The End of COVID Boosters for Healthy Adults?!, Target, Walmart to Raise Prices Due to Tariffs?, More Government Workers Murdered in Mexico (The Five for 05/21/25)
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There’s plenty of news…so let’s dive in.
[one]
The FDA is starting to wonder if getting your 37th COVID booster is a good idea. Until further testing has been done, COVID boosters are only being approved for at-risk populations.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said it plans to require new clinical trials for approval of annual COVID-19 boosters for healthy Americans under age 65, effectively limiting them to older adults and those at risk of developing severe illness.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and top U.S. vaccines regulator Vinay Prasad wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the benefit of repeated annual shots for healthy adults was uncertain after several years of the virus circulating and vaccines being available.
They also said that the U.S. was an outlier among high-income nations in recommending yearly shots for healthy adults.
"At-risk Americans can be reassured that they will be covered by such approvals. At the same time, we want more evidence at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration," Prasad told scientists at the FDA during a livestreamed presentation.
"We want to know more about what these products are doing, especially as we enter the seventh, eighth and ninth dose," he said.
[two]
A spokesperson for President Trump is pushing the talking point that prices will not go up at major retailers due to tariffs.
But reality on the ground is starting to look like it’s going the other way.
On Monday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran stated that “over time, Walmart will be able to get its Chinese suppliers and other suppliers to eat the tariffs” and “that’ll happen over time. In the short run, can there be some volatility in prices the way there was volatility in financial markets? Yeah. But, over time, we have all the leverage. We have all the cards. And that means, just like last time, China will eat the tariffs.”
Host Greta Van Susteren asked, “How do we reconcile the fact that, while getting manufacturing up, you’ve got like the CEO from Walmart saying that Walmart can’t keep up with the increased costs, which, of course, means the consumer, an everyday American who goes into a big store like Walmart. So, how do we address that?”
Miran answered, “I think it’s pretty obvious from the first term that there was no evidence, at all, of macroeconomic inflation as a result of the president’s policies. In fact, it was pretty clear that China paid for the tariffs in the first term and that inflation stayed low, inflation stayed very moderate in President Trump’s first term and it really took off during President Biden’s administration because of their reckless fiscal policies. But that’s besides the point. Now, in the last three months, we’ve now got three months in a row of below-expectation inflation coming out, core inflation, on an annual basis, in the last month, in April, was the lowest level since March of 2021. So, there’s no evidence so far in the historical record or in the recent data of an acceleration in inflation. Now, over time, Walmart will be able to get its Chinese suppliers and other suppliers to eat the tariffs by threatening to move elsewhere. That happens because United States importers are flexible about where we get stuff. We can either make stuff at home or we can import from other countries that treat us better. That leverage means that we can make others absorb the costs. Now, that’ll happen over time. In the short run, can there be some volatility in prices the way there was volatility in financial markets? Yeah. But, over time, we have all the leverage. We have all the cards. And that means, just like last time, China will eat the tariffs.”
Yeah, but to “make stuff at home,” would require YEARS of infrastructure build. It’s possible that Vietnam and other nations might pick up some of the manufacturing to increase their own economies…but this is a vast oversimplification of tariffs.
Even if you’re a pro-tariff person…this is simply a terrible defense of the policy.
And as far as increasing prices…the Walmart CEO is hinting that prices are going up, due to economic realities of the policy…and no cable news pundit is gonna be able to fix that.
"We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible, but given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren't able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,"
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon
UPDATE: Target announced a quarterly sales slump this morning , and will be considering raising prices as “a very last resort” due to tariff policies. Toolmaker Black & Decker, Adidas and toy maker Mattell have already increased prices.
[three]
Another dicey meeting is happening as we speak in the White House.
A meeting between President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa which the South African leader said was intended to “reset” the relationship between both governments after months of tensions appeared to go off the rails when Trump confronted Ramaphosa with inflammatory videos and news articles which he alleged to be evidence of “genocide” against white South Africans.
The Oval Office session had been largely calm and filled with complements delivered from both Trump and Ramaphosa when the American leader was asked what it would take for Ramaphosa to convince him that no such “genocide” was taking place.
Trump directed staff to play a video, which included footage of Julian Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, in which Malema repeatedly exhorts followers at a rally.to “kill the farmer” and “kill the Boer.”
After the video was finished, Ramaphosa told Trump that Malema, while a member of his country’s parliament, doesn’t wield any authority and isn’t part of the government.
“We have a multi party democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves, political parties to adhere to various policies. And in many cases, or in some cases, those policies do not go along with government policy. Our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying, even in the Parliament, and they're a small minority party which is allowed to exist in terms of our Constitution,” he said.
Continuing, the South African leader admitted that there is “criminality” in his country that has seen many people, both Black and white, killed as a result.
In February, President Trump cut HIV/AIDS funding to South Africa over the nation’s policies toward Afrikaner farmers, which likely prompted today’s sit-down.
[four]
A member of Congress is somehow being attacked in the corporate press…for being an alleged victim of a sex crime.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) during a Tuesday hearing on private spaces showed a blurry screenshot of her “naked silhouette” that she said was recorded without her consent.
The House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing she chaired was the latest instance of Mace using the position of her office in a highly unusual way to amplify accusations against her ex-fiance and his business associates, who have denied wrongdoing.
“Freedom is not a theory. It is the right to breathe. It is the right to dress and undress, to sleep without someone’s camera filming your naked body. The Founders wrote liberty in parchment, but hidden cameras erase it in pixels,” Mace said. “I speak not just as a lawmaker, but as a survivor.”
Displayed behind the congresswoman was a poster board showing a wide-angle security camera view of a living room, with a blurred human figure appearing to come out of a doorway — an image that she teased ahead of time with a post on the social platform X saying that she would be “going there” to “show my naked body” captured on one of the videos.
“Behind me is a screenshot from one of the videos I found of myself. The yellow circle, my naked silhouette, is my naked body,” Mace said. “I didn’t know that I had been filmed. I didn’t give my consent. I didn’t give my permission.”
She urged lawmakers to advance her Sue VOYEURS Act to create a civil right of action and the Stop VOYEURS Act to expand the federal prohibition on video voyeurism.
Mace first alleged that the men made and kept secretly recorded videos of women and girls, including herself, through hidden cameras placed at a rental property co-owned by her ex-fiance in a stunning House floor speech in February. Some of her allegations extended to more serious crimes such as sexual assault.
The key line in this article being “used her office to attack her ex-fiancee and his business associates.”
Oh, you mean because they were allegedly COMMITTING FELONIES?!
I don’t know much about Mace, because I’m not one of those weirdos so glued to politics that members of Congress seem like fantasy baseball picks to manage…but how could this be anything other than victim blaming?
[five]
The string of violence against politicians and government workers in Mexico continued yesterday, when two more victims were gunned down.
Two top aides of Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada were shot dead after being ambushed by gunmen on a motorbike in a daytime attack in the city center on Tuesday.
The victims were the mayor’s private secretary, Ximena Guzmán, and an adviser to Brugada, José Muñoz, according to a statement from the city.
The assassinations have sent shockwaves through Mexico’s capital, widely regarded as an oasis of relative security in a country plagued by violence. Political violence has become common in many parts of Mexico, where scores of local political candidates have been assassinated in killings usually linked to drug cartels seeking to exert influence.
Initial reports indicated Guzmn had been driving to work and stopped on a busy avenue in downtown Mexico City to pick up her colleague, an official at the federal prosecutor’s office said.
Muñoz was approached by two gunmen on a motorbike who shot and killed him in the street. The attackers then fired at least four shots at Guzmán inside the vehicle, killing her.
Authorities have not yet given a motive for the attack although security experts say it appeared to be a hit carried out by organized crime.
Until the next one,
-sth