Says People Should Just Lose Weight

On Thursday, the House passed a Democratic-sponsored bill to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month for most Americans, an effort to crack down on price-gouging by drug makers who have raised the price of a lifesaving product used by millions of Americans by almost 500 percent in recent years. Some people now pay more than $1,000 a month for insulin to treat diabetes, even with insurance. Democrats had been seeking a way to rein in drugs prices overall in a broader policy proposal, but it had little chance of passing the Senate. Hoping for bipartisan compromise, they siloed the insulin price control as its own measure. Still, only 12 House Republicans voted in favor of a bill that’s wildly popular with the American public.

Among those voting “no” was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the GOP’s leading troll, who has come up with perhaps one of the most offensive justifications for GOP opposition to the popular bill. In his newsletter Friday, Gaetz told his constituents that he opposed the bill because fat people, not Big Pharma, are responsible for driving up the cost of insulin. He suggested that Type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to obesity, could be cured if only people would workout more and lose weight, at which point they wouldn’t need insulin anymore and the drug costs would fall without government intervention.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/rep-matt-gaetz-votes-against-capping-insulin-prices-says-people-should-just-lose-weight/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=a283d473-a4be-4861-90b9-efd6418aa39e&utm_campaign=Hootsuite

Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox News Sunday, is the latest example of a curious phenomenon: Fox News veterans leaving the network and then telling the public that their former employer is a right-wing propaganda outlet.

“I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion,” Wallace told The New York Times in an interview published Sunday. “But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.”

“Some people might have drawn the line earlier, or at a different point,” he added. “I think Fox has changed over the course of the last year and a half. But I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”

Indeed, Wallace learned more slowly than several of his former colleagues, who left Fox in recent years as its right-wing stars became more volatile, its “news side” atrophied, and the network as a whole remade itself as President Donald Trump’s propaganda channel. They all say more or less the same thing about their previous employer.

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-vets-keep-leaving-network-and-saying-it-propaganda

Dear FRONTLINE community,

For years, we have been examining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise and how he has wielded power.

Tonight, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, we’ll premiere Putin’s Road to War — a documentary special investigating what brought Putin, and the world, to this dangerous tipping point.

Through in-depth conversations with multiple heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, diplomats, Russian politicians, historians and journalists, this special report chronicles defining moments that shaped the Russian leader, the grievances that drive him, and how a growing conflict with the West exploded into war in Europe.

“Vladimir Putin is going to rank up there as one of the worst and most brutal killers of the 21st century,” New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser tells us. “And his career in power has been marked by a willingness to use extreme force and violence and war as a tool of his repression, internal and external.”

From acclaimed filmmaker Michael Kirk and his award-winning team, the documentary traces how Putin went from low-ranking KGB agent to longtime Russian president. It delves into his crackdown on dissent — and the media — inside Russia. It reveals how he has tested the West’s appetite for confrontation over and over again, including in Ukraine in 2014, as he’s tried to expand Russia’s global footprint. And it raises difficult questions about the path forward from here.

Because he is backed into a corner, he is the most dangerous he has ever been, because it is now existential for him,” says journalist Julia Ioffe, a founding partner of and Washington correspondent for the media company Puck.

Putin’s Road to War premieres tonight at a special time — 9/8c — on PBS stations (check local listings), and will also be available to stream in the PBS Video App, on our website and on our YouTube channel. Its PBS premiere will be followed at 10/9c by an encore presentation of Putin’s Way, our earlier documentary looking at the allegations of criminality and corruption that have accompanied Putin’s reign.

You can watch and read our extended interviews with Ioffe, Glasser, Eugene Robinson and other Putin’s Road to War sources on our site and on YouTube as part of our ongoing FRONTLINE Transparency project.

In these tumultuous times, we are grateful for the opportunity to bring you independent journalism that holds truth to power. Thank you for watching.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH
Executive Producer, FRONTLINE