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Marijuana And Alcohol Businesses Should Join The Hemp Industry In The Fight For Regulation Instead Of Prohibition

In recent months, leading organizations and companies in the alcohol and marijuana space have jumped into the hemp sector, offering their support for clear federal legalization and robust oversight of hemp products.

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, the hemp industry’s national advocacy organization, welcomes them—but asks them to join us in a framework that rejects prohibition, embraces regulation, prevents access by minors and protects retail and e-commerce for all elements of the diverse hemp industry.

Since the 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp, it’s been a rollercoaster ride. After a brief gold rush, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) refusal to regulate CBD led to a crash in prices and widespread disruption. But with a hemp industry as resilient as its stalk, innovators pioneered direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales and developed a new market for adult health and wellness products–including a hemp beverage boom which now meets growing demand for non-alcoholic options.

Today, the hemp extract market has surged to $28.4 billion, creating 328,000 agriculture and retail jobs, with a $13.2 billion employment impact and $1.5 billion generated in state tax revenues. Its popularity is not surprising—hemp products are made in the USA, harvested from crops grown by American farmers, manufactured by innovative U.S. entrepreneurs and sold by small businesses dotting the nation.

Competing interests have taken note of hemp’s success. A few marijuana multi-state operators (MSOs) have led efforts at the state and federal level to ban hemp products, and/or seek monopoly control over distribution. But the majority of marijuana advocates support regulation, not prohibition. In fact, many cannabis companies have found new life via hemp. We’re excited to join an emerging new effort to bring the entire cannabis family together in a united policy-making venture.

More recently, the alcohol industry is weighing in as hemp beverages have gained space on shelves previously reserved for liquor. Leading organizations such as the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America and the American Beverage Licensees have called for Congress and state legislators to explicitly legalize and regulate hemp beverages, which in 2024 boasted $380 million in revenues.

But warning clouds loom. In some states, efforts to regulate beverages include bans on other types of hemp products, such as edibles or CBD tinctures fully 85 percent of the hemp product marketplace). In others, there is a rush to ban DTC sales—a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of adult consumers.

Texas has emerged as a key battleground. In response to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s (R) crusade to criminalize all hemp products, HB 28 was introduced as a hemp beverage carveout. Unfortunately, that bill would ban nearly all non-beverage hemp products, criminalize DTC and dramatically reduce the number of retailers who can sell these products.

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Marijuana Rescheduling Blocked By Opposition ‘From Within’ DEA, Biden’s Drug Czar Says

Former President Joe Biden’s drug czar says the process to reschedule marijuana as initiated under the last administration may have been compromised by officials with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which was supposed to be defending the proposed policy change.

At the same time, a pro-legalization former  OP congressman allied with President Donald Trump is raising questions about the sincerity of the current president’s endorsement of rescheduling on the campaign trail.

About four months into Trump’s second term, there has still been no movement on the pending plan to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), leaving advocates and stakeholders frustrated both by the current inaction but also the Biden administration’s failure to get the job done before the transition.

According to former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Rahul Gupta, that may have been due to deliberate resistance from within DEA—a suspicion shared widely among supporters of the reform, including those involved in an administrative hearing that’s been stalled for months, with no clear indication it will proceed any time soon.

“We got stuck moving at the slow speed of government, which was also marred, potentially, by some opposing it from within,” Gupta told The New York Times as part of a broader story examining the rescheduling effort.

The article also features interviews with a former senior DEA agent and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who notably suggested that Trump’s endorsement of a Schedule III reclassification on the campaign trail was essentially an attempt to shore up support among young voters rather than a sincere reflection of his personal views about cannabis.

As far as speculation about DEA’s role in the protracted process goes, there are several factors that have led many to conclude the agency’s leadership internally opposed the proposal, including the fact that there was a break in precedent when then-Attorney General Merrick Garland signed off on it after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made the recommendation. Historically, the DEA administrator approves drug scheduling proposals.

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UnitedHealth Shares Drop After Report Alleges Secret Bonus Payments To Nursing Homes For Cutting Hospital Transfers

UnitedHealth Group shares dropped as much as 7.5% in premarket trading Wednesday in New York, following a Guardian investigation that revealed the health insurer shelled out “Premium Dividend” and “Shared Savings” bonuses to nursing homes that reduced hospital transfers for sick residents. 

The Guardian’s investigation is based on thousands of confidential corporate and patient records obtained through sources, public records requests, and court filings, along with interviews with nearly two dozen current and former UnitedHealth and nursing home employees, as well as two whistleblower declarations submitted to Congress.

The report offers a new snapshot into UnitedHealth’s daily operations at nearly 2,000 nursing homes across the country, where it manages Medicare Advantage coverage for more than 55,000 long-term residents. 

Here are some of the key findings from the report:

  • UnitedHealth stationed in-house medical teams at nearly 2,000 nursing homes, incentivizing them to lower hospitalizations through financial rewards like “Premium Dividend” and “Shared Savings” payments tied to hospitalization rates.
  • Internal records show UnitedHealth monitored nursing homes using “admits per thousand (APK)” metrics and set “budgets” for hospitalizations. Facilities with high APKs were denied bonuses.
  • In multiple documented cases, patients were denied urgent hospital care, leading to serious harm, including permanent brain damage. Whistleblowers say these incidents were hidden or minimized.
  • Nurse practitioners were pressured to push “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) orders, even when patients had previously expressed the desire for life-saving treatments.
  • UnitedHealth also incentivized increased enrollment in its Institutional Special Needs Plans by offering large payments to nursing homes, which in some cases leaked confidential patient data to help sales teams directly solicit families—often bypassing consent rules.

The Guardian noted: 

In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence.

A current UnitedHealth nurse practitioner, who recently submitted a congressional complaint regarding the nursing home program, stated:

“No one is truly investigating when a patient suffers harm. Absolutely no one.

“These incidents are hidden, downplayed and minimized. The sense is: ‘Well, they’re medically frail, and no one lives for ever.'”

A former national UnitedHealth executive said:

“APK drove everything. You gain profitability by denying care, and when profitability suffers for the shareholders, that’s when people get crazy and do things that are not appropriate.”

Two current and three former UnitedHealth nurse practitioners said that UnitedHealth managers pressured them to persuade Medicare Advantage members to change their “code status” to DNR, even when patients had clearly expressed a desire to receive all available life-saving treatments.

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Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis Raises Serious Questions About Who Made These 5 Decisions

On Sunday it was revealed to the public that President Joe Biden had been diagnosed with a “more aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Dr. Zeke Emanuel said Monday on MSNBC that it’s more likely Biden “had it while he was president.” That means that on top of the obvious cognitive impairment, Biden may have also been suffering from an aggressive cancer, further calling into question who was actually making key decisions during his administration.

Here are five of the most consequential decisions of the Biden presidency that, in light of this diagnosis, have many Americans asking whether Biden was truly the one behind them.

Appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant after Justice Stephen Breyer stepped down in 2022. Prior to taking office, Biden made nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court a top priority, as pointed out by The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd. Jackson had notable shortcomings — including the inability to define what a woman is because she is “not a biologist.”

Pardons And Commutations, Oh My!

Biden gave preemptive pardons to former Rep. Liz Cheney, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, Adam Schiff and others who sat on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol as well as to the “police officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department or the U.S. Capitol Police who testified before” the committee, according to The Lawfare Institute.

Biden also issued pardons to his brother, James Biden, James’ wife Sara, his other brother Francis T. Biden, and his sister Valerie T. Owens along with her husband John T. Owens.

As noted by The Federalist’s Beth Brelje, “To be pardoned for a crime, there must be a crime. None of the people on this list have been charged for the awful ways they harmed people in their official capacities.”

Biden also announced in December that he was granting 39 pardons and 1,499 commutations in what his administration described as the “largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”

Weeks before that set of pardons and commutations, Biden quietly commuted the sentences of two Chinese spies. In one case, Yanjun Xu was convicted in 2022 for “conspiracy to commit economic espionage; conspiracy to commit trade secret theft; attempted economic espionage by theft or fraud; attempted theft of trade secrets by taking or deception.”

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Trump’s ‘big’ and ‘beautiful’ tax bill retains hundreds of billions (maybe trillions?) in ‘Green New Deal’ spending

Congressional Republicans are the absolute worst, for many reasons, but this time, it has to do with the “big” and “beautiful” tax bill that’s working its way toward Donald Trump’s desk—Republicans, despite holding both houses, as well as the Oval Office, are set to retain hundreds of billions of dollars in Green New Deal provisions, if they get their way. Here’s the context, from Adam N. Michel and Joshua Loucks at the Cato Institute:

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was pitched as a climate solution. In practice, it turned the tax code into a multi-trillion-dollar energy entitlement program, creating subsidies without caps, sunsets, or accountability. The recently passed House Ways and Means Committee tax bill repeals eight of the IRA credits, phases out five, and keeps or expands several others.

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Hegseth Launches Special Task Force To Investigate Biden’s ‘Chaotic’ Afghanistan Withdrawal

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the creation of a special review panel on Tuesday to investigate the Biden administration’s “chaotic” 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

“President Trump and I have formally pledged full transparency for what transpired during our military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has an obligation, both to the American people and to the warfighters who sacrificed their youth in Afghanistan, to get to the facts,” Hegseth wrote in an agency memo released on Tuesday.

In his directive, Hegseth disclosed that the Defense Department has been conducting “a review” throughout the past three months of what the secretary described as a “catastrophic event in our military’s history.” Based on the probe’s findings, Hegseth “concluded that we need to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to the American people.”

The memo tasks Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell to “convene a Special Review Panel (SRP) for the Department who will thoroughly examine previous investigations.” As noted in a Defense Department press release, Parnell spent 485 days stationed in Afghanistan and was “wounded in action” along with many of his fellow soldiers.

According to the directive, the agency’s Parnell-led investigation will “include but [is] not limited to, findings of fact, sources, witnesses, and analyz[ing] the decision making that led to one of America’s darkest and deadliest international moments.”

“This team will ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,” Hegseth wrote.

As highlighted in the memo, the consequences stemming from the Biden-led withdrawal from Afghanistan were severe.

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“Treasonous Thugs” – President Trump Says People Who Controlled Joe Biden’s Autopen Committed Treason, Calls For Severe Consequences

President Trump on Tuesday said the people who ran Joe Biden’s autopen committed treason.

“Joe Biden was not for Open Borders, he never talked about Open Borders, where criminals of all kinds, shapes, and sizes, can flow into our Country at will. It wasn’t his idea to Open the Border, and almost destroy our Country, and cost us Hundreds of Billions of Dollars to get criminals out of our Country, and go through the process we are going through now. It was the people that knew he was cognitively impaired, and that took over the Autopen. They stole the Presidency of the United States, and put us in Great Danger. This is TREASON at the Highest Level! They did it to destroy our Country. The Joe Biden that everybody knew would never allow drug dealers, gang members, and the mentally insane to come into our Country totally unchecked and unvetted. All anyone has to do is look up his record. Something very severe should happen to these Treasonous Thugs that wanted to destroy our Country, but couldn’t, because I came along. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said on Truth Social.

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Comey’s Recent Behavior Confirms He’s Our Worst FBI Director

James B. Comey posted on Instagram a photo of seashells arranged to read “86 47,” which could be interpreted as a threat against the 47th president. Comey has since denied that he intended violence; nonetheless the Secret Service is reportedly investigating. This posting may have been a lapse of judgment on Comey’s part or something more nefarious.

Comey’s conduct in this instance, however, fits well with his previous anti-Trump behavior and demonstrably poor judgment. His judgment has been a serious concern for many of us who were proud to serve in the FBI and care about the bureau’s credibility and reputation. In his book and elsewhere, he described the sole origin of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s first presidential campaign as based on a report “from an allied ambassador” of an encounter in London between a Trump adviser and “a Russian agent.”

That’s Comey’s characterization of George Papadopoulos’ meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a pan-European academic. Mifsud told the then-Trump aide the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Comey has piously huffed that it would have been “dereliction” not to proceed with a counterintelligence investigation based on that report. But to proceed with such an intrusive investigation on so little was an abuse.

A secondhand rumor should never be enough to justify opening a counterintelligence investigation of any American, much less a presidential candidate. This off-handed conversation initiated a counterintelligence case that disrupted Trump’s first term as president. Like directors before him, Comey should have said, “We need more probable cause” before moving forward with an investigation.

In the encounter Comey cited, there was no mention of emails. Only after the WikiLeaks disclosures was an assumption made by both Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer, Comey’s “allied ambassador,” and Papadopoulos, that the “dirt” was in Hillary’s emails.

Comey’s indignant complaints about Trump are an effort to distract from the dangerous and faulty decisions made on his watch. His initiation of the counterintelligence investigation against Trump was an error of historical proportions.

Comey has tried to justify the spying — electronic surveillance — of Carter Page, a U.S. citizen, by writing that a federal judge granted “permission.” We now know the FISA Court was seriously misled by Comey’s FBI.

Comey grossly usurped the prosecutor’s role in virtually declining prosecution in the Clinton email investigation. That usurpation was spelled out in Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s memo justifying Comey’s firing. Comey also had further muddied the waters by announcing the reopening of the Clinton email investigation just days before the 2016 election.

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The First Step on the Covid Shots

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is holding a very important meeting on May 22, 2025. Under consideration at this meeting is the fate of the Covid booster shots. There has been considerable anticipation as well as media claims that current recommendations and authorization for these products’ use, particularly in children and pregnant women, may be discontinued. 

Public comments are currently being solicited for the meeting, and wide public interest surrounds this event. Unfortunately, I have received reports from colleagues that some comments submitted to the committee calling for discontinuation of these vaccines have disappeared from the FDA website.

Furthermore, an important article from the FDA published today in the New England Journal of Medicine acknowledges the huge discrepancies in Covid vaccine recommendations in the US vs. other countries – as I describe in detail below. The article hints yet again at possible changes in official recommendations regarding the Covid vaccines. In terms of actual changes, however, none have yet been made official 

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Sen. John Kennedy Obliterates Democrats’ HHS Narrative—This Exchange Changed Everything

Sen. John Kennedy just obliterated the Democrats’ narrative on HHS budget cuts with nothing but a few simple questions.

RFK Jr. was under heavy fire.

Then Sen. Kennedy stepped in—and hit a grand slam.

This exchange flipped the whole hearing on its head. You have to see it.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went head-to-head with Senate Democrats today over major proposed budget cuts, including $18 billion slashed from the NIH and $3.6 billion from the CDC.

But for many Democrats, you’d think it was the end of the world.

Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) led the charge, slamming Kennedy for a $3 billion drop in federally funded biomedical research compared to last year.

Kennedy stood his ground.

“We’re cutting waste, we’re cutting duplicative programs,” he said.

Still, Baldwin wouldn’t let up. She framed the loss of “3,200 fewer grants” as an attack on “life-saving programs.”

Kennedy hit back with a devastating stat.

“We spend 70% of the world’s biomedical research out of NIH. 70%. And we’re the sickest country in the world,” he said.

“We’ve had a 38% increase in our agency growth over the past four years,” he added. “That money has not been well spent.”

The exchange summed up a broader dynamic: Democrats trying to paint RFK Jr. as a villain, slashing life-saving science, while Kennedy pointed out that America’s health is declining because of how this money is being spent, not despite it.

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