala Harris without winning a single primary elector in the constitution’s democratic process.

Biden did personally sign his letter stepping out of the race nearly one year to this day, and he would ultimately endorse Harris being crowned his successor as the DNC nominee — along with handing over the hundreds of millions of campaign financing.

But, as opposed to the Hunter Biden position of having abandon the democratically elected nominee, Democrats still argue Joe Biden should have stepped out of the race sooner. Harris was stuck with just a couple of months to put together a campaign to remain in the White House, albeit at the reported cost of more than $2 billion.

It was the most ever spent on a presidential campaign, including Trump’s winning campaign, and it was in just 15 weeks and not 15 months.

Eric Mack ✉

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday embraced the FBI’s decision to open a conspiracy probe into a decade of alleged intelligence abuses and weaponized law enforcement, suggesting it could be led by a special prosecutor and even delve into “credible evidence” in the Jeffrey Epstein case in order to give Americans a greater dose of transparency and accountability.

He also vowed to declassify two highly sensitive pieces of intelligence to help further the prosecutor’s efforts.

“Well, I’m happy that they did that,” Trump said during a wide-ranging interview with the Just the News, No Noise television show when asked about the FBI’s decision a few weeks ago to open a probe that examines abuses from 2016 to 2024 by Democrats and government officials as a continuing criminal conspiracy. “I don’t know much about it, but it deserves to be done.”

It was a disgrace what happened, what happened in 2016 and what happened in 2020. It’s a disgraceful situation,” he said. “And our voting has to be straightened out. I always say if you don’t have borders, if you don’t have fair and free voting, you don’t have a country.”

Unprompted, Trump then volunteered on his own that a special prosecutor – if one is appointed by Justice – to look at weaponization could also delve into “anything credible” on Jeffrey Epstein and his files to make sure Americans have a full accounting.

“I think they could look at all of it. It’s all the same scam. They could look at this Jeffrey Epstein hoax also, because that’s the same stuff that’s all put out by Democrats,” Trump said, when asked what he’d most like to see the FBI investigate.

When pressed whether he was comfortable with a special prosecutor on weaponization also looking at Epstein, he answered, “They’ve already looked at it, and they are looking at it, and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible.”

The Trump administration vowed to release all remaining evidence in the now-deceased financier’s sex scandal and prosecutions, but its early efforts were hampered by missteps by Attorney General Pam Bondi, which created distrust in the MAGA base.

Trump has defended Bondi in the face of heavy criticism but it hasn’t silenced the outcry. In fact, when the FBI and DOJ sent out a memo concluding Epstein did commit suicide in prison and did not leave behind a ledger/client list of the people whom he entertained with young female escorts, many prominent conservatives openly cast doubt and derision on the findings. Now Democrats have joined the chorus.

While Trump opened the door for Bondi to appoint the prosecutor and include Epstein in the scope, Trump also blasted MAGA conservatives who have obsessed about Epstein for weeks with speculation on social media, saying it only gave oxygen to Democrats to distract from the administration’s priorities. 

“You know, some of the naive Republicans fall right into line, like they always do. They just don’t have the sustainability. … There’s something they don’t have, that stick to it like glue,” he said. “The Democrats, you know, they have bad policy, they have bad candidates, they have bad everything, but they stick together. The Republicans don’t do that.”

“But they ought to look into the Jeffrey Epstein hoax too, because that’s another hoax that’s frankly, put out by the Democrats pushing, pushing the Republicans, and put out by the Democrats,” he added.

Trump said he fears prior officials inside the FBI and intelligence agencies may have doctored files about Epstein to either protect Democrats or harm Republicans.

 “I can imagine what they put into files, just like they did with the others. I mean, the Steele dossier was a total fake, right? It took two years to figure that out,” he said. “So I would imagine if they were run by (former FBI director) Chris Wray and they were run by (former FBI director James) Comey, and because it was actually even before that administration, they’ve been running these files, and so much of the things that we found were fake.”

He finished by assuring the MAGA base that he has no desire to prevent further investigation or transparency and hopes the idea of a special prosecutor who can look at both weaponization and Epstein satisfies Americans’ concerns. “So frankly, you know, I think I love that they’re looking at all this stuff. If they are, I hope they are.”

Trump also flatly stated he would declassify two long-secret intelligence files to help the prosecution. The first is a classified annex to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report into the FBI’s mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has been pressing for the release of that evidence, saying it will show U.S. intelligence received new evidence of possible criminal wrongdoing before then-FBI director James Comey cleared Clinton and the bureau never investigated it.

“I would do that. Absolutely. I think it should be looked at,” he answered. “The whole thing was a scam, yeah. And I would do that gladly.”

The second piece of evidence is a classified annex to Russiagate Special Prosecutor John Durham’s final report called the “Clinton Plan intelligence,” which was a U.S. intelligence intercept suggesting Hillary Clinton had personally approved a plan to concoct a Russia collusion scandal against Trump. That intercept was captured before the FBI opened up its Russia probe, and lawmakers and Durham have suggested it would provide damning evidence to any prosecutor.

“I will absolutely declassify it,” he said when asked about the annex.

Just the News

And they don’t exist anyway.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Republicans were pretending they wanted the Epstein files released. Now it’s Democrats who are pretending that they want the Epstein files released.

The reality is that no one wants the Epstein files released. The Dems last of all. Promises to release the Epstein files are sucker bait, because there’s nothing to release. Anyone who starts out promising to release them or the JFK/UFO files eventually ends up having to explain why there’s nothing there.

I was writing about the Epstein case long before many of the current grifters and to state the obvious, there are no files of any significance to release. Anything truly damning is as gone as Hillary’s real emails. Only a crackhead like Hunter Biden would just dump laptops full of damning evidence where anyone could get at it. And if those hard drives had been purely in the province of the FBI, they would have wiped them the way they wiped Hillary’s drives after they had ‘finished’ their investigation.

Or the records of Epstein’s visitor logs during his first term in ‘prison’.

It’s amazing to me that people believe the government is capable of the worst kinds of crimes and yet carefully keeps damning evidence on itself just waiting for the right bureaucrat or appointee to release it. The Communists and Nazis did that kind of thing because they had absolute power and were convinced that they were going to rule the world. They didn’t think in terms of ‘cover-ups’ until much later when they realized they weren’t going to win. Government employees covering up things for powerful people well… cover them up. Sometimes clumsily, like Sandy Berger stuffing documents about Clinton’s Bin Laden policy in his socks. But there is no collection of videos of powerful people assaulting underage girls waiting to be released. If such videos still exist, then you can bet they’ve been winnowed down to protect the particularly influential. And by now everyone ought to know that an upper level Bureau man when confronted with politically explosive stuff like this will find a reason to erase it.

Calls to release the Epstein files will just lead to the release of more useless documents. Everyone in politics knows it. They’re playing a game and lying to you.

As they always do.

Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine

By Andrea Widburg

Many years ago, a leftist attorney I know thought he had a trump card to play, showing how hypocritical churches were when it came to gay marriage: They never complained about abortion infringing on their constitutional rights, he said. Their constitutional complaint in the face of gay marriage showed they were homophobic.

I gently reminded him that churches don’t perform abortions, but they do perform marriages. In other words, anything that allows the government to force doctrinal changes on religious institutions and believers infringes on their First Amendment rights. Thus, the moment the Supreme Court decided its misguided Obergefell decision finding an imaginary right to same sex marriage in the Constitution, I worried about a clash between that imaginary right and the real First Amendment right to religious freedom.

I reiterated my concern when the Supreme Court issued Justice Gorsuch’s utterly misbegotten decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That decision insisted that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents employers from discriminating against employees based on, among other things, sex, extended to sexual preference and so-called “gender identity.” Of course, by sex, Congress in 1964 clearly meant only the XX/XY binary. Homosexuality was not at issue, and “gender identity” had not yet been birthed in leftists’ fertile imaginations.

It was obvious from the moment the Bostock decision hit the streets, though, that it would set up a confrontation between people of faith, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, people of fantasy demanding that their employers and colleagues recognize their mental illness as reality. And, just to emphasize the mental illness part, here is a representative of the so-called gender identity movement:

Newsweek is reporting a perfect example of the inevitable confrontation, because it involves a library that forces “inclusive” language on its employees and a pastor who was fired for refusing to use that language. And while the library may have voluntarily created the speech code because its leftist management buys into so-called transgenderism, the reality is that the Bostock decision requires it—and all other businesses—to do so as a matter of law.

A Louisiana pastor said he was fired from his job at a local library after he refused to use a co-worker’s preferred pronouns.

Luke Ash, the lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, said he was sacked from the East Baton Rouge Parish Library after a conversation on July 7.

Libraries, schools and other institutions have implemented policies to create respectful environments for all employees, including protections for those who identify as transgender or non-binary.

But some may feel that such policies may conflict with employees’ religious beliefs, resulting in disciplinary action or job loss.

According to Newsweek, what comes next is all very nuanced and requires a lot of balancing:

The outcome of this case could hinge on the interpretation of anti-discrimination and religious freedom statutes in Louisiana and may contribute to ongoing discussions about the balance between workplace inclusivity and individual convictions.

That’s true only if the Supreme Court continues to insist that Bostock was correctly decided. And keep in mind that, as happened with the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which articulated the “separate but equal” principle, the Supreme Court can reverse itself.

However, there’s nothing nuanced here. On the one hand, we have a decision that chose to interpret a 1964 statute in a way that Congress clearly never intended, which makes the decision invalid right off the bat. On the other hand, we have a matter of pure religious speech and conscience.

It’s not even close. Bostock needs to be overruled. I hope Ash—the perfect plaintiff because he’s a man of the cloth—finds a conservative legal aid society to take up this case, and that the case makes it to the Supreme Court.

In half a year, the impossible became obvious: borders closed, recruits returned, Iran retreated, and elites were exposed—all because people finally said, “Enough.”

In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo.

The unthinkable has become the banal.

Take illegal immigration—remember the 10,000 daily illegal entries under Biden?

Recall the only solution was supposedly “comprehensive immigration reform”—a euphemism for mass amnesties.

Now, there is no such thing as daily new illegal immigration.

It simply disappeared with common-sense enforcement of existing immigration laws—and a new president.

How about the 40,000-50,000 shortfall in military recruitment?

Remember all the causes that the generals cited for their inability to enlist soldiers: generational gangs, obesity, drugs, and stiff competition with private industry?

And now?

In just six months, recruitment targets are already met; the issue is mostly moot.

Why? The new Pentagon flipped the old, canceling its racist DEI programs and assuring the rural, middle-class Americans—especially white males—that they were not systemically racist after all.

Instead, they were reinvited to enlist as the critical combat cohort who died at twice their demographic share in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How about the “end of the NATO crisis,” supposedly brought on by a bullying U.S.?

Now the vast majority of NATO members have met their pledges to spend two percent of GDP on defense, which will soon increase to five percent.

Iconic neutrals like Sweden and Finland have become frontline NATO nations, arming to the teeth. The smiling NATO Secretary-General even called Trump the “daddy” of the alliance.

What about indomitable, all-powerful, theocratic Iran, the scourge of the Middle East for nearly fifty years?

Although it had never won a war in the last half-century, its terrorist surrogates—Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—were supposedly too dangerous to provoke.

What about indomitable, all-powerful, theocratic Iran, the scourge of the Middle East for nearly fifty years?

Although it had never won a war in the last half-century, its terrorist surrogates—Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—were supposedly too dangerous to provoke.

Victor Davis Hanson

Chinese dominance in display technologies poses a critical national security threat, demanding urgent US action to secure supply chains.

Last month, US energy experts uncovered hidden cellular radios inside Chinese-made solar inverters—critical components that link solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicle chargers to the grid. These rogue devices bypass installed firewalls, potentially giving China a clandestine “kill switch” over slices of America’s energy infrastructure.

With China now producing over 70 percent of the world’s display panels and leading in OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) output, every Chinese console and cockpit screen—from fighter-jet helmet displays to submarine sonar monitors—risks a similar back-door shutdown.

Just as Chinese firms used massive state-backed financing to flood global defense markets with cheap drones and batteries, Beijing has poured billions into subsidies, tax breaks, and low-cost loans to build the world’s largest display fabs. These investments have cornered a $182 billion industry—one forecast to double by 2034—driving panel prices so low that no US or allied competitor can viably enter the market. Today, the Pentagon spends over $300 million a year on mission-critical displays—a figure set to surpass $600 million by 2034. With virtually no non-Chinese suppliers left, global display supply chains—including those underpinning our defense systems—risk being held hostage in the future to Beijing’s strategic whims.

Display Failures Could Cripple US Combat Readiness

The problem is that in modern warfare, displays are as vital as ammunition. Naval combat information centers, international air traffic control towers, field-deployable command posts, and trauma-center ICU monitors all depend on display panels, many of which are Chinese-made or sourced. Displays also form the backbone of next-generation night-vision goggles, helmet-mounted displays, and handheld mission planners, potentially putting individual operators at risk of a sudden blackout if we rely on Chinese-produced panels for our most critical systems.

It may be hard to imagine how far Beijing could take this, but Washington must plan for the worst. In a crisis or period of heightened tension, China could push over-the-air malicious firmware updates that brick internet-connected displays, freeze cockpit screens mid-flight, or disable mission-critical monitors in combat zones. Even sporadic failures could erode commanders’ trust in these systems, potentially deterring decisive action at critical moments. The same could be done to displays that are used to monitor and control our key critical infrastructures like power grids, water systems, rail systems, and airports. Though extreme, these scenarios underscore why display security cannot remain a secondary concern.

China’s Grip on Display Inputs Is a National Security Risk

Even absent backdoors, Beijing’s grip on the display market and its supply chains is a national security vulnerability. Chinese state-backed and controlled firms like BOE, CSOT, and HKC control display panel fabrication, and China dominates critical display inputs—from specialty glass and indium tin oxide to rare-earth phosphors and specialty gases. Beijing has weaponized similar dependencies before. In 2010, it abruptly cut exports of rare earths to Japan, sending global prices soaring and triggering a diplomatic crisis. This April, amidst its escalating trade war with Washington, Beijing announced export curbs on neodymium magnets—vital for America’s auto and other defense sectors, forcing US production lines to idle. In March, they prohibited gallium sales to the US, a mineral critical to the radars that track hypersonic missiles.

Lawmakers Urge Action on Chinese Display Risks

Some members of Congress have already been sounding the alarm. Last fall, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote to then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warning that Chinese domination of the global display industry poses a clear national-security risk. Moolenaar urged the Defense Department to investigate China’s leading panel makers for potential ties to the People’s Liberation Army and to consider designating them as “Chinese military companies” on the Pentagon’s 1260H list, which bars the Department from contracting with those firms. The new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, should take overdue action on this letter.

Treat Displays as Strategic Assets, Not Consumer Commodities

More can be done. The Commerce Department should assess China’s top panel makers for placement on its Entity List, cutting off critical US technology transfers and equipment sales. At the same time, the US Trade Representative could launch a Section 301 unfair-trade practices probe—or Commerce could trigger a Section 232 national-security investigation—into Chinese display panels and parts, paving the way for targeted tariffs. These combined whole-of-government steps would send a clear message that the United States will no longer tolerate strategic dependencies masked as “cheap” consumer goods and would create vital breathing room for trusted defense suppliers.

Looking farther ahead, the United States must jump-start domestic and allied panel production to reclaim hardened defense supply chains. That means creating a level playing field. Congress can do this by extending targeted tax credits and other incentives to reindustrialize display manufacturing on US soil. It also requires mandating friend-shoring for defense and critical infrastructure screens, steering purchases to trusted partners whose industries have been undercut by Beijing’s state-backed practices. Done right, these steps would foster a resilient, diversified display ecosystem that outpaces China.

All told, in the era of great-power competition, it’s time to treat displays not as commodities but as strategic assets—because when the screens go dark, the fight may already be lost.

Mark Montgomery and Craig Singleton

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina: “We didn’t just break barriers at The Citadel, we shattered them. First woman to graduate. Still holding the line.”

Not only was she the first woman to graduate from the Citadel.

She has the courage to state that a man is not a woman; a woman is not a man; that you cannot be BOTH and NEITHER at the same time.

In a culture gone mad, it takes the courage and strength of a Citadel graduate to say the truth.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

By Monica Showalter

In the annals of bad judgment, Elon Musk’s picked fight with President Trump over federal spending stands out as a beaut.

While it’s true that the recently passed congressional budget, a.k.a., the “Big Beautiful Bill” involved a small rise in spending in the bid to get it through, which was Musk’s beef, a beef so strong he ended his relationship with President Trump, it also contained critical tax cuts which usually yield more in tax revenue than congressional estimates. as the economy booms. But there’s an even bigger story out there that the press isn’t reporting: Trump is already cutting the deficit — and on his watch, inflation is going down, too.

The last two days, as highlighted by Wall Street economist Brian Wesbury, shows the big picture:

Why does Wesbury suggest we look at just the last three months instead of the whole federal fiscal year (which begins in October) up until this point on inflation?

Because those are the months Trump, and only Trump, was in office.

He suggests the same for the deficit, but can go back five months. During Trump’s time in office, the federal deficit slid to $498 billion from $741 billion in the same time period a year earlier, when Joe Biden was in office. That’s about a third lower between the amount paid out and the amount paid in, meaning, the federal government is no longer spending like it used to.

Why is the press missing this story? Well, because they are counting it from the fiscal year’s beginning, not from the Trump administration’s second term beginning, which is a far more useful indicator. Trump is slashing the deficit and only the smarter guys on Wall Street, like Brian Wesbury, can see it. The rest are reading reports like these and saying the deficit is up, unable to see that they are lumping Joe Biden’s bad figures in with President Trump’s figures, creating a doo-doo in the punchbowl kind of distortion

That was the crux of Elon’s beef with Trump, the one he made such a stink about, hurling insane, ad hominem insults and vowing to found a third party that he estranged himself from Trump, despite holding a very privileged position of trust.

Was it worth it, Elon? Trump in fact is doing exactly what you wanted all along. You’re a code and numbers guy, how could you miss that? 

Some things we can’t understand.

American Thinker

A U.S. Senate hearing to examine deaths and cognitive delays caused by vaccines revealed a shared belief between Democrats and Republicans that the pharmaceutical industry lacks adequate oversight.

Families of children and teenagers who were injured after receiving the influenza, HPV and MMR vaccines shared their stories in front of a congressional panel Tuesday. Top committee members on both sides of the aisle expressed concerns of how the witnesses’ testimonies demonstrated an “immunity from legal responsibility” within big pharma.

Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers on TV. Johnson said drug companies spent an estimated $10 billion on consumer advertising in 2024, making up almost 25% of evening ad minutes.

Johnson argued that the massive amount of money garnered from this advertising allows the industry to “control the narrative and suppress stories of drug and vaccine injuries.”

The panel’s top Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., shared Johnson’s concerns of big pharma and pledged to co-sponsor a bill banning pharmaceutical advertisements on TV. Blumenthal questioned whether the U.S. government holds the pharmaceutical industry to the same standards as other industries.

“I am extremely suspicious as a lawyer of immunity that is granted in any blanket way across the board to any manufacturer,” Blumenthal said.

Committee members conveyed interest in reforming the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a program which provides legal immunity to pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to the panel. One witness said the program provided no relief to his family over 16 years to support his son who requires around-the-clock care.

“If there are reforms in the law that could come of [this hearing] to improve the law, I would explore them,” Blumenthal told The Center Square.

Caroline Boda