Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Jan. 26
The Washington Post says RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine campaign will make Americans sicker
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already inflicted great damage upon America’s vaccine infrastructure, yet the health and human services secretary is only getting started. His next target is the system that makes vaccines economically viable.
Vaccines are expensive to develop, but for them to be effective, they must also be cheap so that large populations can access them. That means manufacturers must operate at slim margins, making them particularly vulnerable to expensive lawsuits.
In the 1980s, litigation was driving drug companies out of vaccine production. While immunizations save lives, they also inevitably come with rare and potentially serious side effects. That’s why, in 1986, Congress created a program to compensate people injured by shots at no risk to manufacturers, funded by a small tax on vaccines. While far from perfect, the arrangement has become the bedrock for American vaccine innovation.
In recent weeks, Kennedy fired four of the nine members on the little-known Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccinations (ACCV), which advises the government on which injuries should be eligible for compensation.
“HHS has the authority to make changes to advisory committee membership,” an HHS spokesperson told us. “Secretary Kennedy remains committed to a strong, transparent, and independent ACCV that brings the right expertise for this critical work.” The department will announce new members later.
Will he stack the committee with cranks who would bless efforts by Kennedy to allow compensation for autism, despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines do not cause the condition? This could lead to more than $100 billion in estimated awards. The current reserve is just $4 billion.
If the fund goes insolvent, or if special masters who review injury claims — known colloquially as the Vaccine Court — are not willing to go along, claimants would likely turn to civil court for their grievances. Those lawsuits might not succeed, but they would chill pharmaceutical innovation.
None of this is to say the system works perfectly. Even fierce defenders of vaccines agree that it takes too long to adjudicate injury claims, largely because federal law caps the number of special masters at eight who handle the program’s growing caseload.
Given Kennedy’s long history of attacking the Vaccine Court, it’s doubtful his real goal is to make it operate more efficiently. More likely, his objective is to return to the days when manufacturers saw immunizations as risky ventures. That would be a boon for Kennedy’s fellow trial lawyers, but it would make Americans sicker and more vulnerable to contagion.
Jan. 25
The New York Times says giving the U.S. government impunity will result in more violence against citizens
The federal government owes Americans a thorough investigation and a truthful accounting of the Saturday morning shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti on a Minneapolis street. When the government kills, it has an obligation to demonstrate that it has acted in the public interest. Instead, the Trump administration is once again engaged in a perversion of justice.
Mere hours after Mr. Pretti died, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, declared without offering evidence that Mr. Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official, offered his own assessment: “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
These unfounded and inflammatory judgments pre-empt the outcome of an investigation, which the Department of Homeland Security has promised. They also appear wholly inconsistent with several videos recorded at the scene.
Those videos showed that Mr. Pretti had nothing but a phone in his hands when he was tackled by Border Patrol agents, and that he never drew the gun he was carrying (and reportedly had a license to carry). Indeed, the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti moments before a different agent shot him from behind. Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and otherorganizations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration’s description of the killing.
The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.
Even worse is that all of this feels so terribly familiar. Earlier this month, a federal agent shot and killed another Minneapolis resident, Renee Good. In that case, too, the Trump administration has demonized the victim and has blocked a state investigation of the killing.
Truth is a line of demarcation between a democratic government and an authoritarian regime. Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good are dead. The American people deserve to know what happened.
The temperature in Minneapolis is dangerously high. There is an urgent need for the federal agents deployed to the city to step back and take a breath before more Americans are hurt or killed. Those protesting the Trump administration have an equal obligation to avoid violence.
The American people also need answers about whether federal agents acted inappropriately, and the behavior of the Trump administration means that it will be impossible to trust any federal investigation that it conducts. President Trump and his appointees have demonstrated themselves to be unconcerned with truth and willing to lie to serve their own interests. Congress therefore must step in. The Constitution vests it with the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas and demand answers.
Congress ought to investigate both the circumstances of the recent killings in Minneapolis and the broader conduct of the federal agencies engaged in Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, including their treatment of peaceful protesters. The video evidence shows that the incident that ended in Mr. Pretti’s death began when a federal agent lunged at a protester and knocked her to the ground. There are many similar videos and documented instances of federal agents using unnecessary violence against people who are peacefully protesting or documenting events — both behaviors protected under the First Amendment.
Congress has the power to hold the administration accountable through its control of federal spending. A pending bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security offers a crucial opportunity to perform scrutiny and impose necessary guardrails, such as funding for body cameras.
The federal government also has sought to prevent investigations by the state of Minnesota. This must end. A federal judge in Minnesota issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday evening, at the behest of the state, barring federal agencies from destroying evidence related to Mr. Pretti’s killing. The need for such an order is both evident and extraordinary.
“The credibility of ICE and D.H.S. are at stake,” Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican increasingly at odds with Mr. Trump, posted on social media on Saturday. “There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth.”
The Trump administration has made no attempt to calm the waters in Minneapolis. It is a disgrace that the first public comment by Mr. Trump in the wake of Mr. Pretti’s death was to post a picture on social media of what he described as “the gunman’s gun.” Stephen Miller, arguably Mr. Trump’s most influential adviser, wrote on social media, without offering evidence, that Mr. Pretti was “an assassin.”
It is premature to reach conclusions about what exactly happened on that Minneapolis street. The Trump administration should not have done so, and we will not do so. What is clear, however, is that the federal government needs to re-establish public faith in the agencies and officers who are carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. If the administration is allowed to act with impunity and avoid even the most basic accountability, the result will be more violence.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/opinion/alex-pretti-minneapolis-shooting-border-patrol.html
Jan. 23
The Wall Street Journal says a $1.5 trillion military budget is less expensive than war with China
President Trump likes to take credit for persuading NATO to spend 5% of GDP on defense, but in 2025 he didn’t ask Congress to meet that target. That changed this month as he said he’ll propose a military budget of $1.5 trillion. It’s the right decision for a world of proliferating threats.
For “the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times,” he wrote on Truth Social, “our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars.”
Yes, the U.S. already spends more on defense in dollars than other major powers. But the world is more dangerous than any time since Hitler and Tojo were marching through Europe and Asia. China and Russia are working together against the U.S. wherever they can. They’re helping anti-American regimes in North Korea, Iran and Latin America.
Most ominous, new technologies are proliferating in ways that threaten the U.S homeland. These include hypersonic missiles, space and cyber weapons, drones, and as ever nuclear weapons. All of this is before AI is weaponized in multiple ways.
China is embarking on the largest military buildup since Germany in the 1930s. Its navy ship count is larger than America’s, with an expanding network of bases around the world. It is building nuclear weapons fast, with the delivery systems to threaten American cities. A 2024 report by a blue-ribbon panel of defense experts makes for harrowing reading about our vulnerability in the next war.
Deterring these threats—and defeating them if war comes—requires more money than we are now spending. The U.S. is devoting about 3% of GDP to defense. That’s roughly the same as during the height of Bill Clinton’s peace dividend in 2000, and half what it was at the height of Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup. An additional $500 billion would get close to 5% of GDP and the NATO target.
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But hasn’t the U.S. military shown, in Iran and Venezuela, that it is unmatched? Yes, and brilliantly so, against small powers when we can dominate space and the skies, and use our experience in combined arms operations. Going up against China, or a multiple front conflict, is far less certain.
Since Barack Obama’s budget sequestration in 2013, the Pentagon has had to make ugly trade-offs with declining real resources. This was only briefly interrupted by one-time budget increases in President Trump’s first term. The services raid force size and readiness to fund new equipment, which too often is then pared back or canceled to save more money. Replacing an aging nuclear triad is a generational expense, and forget about a “Golden Dome” missile defense on current spending plans.
The U.S. military is too small to prevail decisively in a war with a peer, let alone deter another at the same time. A two-war standard has fallen out of fashion in both parties, but it’s the realist position. A Taiwan crisis that ensnared the U.S. would be an opportunity for Vladimir Putin to snatch the Baltic states or North Korea to move on the South.
The active-duty Army is now roughly the size that Mr. Obama wanted for his come-home-America worldview (450,000). The U.S. Navy battle force is stuck at about 300 ships, despite the urgent need to grow. Tails in the Air Force fighter fleet? About half the Cold War inventory.
One can argue that the U.S. can compensate with technology, but Ukraine has exposed that wish. The billions of private capital flowing into defense tech will help, but the U.S. still isn’t buying and operating unmanned platforms at scale.
Download the U.S. Navy’s reports on accidents during a recent carrier strike group deployment to the Red Sea. The damage included shooting down one of our own fighter jets and a carrier fender bender with a civilian ship. The investigations reveal undermanned departments and under-trained sailors, who appear to have grown accustomed to operating that way.
Even the Caracas raid carries a warning. Those jets that suppressed enemy air defenses? The Biden Administration tried to retire a chunk of the Growler fleet, until Congress blocked that self-defeating penny pinching.
The opponents of spending more on defense make two main points: The Pentagon wastes too much of what it now spends, and the U.S. can’t afford it. On the first point, we’re all for making hard choices, and the Pentagon is making progress in reforming weapons production and purchasing. New contractors like Anduril will make a difference, especially if Congress prods the Pentagon to shape up.
As for affording it, defense is now less than 13% of the federal budget, though it is the most fundamental duty of government. A cradle-to-grave entitlement state won’t look so comfortable if America has to fight another war, never mind loses one. The real choice today is between guns and runaway entitlements.
A $1.5 trillion budget request will be a heavy political lift, and to sell it Mr. Trump will have to level with the public that the U.S. military isn’t as dominant as he has claimed. He’ll have allies on Capitol Hill if he makes the case. The best way to go down as a peacemaker is by building a military no one wants to fight.
Jan. 21
The St. Louis-Post Dispatch says Republicans in Congress should commit to stopping Trump from taking Greenland
President Donald Trump’s renewed, bizarre obsession with taking control of Greenland — and more to the point, his refusal to rule out using military force to do it — is straining America’s ties with its NATO allies to the breaking point, no doubt to the great cheer of the despots who rule Russia and China. Add to that Trump’s announcement of huge new tariffs against our allies as punishment for their resistance and it’s clear that Americans’ lives could soon become both more expensive and less safe.
The Americans potentially facing economic and even military chaos because of one unstable man’s raging id include, of course, Missourians. So where are our elected voices of reason to restrain this lunacy?
Most of the Republicans in our state’s congressional delegation, like most of the Republicans who control Congress, have publicly said little lately regarding the topic the whole world is nervously talking about. With the post-World War II global order hanging in the balance, they at least owe their constituents assurances that they won’t allow Trump to carry out his reckless threats.
NATO has been the most successful military alliance in human history, maintaining relative peace and security in Europe and North America for almost eight decades now because of one simple principle: collective defense. Any adversary considering an attack on any NATO member knows it would be considered an attack on the entire alliance of (currently) 32 countries. This is the primary reason none of NATO’s signatory nations has faced a conventional military invasion since the end of World War II.
Trump, long contemptuous of our fellow democracies, has often chipped at the edges of that alliance. Now he threatens to shatter it from within.
Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory under Denmark, a founding NATO member. Trump for years has mused about buying or otherwise acquiring the massive Arctic island. But lately, he appears to be doing more than musing.
Trump now says the U.S. “must” take over Greenland because of its strategic importance, perched across the Arctic Circle from Russia and China. But the U.S. already has a significant invited military presence in Greenland for that very reason. Unless Trump is intent on renaming the country after himself (would anyone be surprised at this point?), it’s unclear why U.S. ownership of it should be so crucial.
Loopy as purchasing Greenland sounds, Trump’s more threatening comments lately about taking it by force are nothing to laugh off. He has called U.S. acquisition an “absolute necessity” that he would undertake “the easy way or the hard way.” He reportedly has ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draw up contingency plans for a possible invasion. Even in official public statements, the White House says a military takeover isn’t out of the question.
An American attack against a fellow NATO member would put our allies in an impossible position. It would likely end America’s role in the alliance and perhaps even destroy it completely, to the detriment of not only America but the world.
Even entertaining this stunt is a new height of irresponsibility, even from this president. And while some congressional Republicans, including Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, have publicly embraced Trump’s Greenland obsession generally, there seems to be little specific appetite in Congress for an invasion. So why aren’t more of them standing up and forcefully saying, This cannot be on the table — period?
A few hearty Republicans have, to their credit, preemptively pushed back. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called Trump’s threats “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., predicts that his fellow Republicans in both chambers would impeach and remove Trump in response to a Greenland invasion.
They should all be saying that, loud and clear. But for the most part, congressional Republicans have publicly said little about Trump’s threat to invade a NATO ally.
Does Sen. Josh Hawley think it’s not a real possibility, even after what we just saw in Venezuela? Is Rep. Ann Wagner confident that a president who is eagerly militarizing the streets of Minneapolis will respect the autonomy of an ice-covered island?
And is anyone truly banking on the psychological stability of a president who suggested to the prime minister of Norway, also a NATO ally, that part of this is about his personal pique at that country’s failure to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? (The Norwegian government doesn’t even have that power, but whatever.)
Even discussing taking Greenland by force is objectively insane. The threat alone is already endangering NATO and, consequently, the world. But no one should assume that means Trump won’t do it. Missourians and the rest of America should demand that congressional Republicans publicly commit to ensuring he doesn’t.
House and Senate members’ Washington, D.C., offices can be reached through the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_1d4814a3-6a48-429e-b22b-b062f1836717.html
Jan. 26
The Guardian says the U.S. must be rescued from Trump's authoritarianism
Following the fatal shooting earlier this month of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, his colleagues received reassurance that they continued to enjoy “federal immunity” for their actions. “Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony,” the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, had previously stated. “No city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”
Words have consequences. Ms Good, a US citizen and mother of three children, had in fact been attempting to drive away from a protest in Minneapolis, where ICE’s deportation snatch squads have terrorised migrants and those who have attempted to defend their rights. On Saturday, in the same city, the same quasi-paramilitary force was responsible for a second shocking death. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot multiple times in the back after being wrestled to the ground and pepper-sprayed.
Mobile phone footage demonstrates that Mr Pretti, like Ms Good, represented no threat. Contrary to scurrilous claims by senior members of the Trump administration, he was holding a phone, not a gun, before he was overpowered. His killing, which occurred after he attempted to assist a fellow protester who was being manhandled, amounted to a summary street execution by security forces. As anger erupted across Minneapolis, federal officers then reportedly prevented state investigators from accessing the scene of the shooting.
As Trumpism seeks to impose a new authoritarian reality on the United States, Mr Pretti’s brutal death feels like a moment of reckoning. Pledges to shut down the US’s southern border, and to deport undocumented migrants, undoubtedly played a part in winning Donald Trump a second term. But the US president’s determination to wage urban warfare with a force that resembles a secret police – and his indifference to the law as he does so – is generating a widespread backlash that includes at least some of his own supporters. In a recent New York Times poll, almost two-thirds of respondents said they disapproved of ICE tactics.
Amid the growing public outrage, and with treacherous midterm elections due in November, some senior Republicans have begun to sense which way the wind is blowing. Some are now demanding a proper investigation into Mr Pretti’s killing, and the future funding of ICE has been brought into question. Mr Trump, having initially described Mr Pretti as a “gunman”, has since stated that his administration was “reviewing everything” regarding his death.
It would, of course, be foolish to place any faith in these words. Shortly before Mr Pretti was killed, it was widely reported that an FBI agent had resigned after being blocked from investigating the shooting of Ms Good on 7 January. But Republican unease and burgeoning nationwide protests suggest that Saturday’s tragedy could yet function as a cross-party wake-up call if Congress can summon up the moral courage to act.
With impunity, masked agents have acted with lethal and lawless violence in Minneapolis. With the connivance of the White House, their actions have been defended with assertions that most of the country has been able to see are false. In such a dark moment for democracy in the US, a different, decent America must now find ways and means to reassert itself.
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