“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
― Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays
There is no need to cry over spilled Tucker Carlson. His sell by date has expired. Since his days as a Fox show host, he has taken a bizarre turn. As Douglas Murray noted of Carlson’s apparent motivation, “It seems sadly is just propelled by this desire to try to claim that America is basically run by Israel, Jews, and simply does the bidding of Israel…I’m afraid there’s a number of formerly serious and prominent figures who just see everything through this lens these days.”
Tucker sees conspiratorial Jewish machinations driving U.S. foreign policy. In reality, U.S. foreign policy has been guided by widespread sympathy for Israel, which has been felt by Americans since its inception. The near extinction of European Jewry under Hitler’s final solution, its desperate flight to Palestine, and its fight to secure statehood against overwhelming odds forms a historical saga that is truly moving. I suppose that you could remain unmoved by it, but then I would question your motive.
The Left’s motive is an unwavering devotion to seeing the world through the prism of third world liberation struggles. Tucker Carlson and other America First purists have a different motive. They wish to rigidly curtail U.S. involvement with foreign powers, Israel being no exception. To me, it seems soulless, especially in the aftermath of the Oct. 7th massacre. With it, Tucker has created a chasm, isolating himself from many of his former fans, me included.
Bill Ponton
However, it is not on the issue of Israel and Iran alone that I have parted ways with Tucker. It was also a shameless interview that he conducted with con man, Trevor Milton (I wrote about it here). In it, Tucker glossed over Trevor’s distortions of the truth with the sole aim of portraying him as an innocent from the heartland challenging corrupt coastal interests.
In summation, I do give credit to Tucker for the many years in which he provided insight and entertainment to me, but for now he is not my cup of tea.
Jasmine Crockett didn’t simply lose her Senate primary. She staged a slow-motion meltdown on the way out the door, complete with preemptive claims of cheating and “disenfranchisement,” long before the votes were even done being counted.
Early Tuesday evening, while ballots were still being tallied across 254 Texas counties, Crockett started laying the groundwork for an excuse. She told supporters there had been “a lot of confusion” in Dallas County. She insisted that “people have been disenfranchised,” blaming Republicans for supposedly targeting Dallas and hinting darkly at votes that might not count. Then she left her own watch party early and told the crowd not to expect results that night, saying, “We’re not gonna have election results tonight, in my opinion,” and declaring she wouldn’t be back.
The story she spun was simplistic: It was the Republicans’ fault. Republicans messed with the rules, voters got confused, and now the integrity of the election is in doubt. Oh, and blame Republicans!
It was a true Stacey Abrams-level election conspiracy theory, as if Republicans were desperate to stop her from winning her primary. It’s ridiculous that there are still Election Day court fights over election law and closing times, but the sad truth is that they are nothing new. Democrats like to find excuses, no matter how flimsy, to extend voting hours.
Matt Margolis
Crockett, though, treated it like a constitutional crisis, and she laid the groundwork for not conceding the primary. She told her supporters, “We will not know what votes are to be tallied from Election Day out of Dallas County,” and urged them to “remain resilient” and “figure out where it is that you are supposed to vote.” She talked about “cheating” and behavior that “cannot be allowed to be rewarded.” She said her team was “getting stories” and “collecting evidence,”
The MEK Is Not Pro-Western or Committee to Democracy; It Operates as a Cult and Fosters Anti-Americanism
When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power, he denied having any interest in personal power. Rather, he described himself as a figurehead for a coalition of Islamist and leftist groups opposed to the Iranian monarchy. “Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system,” he told The Associated Press on November 7, 1978. He lied. As soon as Khomeini returned to Iran, he set upon purging his former allies.
Among the first to go was the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group which fused Khomeini’s Islamism with Marxist beliefs. They were also among the most anti-Western groups, training with the Palestine Liberation Organization, bombing American companies in Iran and assassinating American businessmen and military officers.
The MEK hated the shah, but they turned their guns and bombs on Khomeini, his regime, and ordinary Iranians after he betrayed them. They opposed Khomeini not because they objected to his ideology but because they wanted power.
In the United States and Europe, the MEK engages in a psychological operation to suggest they are pro-Western or committed to democracy. That is nonsense. They operate as a cult, isolate their members, and foster anti-Americanism. They have become North Korea, only with more food and slicker public relations. Many of the MEK’s claims of infiltrating Iran or running operations inside the country are demonstrably untrue. Former officials who support them do so not because of ideological fealty, but rather because of lucrative honoraria.
Michael Rubin, AEI
A small cadre of activist judges and environmentalist litigators wields outsized power, crippling industries, mismanaging forests, and undermining America’s interests.
With the world anxiously watching the conflict in Iran, it was no surprise that the first segment in the March 1 edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes featured an interview with Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah. The second segment, however, returned to a staple theme of the CBS news team. It presented a perspective on a current issue calculated to discredit the Trump administration and its supporters.
In this case it was threats leveled against activist judges by members of the “far right,” with a particular example involving a lone judge in Washington state who struck down Trump’s executive order, which—to put “perspective” aside for plain reality—was going to stop Chinese intelligence operatives from paying U.S.-based (Chinese-owned) surrogacy companies to produce U.S.-born babies. The kids are then taken back to China to grow up under CCP indoctrination. With all the privileges of “birthright” U.S. citizenship, they grow up to become valuable agents to be reinserted into the U.S.
Rulings like this anger Americans with common sense. Some of them become overwrought. They leave nasty voicemails. In some cases, they resort to violence, although the only example that 60 Minutes could come up with was against a judge’s son over a litigation ruling she’d made that wasn’t the least bit related to a political issue.
If 60 Minutes offered balanced coverage, they would take a serious look at the power that just one judge still can wield over policies affecting the entire nation. There are 677 district judgeships in the U.S., as well as 178 circuit court judges. Even though the June 2025 Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc. limited the ability of individual judges to issue nationwide injunctions, it did not entirely take away that power, nor did it diminish the ability of a single federal judge to stop major industrial projects in their tracks.
There are numerous high-profile examples of how activist judges have used their power to thwart initiatives of the Trump administration, but while the visibility of these rulings has risen, they have been around for a long time. One of the biggest areas where individual activist judges have been able to exercise sweeping power is in the de facto partnership some of them have formed with environmentalists.
During the Obama Administration, environmentalist NGOs turned litigation into a business model, collecting millions by suing the U.S. EPA, which would immediately settle and pay their legal fees. Far more costly, however, was the fact that these rulings would shortcut the normal deliberative process, fast-tracking aggressive new regulations on power plants, fertilizers, waste management, air quality, water quality, and so on. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that just Clean Air Act regulations coming from the “sue and settle” scam between 2009 and 2017 totaled an estimated $70 billion in costs to industries and, ultimately, to consumers.
The cost inflicted by environmental activist judges is not just economic. In some cases, they have also caused horrific mismanagement with catastrophic consequences both for the environment and for people. Needlessly destructive wildfires are a perfect example. The way to preserve healthy forests is to strike a balance: to the extent humans suppress naturally occurring wildfires, they must engage in other means of fuel reduction. To neglect this balance, only putting fires out, is to turn America’s forests into tinderboxes. And thanks to environmentalist litigators and activist judges, that is exactly what has happened.
A December 2025 investigative report published by the Breakthrough Institute describes the asymmetric power that a handful of environmentalist litigators and activist judges can wield. It is important to note that the Breakthrough Institute is not a “right-wing” organization. Formed in 2007, it embraces the potential of technology and innovation and is critical of typical environmentalist anti-growth ideology. In this article, the authors provide numerous examples of how just a few attorneys have literally destroyed the responsible management of forests across the U.S., especially, of course, in California. They write:
A small but loud environmentalist minority opposes fuels reduction, instead claiming that California’s forests must be left untouched. They use outdated environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and National Forest Management Act in courts to delay, and sometimes cancel, projects that would mitigate the wildfires that destroy the ecosystems they claim to protect.
In a particularly amazing example, they identify one group, the “Conservation Congress,” that has sued the U.S. Forest Service dozens of times. This “group” is operated by just one person: Montana resident Denise Boggs. Sometimes Boggs loses her cases, but she wins them often enough to stop fuel-reduction projects that are critical to forest health—projects that can’t wait until the next fire season.
While Boggs is a lone maverick with outsized influence, she is joined by powerful nonprofits that spend millions of dollars in litigation. They include the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and many others with a national presence. Thanks to their litigation, timber harvest permits are denied or delayed, prescribed burns are stopped, and mechanical thinning is prohibited.
As a consequence, wildfires that can’t be immediately extinguished turn into fires without any historical precedent. With densities five to ten times higher than what is considered normal, trees are stressed and dehydrated because there are too many of them competing for limited water, soil nutrients, and sunlight. Across mountains and canyons, conifer forests that were never supposed to get so overgrown and dried out explode into superfires that can’t be contained. The environmentalists call it climate change, and policymakers ban gasoline-powered cars.
It is reasonable to assume that some environmentalist litigators and the judges who rule on their behalf are sincere in their belief that somehow, if you stop putting out natural fires and then do absolutely nothing to reduce the resultant fuel accumulation, that will eventually foster healthy forests. But to an outsider—expert or casual observer—it is difficult to attribute this lack of common sense to honorable motives. What else is at work? A hatred of timber companies and their profit motive? A conviction that humans are a parasitic scourge on the earth, teeming multitudes that should be confined to dense cities and reduced to lives of scarcity? The business incentives inherent in the sue-and-settle model?
While those are plausible ways to explain why litigators and judges are preventing responsible forest management and are causing similar counterproductive impacts across most industries in the U.S., here’s another possible explanation. Policies implemented by Western nations to combat the “climate crisis” have come at a staggering economic cost, with no end in sight. In 2022, a McKinsey report estimated “net-zero” spending at $3.5 trillion per year, with most of it coming from the United States and the European Union. The International Energy Agency predicts clean energy investment to rise to $4–5 trillion per year by 2030. There’s a lot of money on the table.
This much money attracts special interests within the U.S. like moths to a flame, but the climate alarm that motivates ordinary voters to support these staggering expenditures comes from nations that want to see Americans and Europeans squander their economic wealth and eviscerate their industrial capacity because it will weaken them. That is, our adversaries. And more than any other nation, that would be China, a nation that still uses coal for 55 percent of its energy.
Why else, if not to weaken America, would the innocuously named, CCP-aligned “Children’s Investment Fund Foundation” have spent hundreds of millions to influence U.S. climate and energy policy? In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in December 2025, signed by 30 state attorneys general, they allege this organization has, in just the last 10 years, “funneled more than half a billion dollars into U.S. activist organizations as part of a broader effort to push radical climate and DEI policy on U.S. soil. In particular, CIFF has invested over $800 million in climate change initiatives. That includes directing nearly $65 million into climate change litigation, including a $7 million grant to CCI (a main promoter of U.S. climate litigation)—e.g., ‘strategic litigation against heavy emitters and financial institutions to force 1.5 C-aligned conduct’—and $200 million into energy-related initiatives—such as a $29 million grant to a consortium including the Natural Resource Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund.”
These are “perspectives” you will never see on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Activist judges, and the litigators they indulge, may excite passionate objections from some minute fraction of the hundreds of millions of people they affect with their rulings. And if any of them cross the line from angry protest to criminal behavior, their actions must be condemned and prosecuted. But a balanced report would survey the harm wreaked by a small minority of activist groups and aligned judges and the powerful forces that nurture and profit from their misguided rulings.
Edward Ring, American Greatness
It shouldn’t have been a difficult decision.
During his Tuesday State of the Union address, President Donald Trump issued a challenge to the members of Congress before him.
“If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support,” he said. “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Republicans stood and applauded. Democrats didn’t budge from their seats. It was a striking contrast. Trump knew it, too.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up,” he told Democrats.
Imagine telling someone a week ago that congressional Democrats wouldn’t publicly agree with that statement. He or she would have laughed at you because it was so absurd. Even Democrats who prioritize illegal immigrants over Americans would have the political sense not to admit it openly. Right?
Wrong. This wasn’t the only moment like this.
Trump introduced Anya Zarutska, the mother of Iryna Zarutska. Last fall, a man fatally stabbed the 23-year-old daughter. The video of her murder — and the casual indifference of her fellow passengers — is haunting. Finding out that the alleged killer had been arrested more than a dozen times previously was infuriating. The soft-on-crime policies of leftist prosecutors have deadly consequences. Trump chided Democrats for not standing to recognize Anya Zarutska.
Trump also recognized Sage Blair.
“In 2021, Sage was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents,” Trump said. He continued, “After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son.”
Fortunately, Sage today knows that she is a woman.
Everything points to a swift and decisive end for the mullah regime.
n a recent piece for National Review, Philip Klein astutely points out a fundamental difference between a potential confrontation with Iran and the quagmire that became the Iraq War: There will be no full-scale U.S. ground invasion under President Trump.
Klein argues that with Iran’s military already crippled by sanctions and precision strikes, and Trump unwilling to commit to a major land advance, this won’t devolve into another endless occupation.
He’s right, but the analysis stops short of the full picture. A war with Iran, should it come to that amid escalating tensions, would be short, sharp, and transformative, not just because of avoided boots on the ground, but due to a confluence of strategic, economic, demographic, and diplomatic factors that simply didn’t exist in 2003.
Let’s unpack why Iran is primed for a rapid resolution, drawing lessons from Iraq’s pitfalls while highlighting America’s enhanced position today.
First, consider Trump’s doctrine: maximum pressure, minimum entanglement. Unlike the Bush administration’s ambitious nation-building in Iraq, which entangled U.S. forces in a decade-long counterinsurgency, Trump has made it crystal clear he refuses to be embroiled in protracted troop commitments.
His first term demonstrated this with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and targeted killings like that of Qasem Soleimani in 2020, which disrupted Iran’s proxy networks without escalating to occupation.
In a second term, Trump would likely authorize overwhelming air and naval power, cruise missiles, drones, and cyber operations, to decapitate the regime’s leadership and nuclear infrastructure, all while keeping American casualties low. No rebuilding mosques or policing tribal feuds; just neutralize the threat and let the chips fall. This approach echoes Reagan’s Libya strikes in 1986: Quick, punitive, and effective in deterring further aggression.
This setup doesn’t “invite” invasion; it demands a standoff strategy.
U.S. superiority in fifth-generation fighters, stealth bombers, and hypersonic weapons would neutralize these threats in days, not months. Cyber tools, honed since Stuxnet’s sabotage of Iran’s centrifuges in 2010, could shut down command-and-control without a single boot crossing the border. Iran’s terrain, mountainous and vast, further discourages occupation, favoring precision over persistence.
Allies make all the difference, too. In Iraq, the U.S. went in with a “coalition of the willing” that frayed quickly, leaving America to shoulder the burden.
Today, Trump’s Abraham Accords have forged a Sunni-Israeli axis against Iran. The UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan normalized ties with Israel in 2020, creating a network for intelligence sharing, joint exercises, and potential basing.
Subsequent deals, like the rumored Saudi-Israeli pact under Trump’s influence, would encircle Iran with hostile neighbors. Add in European partners wary of Iranian drones in Ukraine and Asian allies such as Japan concerned about oil flows, and you have a global coalition ready for rapid action. Israel’s proven strikes on Iranian assets in Syria demonstrate how allies can handle ground elements, freeing the U.S. for strategic oversight.
Finally, don’t overlook the psychological edge. Iran’s regime thrives on bluster but crumbles under pressure; witness its restrained response to Soleimani’s death. With proxies weakened (Hezb’allah battered by recent Israeli ops, Houthis disrupted in Yemen), Tehran lacks the bandwidth for a drawn-out fight. A short war would deter future aggression, much like the Gulf War’s quick ejection of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Of course, humility is warranted, as Klein notes; wars are unpredictable. But the stars align for decisiveness: A leader allergic to quagmires, an economically vulnerable foe, a restive population, mismatched militaries, and a robust alliance network.
Iran won’t be another Iraq because Trump’s administration, and, indeed, its internal and external allies have learned, adapted, and positioned themselves for victory on their, which is to say, our terms. The mullahs’ days are numbered; the question is how swiftly America acts to finally end their reign of terror.
Genesis 12:1-3 King James Version 12 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Only God would have Israel save Iran from the false prophet’s cult tyranny and underlining the difference between the one true God and a Satanic cult. To have Jews and Christians freeing Iranians suffering from a godless cult is the perfect symbol of the spiritual battle between good and evil around the world. Only the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David would suddenly have the top Iranian leaders in a meeting at one time when they all knew the attack was coming.
During the first attack on the nuclear facilities as well as the top leadership of the top police offices the Jewish military said it was a miracle for both of those to happen so completely and claimed God had his hand on it and of course, he did. This attack and outcome seem to be an even greater miracle to take out their divine leader in the first attempt. Trump said to agree with the demands, or you will experience Hell and guess what, now he is.
These are the monsters who controlled most of the Islamic terrorism around the world and especially in the Middle East. These are the evil men who controlled Hamas in Gaza and ordered the Oct 7 attack on the Peace Concert raping and brutally murdering unarmed young people attending in the name of peace. It appears Israel and America surgically killed all of their leadership without breaking a window next door. If God’s vengeance was not being shown what was?
It took the God of the Jews and their grafted branch the Christians fifty years to fix President Carter’s biggest mistake. The man was an absolute buffoon who stabbed millions of Iranians in the back and made them slaves to a satanic monster. Atheists claim God and allah are the same when they could not be anymore different. God is the one God of the universe who created everything and allah is a moon god invented by Mohamhead to stop the incursion of Christianity into their Arabian Paganistic gods.
His family believed in moon and earth gods represented by the crescent moon and the family obsidian rock which is now the dome of the rock holy site. He made his religion a sadistic military cult which had a main purpose of killing Jews and Christians in is conquering of the world. Iran is the perfect example of an Islamic dictatorship where tens of thousands are murdered for the crime of resisting their tyranny.
Now the God of the Jews and Christians have shown mercy on Iran and its people. America needs to pray the people are freed from their slavery from allah’s Satanic Cult. Pray for a Godly leader to free them from Islam and have Christ come into their lives and country for true freedom.
This is a turning point for Iran, the ME, and World as the number one terrorist state may be freed from its oppression and leadership. This could become the end of the coordination of Mooselip terror around the world. There of course will be Islamic terrorism since it is one of the main tenets of their sick cult. It exists to kill and enslave, by your tongue or a knife to your throat you will convert. No wonder Haavaad and Yale love them.
The God of Israel just gave their “greatest god” a wakeup call and he woke up with his father in the fires of hell with his forty closest murderers. Trump warned them over and over and this was the least kept secret that this weekend would be the attack, and they decided to have a big celebration.
God is in control and this is another example of him showing the world one more time by having His chosen people freeing Arabs.
Pray for Iran
10:53:25 AM by bray
Genesis 12:1-3 King James Version 12 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Only God would have Israel save Iran from the false prophet’s cult tyranny and underlining the difference between the one true God and a Satanic cult. To have Jews and Christians freeing Iranians suffering from a godless cult is the perfect symbol of the spiritual battle between good and evil around the world. Only the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David would suddenly have the top Iranian leaders in a meeting at one time when they all knew the attack was coming.
During the first attack on the nuclear facilities as well as the top leadership of the top police offices the Jewish military said it was a miracle for both of those to happen so completely and claimed God had his hand on it and of course, he did. This attack and outcome seem to be an even greater miracle to take out their divine leader in the first attempt. Trump said to agree with the demands, or you will experience Hell and guess what, now he is.
These are the monsters who controlled most of the Islamic terrorism around the world and especially in the Middle East. These are the evil men who controlled Hamas in Gaza and ordered the Oct 7 attack on the Peace Concert raping and brutally murdering unarmed young people attending in the name of peace. It appears Israel and America surgically killed all of their leadership without breaking a window next door. If God’s vengeance was not being shown what was?
It took the God of the Jews and their grafted branch the Christians fifty years to fix President Carter’s biggest mistake. The man was an absolute buffoon who stabbed millions of Iranians in the back and made them slaves to a satanic monster. Atheists claim God and allah are the same when they could not be anymore different. God is the one God of the universe who created everything and allah is a moon god invented by Mohamhead to stop the incursion of Christianity into their Arabian Paganistic gods.
His family believed in moon and earth gods represented by the crescent moon and the family obsidian rock which is now the dome of the rock holy site. He made his religion a sadistic military cult which had a main purpose of killing Jews and Christians in is conquering of the world. Iran is the perfect example of an Islamic dictatorship where tens of thousands are murdered for the crime of resisting their tyranny.
Now the God of the Jews and Christians have shown mercy on Iran and its people. America needs to pray the people are freed from their slavery from allah’s Satanic Cult. Pray for a Godly leader to free them from Islam and have Christ come into their lives and country for true freedom.
This is a turning point for Iran, the ME, and World as the number one terrorist state may be freed from its oppression and leadership. This could become the end of the coordination of Mooselip terror around the world. There of course will be Islamic terrorism since it is one of the main tenets of their sick cult. It exists to kill and enslave, by your tongue or a knife to your throat you will convert. No wonder Haavaad and Yale love them.
The God of Israel just gave their “greatest god” a wakeup call and he woke up with his father in the fires of hell with his forty closest murderers. Trump warned them over and over and this was the least kept secret that this weekend would be the attack, and they decided to have a big celebration.
God is in control and this is another example of him showing the world one more time by having His chosen people freeing Arabs.
Pray for Iran
Here’s something nearly everyone can agree on: healthcare in the United States is too expensive. Private health insurance premiums rise inexorably well above the rate of inflation, and so do the costs of government subsidized healthcare like Medicare and Medicaid. And if you face a big medical issue without insurance, the bills could well come to more than you could ever pay.
So what’s the answer? To the Left, it’s easy: a “single payer” system, sometimes called “Medicare for all.” In simple terms, the federal government pays for all the medical expenses of everybody. The money comes out of the infinite pile of federal loot. No individual ever has to worry about a medical bill. Prominent backers of the “single payer”solution to healthcare costs include the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as organizations like Physicians for a National Health Program.
The flaw in this approach is something that is not intuitive to most people. It is that once the government is paying, no producer has any incentive to reduce the price to attract more customers. That phenomenon is one of the fundamental reasons why over time capitalist societies get richer while socialist societies get poorer.
A great illustration of this phenomenon has occurred in recent months in the situation of the new miracle weight-loss drugs known as the GLP-1 inhibitors.
Here’s some history of the GLP-1s (from a June 2024 article published by Indiana University). The first of the drugs to get approved to go on the market was Ozempic (Novo Nordisk) in 2017. Mounjaro (Lilly) followed in 2022. Like most new drugs that come on the market in the U.S. under patent and after long and expensive development, their prices were initially set very high, basically unaffordable for most people unless insurance would pay for the drug as a medical expense.
The drugs were initially developed to treat type-2 (adult onset) diabetes; but they were soon recognized to have a notable side-effect of helping the patients to lose weight. In short order, doctors started prescribing the drugs for weight loss, and the manufacturers came out with separately-branded versions of the drugs oriented to the weight loss market. Novo Nordisk got its weight-loss version (Wegovy) approved in 2021, and Lilly got its weight-loss version (Zepbound) approved in 2023.
Once the weight-loss benefit was identified, spending on the GLP-1s started to explode. This August 2025 piece from the AMA collects data through 2023. Citing a study that is said to have captured 85% of retail drug spending and 74% of mail-order, the article reports that spending on GLP-1s went from $13.7 billion in 2018 to $71.7 billion in 2023, an increase of over 500%. And it’s fair to assume that increase at a comparable rate has continued since then.
During 2025, with spending exploding, insurers started to balk. One by one they declared that taking GLP-1s for diabetes was a medical issue, but taking them for weight loss was an uninsured discretionary expenditure. These decisions caused considerable gnashing of teeth, as lots of people who thought they were about to be able to lose weight after years of struggle found out that their insurer would not pay. Here’s a piece from PharmExec.com from August 2025, surveying the insurance situation at that time.
More and more insurance carriers are either not covering the medications or are making it more difficult for people that need GLP-1s for weight loss to get it. Previously, insurance carriers were pressured to add the medications to their plans. For example, employers were eager to offer healthcare coverage that included GLP-1s, as it made the jobs more attractive to employees. GLP-1 medications are expensive, costing anywhere from $499-a-month to $1,000-a-month, if not more. A new report from Reuters says that insurance companies are now being more restrictive of the drugs. Also, . . . many [employers] are . . . adjusting plans to drop GLP-1 coverage. As a result, patients taking GLP-1s for weight loss are finding it necessary to pay for the drugs directly, at full price.
If you were to ask Bernie Sanders about this, his immediate answer would be that it proves the case for single-payer health coverage. However, a funny thing happened once large numbers of people had to pay for these drugs with their own money. A price war has broken out among the manufacturers. The Wall Street Journal had the story on February 24, headline “Novo Nordisk to Cut U.S. List Prices for Ozempic, Wegovy by Up to 50%” (likely behind paywall). Excerpt:
Novo Nordisk plans to slash U.S. list prices for its popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic by up to half starting next year. Under the changes, both Ozempic and Wegovy will list for $675 a month, effective Jan. 1, 2027. That is half of the current price tag for anti-obesity therapy Wegovy and a 34% cut for diabetes treatment Ozempic. The price cuts also will apply to pill versions of both injections, including one sold as Rybelsus. The reductions escalate a price war with rival Eli Lilly in one of the fastest-growing, most hotly contested categories in pharmaceuticals. (Emphasis added.)
Well, for starters, don’t believe for a moment that Novo Nordisk is going to hold the line on its prices all the way to next January. They’re trying to game as many customers as possible to buy the drug at the high price before it drops. But they are going to have to drop the price much faster than they want to keep from losing the market to Lilly. And by the way, there are reports that lots of other big players, from Pfizer to AstraZeneca to Sanofi, are in the process of jumping into this market.
So what’s going on? Again from the Journal:
Novo Nordisk is cutting its drugs’ list prices for the first time, executives said, especially to reduce high out-of-pocket costs for patients who are enrolled in high-deductible health plans or pay coinsurance that is a percentage of list price.
Sorry, but that’s just spin from the Novo Nordisk executives. This has nothing whatsoever to do with altruism toward the patients, and everything to do with trying to maintain market share in a business that is still very lucrative at much lower prices. There are millions of people out there who can’t afford to pay for these drugs with their own money at $1350 a month, but could pay at $1000/month, or $500/month, or maybe $50/month. As long as there are multiple competitors, the price will continue to drop until all these people can afford the product, at least until the price gets down to the cost of production.
This process is no different than the process that has driven down the price of computers, or smart phones, or flat screen TVs, to a small fraction of where those prices started out.
In the market for healthcare, of which pharmaceuticals are a big piece, the process of price competition is substantially prevented or slowed down due to government intervention and third-party payment. Once the government and/or insurers are paying, the manufacturers know that they don’t need to drop the price to reach additional customers with smaller budgets. The government and insurers can always pay.
Yes I know that there are other factors at play in keeping pharmaceutical prices high, notably long terms of patent protection limiting markets to a single producer. Still, the best way to get the overall level of expenditure on medical care under control would be to minimize the amount of that expenditure that comes from government and insurers. Instead, we generally head in the opposite direction.
Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian
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Vitaly Gariev, Unsplash
Feb 27, 2026 James R. Rogers
When professors in public universities teach their classes, are they engaged in government speech pursuant to their job duties, with First Amendment rights equal only to those of other government employees, or does “academic freedom” provide public-university professors with protections that are broader than those shared by other government employees?
Two federal district courts in the Eleventh Circuit (which includes the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) recently came to opposite conclusions on this question.
Federal judges have disagreed about whether classroom teaching by professors in public universities constitutes government speech.Federal judges in Pernell v. Florida Board of Governors of the State University System (2022) and in Simon v. Ivey (2025) disagreed whether classroom teaching by professors in public universities constitutes government speech. Both decisions responded to requests for preliminary injunctions against state laws that prohibited professors at public universities from teaching DEI-related concepts in ways that “compel” students to assent to what the states’ laws define as “discriminat[ory]” or “divisive” concepts.
This reflected the judges’ different assessments of the implications of a non-binding “dictum” in a recent Supreme Court decision.The judge in Pernell granted the request for a preliminary injunction against Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” (HB 7). The judge in Simon v. Ivey denied the request for a preliminary injunction against Alabama Senate Bill 129.
The two federal judges disagreed whether the job-related classroom activities of faculty at public universities are protected by a constitutional guarantee of academic freedom that extends beyond the First Amendment rights shared by other government employees when speaking as government employees. This in turn reflected the judges’ different assessments of the implications of a non-binding “dictum” in a recent Supreme Court decision on the free-speech rights of government employees.
The Supreme Court case around which the judges’ conclusions pivoted is Garcetti v. Ceballos (2005). The case considered the First Amendment claims of a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was disciplined for criticizing the basis of a search warrant in verbal and written communications with his superiors.
In denying that Ceballos’s job-related communications enjoyed First Amendment protection, Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court:
We hold that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.
[…]
Restricting speech that owes its existence to a public employee’s professional responsibilities does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen.
In response to concerns Justice Souter asserted in dissent regarding implications the Court’s decision might hold for “the teaching of a public university professor,” the Court added this dictum:
There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.
The two Eleventh Circuit federal judges split over what the Court’s dictum implies regarding academic freedom and the classroom activities of professors teaching at state universities.
In issuing a preliminary injunction against Florida’s law, federal judge Mark E. Walker read the Court’s dictum in Garcetti to mean the holding announced in Garcetti does not apply to in-class instruction by professors at public universities. So Walker refused to do so, as well.
If the official classroom activities of faculty at public universities is government speech, then governments can constitutionally set parameters.In contrast, the federal judge in the Alabama case, R. David Proctor, took the Court’s language in Garcetti to mean only that the Court left the question open for consideration and determination in a subsequent case. So Proctor analyzed the implications of Garcetti for Alabama’s law and faculty.
On the one hand, according to Proctor, if the official classroom activities of faculty at public universities is government speech, then, as with the job-related speech of other government employees, governments can constitutionally set parameters on what professors say in pursuance of their job duties in the classroom. The state can constitutionally engage in viewpoint discrimination, as is permissible with the job-related speech of non-university government employees.
If public-university faculty enjoy unique free-speech rights, then the state cannot direct their in-class speech.On the other hand, according to Walker, if faculty at public universities enjoy unique free-speech rights beyond those shared by other government employees, then the state cannot direct the in-class speech of faculty in a way that discriminates against the viewpoint a professor may seek to advocate in the classroom.
Yet even Walker’s decision presented a tempered view of academic freedom as a constitutional right, particularly for faculty in state-sponsored colleges and universities.
In his decision enjoining enforcement of the Florida law, Walker nonetheless observed not only that “the Supreme Court has never definitively proclaimed that ‘academic freedom’ is a stand-alone right protected by the First Amendment” but that “the Eleventh Circuit has explicitly rejected the argument that ‘academic freedom’ is an independent constitutional right.”
Nonetheless, Walker underscored that while the Eleventh Circuit does not recognize academic freedom as guaranteeing additional rights beyond those everyone holds, the circuit court “still recognized that academic freedom remains an important interest to consider when analyzing university professors’ First Amendment claims.”
Still, Walker noted that state governments can constitutionally “prescribe the content of its universities’ curriculum.” Quoting the Supreme Court, Walker wrote that “universities may generally make content-based decisions ‘as to how best to allocate scarce resources or to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.’”
Walker drew a constitutional line, however, between states determining the content of the classroom speech of faculty in state-run universities, which is constitutional, and states seeking to prevent faculty from “expressing viewpoints with which [the state] disagrees” (emphasis added), which Walker concluded is unconstitutional.
The distinction between constitutionally permissible content regulation and constitutionally impermissible viewpoint regulation might seem to get us into constitutional arcana. But the distinction is easy enough to understand. Consider an example from a less rarefied category of speech: While government can constitutionally suppress “obscenity” as an entire class or category—that is constitutionally permissible content regulation—it could not constitutionally suppress only obscenity that, say, criticized the current state governor. The latter is impermissible viewpoint regulation.
Walker concluded that Florida’s law conflated its “right to make content-based choices … with unfettered discretion in limiting a professor’s ability to express certain viewpoints about the content of the curriculum once it has been set.” So Walker enjoined enforcement of Florida’s law.
In contrast, Judge Proctor read the cases differently and refused to enjoin Alabama’s law. (I should note that the Alabama law is not identical to the Florida law, and that may partly account for the different outcomes in the cases. Nonetheless, the two judges did reach dramatically different conclusions regarding the pertinence of academic freedom as an asserted legal right in the two cases.)
Proctor began his analysis by noting the different contexts in which questions of academic freedom can arise, with different implications depending on the context. Proctor observed that among the issues the Alabama case did not implicate were the following:
[T]his case does not concern questions about any limitations on private colleges or universities.
[…]
[T]his case does not involve questions about what limits public university professors face with respect to their job duties or other activities outside the classroom.
[…]
[This case] does not prohibit the discussion of any divisive concept in the classroom.
The different contexts in which a professor at a public university speaks determines which different First Amendment protection that speech receives. Proctor first summarized “three buckets” in current constitutional jurisprudence in which the speech of government employees can fall:
First, the employee speaks as a private citizen on a matter of public concern. This is protected First Amendment speech.
Second, the employee speaks as an employee/private citizen on a matter of personal interest. This is not protected First Amendment speech.
Third, the employee speaks as an employee and as part of her official duties on a matter of public concern. […] In those situations, if Garcetti applies, the employee’s speech receives no First Amendment Protection.
For Proctor, given that in-class instruction by faculty at public universities is “part of their official duties,” the “real question” in the case is whether professors at public universities “should be treated differently than other government employees who speak as part of their duties but whose speech is not protected under Garcetti.”
Reducing a student’s grade for asserting the viewpoint that 2 + 2 = 5 rather than 4 is viewpoint discrimination.Proctor underscored two points in concluding preliminarily that the Alabama law at issue in the case did not impose on the First Amendment rights of faculty. First, the interest that Alabama asserts as the reason for enacting its law is to protect students from inappropriate viewpoint discrimination imposed by faculty.
Secondly, and relatedly, Proctor determined that, whatever control a state can constitutionally assert over government speech by faculty in the classroom, it extends at least as far as intervening to prevent faculty from coercively imposing impermissible forms of viewpoint discrimination on students in classrooms.
The decisions rehearse arguments that will undoubtedly be heard again and vetted on appeal.The thing is, faculty and universities necessarily engage in viewpoint discrimination in the classroom. Reducing a student’s grade for asserting the viewpoint that 2 + 2 = 5 rather than 4 is viewpoint discrimination. The insistence, in graded activity, that a “right answer” exists necessarily engages in viewpoint discrimination against those who assert “wrong” answers.
Of course, we normally want faculty to engage in this sort of viewpoint discrimination. We call it education.
Alabama asserted, however, that some faculty in their colleges and universities routinely went beyond education-promoting viewpoint discrimination in their classrooms. The state asserted that some faculty “coerce their students into assenting” to beliefs that, contrary to current constitutional jurisprudence and public policy, are “invidiously discriminatory.” These are the “divisive concepts” that Alabama prohibited faculty from advocating and coercing students to assent to in classroom instruction.
Proctor wrote that the Alabama law does not in fact prohibit discussion of these ideas in the classroom. And faculty remain free to advocate these positions as citizens—that is, outside of the domain of their job duties. What Alabama claimed to do through its law is to rein in faculty attempts to suppress student viewpoints that are entirely consistent with current constitutional jurisprudence and public policy. This claim was assumed to be true for the matter of deciding a preliminary injunction. It would be subject to evidentiary demonstration at a trial.
Secondly, Proctor argued that the fact that professors at public universities are government employees means that faculty engage in government speech when teaching in classrooms. That means states have constitutional authority to require faculty to avoid coercing students to assent to viewpoints that endorse invidious discrimination as defined by current jurisprudence and public policy.
Thus, Proctor concluded that Alabama sought to protect the academic freedom of both the students and the institution with their law, interests that are at least constitutionally permissible.
It bears emphasis that the decisions in both cases were preliminary injunctions. Both cases have yet to proceed to trial with the requisite introduction of, and argument over, evidence of the different claims. The decisions, however, rehearse arguments that will undoubtedly be heard again and vetted on appeal.
James R. Rogers, J.D., Ph.D., is associate professor of political science at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 