☕️ CANDY CRIMES ☙ Tuesday, January 14, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Laken Riley Act headed toward passage and progs upset; Fetterman trip to Trump; tale of two special sessions; Florida preps to deport; British covid inquiry in news; worst company, best result; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! We are now INSIDE a week, with only six days remaining till the Inauguration. I and my beautiful wife Michelle (not to be confused with the subject of the first part of today’s post) will leave for chilly Washington D.C. on Sunday morning and plan to attend Monday morning’s swearing-in. I am not complaining, but the weather is not fair for Floridians. Apart from that we are bursting with excitement. Today’s terrific roundup includes: Laken Riley Act passes House and is poised to pass the Senate making some partisan Democrats upset; vaccine injured Senator travels to Mar-a-Lago; a tale of two special sessions; Florida preps for mass deportations and DeSantis threatens progressive officials; British covid inquiry finally digs into the jabs; and the very worst things are happening to the pharma company that most deserves it.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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The New York Times’ Michelle Golberg frantically scribbled an overwrought op-ed published yesterday under the dark and ominous title, “Democrats Will Regret Helping to Pass the Laken Riley Act.” Regret! Revenge! Other R-words! But, as the vast majority of comments to Michelle’s musings showed, the Act’s passage in the House and its likely passage in the Senate is very good news for America.

Sponsored in the Senate by Democrat John Fetterman (D-Pa.), the Act is named for a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student and devout Christian who was brutally assaulted and tragically strangled to death by a repeatedly arrested, released, and re-released illegal immigrant from Venezuela.

You’ll be forgiven for not knowing much about the Laken Riley Act. Like an overweight ballerina, corporate media has been ponderously balancing between talking enough about the Act to frighten low-information Democrats like Michelle Golberg, but also not talking about any of the Act’s particulars, since any sane American would instantly agree with the details.

There are two main parts of this “cruel and misguided” bill that terrify Michelle. The first part is mandatory ICE detention for any illegal alien arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting. Maybe you, like me, thought things already worked that way. But no. So there’s been a tsunami of illegal alien shoplifting gangs, petty theft teams, and burglary squads — but local jurisdictions keep letting them go.

The thought that sanctuary states might have to stop letting crooks go was what scared Michelle Goldberg the most. She wailed that the…

Behold, the kind of soupy logic that apparently qualifies writers for publication in the world’s alleged top newspaper. In other words, Michelle is scared racist and xenophobic cops will start going around falsely accusing six-year-old Venezuelans of stealing high-fructose corn syrup sticks. You there! Drop that O’Henry and lay on the ground!

Okay, Michelle, sure. Now it’s time for your little lie down.

And yet, mandatory ICE detention for thieving illegal aliens is not particularly exciting, even for Democrats, as Goldberg —after crying about it for three paragraphs— ultimately acknowledged (“there’s little political upside in defending the rights of undocumented shoplifters,” she glumly admitted).

But the second main part of the Act that Michelle complained about is much more interesting and innovative. The law would authorize state attorneys general to sue the federal government whenever federal immigration enforcement or failures to enforce harmed the state or its residents, including financial harms as low as $100.

That means states could help force the federal government to follow the law by suing whenever an Administration “decides” not to enforce the parts of immigration law it doesn’t like. Right down to individual immigration cases. But even more interesting and more potentially exciting, worrying Michelle the most, the Act would give states a way to freeze new visas from stubborn countries refusing to accept returns of their own criminal citizens.

“If we ever have another Democratic president,” Michelle darkly mused, imagining the worst, “it’s easy to picture the most conservative state prosecutors suing to block the issuance of visas to, say, people from China. Immigration policy would be subject to a chaotic fight in the federal courts.”

Maybe. It could be a chaotic food fight, with candy bars.

To columnist Michelle Goldberg, who once encouraged pro-abortion activists to spit on peaceful pro-life protestors, letting states help enforce immigration law would be the worst thing imaginable. She thinks any Senate Democrats who join Republicans in helping beat the Senate filibuster are “completely capitulating to Republican demagogy with little evident concern for the long-term consequences.”

The Senate’s initial vote to allow debate on the Act passed 84-9. So.

At bottom, the Laken Riley Act is about federalism, about returning a teeny-tiny bit of control back to states. And the furious comments to Michelle’s op-ed fully illustrate that the nation is in no mood for regular politics about Biden’s out-of-control immigration problems.

🔥 Speaking of John Fetterman, the casual dresser is wandering near the borders of the Democrat reservation and corporate media doesn’t like it. CNN ran the story yesterday headlined, “MAGA’s new darling: Dem. John Fetterman?”

Back in the old days, they used to call it “bipartisanship” when Democrats worked with Republicans. But now working with Republicans is treason. Or maybe it’s insurrection; I can’t keep up. Anyway, “After the midterms, he got more and more centrist, which is not what his voters elected him to do,” one of the CNN anchors bitterly complained. “I don’t know why he’s going down there,” she added.

She meant why Fetterman was going down to Mar-a-Lago, to meet with the incoming President.

Details were oddly unavailable. None of the stories reporting Fetterman’s trip to Mar-a-Lago said precisely when the meeting happened. But apparently it was over the weekend. In any event, John Fetterman, who sponsored the Laken Riley Act, just became the first Democrat Senator since the election to meet with President Trump.

When last week a reporter asked the vaccine-injured Senator why he was going to Mar-a-Lago, Fetterman joked, “so Trump can make me the Pope of Greenland.” It was pretty funny. Fetterman might be the only Democrat to defend Trump’s Greenland idea, calling it uncontroversial and comparing it to the Lousiana Purchase.

Trump seemed pleased with the meeting, if not gushing over the Pennsylvania Senator:

Trump’s support for Fetterman isn’t surprising; it is politically sound. Trump may soon need some Democrat allies, given the Never-Trumper hostility he still faces in the McConnell wing of the Senate GOP.

Fetterman is not some kind of insta-conservative. He still holds countless crazy progressive positions, like letting boys play girls’ sports, but he’s shattering all the modern rules. Before November, any Democrat straying off the progressive plantation like this would be immediately destroyed politically, as a warning to any other Democrats who might start getting bright ideas.

So, if the Democrats don’t destroy Fetterman for his sudden and unexpected betrayal by talking to Trump, it will be more evidence his party has become leaderless in the wake of its recent shellacking.

🔥 But wait, there’s more! A tale of two special sessions. Politico ran a story yesterday headlined, “Newsom adds LA wildfire funding to Trump-proofing special session.” In short, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Ca.) is forcing legislators to return to Sacramento for a special legislative session to pass a bunch of laws protecting illegal immigrants from being deported after January 20th, part of Newsom’s plan for “Trump-proofing California,” which was a terrible choice of words since it evokes the related notion of “fire-proofing” which is exactly what Newsom hasn’t made California.

It makes one wonder whether Newsom has lost his grip this time.

Meanwhile, all the way East across I-10, the Sunshine State’s Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fl.) is also preparing for Trump’s Inauguration. Like Governor Newsom, Governor DeSantis has also called legislators back to Tallahassee, but for the opposite reason: not to resist, but to position Florida to lead the way in mass deportations.

The AP ran the Florida story headlined, “DeSantis calls special session to implement Trump's immigration policies.”

Yesterday, Governor DeSantis announced the special session will start the week of January 27th, one week after Trump is sworn in, so that state lawmakers will be poised to immediately help implement the incoming president’s policies.

“To effectively help the Trump administration enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” DeSantis explained, “we are going to need legislation to impose additional duties on local officials and provide funding for those local officials.” DeSantis said he is prepared to suspend any elected officials if they “neglect their duties” under Trump’s new immigration mandates.

The elected officials believe him. He’s done it before.

Not only that, but following a too-close call in November, with constitutional amendments that would have enshrined unlimited abortions and perma-puffed recreational marijuana, the Nation’s best governor soberly asked lawmakers to make such citizen-led amendment ballot petitions harder. I have very mixed feelings about this.

During the pandemic, we briefly weighed pursuing a medical freedom amendment (which was mercifully unneeded after courts ratified my take on the existing constitutional Right to Privacy). Clearly, the ability for citizens to fix some problems through constitutional amendment is invaluable. But Florida Man can sometimes be unreliable.

Collectively and infamously, Florida Man once passed a citizen petition protecting pregnant pigs from overly restrictive pens. The pudgy porkers’ freedom to move about their mud pits is now permanently enshrined in our state constitution. So, there’s that.

Either way, Florida’s Governor and California’s Governor continue being political bookends, showcasing opposing approaches to governance and highlighting contrasting ways of life. One of those two states enjoys the undignified record of originating the most one-way U-Haul rentals. Just saying.

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The UK Telegraph ran an astonishing article yesterday headlined, “People harmed by Covid jab to tell of ‘devastating results.’ On the one hand, I told them we would eventually see headlines like this about their “safe and effective” genetic treatments for a common cold. On the other hand, here we are.

At a UK Inquiry this morning, jab victims will testify that “coronavirus vaccines went ‘horrifically wrong’ for many people after the government told the public they must have the jab.” They will also testify that the “devastating results could have been prevented if the government had acted sooner to warn people of the dangers.”

Unsurprisingly similar to our own PREP Act’s horrible program, in Great Britain 17,500 people have applied for official vaccine injury compensation. But over four years, the UK program has only paid a paltry 188 claims. Hundreds more have insultingly been rejected for “not being disabled enough.”

Worse, the British program just pays people disabled by the shots a maximum of £120,000 (about $150,000), but only if the government agrees the claimants are “over 60% disabled.” You can imagine the awful Orwellian arguments opened up by that squishy standard. Sorry, mate, you still have one good eye and you can talk properly half the time, so. Only fifty-eight percent.

The vaccine defenders will also be testifying in force, of course. It’s a roster of evil characters who the British despise as much as we despise our own Mengele-like “doctors” Fauci, Birx, Hotez, Offit, and so forth. I noted with a laugh that one of the planned pro-pharma witnesses is “Professor” Heidi Larson, who is, get this, an “expert in vaccine hesitancy.”

I think we are more expert in vaccine hesitancy than Heidi Larson could ever hope to be.

The inquiry might wind up a whitewash, but well-organized vaccine injury groups plan to make sure the government knows it’s been in a fight. But consider that simple, damning headline. If the tone of the Guardian’s article was any sign, the narrative has already shifted.

💉 Watch out below! In related news, Barron’s ran a delightful story yesterday headlined, “Moderna Stock Sinks. It Disappoints With Covid-19 Vaccine Forecast.” Ruh-roh.

Break out your emergency vial of schadenfreude for immediate use. “On Monday,” Barron’s gloomily reported, “Moderna stock lost a fifth of its value after yet another disappointing financial update fueled worries that the company is going to run out of money.”

The Darling of Wall Street? Say it isn’t so. A company that loses a fifth of its value (20%) in one day is a company that is experiencing the financial equivalent of an old-school root canal without anesthetic. “The market for Covid-19 vaccines,” the financial mag flatly informed readers, “has collapsed.”

It’s about time.

Twelve months ago, Moderna’s financial analysts forecast $5 billion in covid vaccine sales for Moderna this year. But yesterday, the same analysts “revised” that estimate down to $1.5 billion, a shrinkflation event that panicked die-hard investors who snatched up their phones and screamed, “sell! sell! sell!”

But, but, but … the pipeline! What about the pipeline? Moderna’s long-praised pipeline of dozens of new and improved mRNA-based wonder drugs for virtually everything that ails us? Well, Barron’s grudgingly allowed, “vaccine sales are eroding too quickly to comfortably tide the company over until the pipeline matures.”

But wait! What about Moderna’s brand-new RSV shot?? It is the company’s only other product, just recently released under expedited FDA approval last year. What about that part of the pipeline? Moderna’s brand new drug? A whole new disease and a whole new market? Well, listen for the thudding sound…

The stupid name surely didn’t help. They should probably stop putting ‘m’ in front of everything, since it seems like for some reason the market isn’t demanding more mRNA drugs, not like they’d all hoped.

Maybe it has something to do with how the drugs are grown in giant vats of poo bacteria. I’m only asking. I’m a lawyer, not a poo-pill designer.

Anyway, things are apparently so bad that it’s come to this:

You saw it here: the first official media reference to the possibility that Moderna will slide back into the gory abyss out of which it originally crept.

It turns out the deep state can create companies. It can give its new companies unlimited funding. It can staff them with expensive (but diverse) employees and give them positive press and every conceivable advantage. But they still can’t make those companies succeed at hawking bad products.

Start the clock on Moderna. It’s just a matter of time. Then, it will be “one down.”

Have a tremendous Tuesday! Then get yourself back here tomorrow morning for more delicious and intellectually nutritious Coffee & Covid.

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