Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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Jan. 26
The Washington Post on Trump’s “energy emergency”
Oil and gas production in the United States is hitting record highs, easily outpacing consumption growth and fueling an export boom that in 2020 achieved the country’s first trade surplus in energy since at least the 1950s. Renewable energy generation has also expanded at a healthy clip, more than four times as fast during Joe Biden’s presidency as during Donald Trump’s first term. Also, the price of gasoline has been falling steadily since mid-2022, following an upsurge at the tail end of the pandemic.
This is what Trump describes as an “ energy emergency.”
One executive order among the swarm he issued on Monday claims that “insufficient energy production, transportation, refining, and generation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to our Nation’s economy, national security, and foreign policy.” It warned that “hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets.”
It is tempting to dismiss this warning as political signaling — a battle cry in the culture war. The term “emergency” stands in for Trump’s accusation that his predecessor’s push for more clean energy to combat climate change was a plot to bring America to its knees.
The president also seems to believe that using the word might help him achieve various goals, whether it’s opening Alaska’s wilderness to oil drilling, halting the deployment of offshore windmills or safeguarding “ the American people’s freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances, including but not limited to lightbulbs, dishwashers, washing machines, gas stoves, water heaters, toilets, and shower heads.” By calling America’s energy situation an emergency, the same term he used to describe immigration across the southern border, Trump hopes to create legal room to override any congressional or judicial checks on his power.
Performances aside, however, Trump’s conjuring of an emergency will do next to nothing to help meet America’s, and the world’s, future energy needs. Climate change is real. The world must find ways to produce a lot more energy that does not emit greenhouse gases. Trump’s barrage of orders stands in the way of this objective.
The “drill, baby, drill” push might be of less immediate importance. The prices of oil and gas have been falling, largely thanks to booming U.S. production. Oil and gas companies will not want to start pumping more if it will cause prices to drop further.
What will hurt are Trump’s efforts to curtail renewable energy. Halting the disbursement of hundreds of billions in grants and loans under the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to slow the deployment of renewable resources. Moreover, stopping further development of offshore wind generation subverts the objective of ensuring America’s energy supply. During the Biden administration, wind power increased by about one-third, and today it accounts for about one-tenth of U.S. electricity generation.
Most alarming is how Trump’s distaste for clean energy might undermine the ongoing multinational effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Lately, this effort has been losing steam. Thirty years after the first United Nations climate summit in Berlin and a decade after the celebrated Paris agreement, fossil fuels still account for some 80 percent of the energy humanity consumes. It appears that no country is decarbonizing at the rate it promised under the Paris deal.
Pulling out of the agreement, as Trump has done again, further discourages the multinational cooperation to address the climate emergency, which has been flagging after an initial burst of enthusiasm 10 years ago. Trump is hostile not only to climate change but also to foreign aid. By curtailing assistance for climate mitigation, America would abandon the affluent nations’ still unfulfilled responsibility to assist less developed countries in decarbonizing.
Given that countries outside the well-off Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development account for 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the wealthier countries urgently need to help finance their transition to clean energy. To the extent that Trump ignores this challenge, he will increase the chance that a true emergency will occur.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/23/trump-energy-emergency/
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Jan. 22
The New York Times says Donald Trump called for a ceasefire and must make it stand
Before examining the pitfalls and weaknesses of the Gaza cease-fire, let us welcome even the least of what it may achieve. Fifteen months after the horrendous Hamas attack on Israel and the launch of Israel’s retaliatory invasion, Gaza is a moonscape, most of its two million inhabitants homeless, hungry and in despair, and those hostages who are still alive, in the cruel hands of Hamas terrorists, have been torn from their loved ones simply too long. Obtaining even the release of only some of the hostages and even a few weeks of unrestricted humanitarian assistance into Gaza is good news.
The deal is a tribute to the many months of relentless efforts by the Biden administration and mediators from Egypt and Qatar, as well as an 11th-hour push from Donald Trump. Debates have already erupted over who deserves credit for finally achieving a cease-fire and who is to blame for delaying it so long, but the incontrovertible fact is that the United States still holds powerful sway over events in the Middle East — including the fate of this agreement, which will require huge effort.
The agreement calls for three phases, of which only the first is described in detail. The initial stage is to last six weeks, during which 33 hostages — women, men over 50, the sick and the wounded — and several hundred Palestinian prisoners are to be exchanged. Israel is to allow a surge of aid into the enclave, and Israeli troops are to start withdrawing from population centers. Negotiations on the second, more difficult phase are to begin while the first is being carried out and are supposed to cover the release of all remaining living captives held by Hamas and more Palestinians held by Israel and Israel’s “complete withdrawal.” Details of the third phase are unclear, but they presumably will include return of the remaining deceased hostages and prisoners and a reconstruction plan for Gaza. The critical question of who will administer Gaza after the cease-fire also remains unsettled.
That leaves plenty of room for either side to back out, as they have again and again in the negotiations. Phased plans have a dismal record in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle because they are conditioned on each side fulfilling the terms of the current phase, effectively giving zealots on both sides ample opportunity to derail the process, as the fates of Oslo, Oslo II, Hebron, Wye River and so many other “peace processes” bear witness.
Neither the Israeli far right nor Hamas is keen on the deal. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing followers, the fact that Hamas has not been eradicated is insufferable. And some extreme nationalists — including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who resigned as national security minister on Sunday over the deal — have not abandoned their ambition to build on Israeli military successes against Hamas and Hezbollah to restore Jewish settlements to Gaza and to annex West Bank territories. Hamas, which rejoiced in the atrocities it committed in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and effectively invited the destruction of the territory it purports to lead, will try to use the freeing of large numbers of prisoners to enhance its standing among Palestinians and balk at any deal that further weakens its hold on Gaza.
That puts considerable responsibility on the Trump administration to keep the process on track. President Trump has been widely and properly credited for pushing Mr. Netanyahu into accepting the cease-fire, first by warning in early January that “All hell will break out” if hostages were not released by the time he entered office and then by sending his old friend and new Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, to personally lean on Mr. Netanyahu. This enabled the prime minister to tell his right-wing cohort that he had no choice, since the president they so ardently hoped for was not with them on this.
That may not fully justify Mr. Trump’s boast that the agreement was a result of “our Historic Victory in November” — the deal that Mr. Trump pushed over the finish line was essentially the same as what President Joe Biden had proposed last May and might have been adopted in any case. But if Mr. Trump believes he was instrumental in achieving the deal, he should also accept responsibility for sustaining the cease-fire and for its fate.
That does not mean he will. Mr. Trump’s only clear demand on Israel was that the hostages be released in time for his inauguration. The history of his first stint in the White House suggests little sympathy for the Palestinians and no interest in the “two-state solution” that has been the holy grail of American diplomacy for many years. Among Mr. Trump’s first acts after his inauguration was to lift sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on dozens of far-right Israelis and settler groups. And when asked whether he thought the cease-fire would hold, he showed little interest in the conflict. “That’s not our war,” he said. “It’s their war.”
By all accounts, Mr. Trump is far more interested in building on the Abraham Accords his first administration brokered, under which Israel established relations with the United Arab Emirates, and to similarly normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. He is said to see a Nobel Peace Prize there and not in the notoriously thankless efforts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
Beyond that, he is likely to be as unpredictable and impetuous in his foreign dealings as he was the first time around. Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right allies, and the surviving Hamas leadership, will be watching Washington carefully for signals; without American pressure, the deal will be at great risk.
It will be up to Mr. Trump’s new foreign-policy team — the national security adviser, Mike Waltz; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and Mr. Witkoff — to remind the president that his government bears responsibility for the cease-fire agreement and to point out that a rekindled war in Gaza and the annexation of any part of the West Bank would most likely undermine Mr. Trump’s ambitions for regional diplomacy.
By contrast, a Gaza at peace and an international reconstruction program there funded by Persian Gulf oil money would be a fitting centerpiece for Mr. Trump’s Middle East project. That would make it easier to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and that, in turn, would strengthen an American-led alliance to force Iran to the bargaining table.
Such a program is all the more feasible at a time of acute upheaval in the Middle East. Israel is in an unusually strong position: It has effectively defeated Iran’s proxies to its north and south, Hamas and Hezbollah, while the collapse of the Assad regime has rendered Syria largely harmless and has further weakened Iran’s power to threaten Israel. The Gaza cease-fire could also accelerate the end of Mr. Netanyahu’s rule, giving the Trump administration a fresh start with a new, more moderate leadership.
The Middle East, alas, has a way of confounding optimistic scenarios. The return of hostages and the opening of Gaza to caravans of desperately needed food, clothing and medicine are already huge and welcome achievements. The progress need not stop there.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/opinion/trump-gaza-cease-fire.html
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Jan. 26
The Wall Street Journal on the negligence and mismanagement of Head Start
Head Start has been something of a sacred cow in Washington since its creation in 1965. The $12.3 billion federal program provides pre-school services to nearly 790,000 low-income children each year. But a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office reveals serious negligence and fiscal mismanagement in Head Start, putting at risk the very children the program claims to help.
The report studies Head Start programs that are operating under interim management, meaning those whose former managers—usually local agencies or nonprofits—gave up or lost their federal grants due to poor performance. Interim managers are appointed by the Office of Head Start, or OHS, and run the programs until new grant recipients can be found.
According to the report, OHS oversight of these interim-managed programs is woefully inadequate. Between January 2020 and June 2024, 28 programs were due for oversight. OHS monitored only half of them, “leaving it unaware of documented and potential child safety incidents and other concerns.”
The report says one local center director saw “a teacher grab a child by the hood of their coat and slam them to the ground.” At another program, the interim manager told a center director not to inform parents about mold in school, “even though children and staff had developed respiratory symptoms, and one child had a known allergy to mold.” While state licensing agencies documented 15 major child-safety violations between August 2019 and March 2024, OHS’s records noted only nine of them.
OHS also failed to monitor fiscal waste. Despite fewer than half of all available seats at interim-managed programs being filled in the 2022-23 school year, OHS “never enforced enrollment standards or required Head Start funds to be returned for children not served.” In fiscal 2022, interim-managed programs spent 72% of the total pool of taxpayer-funded grants, though student enrollment was 47%.
Where did the money go? Local staff at several programs reported purchases of costly equipment that didn’t work or sat unused. One interim manager agreed to pay “rent that was more than four times” what it should have been for the classroom space. Another program “frequently ran out of diapers, baby wipes, soap, and other essentials,” requiring teachers to buy supplies with their own money.
A 2012 study from the Department of Health and Human Services found that any advantages enjoyed by Head Start students mostly vanish by the end of third grade. Moreover, reports of Head Start’s lack of financial oversight and child safety risks have circulated for decades. But lawmakers don’t like the optics of opposing early childhood education, which is why the program’s funding keeps growing.
Perhaps this is about to change. Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, reacted to the report on Tuesday, writing, “We have an obligation to protect these children and end this gross negligence immediately.”
The GAO wants Head Start to enhance its oversight standards and fiscal accountability. But if it can’t prove its results are worth $12.3 billion, it may be time to make some cuts—or perhaps simply pass the money down to the states, which are already better equipped for educational oversight.
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Jan. 24
The Boston Globe says PBM practices must be reformed
In 2021, the FDA approved a new insulin drug, Semglee, that was interchangeable with a brand-name insulin called Lantus. Lantus cost $292 for a 30-day supply. Drugmaker Viatris launched two versions of its drug — Semglee cost $269 and a generic version cost $99 for the same amount, according to the Biosimilars Council.
Now, in a rational world, insurers would immediately switch to the generic drug so patients with diabetes could save money.
Instead, pharmacy benefit managers — which determine what drugs insurers cover under what terms — wouldn’t put the unbranded drug into their formularies. Insurers wouldn’t cover or would only partially cover the cheaper drug, driving patients toward the more expensive ones.
That example, cited in a lawsuit Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell filed Jan. 13 against insulin manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers, is emblematic of the skewed incentives in drug pricing. Campbell’s lawsuit follows similar suits in other states and a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission that aim to use the courts to force PBMs to change practices that drive up drug prices.
It’s not only insulin. The FTC on Jan. 14 released a report charging PBMs with driving up prices for specialty drugs to treat cancer, HIV, and other illnesses.
PBMs say they add value to the system by negotiating with manufacturers for lower drug prices and incentivizing consumers to use cheaper generic drugs. The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents PBMs, wouldn’t comment on Campbell’s lawsuit. It said the FTC report only focuses on a small segment of the market and “makes sweeping assertions about the role of PBMs disconnected from a full appreciation of their critical cost-saving role for employers, unions, taxpayers, and patients.”
There is a role for PBMs in the system, but only if they actually negotiate lower costs and improve consumer access to drugs. Often, as in the case of the diabetes drug, they do the opposite.
In Massachusetts, the Legislature recently passed a bill putting PBMs under the state’s health care cost trends hearing process and capping the copays insurers can charge for insulin. But truly resolving the problem requires Congress.
Congressional leaders in December struck a deal to rein in PBM practices, but the bill fell apart. President Trump has pledged to “ knock out the middlemen ” in health care, so the time is ripe for Congress to reconsider the issue.
Massachusetts Representative Jake Auchincloss, who introduced a bill to rein in PBM practices,told the editorial board that PBMs started out performing a legitimate function but “got greedy.” Now, Auchincloss said the amount of money PBMs take from the health care system raises premiums, increases drug copays, and hurts independent pharmacists.
Campbell’s lawsuit highlights the impact PBMs have on one drug. In Massachusetts, about 500,000 residents are living with diabetes, nearly all of whom rely on the daily use of insulin to survive. This is not some new wonder drug whose research and development costs manufacturers need to recoup. Versions of insulin have been around since the 1920s, and current formulations were pioneered in the 1990s.
A 2018 study estimated that in a competitive market, insulin should cost between $72 and $133 a year. A 2024 study suggested that based on the manufacturing costs, a year’s supply of insulin could cost $111. Yet in 2016, the lawsuit filed by Campbell’s office said, the average diabetic spent $5,705 on insulin, and the average cost per month for the most popular types of insulin was $450. Prices have skyrocketed, far exceeding inflation. Drugmaker Eli Lilly raised the price on a vial of Humulin insulin from around $165 in 1997 to $1,784 in 2023, according to Campbell’s lawsuit. Sanofi raised the price of Lantus from $50 a vial in 2006 to $340 in 2023.
If insulin is too expensive, patients may avoid using recommended doses, leading to serious health consequences.
As Campbell’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, which includes information that emerged in federal reports and congressional hearings, PBMs contribute to price increases. There are three major PBMs — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx — that control 80 percent of the US market. (Each has affiliated pharmacies and insurers.) These middlemen negotiate the prices paid to drugmakers and pharmacies and the lists insurers use to decide what drugs are made available, with what restrictions and at what cost, to consumers.
As Campbell’s lawsuit explains, manufacturers want their drugs included with good coverage on insurers’ formularies. To get that placement, manufacturers voluntarily raise their list prices, then pay a portion of the price to the PBM, through rebates and fees. PBMs give these expensive drugs “preferred” status, while excluding lower-priced drugs from insurance coverage. That means manufacturers and PBMs benefit when a drug price is higher — but consumers get overcharged. PBMs also steer consumers to their affiliated pharmacies, which can charge more.
Several PBM reform bills have been introduced in Congress. The December deal focused on transparency and would have also banned specific practices, like linking PBM payments to drug prices in Medicare.
Auchincloss has a more comprehensive bill that he has introduced in Congress, which would apply to federal government-run insurance plans. It would stop PBMs from requiring patients to use affiliated pharmacies and would use a pricing metric to avoid wide swings in how much pharmacies are reimbursed for the same drug. It would prohibit PBMs from requiring patients use a brand-name drug over a generic and would eliminate some payment practices that incentivize higher prices. Other proposed bills would cover commercial insurance plans and prohibit PBMs from owning pharmacies.
There is a role for PBMs in health care, and they should be paid through reasonable administrative fees. But they shouldn’t be allowed to operate in ways that drive up costs for consumers.
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/24/opinion/insulin-pbm-drug-prices-campbell/
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Jan. 24
The Guardian on Trump’s first few days in office
Waiting for Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday was like watching a tsunami gather force. Everyone could see the threat approaching. But its scale was still shocking as it hit land, and what damage it wreaks will ultimately take months and years to determine.
The deluge is intentional. For supporters, there is a sense of unleashed macho, almost messianic energy – setting the US on a path to national destiny which might take in Greenland, Panama and ultimately Mars. This time Mr Trump has an electoral mandate, a compliant team with a ready agenda, the obsequiousness of billionaires who command the attention economy, and a compliant supreme court which has already granted the president extraordinary power. He aspires to the rule of a monarch. The flood of executive orders, pardons and pronouncements is intended to overwhelm and intimidate, but also to disorientate opponents.
Where should they look first? To his blanket pardon to those involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, including those who assaulted police officers, far beyond what he had said he would do – placing violent extremists beyond the reach of the law? To his attack upon birthright citizenship, and crackdown upon immigration more generally? The withdrawal from the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization? That’s without even wondering what to make of his milder tone towards China, and his somewhat tougher one towards Vladimir Putin.
The most glaring instances may not be the most important ones; Mr Trump’s signature achievement in his first term was arguably his appointment of those supreme court judges, paving the way for the overturning of Roe v Wade. His arbitrary reclassification of thousands of federal employees as political hires, making them easier to fire if insufficiently loyal, has attracted less attention than less substantive pronouncements.
But nor are the most plausible plans necessarily the most critical. He may not be able to enact many of his proposals for an immigration crackdown. But simply announcing them emboldens anti-immigrant sentiment among his supporters and shifts the broader sense of what is politically acceptable or feasible. A federal judge has already blocked his curtailment of automatic birthright citizenship as “blatantly unconstitutional”. But some experts believe the obstacles could be overcome. And for Mr Trump, challenging the constitution head-on may be not just an effect, but the very point.
Set against this, issuing a flurry of executive orders is far easier than passing the legislation needed for other changes. The constitution has, for more than seven decades, limited a president to two terms. Second-time presidents can become lame ducks after a couple of years, as aspirants jockey to replace them. The gravitational force of power will likely hold most of his acolytes close to him. But they are mostly men of giant egos, used to having their own way, and there are already some fissures between them; Mr Trump enjoys playing backers off against each other. Trump voters may be alienated if tariffs lead to higher prices for them. Bullying allies may prove costlier than he expects in the longer run.
At home, the lack of protesters on the streets should not be mistaken for acquiescence. Nor should the downcast mood be taken for despair. Determining where to look, and what to prioritise, is extraordinarily hard in this shifting landscape. But there will be legal, political and social opportunities: “You have to have your head up, and look for those openings,” urged Timothy Snyder, the historian and author of On Tyranny. Even small achievements, especially when made in collaboration with others, can remind people what is possible in the face of what may appear to be insurmountable forces.
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