From the Desk of Bob Barr

Daily Caller

President Trump is right to make lowering drug prices one of his priorities. American consumers are sick of paying two, three, even five times more for medications than the prices outside our borders.

A proposal the Administration is considering, however, threatens to make the problem much worse.

It is true that the United States is in effect subsidizing the rest of the world’s drug costs. Since countries like Canada and France, with economies that are overtly socialist, impose strict government price caps on drugmakers, pharmaceutical companies charge Americans more to make up the difference – a situation that is neither fair nor free-market.

So, when the Trump Administration reportedly began soliciting proposals to implement a so-called “Most Favored Nation” (“MFN”) policy for pharmaceuticals, it understandably attracted attention.

On the surface, the move to a pharmaceutical most-favored-nation strategy sounds like a tough, Trumpian fix. In reality, it represents the same, discredited and dangerous idea the Left has been pushing for years, just repackaged in MAGA talking points.

The positive, and practical solution to this inequitable treatment – one that actually is quintessential Trump — is to stop subsidizing drugmakers who treat American consumers like suckers and view our vast pharmaceutical market as a bottomless piggy bank. The problem is, no Big Pharma company wants to give up the substantial federal research dollars, tax credits, and government contracts now provided by Uncle Sam.

The one action that would cause Big Pharma to stand up and take notice would be for the Trump Administration to seriously threaten to cut off that largess unless Big Pharma starts treating American consumers as fairly as it treats foreign governments. This actually could start to solve the problem of unfairly high domestic drug prices.

Conversely, however, moving to implement a most-favored-nation strategy for pharmaceuticals would impose a backdoor price control scheme imported straight from the European socialist playbook. And at the center of this scheme is a group backed primarily by John Arnold.

The same John Arnold who worked at Enron, cashed out with an $8 million bonus while the company imploded, and then reinvented himself as a left-wing mega-donor funding some of the most radical ideas in American politics. Arnold bankrolls left-wing organizations that fund anti-police prosecutors and push to eliminate bail for violent criminals, all while helping to install surveillance tech that spies on everyday Americans. He now seeks to tell U.S. leaders how to fix their healthcare system.

Arnold has endorsed MFN personally and, through Arnold Ventures, apparently thinks MFN would help the federal government cut costs. In this, he is mistaken. Nothing positive can come from shoe-horning drug pricing here at home into systems employed in countries with centralized, government-run healthcare; systems in which healthcare treatment is rationed and access to new medicines delayed, with powerful, unelected bureaucrats at the helm.

Were such a socialized pharmaceutical regime to be implemented here, America’s medical marketplace would be effectively controlled by bureaucrats in those countries holding the power to cap drug prices. The likely result would be delays in introducing important new drugs into the U.S. market, including those to fight cancer and treat Alzheimer’s.

Such dire predicaments are not just hypothetical. Just look at the results of Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which imposed similar price controls — drug developers responded by pulling back on research into rare diseases and pausing trials.

Republicans who buy into this MFN scheme aren’t fighting Big Pharma — they’re doing John Arnold’s bidding. And if they are not careful, they will likely pay the price at the ballot box. Once voters find out that pharmaceutical most-favored-nation means fewer lifesaving drugs, longer wait times, and more government interference — in a word, “Obamacare 2.0” — the backlash could be swift and brutal.

Conservatives need to seriously start fighting for real, market-based reform, not importing bureaucratic rationing from France and calling it patriotism. Pharmaceutical most-favored-nation needs to be shut down quickly, before it gains a toehold here at home.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served previously as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, serves as head of Liberty Guard, and is the immediate past president of the National Rifle Association of America.

Daily Caller

President Donald Trump’s planned executive order to bolster U.S. shipbuilding acknowledges a hard truth: China is winning the global economic battle, at least in the maritime sector.

The U.S. defeated Japan in the Pacific theater of World War Two in large part because we could pump out new ships faster than the Japanese could sink them. America even flaunted its superior industrial base by launching vessels that served no purpose beyond boosting morale — most famously a floating ice cream factory.

Today, however, our primary global adversary, China, has 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, giving Beijing a significant advantage in any naval war of attrition.

While the fact sheet accompanying Trump’s E.O. accurately notes that China achieved its “position of dominance in the global market through unfair non-market practices,” this isn’t a simple case of socialism versus capitalism. Unfair or not, it is a very real and serious problem we must acknowledge and confront.

Ironically, American companies have a much harder time building anything than their counterparts in communist China. Not only do American shipyards face much stricter environmental reviews than many foreign competitors, but they also face the one-two punch of expansive regulations and organized labor.

Instead of addressing workplace health and safety concerns through our legal tort system or through collective bargaining with workers, shipbuilding companies (and manufacturers of all stripes) are forced to spend billions — and years — complying with invasive government rules. These in turn create an elevated “floor” that serves as the new starting point for each future labor negotiation.

Neither side in this geo-political contest is abiding by free-market principles. The difference is that while China stimulated its shipbuilding industry with state subsidies, we killed ours with overregulation. Free markets are more effective at solving problems than top-down state control, but not if those markets are choked with government red tape.

This pattern extends to other areas of the economy. The Chinese Communist Party pours billions into subsidizing telecommunications company Huawei, which makes 30% of the world’s 5G network equipment. Its closest U.S. competitor, Cisco, has a market share of roughly 5%. If Huawei takes the lead in transitioning the developing world to 5G, China will reap hundreds of billions of dollars in profit and gain enormous leverage over countries that rely on its technology and equipment.

In a truly free market, new U.S. companies would rise to the challenge of competing with Huawei. Instead – and ironically — the overregulated market we actually have is actively preventing them from doing so.

The Department of Justice Antitrust Division, for example, filed a lawsuit in January designed to block telecommunications company Hewlett Packard Enterprise from acquiring a competitor called Juniper. Together, the two companies would have more resources to challenge Cisco’s domestic market dominance (some Huawei products are banned in the U.S.). But before that can happen — and unless Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi intervenes — Hewlett Packard and Juniper will be forced to spend their time and money fighting their own government in court.

Beijing also is pursuing energy security by any means available, including long-term contracts for liquid natural gas imports, increased petroleum refining capacity, solar farms, wind, and hydro. In recent years, China’s Communist Party-controlled government has permitted one to two new coal plants every week (accounting for 95% of global coal plant construction), even as they build as many new nuclear plants as the rest of the world put together.

Making matters worse for us and better for China, former President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, placed a moratorium on LNG exports, rammed through hundreds of billions of dollars in green energy subsidies (which mostly went to purchase Chinese solar panels and electric vehicle batteries), and sold Beijing oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Moreover, thanks to Washington’s draconian environmental regulations and convoluted permitting processes, we haven’t built a coal plant since 2013, and our nuclear power generation has been stagnant for the past quarter century.

The same story keeps repeating itself: China subsidizes while America self-sabotages.

Fortunately, it’s not too late to change course. President Trump has already moved to streamline permitting for new energy projects, and has committed to slashing 10 regulations for every new one his administration creates. He’s also placed tariffs on Chinese goods, signaling that the U.S. will no longer handcuff its own companies while China cheats with theirs.

The bottom line here is that the biggest threat to American economic power isn’t China—it’s our own government’s refusal to let our businesses compete on a level playing field. If we don’t cut the red tape now, we’re handing China the energy future on a silver platter.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.

Townhall

Flareups pitting true, free-market advocates against crony capitalists are nothing new in our heavily regulated economy, with one of the latest battlefields involving fantasy sports companies.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law that long had made it illegal for consumers in the U.S. to bet on sports —  the “Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act” (“PASPA”). Notwithstanding that marketplace victory, and as I wrote here a year ago, unhealthy relationships between state regulators and certain fantasy sports companies continue to cause problems for other, usually smaller companies. It should come as no surprise that at times these crony capitalist efforts are camouflaged as pro-market measures, the proverbial “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

In a recent column, for example, a former GOP legislator wrote, “Lawmakers must recognize that not every industry requires federal interference—especially in sports betting.” While this statement appears broadly supportive of a free-market approach to fantasy sports betting — a position I happen to share — the real call to action by the author is revealed later in the opinion piece, and favors less, not more, market freedom.

In fact, the author made it very clear that he’s a fan of the likes of “FanDuel, DraftKings, ESPN Bet, BetMGM, Fanatics, Bet365, and Caesars Sportsbook,” large companies that offer fantasy sports contests (skill-based games), traditional sports betting (straight sports gambling), or both. What he is curiously not a fan of are small fantasy sports upstarts that simply seek to continue servicing their many loyal customers and growing their businesses.

Naturally, the big fantasy sports companies, such as DraftKings and FanDuel, which together control 70 percent of the marketplace, don’t like the upstarts either, and they are spending a considerable amount of time and money lobbying policymakers to try and keep them out of the marketplace.

According to the author, these newer fantasy sports companies are “shady.” Hardly. In fact, most of the smaller, daily fantasy sports companies legally provide games of skill to millions of customers, and the only “crime” these companies might seem to have committed is cutting into the profit margins of the big market incumbents. This is likely the reason the big boys are spending so much of their attention cozying up to powerful people in the regulatory state who have the authority to kick their newer competitors to the curb; unfortunately, with at least some success.

For example, in July 2023, a lobbyist with ties to the Sports Betting Alliance, a lobbying group that represents DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Fanatics Sportsbook, asked Wyoming’s attorney general to act against their upstart competition. A few months later, the state issued cease and desist orders to local competitors, even apologizing to the lobbyist for how long it took them to do so.

DraftKings’ CEO Jason D. Robins even admitted that his company is pushing for such actions, calling it an opportunity for the industry to obtain “a moment of clarity” a euphemism for crony capitalism.

Writing for Bloomberg Law, John Yun, the Executive Director of the Global Antitrust Institute and an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason University, called DraftKings and FanDuel out as “rent seekers.” He’s right — and he’s not alone in criticizing these corporate giants.

In December 2024, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) wrote to the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission raising “concerns regarding FanDuel’s and DraftKings’s conduct,” which they stated “may be violating Section 1 of the Sherman Act[‘s] prohibition on coordination to obstruct or impair competition.” They urged them “to look into these allegations to ensure that competition is protected and consumers continue to benefit from innovation and new offerings in sports entertainment.”

Sen. Lee continued in a press release, writing, “FanDuel and DraftKings didn’t get their monopoly through a merger, so now they’re trying to achieve it by arguably acting as one company…threatening innovation, limiting consumer choice, and stifling new entrants.”

DraftKings and FanDuel lobbying to advance their business interests is not really surprising. Market leaders in all economic sectors play the game, and invariably find advocates to press their position, either directly or less so under the guise of “clarity” or other euphemisms for regulatory favoritism. For now, I suppose, all we can hope for is that “truth in advertising” comes to crony capitalism.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.

Townhall

Nowhere is the difference between the Biden Administration and that of Donald J. Trump in starker contrast than its approach to firearms and the Second Amendment to our Bill of Rights.

The former President’s belief that the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed in that Amendment needed to be trimmed back was on display throughout his term in office. Biden even established in 2023 an office in the White House itself to identify and manage gun control policy actions — the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. While this office, ostensibly under the leadership of Vice President Kamala Harris, did nothing of actual substance during its short life span, it did serve to highlight the anti-Second Amendment mindset prevailing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump on the other hand, being an avid supporter of the Second Amendment, quickly upon assuming office directed new Attorney General Pam Bondi to undertake an immediate and comprehensive study of all steps taken by the Biden Administration that have the effect of infringing the Second Amendment — a road map for corrective actions over the next four years.

To further illustrate his bona fides as a pro-Second Amendment President, Trump appointed Dave Warrington, a well-known firearms-rights advocate to serve as a presidential advisor in the White House.

Trump’s break from Biden’s consistently displayed disdain for the firearms rights of law abiding citizens has been complete. Even among Republican administrations, the speed of Trump’s pro-Second Amendment policies has been unprecedented.

For example, it took five years before former President George W. Bush marshalled the courage to finally agree in 2005 to support and sign the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act”  — a law that simply provided to firearms-related businesses the same protection from lawsuits alleging misuse of a lawful product already historically available to other lawfully manufactured products such as automobiles.

President Trump, on the other hand, within days of being sworn into office signaled his open and tangible support for the lawful manufacture, sale, possession, and use of firearms.

Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel, is a well-known supporter of the Second Amendment. He will play a key role in demonstrating that support as the nation’s top law enforcement official, especially considering it is the FBI that maintains the database for the  National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

Gun control advocates have long pushed for expansion of NICS into a “universal background check” that would apply to all manner of private firearms transfers between private citizens, and not as between licensed firearms retailers (so-called “FFLs”) and consumers, as is now the case under the NICS law that has been in effect since the late 1990s.

Gun control advocates, including “GIFFORDS” are lobbying hard against Patel’s confirmation, but Trump has signaled unwavering support for the nominee, and even Washington-centric media rate his chance of confirmation as high.

Biden’s underhanded policy of reducing the number of firearms retailers by attacking them for alleged violations of regulatory paperwork requirements by Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), has come to a screeching halt in the new administration.

The list of Trump’s actions in support of gun rights is long indeed, even publicly criticizing financial institutions that have in recent years made it difficult for firearms businesses to use their services.

There is, of course, more to be done if the right to keep and bear arms is truly and in fact protected as a “privilege or immunity of citizens of the United States” by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and thereby no longer subject to the many government restrictions limiting its exercise by states such as New York, New Jersey, and California.

If during his second term, President Trump is able to appoint one or more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in the vein of a Clarence Thomas or the late Antonin Scalia, we Americans might finally and at long last enjoy the nationwide right to keep and bear arms as envisioned by our Founders.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.

The Hill

A January 2025 report by Unusual Whales, a financial data platform for retail traders, revealed how members of Congress once again beat average market returns last year. Not surprisingly, debate has resurfaced in Washington about whether it is time to pass legislation, such as that proposed by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), to ban stock trading by elected representatives.

Ossoff has championed this issue in one form or another since first being elected to the Senate in 2020, and its current, bipartisan permutation, the Ending Trading and Holdings In Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, reflects a principle with which I and a large majority of the American electorate agree. However, as former presidential candidate Ross Perot famously opined, “the devil is in the details.”

By any reasoned standard, government officials profiting from the regulations and laws they help enact constitutes a serious ethical issue. The magnitude of this problem was revealed starkly last September, when it was reported that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband sold 2,000 shares of Visa stock for $500,000 just weeks before the Justice Department sued the company’s debit card business in a lawsuit many legal experts consider unjustified. The actions by Mr. Pelosi ignited increased public concern that officials may be using their positions, and the inside information they obtain as a result, to influence the market for their own benefit.

It is not just Pelosi’s husband who appears to be a beneficiary of such maneuvering. The new Unusual Whales report shows that in 2024 one member of Congress gained an eye-popping 149 percent in stock trades — more than 124 percent greater than the S&P 500’s 2024 benchmark. While this report highlights the significance of this potential conflict of interest problem, an outright ban on members trading stocks is not the appropriate remedy.

In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act, which bars lawmakers from trading on insider information. The Pelosi scandal, however, shows why that law needs strengthening. For example, the ban must apply to representatives’ immediate family members as a way to close loopholes like the one by which Pelosi’s husband profited so handsomely.

An outright stock trading ban for all members paints with too broad a brush and would be grossly unfair. Contrary to popular belief, not all members of Congress are extraordinarily wealthy. Members earn $174,000 annually, with those in leadership positions receiving slightly more. That is, of course, a comfortable salary, but it does not represent “I don’t need to invest” wealth, especially considering the high cost of living in the Washington, D.C. environs.

Broadly speaking, the stock market remains one of the best tools with which all Americans can build their financial futures, and public servants should not be excluded from participating in it. That said, reform is necessary to address the unresolved conflicts of interest that come with congressional stock trading.

Instead of outright banning members’ stock trading, federal lawmakers should focus on improving the enforcement of the STOCK Act by strengthening its penalties — as low as $200 for a first-term violation. Such de minimus penalties may be why Business Insider’s investigation of financial disclosures found that 57 members of Congress and at least 182 top Capitol Hill staffers were late in filing their stock trades as demanded by the STOCK Act in 2020 and 2021 alone.

Increasing the STOCK Act’s penalties would go a long way toward improving members’ compliance and rooting out corruption and insider trading.

Federal decisionmakers’ proposals and lawsuits should also be subject to greater scrutiny from key congressional committees of jurisdiction — oversight that surely would help limit, if not stop actions that are either illegal or unjustly motivated by personal or political gain.

For example, if the House Judiciary Committee, on which I served during my eight years in Congress, had held the Justice Department’s feet to the fire over its seemingly baseless Visa debit card lawsuit, and demanded that it explain the reasoning behind its actions (or inactions), then the lawsuit may not have ever been filed, and the appearance or reality of Congress profiteering from such overreach would have been avoided.

Finally, incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi can (and should) establish an independent ethics panel and task it with regularly examining the financial activities of federal officials and their families.

Through stronger enforcement of existing law, Congress can better address the root of the congressional stock trading problem without unduly constraining the financial freedom of its members.

Bob Barr currently serves as president of the National Rifle Association. He represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and in the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

The recent, tragic airline-helicopter crash at Washington’s Reagan National Airport has thrust the Federal Aviation Administration into the spotlight, with its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies at the center of the controversy.  Adding urgency to the discussion are reports indicating that the airport’s extremely busy traffic control tower was understaffed at the time of the collision, a deficiency that some experts attribute to the FAA’s prioritization of diversity hiring over merit-based selection.

At the same time, the FAA is facing a class-action lawsuit alleging that it denied 1,000 would-be air traffic controllers jobs because of diversity hiring targets. Details of the long-pending litigation have resurfaced, with lead plaintiff Andrew Brigida arguing that the FAA’s focus on DEI hiring practices made an accident like this virtually inevitable.

This is precisely why it is so troubling to learn that a strong advocate for DEI is under consideration to lead the FAA.

The name of Alex Wilcox, who now heads JSX Air, has been floated as a potential nominee. As JSX CEO, Wilcox openly championed DEI, even celebrating his company’s “perfect” score from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. He also publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement, further cementing his ideological alignment with DEI priorities.

This appointment would come at a time when President Donald Trump has taken decisive action to dismantle entrenched DEI programs across the federal government.

In just two weeks, Trump stopped and has begun to reverse years of bureaucratic expansion that prioritized ideological agendas over competence and accountability. Noting that these programs divide Americans by race, waste taxpayer dollars, and lead to shameful discrimination, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management now has given federal agencies 60 days to terminate “to the maximum extent allowed by law, all federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions.” What once seemed like a bureaucratic cancer is being swiftly excised by an administration determined to restore merit-based governance and efficiency.

Nominating Wilcox, however, would undercut much of the progress toward merit-based decision-making that the Trump administration has already realized — and, considering this recent news, for what is currently the most important position in the federal government to rescind DEI orders. We cannot afford another self-inflicted wound like the one that appears to have played a role in the Reagan Airport crash.

As it is, the administration is already facing strong resistance from the pro-DEI bureaucratic state. The last thing the White House needs right now is to inadvertently undercut its own policy.

Some bureaucrats and agencies are currently playing a shell game, rebranding DEI offices under vague terms like “workplace culture initiatives” and “inclusive leadership programs.”

For example, shortly after Trump’s executive order eliminating DEI in government agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) attempted to circumvent the policy by changing job titles. To highlight just one case study, Lisa T. Boykin, formerly the ATF’s “Chief Diversity Officer,” quietly became a “Senior Executive”—with no indication that her responsibilities had changed.

Given his past history, who is to say that Wilcox would not do the same if elevated to the top post at FAA?

The resistance to Trump’s anti-DEI policy has been even more pronounced in academia, where universities reliant on federal taxpayer funds have found creative ways to maintain their DEI commitments. Northeastern University, for example, rebranded its “Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” as “Belonging in Northeastern,” calling it a “reimagined approach” fostering inclusivity while preserving the institution’s core values.

In typical DEI Doublespeak, Northeastern University spokesperson Renata Nyul stated, “While internal structures and approaches may evolve, the university’s core values remain unchanged. We believe that embracing our differences and cultivating a sense of belonging strengthens Northeastern.”  Translation: We will continue discriminating, no matter what the law says.

The moral of this story is that the entrenched nature of these programs is indicative of how resistance will continue, whether through quiet rebranding efforts, bureaucratic maneuvering, or outright defiance from agencies invested in ideological hiring and training mandates.

Ensuring that DEI programs do not simply resurface under new names will require strong leadership and a commitment to enforcing Trump’s order in both letter and spirit. Sadly, FAA-wannabe Wilcox does not appear to possess such a commitment.

The FAA appointment represents a crucial test for the Trump Administration — one it cannot afford to fail. The safety of the American public depends on a lead aviation agency that actually prioritizes merit and expertise over ideology. The Reagan Airport crash serves as a tragic reminder of what happens when those priorities are thwarted.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves as President of the NRA.

Daily Caller

It needs to be said loud and clear: murder is not a “policy choice.” Grotesquely, however, socialized medicine advocates are taking advantage of the December 4th slaying in New York City of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson to press their policy agenda.

A Generation Lab poll released last week found that 50% of college students — a demographic largely conditioned by social media — viewed accused killer Luigi Mangione either “extremely” or “somewhat” favorably. Only 19% thought the same of Thompson.

In the background of such disinformation are such books as “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans,” by Wendell Potter, Cigna’s former Vice President of Corporate Communications. In 2024, Cigna was the sixth-largest health insurance company in America, with $195 billion in revenue.

Among other things, the book instructed health executives how to survive an “ambush” interview by leftwing documentary propagandist Michael Moore, whose 2007 film “Sicko” praised Fidel Castro’s communist medical system, and itself became a major impetus for the 2010 passage of the increasingly troubled Obamacare system.

As Peter Suderman wrote last month in Reason Magazine, Obamacare’s high costs to participants hit hard because “it required coverage of a slew of federally mandated essential health benefits, regardless of whether those benefits were needed or wanted.”

Then, a spendthrift Congress (one of many) uncapped benefit subsidies in 2021 with the “American Rescue Plan Act” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and again in 2022 with the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Those actions allowed “households making up to $350,000 a year in some cases, to obtain subsidized coverage, at a cost of about $30 billion to $40 billion annually.” The subsidies expire at the end of 2025 and will present a major headache for the incoming administration of President Donald Trump.

Former Cigna official Potter now is pushing for even greater government dominance of the medical insurance industry. The Thompson murder prompted Fortune to interview him for an article late last month, “Former Cigna insurance executive says he quit after witnessing an industry that ‘puts profits over patients.’” He appears not to understand how a free-market system works, whether for medical care or MacBooks.

In the Big Government world of Obamacare, the Veterans Administration and other government-run healthcare systems operate according to political criteria, not market forces. If a government program fails to help people, it doesn’t go out of business – it throws more money at the problem, thereby increasing inflation and lowering taxpayers’ spending power, or harms taxpayers more directly by raising taxes and increasing bureaucracy. That in effect is the brick wall Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” faces as it tries to cut the bloated waste that produced an incredible $2 trillion deficit in the 2024 federal budget.

Potter, however, now decries a system that “forces patients and their doctors through a maze of approvals before getting a procedure, sometimes denying them necessary treatment.” As the reason for his resignation from Cigna in 2008, he cited a leukemia patient who denied a liver transplant because she was “too sick for the procedure.”

But what is the situation today, 17 years after Potter’s departure from Cigna? Last April, the Cleveland Clinic’s Daily News Stories headlined, “New Technology Benefits Liver Transplants.” A Dec. 2023 study in the National Library of Medicine summarized, “Advanced analytics is thus poised to transform management in LT [liver transplants], maximizing graft and patient survival.”

Such accounts are evidence of medical advances under our current system, not Potter’s utopian fantasy — one akin to Canadian Medicare, entirely run by the government. A recent study by the Frasier Institute calculated that wait times between referral and treatment in our neighbor to the North were far longer than those in the U.S., and were twice as long as patients could expect in 1993.

It should come as no surprise then, that a 2024 Ipsos poll found 42% of Canadians would jump out of their system’s non-profit lines and drive down to the United States to pay cash for care in our for-profit system – a scenario not mentioned by Potter.

While America’s health-care system is far from perfect, those clamoring for reform ought to apply the maxim from the Hippocratic Oath, First do not harm, and at least stop using the murder of a healthcare company as fodder for their policy agenda.

Bob Barr currently serves as President of the National Rifle Association. He represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

Writer Greg Steinmetz titled his 2015 book chronicling the life of Sixteenth Century German financier Jacob Fugger, “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived.” Whether a biography centuries from now will describe Elon Musk in similarly grandiose terms, as his contemporaries we will never know. Suffice to say, however, that this richest of men in this first quarter of the 21st Century will have left his mark as one of the era’s most influential individuals.

Elon Musk actually shares much in common with Jacob Fugger, notwithstanding their very different geopolitical worlds. Both Fugger and Musk are risk-takers. Both are bold and self-assured. As noted by Fugger’s biographer, the German money lender was bold to the point of being imperious.

Even more to the point perhaps, while Fugger is described by Steinmetz as one of the true architects of modern capitalism, Musk is one its most apt students, having parlayed a sound upbringing in South Africa into a business empire the components of which touch virtually every sector of government and business around the world (and beyond); including most notably the social media giant X (formerly Twitter), Tesla as the world’s preeminent proponent of electric-powered vehicles, and SpaceX which is leading the long-overdue revitalization of America’s space effort.

Fugger in his time was despised by components of what we would today accurately describe as The Establishment, especially the then-massively powerful Roman Catholic Church. In fact, Fugger’s exercise of his financial prowess and power brought the Pope to his knees and forced the Church to reverse centuries of dogma and permit what had previously been officially taboo – charging interest for loans.

In our time, Musk has come to be hated by elements of our Establishment, most particularly the mainstream media and the Democrat Party. So fearful of Musk has the Democrat establishment become that his budding friendship with Donald Trump is seen as politically sinister and evil.

For Democrats, the notion that a private citizen – Elon Musk, for example — would dare to have a say in whether our country’s representative legislature should continue its spendthrift ways unimpeded, has caused conniptions among Washington’s Democrat doyens. Far-left-wing Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is demanding answers to what she apparently views as an improper and unethical – if not worse – relationship between the multi-billionaire businessman and the President-elect.

House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York sputtered last week that Musk, in cahoots with “Extreme MAGA Republicans,” is controlling not only Trump but Speaker Mike Johnson. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in by claiming that Trump was Musk’s “puppet.”

The Lefts new strategy is to try and sow dissension between President Trump and Elon Musk.

They want to make Trump look weak by creating a narrative that says Musk is really in charge so that Trump will either break with Musk to silence the rumor, or fire musk out of jealousy. pic.twitter.com/IJhUO5Wx2J

— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) December 22, 2024

Few, if any policy leaders jumped off the Trump juggernaut plowing headlong toward Inauguration Day in reaction to the name-calling by the likes of Warren, Jeffries, and Pelosi.

For a political party that now goes berserk at the thought of a Republican president-elect who listens to advisers or counselors who might also themselves possess a degree of public policy influence, the Democrat Party has had its share of chief executives who clearly listened to such persons. President Franklin Roosevelt had his Harry Hopkins, Harry Truman his Dean Acheson, JFK his Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, proto-Democrat Nixon his Henry Kissinger, and Bill Clinton his Paul Begala.

Indeed, one of the most notable “advisers” to a sitting U.S. President was none other than Edith Wilson, wife of then-President Woodrow Wilson, who by all accounts now confirmed, actually ran the presidency for several months in 1919-1920 after her husband was severely debilitated by a stroke.

Anyone who knows Donald Trump, or not personally knowing him at least has observed how he operates, understands that he is the consummate marketeer, and that forcing him to do someone else’s bidding is a doomed undertaking. Both he and Musk are offspring of the marketplace, and both understand what a marketplace is and what it should be.

So, spare us the faux anguish over the fact that President-elect Trump actually heeds the advice of one of the world’s most prescient and bold business leaders of the early 21st Century. Remember also it could be a lot worse. Thank your lucky stars Trump is not listening to the likes of  Disney’s uber-woke CEO Bob Iger, Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun, or Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and currently is the president of the National Rifle Association.

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Verbally attack, or simply criticize in public transgenderism or the gay lifestyle, and you are roundly condemned as trans-phobic or homo-phobic. The term “pro-choice” is the favored moniker to describe those who favor legalized abortion rather than “pro-abortion.”  Those who are opposed to abortion, whether on religious, moral, or political grounds, are demeaned as “anti-choice.” Thus is contemporary left-wing culture consumed with staking out their territory as guardians of lifestyles.

Mass murders involving firearms become not examples of the need for culture control to identify and resolve cultural behaviors leading to the devaluation of life, but to the simplistic call for instrument control, that is, gun control. Virtually every incident involving gun violence, including most recently the December 16th shooting at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, is headlined by President Biden as illustrating the need for “gun control” not as a call to protect “life.”

This month, in perhaps the clearest yet personification of the Left’s disregard for principles of life, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is hailed as a true man of the people, a heroic persona even, deified to a degree Bonnie and Clyde could only hope to have aspired during their brief crime spree across America’s heartland during the bleak days of the Great Depression.

Luigi Mangione is seen through this lens of his expanding social media savvy fans as “radiant,” an “American hero,” and a modern-day “Robin Hood” – a video sensation even as he is led in shackles into a jail facility in Pennsylvania while he awaits extradition to New York where the cold-blooded murder took place with Mangione allegedly shooting his pre-selected victim in the back.

Overlooked in the case of Mangione, or purposefully ignored by his growing legion of fans, is what they would in earlier days (such as in the “Occupy Wall Street” era) have condemned as decadent — the privileged upbringing and beach bum lifestyle enjoyed and flaunted by Mangione prior to his actions on December 4th and the drafting of his rambling and semi-unintelligible “manifesto” labeling the victim CEO as a “parasite.”

The alleged gunman’s disgusting characterization of his victim – in reality a married father of two teenaged sons – has been not only echoed but glorified elsewhere in the days following the cowardly attack, further cementing the lack of human compassion for life prevalent among many young adults.

According to a just-released poll, 41% of those aged 18 to 29 consider Mangione’s apparent assassination of Thompson to be “acceptable.”

It gets worse.

One so-called “internet personality,” Taylor Lorenz, actually and openly celebrated the murder. In a befuddled attempt to defend her glorification of the healthcare company executive’s murder, Lorenz claimed that her expressed “joy” at his murder actually reflected her belief in the “sanctity of life” because of the manner by which insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare decide not to cover certain procedures.

Another Gen. Z individual has employed TikTok to present a “walking tour” of the areas connected to the United Healthcare murder – a project he reportedly thought would be “funny.”

The depravity of the Left is even more aptly demonstrated in a set of playing cards depicting CEOs who should be targeted, with all the cards imprinted with a human silhouette as a shooting target, reasonably implying they should be shot.

With some three-quarters of Gen Z-ers supporting legal abortion, it should surprise few that among this large segment of young adults in America, the murder of a corporate executive is not only considered no big deal, but to some degree even “acceptable.”

A recent, positive-themed study of Gen Z values described this group as one that favors “a more inclusive and accepting society where everyone feels comfortable.”  Everyone, that is, except those deemed, in Mangione’s words, “parasites” or, reflecting the strong pro-abortion bent of this age demographic, those who favor the life of unborn babies.

Biden’s gun-control message following the Madison, Wisconsin school shooting did express sorrow for the families of the victims. This was far more rhetorical compassion than the President devoted to Brian Thompson’s murder, a tragedy that was met by silence from the White House, where apparently concern for “life” depends on the context in which life is taken.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as President of the National Rifle Association.