New Surgeon General Isn't a Doctor, "Muslim Only" City Has HOA in a Mosque?, Politicians in Mexico Murdered at Alarming Rate (The Five for 05/13/25)
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Let’s dive into the news.
[one]
The future of the crypto industry in the U.S. is currently being played as a political bargaining chip.
The cryptocurrency industry, riding high amid the friendliest Washington environment in its history, just suffered its first major setback of the Trump era.
Senate Democrats’ move Thursday to reject an industry-backed crypto bill delivered a significant blow to the digital asset lobby’s standing on Capitol Hill, where its agenda suddenly appears to be on wobbly ground.
The crypto bill may still have a path forward. But the industry’s effort to influence policymakers on both sides of the aisle with hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending is running up against sharp partisan fissures in Congress as Democrats look for new avenues to resist President Donald Trump.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has been dubbed the Senate’s “crypto queen” and helped lead a series of negotiations to win over Democratic holdouts ahead of this week’s vote.
The setback illustrates the challenge of bipartisan policymaking in the age of Trump 2.0. Unlike in their push to pass a tax-cutting megabill, Republicans need Democratic votes to advance industry-friendly crypto legislation through the Senate, and it’s proving to be a divisive issue on the left.
Many Democrats — including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York — have warmed up to crypto in recent years and courted the industry’s campaign cash, raising hopes that it could be one of the few areas ripe for bipartisan dealmaking this Congress. But progressive lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have remained staunch opponents of GOP-led efforts to legislate on crypto, and concerns about the Trump family’s crypto ties have loomed large over the policymaking efforts in recent weeks. It has all come to a head as Schumer is still reeling from the backlash to his decision not to force a government shutdown in March.
A week prior to the vote, the Democratic Senate leader privately urged his colleagues during a caucus meeting not to commit to supporting the bill and use their leverage to force additional changes. Other senators, including Warren, raised concerns about passing the industry-backed crypto legislation as the Trump family deepens its financial entanglements in the digital assets sector.
[two]
The new Surgeon General, Casey Means, was never a full fledge doctor.
Commentator Laura Loomer, normally a big Trump supporter/MAGA mouthpiece, took to Twitter for a scathing, and well researched rant.
Posted to Twitter:
You’re so full of s*** @calleymeans You are a PR spin master (funny how you never talk about your career in PR and crisis management) and you are threatened by my access to President Trump and the fact that White House officials called me to discuss the posts I made about your sister.
Why? Because nobody who works for Trump showed him any of these receipts on your degenerate sister. I was told your sister has hired you to do crisis PR and that you are paying the right wing podcasters who are giving her endorsements despite her lack of qualifications.
Maybe you should sue me and we will find out in discovery. You are lashing out because your lies have actually made their way to the President. Accuse me of taking money from whoever you want. You’re on video admitting you are a NEVER TRUMPER. You and your sister both admit to RECREATIONAL DRUG USE.
Your sister lied about the real reason why she didn’t finish residency. She said it’s because the medical profession is “corrupt”. Today, we learned the real reason. Her colleagues said your sister @CaseyMeansMD has a severe anxiety disorder which caused her to not finish her residency. Is this why her patients were not getting better? Is it because she was using Psilocybin as she admitted in her own newsletter? Psilocybin is illegal. Psilocybin is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule I drugs, which include heroin and LSD, have a high potential for abuse and serve no legitimate medical purpose in the United States.
Your sister calls these drugs “plant medicine”. It appears that you and your sister have both recreationally used controlled substances. Does President Trump know you and your sister recreationally use Psilocybin? Why would we want a US Surgeon General who uses controlled substances recreationally according to her own newsletter? Isn’t she also pregnant? Yikes. Poor child. Could you and your sister even pass a random drug test? I could. Let’s compare results today. Name the place for the drug test and I will pay for your travel.
You said your entire health journey began after a psychedelic trip on drugs. You are just another Never Trump grifter trying to make money off of MAGA. I’ve been with Trump since day one. Where were you in 2016? Getting high on shrooms?
Loomer posted the following screenshots as evidence:
I'm no fan of Laura Loomer, but I'm with her on this one. Means’ sketchy record, dependence on psychedelics, whack job new ageism and lack of a medical license are all major issues here.l, even though I'm somewhat aligned with her views on health.
On the other side of the coin, I do think there are medical benefits to psychedelics, and the research is pointing more and more to the help they can bring to people with serious medical issues.
There's also mounting evidence Casey Means it's a whack job. President Trump is SUPER anti drug…and known for making decisions quickly. It's quite possible Means wasn't fully vetted, and Trump often changes his mind. I would be happy to see her quickly exit the administration.
[three]
A clip from the Righteous & Rich Podcast is going viral over plans by real estate developer Sam Amin to build a town where the HOA fees can only be paid through a Mosque, in order to keep any non-Muslims out.
So we're still debating on the name, but it's gonna be something Muslim name and a village attached to it, right? The names of the streets, Zi, like all the great conquerors, like people need to Google those conquerors. And then we want to have different sections like on the Lucia, this, that like all our.
Past glories and we wanna bring it back the way, what we're doing, brother. Um, like you cannot make it exclusive, like non-Muslims not allowed, yeah, are not allowed. What we're doing, there's something called association fee, I don't know what it's called in Dubai, like your maintenance fee that you pay your lead, cutting the service fee to cut the grass, to remove the snow and whatnot.
So that service fee will put there 75% of the service fee. Paying goes to the Maji brother. We're putting an application now where we're selecting the names of the streets in United States of America.
I’m no legal expert, but my gut says this has to violate a score of U.S. laws. The corporate press is far more critical of Christianity than Islam…but imagine of there was a “Southern Baptists only” subdivision being constructed in Birgmingham, AL.
It’s not ethical to gatekeep housing based on religious beliefs.
[four]
One story going viral on social media this week points the finger at an unlikely villain in the fertility crisis…car seat laws.
The Institute for Family Studies reports:
If a new working paper from Jordan Nickerson and David H. Solomon is to be believed, this kind of vehicle Tetris is more than a mild annoyance for many American families. The study finds that when the law requires both of a family’s two existing kids to be in car seats, the family becomes less likely to have a third child. Among women ages 18–35 with two kids, about 9.36% give birth each year, but having both the older kids bound by car-seat laws reduces that by about 0.73 percentage points.
Most of the time, these parents seem to be forgoing, not just delaying, another birth. And more and more parents have faced this constraint over time: Car-seat laws only began in the 1980s, but today, the average U.S. state doesn’t let kids ride with just a seat belt until after their seventh birthday.
The study is carefully designed and worth taking seriously, though some limitations—and the sheer complexity of the undertaking—also warrant caution.
If I tell you that car-seat laws correlate with reduced fertility, your first instinct might be that the relationship is spurious. Perhaps the adoption of aggressive car-seat laws and a preference for smaller families are both driven by the same underlying cultural factors, for instance—especially the over-the-top "safetyism" that makes parenthood so labor-intensive these days. The study’s key strength is that it goes out of its way to address such concerns. It looks specifically at situations where a family has two kids and state law requires both to be in car seats, and checks to see if something is going on with such families that isn’t happening to similar families not facing this problem.
This is really stupid. As the parent of a very tall six-year-old, I cannot see, from a practical standpoint, why she still needs to be in a stupid booster seat at age eight.
There’s also next to no possibility of reversing such a stupid law.
[five]
Two different candidates for Mayor in Mexico’s upcoming elections have been murdered since Sunday.
Gunmen killed a mayoral candidate from Mexico’s governing party in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and four others who accompanied her, the second such local candidate killing in the state ahead of the June 1 election, authorities confirmed Monday.
There were reports later Monday that two federal agents were killed in another part of the state.
The attack on candidate Yesenia Lara Gutiérrez of the Morena party occurred Sunday when she was leading a caravan of supporters through Texistepec. Three more people were wounded.
Veracruz Gov. Rocío Nahle, also of the Morena party of President Claudia Sheinbaum, said Monday that Lara Gutiérrez’s daughter was among those killed.
Texistepec is a town of 20,000 southwest of the important petroleum industry port of Coatzacoalcos.
“No (elected) position is worth dying for,” Nahle said in a press conference Monday, where she promised justice.
“All of the state’s power will be present in coming days so that the elections are free and democratic,” she said.
At a wake Monday in Texistepec, family and friends mourned Lara Gutiérrez and spoke about the fear the violence stirred around the election.
“We can’t continue with the insecurity, we’re tired of all of this, this is terrorism,” said supporter Joaquín Fonseca. “There are five people dead, not one. We’re living the worst of the terrorism.”
No suspects have been named, but it’s pretty obvious that this is a case of drug cartels removing any political candidate from the equation.
The federal government can promise a “free and fair” election with the presence of national troops at polling stations…but the candidates people might have chosen…are in the ground.
Until the next one,
-sth