Big Pharma Perks

Ralph speaks to Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen about how the Trump Administration's drug pricing deals favor Big Pharma. Then, some advice for progressive candidates from Ralph and former NYC Public Advocate Mark Green.

Peter Maybarduk directs Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, which helps partners worldwide make medicine available and affordable for all. He has provided technical and strategic assistance to government agencies and health organizations in dozens of countries, and sits on the governance board of the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed organization that negotiates licenses among drugmakers to expand global availability of affordable generics.

Trump has several different drug pricing initiatives, but he’s hollowing them out himself by negotiating exemptions from his own drug pricing programs on behalf of the Big Pharma corporations. Trump has been signing a series of deals in the White House so far with 27 drug makers, and they get the PR from this, right? They come out and say, “We’ve got a new deal. We’re going to offer the best prices in the world.” But those deals are secret. Part of what we know now is the deals actually exempt the drug makers from any of the binding mandatory programs that Trump is trying to run.

Peter Maybarduk

Almost every new drug relies on some kind of US-government funding at some stage. Sometimes it’s just in the research chain (in the literature, the publications) that link back to NIH research. Sometimes it’s all the way up through development…So there’s a lot to be said for public R&D, which already happens. There’s also: we could just manufacture more drugs publicly in the late stage...And generally, if you had, for example, a government-owned-contractor-operated model or a fully public model of production and the proper terms attached to it, you could fight rationing. You could ensure that there’s a basic supply of essential medicines available for people. It would help you fight during pandemics and not have to be reliant on pharma’s profit-maximizing decisions about who is going to get vaccines, for example, at what price and when. You could bring those things under public authority and make them accountable. There’s a lot of levers that we’re not yet using that we could use to make medicine affordable and available for all.

Peter Maybarduk

Mark Green is a former Nader’s Raider, who ran Public Citizen’s Congress Watch for ten years and was elected New York City’s first Public Advocate. He’s a prolific author, and has collaborated with Ralph on Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General B******t, and Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.

As the GOP spends hundreds of millions on negative ads in the final month, here’s a suggested strategy and narrative for aggressive and progressive Democrats in close contests. First: yes, Assume Trump’s “on the ballot” (in his phrase), to tarnish your rival with his erratic extremism. And second: frame everything under the memorable banner of “Progress, not corruption.” [Trump] has pushed America to an inflection election when voters determine whether Trumpism survives Trump, or whether it becomes a pariah ideology like McCarthyism.

Mark Green

News 10/16/26

* Our top story this week is the resounding reelection victory of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. As Jacobin reports, Fain won his first term in 2022, taking out the long-entrenched leadership clique at the union following internal democratic reforms, including direct election of union leadership. Under Fain, the UAW has again become a fighting union, winning “record agreements at the Big Three,” automakers following a successful stand-up strike, “delivering 25 percent wage increases, eliminating wage tiers, restoring cost-of-living adjustments, securing bonuses for retirees for the first time in decades, winning the right to strike over product commitments, and bringing electric vehicle battery production under the union’s master agreements.” Fain’s UAW also secured “life-changing contracts” at Daimler Truck, American Axle, Allison Transmission, Cornell University and Rolls-Royce, along with unionizing the workers at “Volkswagen’s sole US assembly plant in Tennessee, which became the first foreign-owned Southern auto plant to be organized in US history.” Fain has also expanded the UAW’s horizons in terms of international solidarity, making it the largest union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023. In response, and many say, in retaliation, a federal monitor was appointed to oversee the union and, some allege, to sabotage Fain’s governing program. Hopefully, Fain’s renewed mandate will send a signal throughout the labor movement that there is nothing to be lost – and everything to be gained – to, as this piece puts it, “wage a real fight for working-class people in this country.”

* In more positive labor news, New York City Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su reports the city’s ferry captains have voted to unionize and affiliate with the Transport Workers Union (TWU). Su notes in her statement that the Mamdani administration will “always support workers’ choice to organize for a union,” and that “Workers should be free to make that choice without employer interference…[and] have a path to a speedy first contract. These crews, and all working people, deserve nothing less.” This decision comes just two months after the Diesel Technicians and Welders on the ferries voted to unionize under the TWU banner as well. At that time, the union issued a statement reading, in part “The highly skilled NYC Ferry workers are trusting in the industrial power of the TWU in New York to deliver a crucial first contract while showing up to fight for them on all fronts, no matter what…Across New York City and New York State, the TWU is showing over and over again why we are America’s fightback union, organizing the unorganized and standing up for every worker against powerful interests.”

* Turning to the midterms, Shannon O’Brien, Chair of the Montana Democratic Party writes in an op-ed for MS NOW that she is resigning her post and throwing her support behind independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar. Bodnar is widely seen as the most competitive non-Republican candidate in this race, but Democrat Alani Bankhead has refused to drop out despite garnering little support, either inside the state or nationally. In this piece, O’Brien writes that she is a “a lifelong Montana Democrat who has proudly run and served under that label,” but that she believes “there are things more important than labels or party politics.” O’Brien goes on, writing that “Bankhead does not have the momentum, resources or will to win this race,” and denounces her for “mudslinging” at Bodnar and citing the “real questions about…Bankhead’s commitment to protecting a woman’s right to choose, her support of working people and her views of people living in poverty.” O’Brien finishes by appealing to Montana values, arguing that her “job has always been to advance the values Democrats in this state care about, and right now, the clearest path to doing that runs through an independent candidate.”

* Elsewhere in the Great Plains, Democrat Adam Hamilton is building stunning momentum in his bid to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall. This week, the Washington Post published an article explaining why two former Republican Governors of the Sunflower State, Mike Hayden and Bill Graves, have endorsed Hamilton. This piece quotes Graves, who said “I’ve just been terribly disappointed and alarmed at the congressional level in the Republicans’ willingness to yield so easily, so readily, to this executive branch and yielding to actions that a lot of Americans don’t think make a lot of sense,” while Hayden, formerly a backer of Marshall, said Marshall’s willingness to back Trump’s war in Iran and the administration’s tariffs, “despite the consequences for Kansans,” convinced him that “It’s time for a change.” The Post reports “Democrats have become more bullish,” on this race, with the Senate Majority PAC announcing a $5 million ad campaign after “realizing the race was growing more competitive.” Kansas has not elected a Democratic Senator since 1932.

* On the flip side, the Kansas Reflector reports Senator Marshall may be “blurring the line between taxpayer dollars and campaign cash.” According to this report, “no one working for Marshall’s campaign had received a paycheck in the past five years,” per FEC data, an odd state of affairs for an active campaign made curiouser by the fact that Marshall’s Chief of Staff Brent Robertson maintains that the campaign does in fact have paid staff. This discrepancy could be explained by Marshall misclassifying campaign expenses as official Senate business, allowing him to pay for these with taxpayer money. Documents obtained in this investigation seem to support this hypothesis. To name just one example, during an October 2020 trip to Dallas, Marshall used “campaign funds to book flights…[but] used taxpayer dollars for a meal, despite the only official event on his calendar being a Zoom meeting. In contrast, a screenshot of his color-coded calendar shows his attendance at a Cowboys v. Giants game, three meetings and a fundraising dinner all marked as political events.” One text exchange shows Robertson responding to a question about whether a trip was official or campaign related by saying the “Primary purpose is what we say it is.”

* Yet, allegations of campaign finance violations have been weaponized in politics before. One recent example just occurred here in Washington, DC. During the all-important Democratic Mayoral primary, the D.C. Board of Elections levied a $16,000 fine against the progressive candidate in the race, the democratic socialist Councilmember Janeese Lewis George supposedly for “impermissibly” coordinating with local unions. Now, the Washington Sun reports these charges have been “tossed out,” marking a “long awaited win” for Lewis George. Lewis George and her campaign always maintained that there was “no…evidence that it illicitly coordinated with unions and that a firewall existed between campaign staff and their union jobs,” following a new round of deliberations, the “board’s three members unanimously agreed.” Lewis George welcomed the ruling, but criticized the Office of Campaign Finance for improperly involving itself in the election, saying “OCF’s order violated D.C. procedural requirements, included multiple false statements about its own investigation, misrepresented the campaign’s statements and positions, offered no evidence in support of their conclusions, and was simply wrong on the law.” Lewis George added that it was “not the first time OCF had filed a flawed order in the days just before a contested election,” referring to a similar incident in 2022, when the office seemed to intervene against progressive candidate Elissa Silverman for the DC Council to the benefit of her centrist challenger Kenyan McDuffie – ironically the same candidate who was running against Lewis George in the mayoral primary. Silverman lost that election, only for the Board of Elections to toss the case out months later. Lewis George adds that “D.C. voters deserve a fair election process that inspires confidence and where all rules are consistently and fairly enforced.”

* In more local news, the final debate of the Los Angeles Mayoral election was held this week, pitting embattled incumbent Mayor Karen Bass against DSA-backed challenger Nithya Raman. According to the LA Times, the general sense coming out of this debate is that Raman was unable to land a knockout punch against Bass, though how much impact this debate will have remains unclear. Bass is said to have come off more prepared, whereas Raman frequently checked her notes, and may have thrown Raman off balance during the debate. Raman, for her part, hammered Bass for the continuing homelessness crisis and for leaving the city “leaderless” during emergencies such as the Palisades and Lineage fires. Polls consistently show Raman leading Bass, though by wildly varying margins.

* Turning to the federal government, President Trump may be laying the groundwork for the dismissal of self-styled ‘Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth. The proximate cause, per the Daily Beast, is Hegseth’s outrageous plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, the mass shooter who killed 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. Hasan was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013; recently, the Pentagon decided he was to be executed by firing squad and Hegseth committed to livestreaming the event for public consumption. Hasan, who was “left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after being shot by police during his arrest,” will either be “shot sitting down or strapped upright to face the firing squad,” according to the New York Times. Unsurprisingly, this scheme was met with “bipartisan waves of ‘negative input’ from lawmakers and advisers both inside and outside the White House,” and Trump went from “giddy” about the idea to not “particularly enthusiastic.” Vice President JD Vance is quoted saying “if it’s all through livestream, I’m not going to be watching it.”

* In related news, POLITICO reports Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who “oversees the Catholic Church’s pastoral services to Catholics in the U.S. military,” has condemned the idea of livestreaming the execution of Hasan. Going further however, Broglio “stipulated that any Catholic soldier assigned to the U.S. Army firing squad should ask to be excused from that duty, which he described as contrary to the teachings of the church.” Broglio presided over the funeral of Michael Grant Cahill, who was the only civilian killed in the Fort Hood shooting perpetrated by Hasan. Broglio questioned Hegseth’s decision, asking whether it is worth compromising the reputation of the US military by “broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheelchair to the whole world?”

* Our final story for the week also concerns the Catholic Church. On Sunday, it was reported that Pope Leo XIV would undergo surgery, but only later this week was it reported that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and that the surgery in question was to remove the lower lobe of his right lung. According to AP, the pontiff “resumed his regular diet, began walking and celebrated Mass in the hospital,” indicating that he is recovering well from the surgery, though questions remain about the spread of the cancer and whether his tour of Latin America next month will proceed as planned. However, even if the 71-year-old Pope Leo recovers without any complications or return of the cancer, the medical context shines a new light on another decision made at the Vatican this week – the elevation of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as the new Dean of the College of Cardinals. Tagle succeeds his 92-year-old predecessor, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Vatican News explains that Tagle will lead the cardinals of the world as primus inter pares, meaning “he will not exercise hierarchical governing authority over his fellow cardinals, but rather coordinate their activities.” His primary duty will be to “convene any future Conclave in the event of a sede vacante (vacant see) and to preside over it, provided he is under the age of eighty and thus included among the electors.” In other words, Tagle – a close ideological ally of the wing of the Catholic Church represented by Pope Francis and now Pope Leo and himself seen as a possible successor to Francis – will have a powerful post from which to oversee a conclave if any ill fortune were to befall the current pontiff. God forbid.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe