America’s Drug Shortage Is a National Security Crisis

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America’s Drug Shortage Is a National Security Crisis

By Joseph Varon

There is a phrase that no physician wants to hear when walking into an intensive care unit: “Doctor, we don’t have it.” I have heard variations of that phrase more times than I care to remember. Sometimes it is an antibiotic. Sometimes it is an intravenous medication that we use routinely. Sometimes pharmacy is conserving a drug because supplies are running dangerously low. In perhaps one of the most absurd examples of modern American medicine, sometimes the scarce commodity is not an exotic monoclonal antibody, an experimental cancer therapy, or a complicated biologic agent. It is a simple intravenous fluid.

Think about what that means. We practice medicine in a country capable of replacing heart valves through catheters, sequencing a human genome, performing robotic surgery, supporting failing lungs with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and developing entirely new classes of medications within a few years. Yet I can walk into an American intensive care unit caring for critically ill patients and discover that a basic medicine or fluid I have used for decades is unavailable.

The nurses know the drill, and the pharmacists know it even better. A message comes from pharmacy telling us to conserve a medication, use a different concentration, substitute another antibiotic, change the infusion, or save the remaining bags for patients who absolutely need them. Suddenly, clinical decisions that should be based entirely upon physiology, microbiology, pharmacology, and the needs of the patient acquire another participant at the bedside: the supply chain. What was once perceived as an occasional inconvenience has become something much more serious. It is a warning.

As of June 2026, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reported 227 active drug shortages in the United States, and nearly half of the new shortages reported during 2026 involved products available from only a single manufacturer.[1] Current shortage lists contain products whose names would be utterly unremarkable to anyone who has practiced hospital medicine: dextrose injections (water with sugar), sodium chloride products, amiodarone, midazolam, morphine, anti-infective agents, and numerous injectable medications that constitute the ordinary machinery of modern inpatient care.[1] These are not luxury items or niche therapeutics. They are the plumbing of medicine.

A High-Tech Medical System Built on a Surprisingly Fragile Foundation

Drug shortages are frequently discussed as isolated events. A factory experiences a quality problem, a production line shuts down, a raw material becomes scarce, demand unexpectedly increases, or a hurricane damages a manufacturing facility. Each shortage receives its own explanation, and eventually many of them resolve. Looking at these events individually, however, misses the much larger problem: the American pharmaceutical supply chain has been optimized for efficiency, low prices, and lean inventories, but it has not always been optimized for resilience.

Over several decades, pharmaceutical manufacturing steadily migrated outside the United States. According to the FDA, more than half of pharmaceuticals distributed in America are manufactured overseas. As of 2025, approximately 69 percent of generic drug products were manufactured outside the United States. Even more striking, only about 11 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturers were located in the United States, compared with approximately 22 percent in China and 44 percent in India.[2]

This does not mean that Chinese or Indian manufacturers are inherently problematic. Many produce high-quality medicines that American patients depend upon every day, and a resilient pharmaceutical system should unquestionably include global suppliers. The problem is concentration. When the production of an essential drug, its active ingredient, or a critical chemical precursor becomes concentrated among only a handful of manufacturers or geographic regions, economic efficiency can quickly become a strategic vulnerability.

A quality-control failure at one factory, a geopolitical conflict, a transportation disruption, an epidemic, a natural disaster, an export restriction, or a shortage of a precursor chemical can reverberate thousands of miles away until eventually a pharmacist in an American hospital tells a physician that a medicine is unavailable. At that moment, globalization stops being an abstract economic discussion and becomes a clinical problem affecting an actual patient. We saw this during the pandemic and have seen it again during recent armed conflicts.

The Economics of Cheap Medicine

One of the great ironies of the drug-shortage crisis is that many of the medicines most vulnerable to shortage are not extraordinarily expensive medications. They are extraordinarily inexpensive ones. Generic sterile injectable drugs are among the most important products in hospital medicine and among the most difficult to manufacture reliably. Their production requires specialized equipment, meticulous sterile technique, rigorous quality controls, and significant capital investment.

Yet intense purchasing pressure has driven the prices of many older generic injectable drugs extraordinarily low. The result is a market in which manufacturers may have very little financial incentive to maintain redundant factories, modernize equipment, increase reserve capacity, or even remain in the market. A 2024 analysis from the Department of Health and Human Services examined the economics of generic injectable medicines and found that although the market was profitable in aggregate, that profitability was heavily influenced by a relatively small number of successful products. Most individual generic injectable products examined remained unprofitable even 36 months after launch.[3]

The Government Accountability Office has described the same fundamental problem. Sterile injectable drugs dominate many persistent shortages because they combine complicated manufacturing requirements with low prices, limited production capacity, and low profit margins.[4] For years, Americans have been told that lower drug prices are an unquestionable victory, and usually they are. Nobody wants patients paying unnecessarily high prices for medications that have existed for decades. There is, however, a point at which relentless price compression produces something other than efficiency. It produces fragility.

If the price paid for an essential injectable medicine becomes so low that only one or two manufacturers are willing to produce it, we have not created an efficient marketplace. We have created a single point of failure. The cheapest medication in the world offers very little comfort to the critically ill patient when it is no longer sitting on the pharmacy shelf. This can translate into disasters in patient care!

When a Shortage Reaches the Bedside

For people outside medicine, a drug shortage may sound primarily like an inventory or procurement problem. Inside an intensive care unit, it can become something entirely different. Imagine a patient arriving in septic shock. His blood pressure is collapsing, his lactate is increasing, and his organs are beginning to fail. Every intensivist understands that timely and appropriate antimicrobial therapy can make an enormous difference in that patient’s outcome.

Now suppose that the antibiotic we ordinarily would select is unavailable. The physician must choose an alternative that may have broader coverage than necessary, greater toxicity, a different dosing profile, or less familiarity among the clinical team. The substitution may affect antibiotic stewardship efforts throughout the hospital. Pharmacy must develop alternative protocols, nurses may need to administer different concentrations or schedules, electronic medical record order sets may need modification, physicians must be notified, and remaining inventory must be monitored carefully. Multiply that experience across hundreds or thousands of hospitals, and what appeared to be a simple shortage becomes a systemic disruption of care.

A systematic review published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection examined 74 studies involving antibiotic shortages. Manufacturing disruptions, active pharmaceutical ingredient problems, and economic viability repeatedly appeared among the causes. Reported clinical consequences included longer hospital stays, treatment failure when inferior alternatives were required, and disruption of antimicrobial stewardship programs.[5] Over the past several decades, I have seen patients die in hospital settings where medications or fluids were not available.

We also know independently that antibiotic delays in critically ill patients are not trivial. In a 2024 multicenter study of patients with septic shock, delays in administration of the second antibiotic dose were associated with higher mortality and longer ICU and hospital stays.[6] That study was not designed to prove that drug shortages caused those delays, but it underscores an essential point: in critical illness, reliable and timely drug availability is not simply a logistical convenience. Time matters, and access matters.

The same principle applies throughout critical care. Vasopressors keep patients alive when circulation collapses. Sedatives allow safe mechanical ventilation. Electrolytes correct potentially fatal abnormalities. Anticonvulsants control seizures. Antiarrhythmics treat unstable cardiac rhythms. Injectable bicarbonate may be required in selected patients with severe metabolic derangements. These medications are so familiar to clinicians that we rarely stop to consider the enormous industrial system required to place a vial in a medication dispensing cabinet. We notice that system only when the vial disappears.

Researchers studying a worldwide shortage of intravenous sodium bicarbonate demonstrated that conservation measures significantly altered how clinicians treated critically ill patients with acidemia.[7] That experience illustrates something physicians already understand intuitively. When supply disappears, medical practice changes, not because the physiology changed, the evidence changed, or the patient’s needs changed, but because the shelf was empty.

When America Almost Ran Out of IV Fluid

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the fragility of the system better than intravenous fluid. In September 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated portions of the Southeastern United States and flooded Baxter International’s North Cove manufacturing facility in North Carolina. Production stopped, and the consequences quickly spread far beyond the region affected by the storm. I saw firsthand the consequences.

North Cove was not simply another pharmaceutical factory. It was the largest American manufacturer of intravenous and peritoneal dialysis solutions, and estimates indicated that the facility produced approximately 60 percent of the IV solutions used in the United States. The disruption became significant enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a national Health Alert advising healthcare facilities to assess inventories, conserve intravenous solutions, develop mitigation plans, and use alternatives when clinically appropriate.[8]

Hospitals across the United States began rationing and conserving fluids. Allocation limits were imposed. Some facilities reconsidered procedures, federal agencies worked with manufacturers, and the FDA permitted temporary importation of products from facilities outside the United States. All of that disruption occurred because one major factory flooded.

There could hardly be a better illustration of the difference between efficiency and resilience. Intravenous saline is not cutting-edge technology. The concept of delivering salt water into a vein predates almost everything else in the modern hospital. Yet the United States had allowed production of one of medicine’s most fundamental commodities to become concentrated enough that damage to a single manufacturing complex could force hospitals across a continent to conserve fluid.

That episode should have been treated as a national security warning. Instead, like most shortages, it gradually faded from public attention when supplies improved. The immediate crisis may have receded, but the underlying lesson remains very much alive.

Preventing New Shortages Does Not Eliminate Existing Ones

There is an apparent statistical paradox worth explaining. The FDA has made significant progress in preventing new shortages. FDA officials reported only four new shortages during 2025, far below the extraordinary peak seen in 2011, and the agency routinely works with manufacturers to prevent potential disruptions before they become national shortages.[9] That is genuine progress and deserves recognition.

At the same time, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists reported 227 active shortages in June 2026.[1] Both figures can be accurate because the organizations track shortages differently and, more importantly, because preventing new shortages does not eliminate longstanding ones. Some drug shortages persist for months or even years. Others improve temporarily and later recur. Certain medicines remain vulnerable because the economic, manufacturing, and sourcing conditions that created the shortage never fundamentally changed.

[…]

The Empty Shelf Is Trying to Tell Us Something

[…]

However, when physicians repeatedly walk into American hospitals and discover that ordinary, essential medications are unavailable (such as simple IV fluids), that too is a warning sign. We should stop treating it as background noise or another routine inconvenience of hospital administration. Nurses should not have to develop workarounds because a basic IV solution is scarce. Pharmacists should not spend countless hours searching for substitute suppliers because an old injectable medicine has become economically unattractive to manufacture. Physicians should not have to choose a second-line antibiotic for a critically ill patient because the first choice vanished somewhere between a chemical plant overseas and the hospital pharmacy.

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/americas-drug-shortage-is-a-national-security-crisis/

The Green Energy Paradox: Saving Nature by Destroying It

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By Mark Keenan
September 07, 2026

The environmental movement used to be about protecting nature: clean rivers, clean air, fewer toxic chemicals and less destruction of the countryside. Now, apparently, we are going to save nature by digging up enormous quantities of it.

The “green transition” requires an enormous expansion of mines, mineral-processing plants, battery factories, transmission lines, solar farms, wind farms and an extraordinary amount of industrial machinery. Much of that machinery still runs on fossil fuels and most likely will continue to do so. There is no energy system without materials. Furthermore, these developments have environmental consequences of their own.

Welcome to the green-energy paradox: industrialize nature in order to save it.

The contradiction has become particularly relevant in the United States, where the Trump administration has begun reversing elements of the previous administration’s wind and solar policies. In June, four offshore wind leases were terminated, with investment redirected toward natural gas generation and geothermal energy.

Perhaps this is a good moment to ask a very unfashionable question:

Just how “green” is green energy?

Solar Panels Don’t Grow on Trees

 

A solar panel looks wonderfully clean once it has been installed in a field. No chimney. No smoke. No coal truck arriving at the gate.

Unfortunately, solar panels do not grow in fields.

Solar technologies require materials including aluminum, silicon, silver, gallium, indium and tellurium, among others. These materials have to be mined, processed, refined, transported and manufactured into equipment. Mining operations require enormous quantities of heavy machinery, including excavators, drilling equipment and giant haul trucks. Most of this machinery is diesel-powered.

Mineral processing and refining can also be extremely energy-intensive, while the movement of ores, refined metals and finished components through international supply chains remains heavily dependent on fossil-fuel-based transportation including ships, trucks and other vehicles.

This exposes one of the fundamental contradictions of the green-energy transition.

Here we encounter the first little irony with the “fossil-fuel-free” future: it takes enormous quantities of fossil fuels to build it. Mining trucks burn diesel. Ore must be crushed and refined. Metals and components travel by truck and ship. Factories manufacture the panels, turbines and batteries.

The green economy, it turns out, is not floating somewhere above the fossil-fuel industrial economy. It is built by it. The supposedly clean, post-industrial green economy turns out to be extraordinarily industrial.

I am not opposed to mining or industry. Modern civilization obviously needs both. What I object to is the marketing trick whereby one enormous industrial system is described as “dirty,” while another enormous industrial system is painted green and presented as if it descended from heaven on a leaf.

The issue is honesty. We should not pretend that renewable-energy infrastructure exists outside a vast energy-intensive industrial cycle that is also heavily fossil-fuel dependent.

Then there is the land. Utility-scale solar requires large areas because sunlight is diffuse. Add access roads, substations and transmission infrastructure and eventual disposal or recycling of equipment and the physical footprint grows further.

Environmental damage does not cease to exist merely because it happens somewhere beyond the photograph on the renewable-energy brochure.

And What If The Premise Is Wrong?

There is an even more awkward question. What if the climatic premise being used to justify this enormous industrial transformation is itself disputed?

The public is routinely given the impression that virtually every qualified scientist agrees that human CO₂ emissions constitute a climate emergency. Yet the World Climate Declaration organized by CLINTEL has attracted more than 2,000 scientist and professional signatories who reject the claim of a CO₂-induced climate emergency. I am one of its signatories.

I examine that scientific dispute in detail in my book Climate CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement. My purpose here is simply to point out the extraordinary paradox: Western governments are proposing a vast reconstruction of the energy, transportation and industrial systems of modern society while many qualified scientists continue to dispute the climatic premise being used to justify it.

Wind Power Has a Big Material Footprint Too

Wind has the same material usage problem — only on an enormous physical scale.

The late Cambridge engineering professor David MacKay, who served as Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, calculated that producing about 50 kWh per person per day from British offshore wind would require wind farms occupying a sea area roughly twice the size of Wales.

Twice the size of Wales.

That means enormous quantities of turbines, foundations, steel, concrete, copper, substations, access roads, and transmission infrastructure spread across an extraordinary area — before dealing with intermittency, storage, backup generation and grid balancing.

The wind may be renewable. The steel, concrete, copper, mines and factories are not.

That is the green-energy paradox: technologies promoted as necessary to protect the natural environment can themselves require the industrialization of vast areas of land and sea, extensive mining and enormous quantities of manufactured infrastructure.

The Electric-Car Magic Trick

Electric cars provide perhaps the clearest example of green marketing. Look at the car and there is no exhaust pipe. Wonderful: zero emissions.

Now move the camera backwards.

There is the lithium mine. The nickel. The cobalt. The graphite. The steel and aluminum. The battery factory. The charging network. The expanded electrical grid. And somewhere, of course, the power station generating the electricity (and that is most likely to be a fossil fuel power station).

The emissions and environmental costs have not magically vanished. Much of the activity has simply moved somewhere else.

Lithium-ion battery production requires minerals including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. EV production also requires enormous quantities of steel, aluminum and copper.

Replacing hundreds of millions of conventional automobiles with electric vehicles therefore requires an enormous industrial reconstruction involving mines, battery factories, charging stations, expanded electricity generation and substantially enlarged electrical grids. Again this entire cycle is heavily dependent on fossil fuel use.

This doesn’t mean that electric vehicles have no advantages. It means that calling them simply “zero emission” or “green” tells only a fraction of the environmental story.

And Then There Is Artificial Intelligence

Perhaps the funniest contradiction belongs to artificial intelligence.

AI systems are very good at reminding humanity about the dangers of CO₂ emissions. There is just one small problem: AI is ravenously hungry for electricity.

Data centres consumed roughly 415 TWh of electricity worldwide in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency, and consumption could more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, with AI the main driver of that growth.

The majority of that electricity comes from coal and natural gas. So worldwide fossil-fuel power stations are generating electricity for giant data centres so that an AI chatbot can explain to you why humanity urgently needs to stop burning fossil fuels.

You couldn’t make it up.

When “Green” Becomes a Marketing Label

This is what happens when environmentalism is reduced largely to carbon accounting. Mines, habitat destruction, water consumption, transmission corridors and millions of tons of industrial equipment can all acquire the magic label “green” if the spreadsheet says they reduce CO₂ somewhere else.

However, the technology advertised as saving nature requires mines, diesel machinery, steel, concrete, factories, transmission systems and huge areas of land.

Real environmental accounting should examine the whole lifecycle: mining, manufacturing, energy consumption, pollution, land, water, transportation, reliability, recycling and disposal. There should be no environmentally sacred technologies.

This broader distinction between carbon accounting and genuine environmental protection is something I examine in more detail in my book Transcending the Climate Deception – Toward Real Sustainability.

If an oil well deserves scrutiny, scrutinize it. If a solar farm, wind farm or battery factory deserves scrutiny, scrutinize that too.

I spent part of my professional career working on environmental issues in government and at the United Nations. I have no desire to see polluted rivers, poisoned land or filthy air.

Which is precisely why I find the modern definition of “green” so peculiar.

Protecting nature cannot simply mean moving environmental damage from the exhaust pipe to the lithium mine, from the power station to the mineral-processing plant, or from one landscape to another.

If saving nature requires destroying nature on an industrial scale, perhaps the first thing that needs recycling is our definition of environmentalism.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/green-energy-paradox-saving-nature-destroying-it/5939361

Trump Goes Off Following Report that DC National Guard Deployment Didnt Curb Crime, Lawsuit Already in the Works

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President Trump visits law enforcement and National Guardsmen at the United States Park Police Anacostia operations facility

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went off on reporting from the “foolish Center for American Lack of Progress” that the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC, and other cities across the nation had “no effect” on crime. 

Chandler Hall, Associate Director for Public Safety at the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress, wrote in July that “costly National Guard deployments have failed to reduce violent crime despite its claims of success.”

“The second Trump administration is trying to take credit for the historic drop in violent crime across America despite the fact that this trend began before it took office, and it is using these declines to justify expanding policies that are unpopular, ineffective, and costly,” the article reads, claiming that data “clearly show” crime was already declining under Biden and labeling Trump’s policies as “extreme.” Chandler further claimed that Trump’s first National Guard deployment in Los Angeles to curb violent anti-ICE riots was a “road map for subsequent authoritarian power grabs.”

Hall joined CSPAN last month, roughly one year after Trump invoked Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act and deployed the National Guard, to discuss his so-called findings, with the obvious political slant. He again accused Trump of lying about his policies having any effect on crime and attacked him for “federal overreach” and “making it more difficult” for liberal city officials.

WATCH:

Trump responded this morning, calling the report “another Radical Left SCAM,” funded by George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, , Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal, as well as foreign entities.

“This will be met with a lawsuit, which is being drawn now. I am also strongly considering adding some of the contributors to this Fake Organization. Crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it,” Trump said. “Liars, at this level, must be held accountable!”

Full statement:

Chandler Hall, representing, on Television, the foolish Center for American Lack of Progress, stated that adding the National Guard to Cities, including our now Great Again, Washington, D.C., had “NO impact on Crime.” How crazy is that. Hall was met with furious dissent. The report is just another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, WellsFargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal.

Foreign support includes the Embassy of Japan, the Korea Foundation, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (Taiwan), and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. The Dumocrats love it, and are against anything “TRUMP.” These people, and others like them, are so bad for our Country.

Their stated course is anything to hate or demean “TRUMP.” This will be met with a lawsuit, which is being drawn now. I am also strongly considering adding some of the contributors to this Fake Organization. Crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it. Liars, at this level, must be held accountable!

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/trump-goes-following-liberal-think-tanks-report-that/

Massie And Burlison Introduce Bill To Defund Flock Surveillance Cameras

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By Ken Macon
September 8, 2026

Two Republican members of Congress have introduced a bill that seeks to stop the federal government from funding surveillance cameras that are used to build mass vehicle and biometric location tracking systems.

Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Eric Burlison of Missouri introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, on September 2.

Massie and Burlison want to cut off the flow of federal money to local and state law enforcement that is used to purchase, maintain, and operate the controversial Flock Safety cameras, but also other similar systems, and any data they produce.

And the proposal seeks to stop federal funding of any cloud services that store data collected by Flock Safety and similar companies, as well as any data-sharing agreements involving these systems.

Massie and Burlison are joined by five other representatives as original cosponsors of the bill: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Ro Khanna of California, Chip Roy of Texas, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana.

If it becomes law, the Flock-Off Act would represent a significant limitation on the ability of the federal government to help build and maintain surveillance systems that can track people’s movements and identify them through biometric data.

The bill covers automated license-plate readers, cameras that can identify or extract vehicle characteristics, and biometric surveillance cameras. Biometric data is defined as including facial recognition, voiceprints, iris or retinal scans, fingerprints, and gait recognition.

The bill would require federal agencies to decommission federally funded covered systems within 180 days, while state and local recipients would have to stop operating federally supported systems to continue receiving money under the relevant federal program. If they violate the spending prohibition, relevant program funds would be withheld until the improperly spent amount is repaid to the US Treasury.

There are some exceptions: the border, and toll roads. Federal funds could continue to be used for cameras located within one mile of the northern or southern US border, if they are used to detect or interdict “unlawful entry, human trafficking, or drug smuggling.” In addition, automated license-plate readers used solely to collect, administer, or enforce tolls would also be exempt.

Massie said the purpose of the bill is to stop the federal government from helping local police and cities that have “gone beyond the pale” by deploying mass surveillance systems that are reminiscent of those described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

“The federal government shouldn’t provide ‘security’ grants to cities and police departments that have gone beyond the pale and turned their communities into a version of 1984,” Massie said. “The Flock-Off Act withholds federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. Federal taxpayers should not be forced to fund the surveillance state.”

“Technology may change, but our constitutional rights do not,” Burlison said. “The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, and advances in surveillance technology should not come at the expense of our privacy and liberty.”

H.R. 10221 was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

[…]

Via https://reclaimthenet.org/massie-burlison-flock-surveillance-defunding-bill

France to ban products from Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank

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The Cradle

France will begin the process of banning products originating from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Tuesday.

“France is going to put an ‌end to its commerce with Israeli settlements in Palestine, along with 11 other countries which have also undertaken similar engagements,” Barrot wrote on X.

“Why are we doing this? Because the West Bank is close to exploding – there is frenzied expansion of the settlements, a flare up of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers, and acts of terror which have been attacked by Israeli authorities themselves,” added Barrot.

Via https://t.me/thecradlemedia/67602

Vaccination Data on Amish Children Screened for 2010 Autism Study Was Never Made Public

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amish buggy and word "autism"
by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
September 2, 2026

A study presented by researchers in 2010 found an autism rate among Amish children of roughly 1 in 271 — much lower than the national average. The researchers collected the vaccination data on the children they studied. However, they didn’t disclose the data — making it impossible to know if the Amish children who developed autism were vaccinated or unvaccinated. Experts suggest it would be valuable to make that data public.

Controversy is swirling around a 2010 study on autism rates among the Amish, after President Donald Trump on Monday posted a graphic citing the study.

Trump’s post on Truth Social claimed, “No published case has explicitly documented an unvaccinated Amish child with autism.”

The social media post cited a study, conducted in 2008 and 2009 by researchers who screened 1,899 Amish children in Indiana and Ohio for autism. The researchers confirmed seven cases of autism among the children.

The study concluded that among the Amish children in the study, the autism rate was roughly 1 in 271 — far lower than the national rate, which at the time was estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as 1 in 91.

According to Trump’s post, the study authors collected vaccination histories for the children but “did not report any confirmed case” of autism as “completely unvaccinated.”

The post drew a mix of cheers and fact checks, according to health writer Sayer Ji.

Ji called Trump’s post “factually imperfect” but “genuinely important.”

The post contained factual inaccuracies — for instance, it stated that the Amish have been around for 330 years. However, although the Amish broke away from the Mennonites 333 years ago in 1693, Amish settlements in the U.S. didn’t begin until the 1720s.

Trump’s post also drew attention to the verifiable fact that the Amish tend to have lower vaccination rates and lower autism rates, compared to the mainstream.

Ji praised the president for highlighting the 2010 study. “Whatever else you think of the man, he [Trump] pointed at the study,” Ji wrote.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland told The Defender she was pleased that Trump highlighted the relative absence of autism among the Amish, who typically have lower vaccination rates than mainstream communities.

“It’s high time we start dealing with reality — the current vaccine schedule causes brain injury called autism. Let’s be humble enough to learn from the Amish,” Holland said.

What did the 2010 Amish autism study show?

Trump’s post cites a 2010 study conducted by human genomics researchers from the University of Miami and Vanderbilt University, according to a conference abstract about the study.

However, contrary to Trump’s post, the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study’s abstract, dated May 22, 2010, appeared on the website for the International Meeting for Autism Research, a research gathering held by the International Society of Autism Research.

The study authors appeared to have presented the study at the May 2010 meeting. There is no online record of the study’s full report.

The abstract’s methods section states that the researchers collected the children’s vaccination data. However, the results section doesn’t state whether the seven Amish children in the study who were identified as having autism were vaccinated or unvaccinated.

The abstract states:

“Preliminary data have identified the presence of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] in the Amish community at a rate of approximately 1 in 271 children using standard ASD screening and diagnostic tools although some modifications may be in order.”

The authors wrote that “further studies are underway” to address the cultural norms and customs that may affect how parents talk about their children’s behavior when interviewed by researchers.

It is unclear if the study authors looked at whether the seven children with autism had been vaccinated.

The study’s lead author, listed as J. L. Robinson, did not respond to The Defender when asked if the researchers ever ran a vaccination-stratified analysis of the seven confirmed autism cases, and why the researchers never published the study.

The Defender asked Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami and one of the study’s authors, the same questions. However, the inquiry was directed to the university’s public relations director, who did not respond by deadline.

Ji searched online public records to see if the study authors ever spoke again publicly about the study or submitted it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but found nothing.

That is significant, Ji told The Defender. “I searched for and could not find any public statement by any of the six authors, in sixteen years, on why the paper never appeared or what became of the data. That absence is the finding.”

Ji said he isn’t accusing the study authors of intentionally burying their data on the Amish children’s vaccination histories. “I am not alleging that any of the six destroyed data or acted in bad faith — I have no evidence of that.”

But their data were effectively “buried,” in that the data were never published and never appeared in a future study.

Ji acknowledged that even if the study had explicitly linked all seven autism cases to not vaccinating, the study wouldn’t prove that unvaccinated children do not get autism, because seven is too small a number to power a statistical model.

But the data would still be helpful because they “would fill a hole in the record and tell us whether the screening infrastructure can be rebuilt at scale,” he said. “A statistician could do it in weeks if the files exist.”

The study authors did not respond when The Defender asked if they still had the original research files for the study.

Given that the study appeared to use federally funded research dollars, according to the abstract, the public deserves to know what happened to the files, Ji said.

Trump focused on uncovering autism-vaccine link

Trump’s post referencing the 2010 study comes amid a roiling debate about vaccines and autism. In May, Trump pressed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do more to investigate a possible link between vaccines and autism, according to a July 27 Wall Street Journal report.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order calling for sweeping changes to U.S. vaccine policy, including reducing the number of diseases for which kids receive routine childhood vaccines from 18 to 11.

According to The Associated Press, Trump is “fixated on connecting autism to vaccines.”

During a Sept. 22, 2025 press conference, Trump said, “There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills that have no autism. … The Amish, as an example, they have essentially no autism.”

According to Ji, the 2010 Amish study does not prove that vaccines cause autism.

However, the story of what happened to the 2010 study reveals that when data are collected that could potentially contribute to answering the question of whether vaccines cause autism, that data “doesn’t become available,” Ji said.

In Ji’s view, studies looking at Amish autism rates should examine many factors, including vaccination status, exposure to glyphosate, acetaminophen, ultrasound, diet, endogamy and access to healthcare.

The full results should be made public, regardless of what the studies find. “That isn’t anti-vaccine. It’s science.”

The connection between lower vaccination and autism rates among the Amish was something that investigative journalist Dan Olmsted spent years documenting.

Olmsted, founder of Age of Autism, authored “Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic” (2011) and “Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future” (2017) before he passed away in early 2017.

This article was funded by critical thinkers like you.

The Defender is 100% reader-supported. No corporate sponsors. No paywalls. Our writers and editors rely on you to fund stories like this that mainstream media won’t write.

Where did Trump get the graphic he posted?

The Amish continue to be central to ongoing national debate on vaccines. In New York, Amish are threatening to leave the state due to the state’s school-based vaccine mandate, according to an Aug. 26 New York Post report.

Pennsylvania, which is home to the largest Amish population in the U.S., has been making headlines for its current measles outbreak and ongoing investigation of measles-related deaths.

Steve Kirsch created the graphic that Trump posted to social media. On Aug. 14, Kirsch posted the graphic on X with the statement, “Baffling, isn’t it? Autism is only found in vaccinated Amish kids. I wonder why?”

Kirsch told The Defender he created the graphic using ChatGPT.

He instructed ChatGPT to create a graphic based on the 2010 study and based on his understanding that there is no evidence that an unvaccinated Amish child has ever been diagnosed with autism.

“Nobody has ever heard of an unvaccinated Amish child with autism,” Kirsch told The Defender.

Kirsch said he referred to the study as “published” in the graphic because the International Society of Autism Research posted the study’s conference abstract online. He acknowledged that the study itself was never published.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccination-data-amish-children-screened-2010-autism-study-never-made-public/

Analysts warn of colonization as US saturates Australia with 110 bases

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US Marines with Marine Rotational Force – Darwin stand in formation with Australian Army soldiers during the opening ceremony of exercise Southern Jackaroo at Robertson Barracks, Northern Territory, Australia, June 15, 2021.

Press TV

7 Sept 2026

The United States reportedly wields control over, or has access to, 110 military facilities belonging to Australia — a presence so extensive that analysts now describe it as a “saturation” and even a “colonization” of the Australian continent.

The Guardian, citing information gathered from the database of the Nautilus Institute, reported that the US military or US defense corporations have access to more than half of Australia’s military facilities.

According to the database, the United States controls 17 military facilities on mainland Australia, has access to 75 more Australian-run military installations elsewhere, while US defense corporations have access to an additional 18 facilities.

“This is not a matter of penetration, it’s a matter of saturation,” said Prof Richard Tanter, the database’s author.

“Over half of the defense facilities that we have looked at have some level of American access: that means American personnel, it means American corporations, some of the biggest armaments companies in the world.”

The US military in Australia engages in gathering intelligence, accessing satellite data for targeting information, and communications intercepts.

Other military activities include training for some 2,500 marines on dry-season rotation in the Northern Territory, as well as the pre-positioning of warfighting assets, weapons, munitions, and fuel, stored in case of a regional war in the Pacific.

The US now practically owns Australia’s human, soil, and mineral resources through its control of the nation’s military, according to critics.

The US military presence will continue to expand. From next year up to 1,200 uniformed military personnel will operate from the HMAS Stirling submarine base just off Fremantle.

The government insists that technically this will not be a US base — rather a “rotation” — but there is little contestation of its actual implication.

The Aukus nuclear submarine agreement, described by former defense minister Christopher Pyne as “a lot more than the submarine procurement,” effectively establishes a new United States submarine base in the Indian Ocean.

“For the Americans, being able to have a submarine base in the Indian Ocean is a massive strategic advantage,” Pyne told a public inquiry.

Dr Vince Scappatura, author of The US Lobby and Australian Defense Policy, described US base access across Australia as a kind of “second wave of colonization.”

“Today we are shaping up to be the ‘tip of the spear’ for US power projection into the region — that’s what the sprawling US base access represents,” he said.

“Each one of those dots on the map represents a point of leverage Washington has over Canberra when it comes to matters of defense and foreign policy.”

Scappatura noted that the phrase “empire by invitation” was originally coined to describe US hegemony over western Europe “but it is applicable equally here. I sometimes describe it as ‘voluntary subordination’.”

The United States has been escalating militarization in the Pacific by resetting ties with regional countries in an attempt to form a coalition against China.

Beyond Australia, US bases and military access points are expanding across Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other regional nations, effectively drawing them into Washington’s orbit.

Critics say this is a desperate bid by Washington to arrest the rise of China, with Australia and other regional countries being used as forward operating bases in what could become a larger confrontation.

Tanter says that the acceptance of the US military presence has become so ingrained within the government and defense that unwinding Australia’s enmeshment within the world’s most powerful military is increasingly difficult.

“This is a massive institutional failure in Australia, a kind of learned incapacity at a political, parliamentary and bureaucratic level,” he said. “We’ve learned how not to ask those questions.”

Dr Emma Shortis, director of international and security affairs at the Australia Institute, says Australia’s increasing integration with the US military has resulted in “an accelerating erosion of Australia’s independent, sovereign, decision-making power.”

“Instead of having the option of saying ‘no’ to involvement in United States wars, involvement becomes the default position,” she said.

She cited the March attack by a US nuclear-powered submarine on an Iranian frigate, sinking it and killing more than 100 people. Three Australian naval personnel were onboard, part of the submarine’s crew: the US did not forewarn Australia of the attack.

“Australia might maintain the pretense of sovereign decision-making power, but that’s not the reality,” Shortis said.

Dr Albert Palazzo, an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra and formerly the director of war studies for the Australian army, told the Guardian the US military’s accelerating buildup carries danger for Australian security.

“The Australian government seems to be waltzing its way into a war between the United States and China, by allowing this country to become an outpost or bastion of the US military, and as a platform from which they will launch military force against Chinaa,” he said.

Australians’ faith in the US is fragile and fracturing. A Lowy Institute poll showed Australians’ “trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world” has fallen to 31%, the lowest level in its polling history.

Just 21% of Australians have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, the lowest level of confidence in a US president yet.

More than twice as many Australians (59%) now believe Australia’s interests are best served by a more independent foreign policy rather than a closer alliance with the US (23%). Just 13% of Australians believe the US is a “very reliable” security ally.

This represents, Shortis says, a “seismic shift” in Australia’s perception of its once-great and powerful friend.

“After following the US into nearly every war since World War II, Australians have had enough. They see tangible risks in being so close to President Trump’s bleak and violent version of America.”

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/07/775832/Guardian-US-controls-or-has-access-to-110-defense-facilities-in-Australia-Nautilus-Institute

Israeli Defense Minister Katz: 70% Of Gaza Is Desolate, 80% Of Gazans Want To Migrate, Israel Is Ready To Move Them Out

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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

 

Tionism Staff

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz delivered a wide-ranging assessment of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, making clear that the forced displacement of Gaza’s population remains central to Israel’s strategic vision — and that Israel is prepared to carry it out the moment political conditions allow.

Katz stated that between 60% and 70% of Gaza is now desolate. “About 70% of the area is desolate — without residents, without houses, without tunnels,” he said, while acknowledging that work remains to be completed.

On the question of Gaza’s population, Katz was direct: “There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration.” He cited surveys showing that approximately 80% of Gaza’s population wants to emigrate, adding that Hamas is the primary obstacle preventing them from leaving. “Hamas doesn’t allow them, and there are no countries in the world that will take them,” he said.

Katz said Israel is fully prepared to facilitate the departure of Gaza’s population by sea, by air, or by any other available means. He noted that Egypt has refused to serve as a transit route. The sticking point, he explained, is that Arab countries willing to accept Gazan migrants are demanding U.S. backing before moving forward. “Every country that is willing wants American backing,” Katz said. “Currently, President Trump didn’t cancel this; he froze it. All the Arab countries came to him due to their pressure on this matter.”

Katz indicated that the moment for resumed military and territorial action will come when it becomes clear that Hamas is not meeting its commitments. “Then we will get a green light to move forward militarily, territorially, and in other areas, and this thing will gain momentum,” he said.

On the West Bank, Katz rejected the characterization of settler violence as “Jewish terror,” stating he has canceled that term. “Terror is whoever acts to commit terror against the State of Israel,” he said. He confirmed that the IDF has conquered refugee camps in the West Bank, evacuated 40,000 residents who have not returned, destroyed infrastructure, killed terrorists, and remains inside those areas.

Katz also summarized the broader scope of Israeli military action: “We destroyed 70% of Gaza. We destroyed areas in southern Lebanon; we ruined dozens of villages that served as Hezbollah strongholds. We evacuated 200,000 residents.”

[…]

Via https://tsionizm.com/news/2026/09/06/israeli-defense-minister-katz-70-of-gaza-is-desolate-80-of-gazans-want-to-migrate-israel-is-ready-to-move-them-out/

UK prepares landmark ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements

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The Cradle

Sept 7 2026

According to Whitehall sources cited by Middle East Eye correspondent Imran Mulla, the United Kingdom is poised to announce a sweeping ban on trade and investment tied to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Scheduled for formal rollout on Tuesday, the policy is designed to bring British trade policy into direct compliance with the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) landmark July 2024 advisory opinion, which ruled the entire Israeli occupation unlawful.

The anticipated measures are expected to prohibit economic activity and investment in businesses operating within illegal settlements, closing a long-standing loophole that allowed goods from occupied territories to skirt rigorous enforcement.

While legal advocates and UN special rapporteurs have emphasized that third-party states carry a binding obligation under international law not to render aid or assistance in maintaining illegal colonial enterprises, the impending move has already drawn fierce pushback from pro-Israel lobbies and foreign capitals intent on shielding the occupation infrastructure from economic accountability.

Via https://t.me/thecradlemedia/67552

Families of dozens of Lebanese kidnapped by Israel demand answers

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The Cradle

Sept 7, 2026

According to an in-depth investigative report by The Public Source, families of Lebanese abductees held by Israel are demanding urgent government action to secure the release of dozens of Lebanese citizens abducted during Israeli incursions across southern Lebanon.

The report highlights a systematic pattern of land and sea abductions carried out by occupation forces during so-called ‘truces.’

At least 30 Lebanese—including farmers, fishermen, local officials, and residents returning to check on their homes—are currently detained without charge in Israeli military facilities, with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirming it has been denied access to them.

Advocacy groups, including the Lebanese Association for Prisoners and Detainees and the newly formed Popular Campaign for the Freedom of Lebanese Detainees and Abductees, have criticized the Lebanese government for failing to champion the cases through international legal channels.

With diplomatic avenues yielding no results, families of the abducted report placing their sole hope in the resistance and military leverage to force the return of their loved ones.

Via https://t.me/thecradlemedia/67562