Latest news with #OperationWarpSpeed
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Trump administration to expand price support for US rare earths projects, sources say
By Ernest Scheyder and Jarrett Renshaw (Reuters) -Top White House officials told a group of rare earths firms last week that they are pursuing a pandemic-era approach to boost U.S. critical minerals production and curb China's market dominance by guaranteeing a minimum price for their products, five sources familiar with the plan told Reuters. The previously unreported July 24 meeting was led by Peter Navarro, President Donald Trump's trade advisor, and David Copley, a National Security Council official tasked with supply chain strategy. It included ten rare earths companies plus tech giants Apple, Microsoft and Corning, which all rely on consistent supply of critical minerals to make electronics, the sources said. Navarro and Copley told the meeting that a floor price for rare earths extended to MP Materials earlier this month as part of a multibillion-dollar investment by the Pentagon was "not a one-off" and that similar deals were also in the works, the sources said. U.S. critical minerals firms, which complain that China's market dominance makes investing in mining projects risky, have long sought a federally backed price guarantee. Rare earths, a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion, and other critical minerals are used widely across the electronics sector, including the manufacture of cell phones and weapons. The officials detailed Trump's desire to quickly boost U.S. rare earths output - through mining, processing, recycling and magnet production - in a manner that would evoke the speed of 2020's Operation Warp Speed, which developed the COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year. Navarro confirmed the meeting to Reuters. He said the administration aims to "move in 'Trump Time,' which is to say as fast as possible while maintaining efficiency" to remedy perceived vulnerabilities in the U.S. critical minerals industry. Navarro did not comment on whether he mentioned the price floor at the meeting. "Our goal is to build out our supply chains from mines to end use products across the entire critical mineral spectrum, and the companies assembled at the meeting have the potential to play important roles in this effort," Navarro said. China - the world's largest producer of rare earths for more than 30 years - halted exports in March as part of a trade spat with Washington that showed some signs of easing late last month, even as the broader tensions remain. Beyond the price floor, Navarro and Copley advised attendees to avail themselves of existing government financial support, including billions of dollars worth of incentives in Trump's tax and spending bill approved on July 4, the sources said. Copley did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple signed a supply deal with MP after the Pentagon's investment this month. At the Washington meeting, Navarro and Copley said Trump would like to see more tech companies invest in the rare earths sector, either through seed investing or by making buyouts, all of the sources said. Apple and Corning did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment. EXPORT BAN REQUEST While the attendees asked Navarro to support a ban on exports of equipment containing rare earth magnets to spur domestic recycling, Navarro told them he would push for that only after the U.S. rare earths industry is more developed so as not to prematurely give China leverage in the ongoing trade spat, according to the sources. When asked about a potential ban, Navarro told Reuters: "All policy options are on the table. As President Trump loves to say, 'Let's see what happens.'" Attendees included Phoenix Tailings, which is building a rare earths processing facility in New Hampshire, Momentum Technologies, which developed a modular battery and magnet recycling system, Vulcan Elements, which has built a pilot facility for rare earth magnets, and rare earths recyclers REEcycle and Cyclic Materials. "These guys are serious about fixing the problem," said Vulcan CEO John Maslin. "They want companies to partner." Redwood Materials and Cirba Solutions, two of North America's largest battery recyclers, also attended. TechMet, which invests in mining projects across the globe and in which the U.S. government holds a minority stake, also attended the meeting, as did Noveon, a Texas-based rare earths magnet company. Phoenix, Momentum, Cirba, TechMet, Noveon, Cyclic, ReElement and REEcycle, all of which are privately held, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Redwood declined to comment. The administration officials plan to meet again with the companies in roughly four to six weeks, a truncated timeline aimed at underscoring the administration's desire to quickly support a U.S. minerals industry, the sources said. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Hill
23-07-2025
- Health
- The Hill
The FDA must be modernized for the era of personalized medicine
A baby named KJ was born in Philadelphia with an ultra-rare metabolic disorder that, under normal circumstances, would have required an organ transplant or been fatal. Instead, doctors sequenced KJ's genome and identified a unique mutation. Within six months, they designed and delivered a personalized CRISPR-based therapy — resulting in the first patient to be cured by a bespoke gene-editing treatment. A few years earlier, a young girl in Boston named Mila suffered from a fatal neurodegenerative disease. In just 10 months, a team of doctors designed, developed and synthesized a one-of-a-kind drug just for her, this time using an antisense oligonucleotide therapy that slowed the progression of her disease. These are more than medical miracles. They are proof that it is now possible to tailor medicines to a single person's genetic code. What is missing is a regulatory framework to scale these one-off breakthroughs into a new standard of care. Globally, more than 50 million children suffer from rare genetic diseases — and nearly one in five will die before the age of five. Even children with the same diagnosis can carry different genetic mutations, meaning a one-size-fits-all drug may be ineffective or impossible to make. The problem is our healthcare system isn't designed or incentivized to develop drugs for individual patients. The good news is that science and technology have caught up. We can now sequence a genome for under $100. Artificial intelligence models can design mutation-specific therapies in days and RNA-based treatments can be manufactured in weeks. Operation Warp Speed showed our ability to distribute advanced therapies at scale. And with wearables and digital health tools, we can monitor children's physiological response in real-time, both before and after treatment. The FDA's current approval framework is nearly a century old. It was originally designed to regulate mass-produced drugs for large populations. While there have been reforms since then, most have been incremental and tailored to conventional pharmaceutical development. The current process treats personalized medicines — especially 'N-of-1' therapies — as individual research trials. This approach is time-consuming, expensive and not scalable for the millions of patients who could benefit. Rare disease doesn't just affect patients, it drains families and their communities. Parents leave the workforce to become full-time caregivers. Families travel across the country for access to specialists. Experimental treatments, hospital stays, lost wages and uncovered expenses can bankrupt a family before a diagnosis is even confirmed. In many cases, the child's condition continues to deteriorate while waiting for a diagnosis or cure. The cumulative damage is incalculable. Thanks to advances in genomics, AI, synthetic biology and preclinical testing, personalized therapies are becoming more cost-effective and scalable. For example, the FDA's recent roadmap to phase out mandatory animal testing opens the door to validating therapies using artificial organs or a patient's own cells — improving safety while cutting time and cost. America remains a global leader in the core breakthroughs that made Mila and KJ's treatments possible — from CRISPR gene editing to large language models trained on protein and RNA structures. But that lead is fragile. The FDA has taken steps in the right direction, including establishing a pathway for personalized CAR-T therapies and issuing draft guidance for ASO drugs. But guidance isn't enough. We need a dedicated framework that clarifies the rules, requirements and incentives for those building personalized therapeutics. Without it, researchers and companies will hesitate to invest time and resources into what feels like regulatory guesswork. As the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services undergo what appear to be structural changes, this is a rare window to modernize regulation and secure America's position at the forefront of next-generation medicine. To turn personalized therapies into a new standard of care, the FDA can take a number of key steps. The agency should create a new regulatory pathway for bespoke therapeutics. N-of-1 drugs can't be evaluated using the traditional Phase 1-2-3 frameworks. We need an entirely new process-oriented framework that considers families, physicians, payers, regulators and industry alike. The FDA should establish a dedicated oversight body. A centralized group within the agency should review personalized therapeutics, set transparent safety and ethics standards and ensure rigorous tracking of outcomes. This will build consistency, speed and public trust. The agency should enable sustainable funding and reimbursement. Cost no longer needs to be the barrier. Clear regulatory rules will unlock investment, while reimbursement frameworks will ensure payers can cover these treatments responsibly. Absent this, safe and effective therapies may never reach patients. Every week matters for a child with a rare, degenerative condition. Acting now can turn scientific breakthroughs into a public health reality. If we wait, we risk letting outdated regulation stall progress — and watching the rest of the world move forward without us. The tools are here. The science is ready. All that's missing is a regulatory system built for the future of medicine that doesn't treat individualized care as an exception, but as the new standard. Nessan Bermingham is an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, where he invests in genetic medicines and AI drug discovery and development. He is also the founding CEO of Intellia Therapeutics, the founder and chairman of Korro Bio, and a board member of EveryONE Medicines.
Business Times
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Times
Trump is flunking his Epstein test
CULT loyalty is blind until it isn't. Donald Trump's populist truth test now seems to be at hand. Whether or not the 'Epstein files' exist is secondary. Trump and his leading henchmen stoked a frenzy about the cover-up of material relating to the late convicted sex abuser's allegedly complicit circle of friends. Now they say that they have nothing to show. 'We will bring justice to the paedophiles!' has been replaced by: 'Move along, nothing to see.' On this occasion, however – and for the first time in a serious way – the Maga cult is not obeying orders. Indeed, it looks even worse than that for Trump. For years he insisted there was a deep-state plot that only he could expose. Many of his leading backers, notably Kash Patel, who now heads the FBI, and the attorney-general, Pam Bondi, presented the Epstein files as a defining example of establishment depravity. Now they say it was fake news. But Trump is messing up their U-turn. Last weekend, he claimed that the Epstein files did exist after all but had been concocted by presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden – as well as former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and other familiar suspects. Then he pleaded with his base to focus on something else. It is not only Trump's world that is having trouble keeping up. 'One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it's the 'HOTTEST' Country anywhere in the World. Let's keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,' he posted on Truth Social. To be clear, millions of Americans of all leanings care about the Epstein case. You do not need to be a conspiracy theorist to find something fishy about Trump's special pleading. That Trump himself has previously admitted to being a friend of Epstein for 15 years is creeping into Maga consciousness. The president has since claimed he was 'not a fan' and 'had a falling out with him a long time ago'. Blaming Bondi and Patel for this latest alleged cover-up, which some Maga influencers are doing, is a distraction. Patel and Bondi are the blind loyalists in this equation. Claiming that the sovereign is being betrayed by his courtiers is as old as history. 'If only the Tsar/Stalin/Hitler knew what was being done he would fix it,' they cry. But making sacrificial lambs of Bondi or Patel will not bail him out. It could only work if their replacements uncovered new evidence. So how will Trump get out of this? The only previous time he has clashed with his base was over the Covid vaccines. In spite of having presided over 'Operation Warp Speed', which was arguably his greatest first-term feat, he dropped that bragging right when rally-goers started to boo him in 2021. If he could not beat the mob he would join them, even if it meant forgoing credit. Siding with the crowd is not an option Trump seems willing to take with the Epstein files. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up When he first ran for president, Trump claimed his base was so loyal he could shoot someone on New York's Fifth Avenue and they would still vote for him. That may still be true. But sexual abuse plays a central role in Maga's deep-state conspiracy theories. Most of their myths are just that – most notably the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria satanic paedophile ring. What distinguishes the Epstein story is that it derives from a legally proven case. I have no idea whether the FBI has evidence from its Epstein documents that could damage Trump, or other big names. Epstein's social circle included other billionaires, a former US president, a former governor, a former senator, a former bank boss and a member of the British royal family. His world knew no partisan boundaries. What they had in common was affinity to a billionaire donor who threw racy parties. Leading Maga figures and a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are now calling for an inquiry into the alleged Epstein cover-up. Who knows where that unlikely cross-ideological rallying cry could lead? Trump could defuse the problem by agreeing to appoint a special counsel. Dozens of powerful men could come off badly from such a probe. Should Trump stonewall this demand, the suspicion that he is hiding something will grow. At a time when the Maga world is showing signs of broader disaffection – notably on Trump's newfound enthusiasm for arming Ukraine, and making an exception in his deportation drive for illegal immigrants who work in agriculture – the president is taking a gamble that Epstein will go away. It might be a bit late for Trump to acquaint himself with the Chinese proverb: if you ride the tiger, it is hard to get off. FINANCIAL TIMES
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Former FDA chief: Ultraprocessed foods are ‘addictive' like drugs
(NewsNation) — Ultraprocessed foods engineered with fat, sugar and salt are 'addictive' and driving America's obesity crisis, according to a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner who argues the problem goes far beyond individual willpower. Dr. David Kessler, who led the FDA and later ran Operation Warp Speed, said obesity rates have jumped from 13% in the 1960s to 42% today because of what he calls 'ultraformulated foods' that trigger dopamine responses similar to addictive drugs. 'We took fat, sugar and salt, put it on every corner, made it available 24/7, made it socially acceptable to eat any time,' Kessler said Thursday on NewsNation's 'Elizabeth Vargas Reports.' 'We're living in a food carnival. What did we expect to happen?' Air pollution, herbal remedies tied to lung cancer risk: Study Four out of 10 American adults are classified as obese, with up to a quarter of them morbidly obese. Kessler, author of the new book 'Diet, Drugs and Dopamine,' said the real health threat comes from toxic abdominal fat that infiltrates the liver, pancreas and heart. Around 25% of American men will develop heart failure in their lifetime, 33% will develop diabetes, and 25% will have a stroke, according to Kessler. Unlike traditional processed foods that contain preservatives or stabilizers, ultraformulated foods combine fat, sugar and salt in ways that affect the brain's reward systems, Kessler explained. Food companies design products to hit what they call the 'bliss point' that triggers these reward circuits. Fact check: Are there 1.4M illegal immigrants on Medicaid? 'It's not like amphetamine or cocaine, but I certainly use food,' said Kessler, who gained 40 pounds after running Operation Warp Speed. 'It's not about willpower. It's about biology.' The former FDA chief said Americans need to change how they view these foods, comparing the effort to the successful campaign against tobacco that transformed cigarettes from glamorous to deadly in public perception. Kessler also weighed in on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, which federal researchers are now studying for use to treat alcohol addiction in patients not overweight. These medications work by slowing food through the stomach to the point of nausea, counterbalancing reward circuits, though Kessler said more research is needed. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Business Insider
04-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The Bulwark's top editor shares how the anti-Trump site tripled its subscriber base in a year — and why it's betting on YouTube
If President Donald Trump didn't exist, the staunchly anti-Trump news website The Bulwark might not either. But the president isn't solely responsible for The Bulwark's success. Instead, its top editor credits email newsletters, podcasts, and YouTube for its impressive growth in recent years. "We grew consistently, all the way through the Biden administration," Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, said in an interview with Business Insider. "That's something I didn't expect." To be sure, Trump's resurgence has added fuel to the fire that Last and his colleagues were kindling. The Bulwark surpassed 100,000 paid subscribers on Substack in early July, which the company told BI is more than double its total in late October — just before the 2024 election. The Bulwark also now has 830,000 total subscribers, most of whom get its emails for free. The company said its total count has tripled in the last year and surpassed 500,000 a day after Trump retook office. YouTube is another key part of The Bulwark's growth. It crossed 1 million subscribers on the platform in mid-February, and that count rose 34% between then and early July, thanks to a healthy mix of short-form snippets and long-form videos. The news site uses YouTube Shorts, the platform's buzzy, TikTok-esque clips, as a foot in the door for newcomers. But long-form content of all kinds is crushing on YouTube, especially on TVs. The Bulwark's producers have taken note by making most of their videos at least 10 minutes long, and some run well over an hour. "We no longer think of podcast and video as separate," Last said. "We just think of it all as broadcast." The Bulwark was perfectly positioned for one of the wildest decades for news in the last century, complete with a pandemic, wars, and Trump's rise, fall, and rebound. "It's been a crazy eight years," Last said. "People have been forced to pay attention to the news in ways which are reasonably unique, at least in our lifetimes." Not just 'Never Trump' The Bulwark has gained much of its notoriety for its sharp criticism of Trump. But when asked who he's writing for, Last said he's not necessarily targeting a certain political group. "The target audience is people who take ideas seriously and aren't looking for confirmation bias and who think that the moment is important," Last said. He added: "I think of, honestly, our target audience as being indistinguishable from The Atlantic's." While Last said many Bulwark readers are largely on the center left to the center right, he added that the main common thread among his reader base is a distaste for authoritarianism. To Last, that's synonymous with an unease, or outright disgust, with Trump and many of his policies. "We're on a team, and the team is democracy," Last said. However, Last said The Bulwark doesn't have a vendetta against Trump. If the president enacts policies that Last and his colleagues like — such as Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated COVID-19 vaccine development during the pandemic — he said they'll gladly tout them. "We are not reflexively negative," Last said. "It's not like if Trump comes out and says that 'ice cream is good,' we have to say, 'ice cream is bad.'" Still, Last's readers know that he sees Trump as a serious threat to American democracy. "If I had described the events of 2020 to somebody in 2016, they would've said, 'You're crazy — that's "Trump Derangement Syndrome,"'" Last said. Critics may shrug off The Bulwark's warnings as alarmist, but Last insists he's not crying wolf. "The fact that people aren't freaked out by just the actual real things that have happened in front of our eyes is mostly a function of the pot being turned up while the frogs are in it," Last said. Straightforward and direct Authenticity sells in 2025, both in politics and media. Just look at the most popular podcasters, including Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper of "Call Her Daddy" fame. Audiences also crave honesty, Last said. That honesty and authenticity, combined with strongly held convictions, have become cornerstones of The Bulwark's popularity. "A lot of times, we'll sit around arguing with each other, and the argument will end with one of us going, 'Yeah, you guys are right. I got that wrong,'" Last said. Unlike traditional media organizations, The Bulwark is built on Substack. The newsletter hub has been a huge part of the news site's rapid growth, Last said, since readers of other writers can discover The Bulwark and subscribe in a single click. "Anything you can do to lower the friction just pays enormous dividends," Last said. By building its business around newsletters, The Bulwark reaches readers directly, without intermediaries like search engines or social media. Newsletters and podcasts can also build emotional connections. The Bulwark's publisher, Sarah Longwell, told Vanity Fair in May that "people feel like they are friends with us" since they hear their voices and can even reach their inboxes by replying to emails. This access makes The Bulwark feel fresher than newspapers or cable news channels, Last said. "That's the sort of thing that you often get from independent media operators, if you're a one-man band on Substack," Last said. "But it's, I think, not as common to see that at an institutional level." Putting MSNBC and CNN on notice Although The Bulwark has roughly doubled its paid reader base since the election, Last sees much more room to grow. The news site recently hired reporters to cover policy, immigration, and Congress, Last said. This can help The Bulwark add value through reporting, instead of just its opinions. But the biggest potential for growth is YouTube, Last said, given that its subscriber base can scale far faster on the world's biggest video platform than on Substack. The Bulwark could take its video strategy to the next level by producing shows in the style of traditional TV, Last said. He said his site is open to partnering with a streaming service, similar to The Daily Beast's deal with Netflix that was reported by Semafor. MSNBC and CNN have been a go-to spot for the anti-Trump TV news audience for years. Last suggested that The Bulwark is willing to encroach on their territory and beat them at their own game. "Cable news is dying," Last said. "All of the minutes of attention, which gets sucked up by CNN or Fox or whoever, those minutes are going to flow elsewhere. And I think that we should be a place where that attention goes." Legacy networks like MSNBC may be able to coexist with new media outfits like The Bulwark, especially since its writers regularly go on the left-leaning cable network. But regardless of who's pushing back against Trump, Last's hope is that American democracy is healthy. He doesn't want chaos, even if it can help his business, but he knows that's mostly out of his control. "Given the choice between having half of our audience, but living in a normal time, I would absolutely take that," Last said.
