DL Open Thread: Tuesday, June 17, 2025
If It’s Tuesday, They’re Deporting Hard-Working Immigrants Again:
ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.
I’m guessing that Trump hotels are exempt from such raids.
Trump Flees G-7. Emergency diaper change?:
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president would return to the US after an official dinner with the G7 leaders on Monday night, local time.
Trump told Canada’s prime minister and summit host, Mark Carney, the other leaders of the world’s biggest economies would understand his early exit.
“I have to be back as soon as I can,” he said. “I wish I could stay until tomorrow, but they understand, this is big stuff.”
He alone can fix it.
Iran And American Foreign Policy–Wash, Rinse, Repeat:
Israel’s intensifying war on Iran would be impossible without U.S. support.
Tel Aviv is launching its attacks while assuming America will resupply its stocks of weapons. The U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile defense system and American forces are countering the impact of Iranian retaliation, and Washington is bolstering Israeli confidence by deploying ships to the region and pushing back against international criticism of Israeli actions.
Amid slim chances of a quick end to the conflict, as Iran strikes back and risks broadening the fighting, the worsening situation is inextricably tied to U.S. foreign policy ― and it’s echoing past American tendencies in the Middle East that have fueled chaos while taking a deadly toll there and stateside.
Given the ease of slipping into habits of violence without a strategy for encouraging peace, the danger is growing that President Donald Trump will usher in a new era of instability and perpetual, unpredictable war, spearheaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long used conflict abroad to solidify power domestically. Iran is one of the strongest powers in the region and a firm critic of Israel; Netanyahu has for decades spoken of a full-scale war against the country but faced international pressure rooted in fear of massive bloodshed and dark global implications.
Now, “there is real fear here that Israel will not allow any country that it perceives as too big or influential to develop or progress,” a U.S. official in close contact with Middle Eastern counterparts told HuffPost. “Some of the [Persian] Gulf countries believe they will be in the crosshairs next too.”
How The FDA Let Risky Drugs Into The US. Stellar reporting from Pro Publica:
To understand how risky drugs could end up in our medicine cabinets, ProPublica spent more than a year investigating the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of foreign factories accused of violating critical quality standards. Reporters focused largely on factories in India, a key supplier of the world’s generic drugs.
The investigation exposed how the FDA, without warning the public, allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the United States over the past dozen years even though they were made at factories banned from shipping products here. The agency did not routinely test the drugs as they were circulating in the United States or actively track whether consumers had been harmed.
Read. You’ll learn a lot. An excerpt:
On a sweltering morning in western India in 2022, three U.S. inspectors showed up unannounced at a massive pharmaceutical plant surrounded by barricades and barbed wire and demanded to be let inside.
For two weeks, they scrutinized humming production lines and laboratories spread across the dense industrial campus, peering over the shoulders of workers at the tablet presses, mixers and filling machines that produce dozens of generic drugs for Americans.
Much of the factory was supposed to be as sterile as an operating room. But the inspectors discovered what appeared to be metal shavings on drugmaking equipment, and records that showed vials of medication that were “blackish” from contamination had been sent to the United States. Quality testing in some cases had been put off for more than six months, according to their report, and raw materials tainted with unknown “extraneous matter” were used anyway, mixed into batches of drugs.
Sun Pharma’s transgressions were so egregious that the Food and Drug Administration imposed one of the government’s harshest penalties: banning the factory from exporting drugs to the United States.
But the agency, worried about medication shortages, immediately undercut its mission to ensure the safety of America’s drug supply.
A secretive group inside the FDA gave the global manufacturer a special pass to continue shipping more than a dozen drugs to the United States even though they were made at the same substandard factory that the agency had officially sanctioned. Pills and injectable medications that otherwise would have been banned went to unsuspecting patients across the country, including those with cancer and epilepsy.
A School Where Real Terrorists Are Trained:
On Saturday, a gunman impersonating a police officer fatally shot Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home, and wounded state Sen. Mark Hoffman and his wife at their home. Police finally apprehended the suspected shooter, Vance Boelter, Sunday night after “the largest manhunt in state history,” Brooklyn Park police Chief Mark Bruley said at a press conference that night.
Among the details about the suspect beginning to emerge is that he reportedly attended a bible college that is a stronghold of the New Apostolic Reformation, the charismatic movement that teaches that Christians are called to take over the US government. Founded in 1970, Christ for the Nations Institute, located in Dallas, Texas, boasts having graduated more than 40,000 students from over 170 nations. It is also the alma mater of several leaders of the NAR movement, including at least one who was involved in the lead-up to the Capitol insurrection on January 6.
Oh. School’s in Dallas. Lotsa ICE agents hanging around there. Nothing’s gonna happen to that Fascist training academy.
Legislators Killing Hospital Care Review Board. Not technically killing it–starving it for oxygen and funding:
Hospital costs in Delaware are some of the highest in the nation, which impacts the budgets of individuals and the state, with its obligation to fund Medicaid and retiree benefits. In response, Delaware lawmakers last year created the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board with the authority to veto hospital budgets if they deemed them excessive. But that authority has opponents saying it usurps the power of hospital boards who know what is best for their communities.
This is the kind of thing that happens when a retired Christiana Care green-eyeshade guy is elected to the Senate. Ray Seigfried‘s fingerptints are everywhere here. Because he represents Christiana Care, not his constituents.
What do you want to talk about?
Let’s get something straight: The Hospital Review Board has fuck-all to do with your hospital bill. It exists because the state, having handed retired employees a generous benefits package, doesn’t want to pay its bills. It’s. That. Simple. Stop pretending this is some benefit to the public. They don’t give a flying fucked rat’s ass about you.
Couldn’t disagree more. Hospitals are charging different prices to the state, to the ACA, to employer plans, and on and on. Worse, they charge different prices than the increasingly-rare nonhospital providers due. And it’s not because they are paying physicians and nurses, that’s for sure. Executive compensation is absurdly high and has increased by double digit percentages in recent years . AND these hospitals are allegedly nonprofits so they’re not paying taxes even though they have billions in reserve to use for their out of state exploits. We have some of the worst charitable care rates of any state (aside from St. Francis).
Transparency is needed.
Couldn’t disagree with what? All that’s true, but what I said is that they only care about their own bottom line, and that nobody should think or pretend otherwise.
Go ahead and install such a board for all the good it will do.
State government can’t run the things it’s empowered to run. I don’t foresee any good outcome from them running health care. Remember, their idea of an expert in the field is Bethany Hall Long.
Trump now demands ‘unconditional surrender’ from Iran:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/us/politics/trump-iran-israel-nuclear-talks.html
That’s one way to try to suspend a future election, I guess…
Utterly appalling vote by LBR to privatize cryto gamblers gains and nationalize the gamblers losses. It was the cloture vote, so she’ll pull a Coons and vote against it in the full senate, but don’t be fooled. That vote means nothing. She’s been bought by the crypto lobby.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-21-democratic-senators-deserve-primary-crypto-bill/?fbclid=IwY2xjawK-4v1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFIb3hkMFFoWVh4am9INFhzAR5Nc83i0RypplfLvsqCBoboFrb0Bpbz5fMU9MTvEIMZoDa4Zh890hV-6gDrtA_aem_SjcfCzEW1Ac98nMCTSlpKQ