A century ago, the U.S. federal government made a straightforward decision: If you sell food to Americans, the government will verify that it is safe. Not by reviewing self-submissions. Not by relying on self-representations, but by showing up and seeing for itself. The system relied on Food and Drug Administration officials making surprise inspections and verifying compliance firsthand. This standard held because it worked. It aligned incentives, deterred corner-cutting, and caught problems before they spread. In recent years, though, the FDA has moved away from this standard, and the results have been immediate and remarkable. Prior to 2021, food recalls were rare. Then the FDA quietly implemented “announced” and “remote inspection” draft policies in January 2021, right at the beginning of the Biden presidency, to align with its full-time/maximal “work at home” policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused FDA recalls to surge. What began as a temporary government program ossified into a permanent FDA policy in June 2025, despite the risk from COVID-19 having long been gone and FDA employees returning to the office. However, facilities that once expected surprise FDA inspections began operating under a regime defined by manufacturer-supplied documentation, self-submitted testing, and remote, scheduled (rather than unannounced) FDA interactions. The result? Food recalls are no longer occasional disruptions. They are now a regular feature of our FDA. Recall data shows a clear, sustained rise, with products contaminated by pathogens, foreign materials, or basic cleanliness and sanitary failures reaching consumers, and only then being recalled. Are You Going to Eat That? Recall data published by the FDA shows a cumulative increase in the number of post-market food and beverage recalls over time. During COVID almost no inspections occurred because employees were “working from home.” Note: The FDA does not share recall data prior to 2018 on its website. The direction of the graph is clear. The slope is steep and reflects a policy change implemented by FDA leadership that favors trusting manufacturers and detecting problems after products are delivered to store shelves and consumers. And these “official” FDA recalls are just the tip of the iceberg. Only a small fraction of food-related illnesses is reported, per independent studies, plus the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teresa Murray, a consumer watchdog at U.S. Public Interest Research Group states: “There’s a decent chance that you or someone close to you has become ill from food poisoning during the last few years yet didn’t realize it unless the sickness was bad enough to see a doctor.” The cause is obvious and demonstrable. In any regulated system, behavior follows incentives. When the likelihood of unannounced, physical inspection evaporates, noncompliance follows. Over time, the change expressed itself in outcomes. Problems that would have been identified at the point of production are now only discovered well after distribution—after Americans may have already consumed recalled foods—when the only remaining action is a post-marketing recall. The data tracks that shift with uncomfortable clarity. Food recalls alone have skyrocketed, with dozens of events in single months. Per the FDA’s published data, contamination of recalled products has included findings of botulinum, Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli, and other foodborne bacteria. These incidents reflect a fundamental lack of basic food-handling and cleanliness protocols, and they have the potential to be responsible for sickening or killing Americans. May 14, 2026 screenshot of the @FDArecalls X page. Ironically, the FDA recalls X account page picture shows images of badged FDA officials and employees in uniform conducting in-person inspections and testing unlike its real-world “remote” testing policies. Today’s food recalls are not outliers, they are almost daily occurrences. Hardly a weekday goes by that the FDA doesn’t issue a recall for something, according to a search of its main FDA.gov recalls webpage and its X account (formerly Twitter). The account lists over 7,400 postings, per the upper left-hand corner of the image above (denoted with a green arrow). The current administration inherited this structure along with a backlog of inspections that built up during the pandemic. However, it also inherited the responsibility to keep our food supply safe. Thus far, it has not done so. It’s bad enough that even the U.S. Government Accountability Office publicly scolded the FDA as recently as February 2026 about not effectively overseeing America’s food safety. It’s more than a little ironic, because the now-exited FDA Commissioner Marty Makary promised that the safety of our foods would be emphasized. He had frequently and repeatedly stated that “people forget the ‘F’ in FDA stands for food,” and “we want to focus on food,” and “It’s time to tell people the truth about food.” Unfortunately, those promises never translated into FDA regulatory policy action when it came to postmarketing safety recalls. Remote testing methodologies remain in place, the inspection cadence has not been reestablished, and within the agency, continuity has been uneven, with senior roles turning over multiple times and experienced personnel exiting at a concerning pace. Food safety does not tolerate policy drift. It requires a stable, predictable enforcement posture and a clear signal to the market that standards will be verified, and consumers protected. The solution is clear: Reestablish unannounced, in-person inspections as the default across high-risk food facilities, both domestic and foreign. Treat manufacturer-submitted documentation as supporting material, not the basis of compliance. Clear the inspection backlog on a defined schedule and publish regular progress reports. Concentrate resources where the risk is highest and maintain a visible presence that resets expectations across the supply chain. Measure performance where it matters. The relevant metric is not how many recalls are issued. It is how many are avoided because of competent, independent inspection and testing. None of this requires new authority or novel theory. The statutory framework already exists. The expertise exists. The operational playbook is well understood. It is a question of discipline and execution by leadership. An America-first MAHA approach to food-safety policy begins with a simple commitment: what is sold in this country must meet standards that are independently verified, not unscientifically assumed. That commitment is enforceable. It has been enforced before. It must be enforced again. When it comes to America’s food safety, the FDA does not need to reinvent itself. It just needs to show up to work again.

THE WASHINGTON STAND—The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday announced a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) in which the hospital not only committed to never again carry out gender transition procedures on minors, but also agreed to open the nation’s first detransitioner clinic and fully fund it for five years. TCH gained notoriety in 2023 when a whistleblower provided evidence that the hospital continued to secretly administer gender transition hormones to minors, even after the Texas legislature had made it illegal. “Today’s resolution protects vulnerable children, holds providers accountable, and ensures those harmed receive the care they need,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The Justice Department will use every weapon at its disposal to end the destructive and discredited practice of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for children.” The settlement, reached in coordination with the Texas Attorney General’s office, requires TCH to “establish the first-ever multidisciplinary clinic designed to provide medical care to patients who were subjected to ‘gender-transition’ procedures,” the state AG’s office said. “This Detransition Clinic will help patients reverse the damage caused by ideologically-motivated physicians who harmed patients by performing dangerous medical interventions for the purpose of ‘transitioning’ them.” Under the settlement, TCH will also pay $10 million to cover its fraudulent billing of Texas Medicaid by coding gender transition procedures as completely different procedures—a practice exposed by whistleblower Eithan Haim. The settlement also requires TCH to fire and irrevocably terminate hospital privileges for five doctors who carried out the illegal procedures on minors, agree to never again provide “gender-transition” services, amend its bylaws so that any doctor who carries out gender transition procedures on minors automatically relinquishes his or her privileges, and implement other compliance and ethical measures, according to the Texas attorney general’s office. The ramifications of this settlement are massive. While $10 million is a relatively small financial penalty for a hospital giant, it is more significant that the hospital agreed to fire staff, change bylaws, and fully fund a clinic to do the opposite of the procedures it recently profited from. Clearly, the hospital realized federal and state prosecutors had it over a barrel. So, like any self-interested business, it finally decided to cut its losses and reach the best deal that it could. This entailed significant cooperation with authorities, which the DOJ publicly recognized. Over the course of a five-year investigation, the hospital turned over more than five million documents to investigators. “I am grateful that Texas Children’s wants to be part of the solution and no longer the problem,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, with the forced politeness of someone who just won a major settlement by agreeing not to say anything negative about someone who richly deserved it. For its part, TCH claimed it had committed no wrongdoing and presented the settlement as a decision it made to save on legal costs. “All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts—we have been compliant with all laws,” it claimed in a statement. “Today, we made the difficult decision to settle with the Texas Attorney General and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions. To be clear—we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” Such excuses did not spare the hospital from leftist wrath. Texas Rep. Jessica González (D) blasted the decision as “shameful” and “the furthering of an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society.” González did not explain how recognizing the existence of detransitioners would lower public awareness of people who wish to transition. Likewise, Equality Texas CEO Brad Pritchett complained that the settlement was “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.” Yet a 2021 study surveyed some 237 detransitioners, and the number has only grown since. Pritchett added that it was “embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.” So much for blunting the Left’s displeasure. The most electric remarks came from Andrea Segovia of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, who called the decision “terrifying” because of “what other states will take from this” and claimed that people who identify as transgender only detransition “because of social pressures.” Segovia has clearly never listened to the stories of detransitioners. For instance, Fox Varian, who won the first trial malpractice verdict for gender transition procedures, said she had felt social pressure to transition, and that she had regretted her underage double mastectomy from the moment the bandages were removed. Trans activists oppose detransitioners just like abortion activists oppose pro-life pregnancy centers. These opposite counterparts do nothing to interfere with their own behavior. But their very existence pricks the conscience and exposes the fundamental lie at the root of these unnatural ideologies. The existence of detransitioners proves that immutable biology trumps subjective and transitory feelings. But the hatred leftists feel for them does not change the fact that detransitioners exist, comprise a growing category, and currently have no clinics committed to helping them recover the God-given design of their bodies. Whether the newly agreed-upon TCH clinic will fulfill this role remains to be seen. In its public statement, TCH did not provide any specifics on the character of the new detransitioner clinic. By publishing time, it did not respond to a TWS request for comment. “From a legal liability standpoint, this is great news,” FRC Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena González (no relation to Jessica) responded to the news. “‘You break it, you buy it’ was good retail policy at the Pottery Barn when I was a kid. But from a practical standpoint, I can’t imagine that anyone who has had their body permanently altered as a child—whether hormonally, chemically, and/or surgically, up to and including permanent sterilization—would entrust their healing to the same gender-experimenting institution after they were so carelessly broken under the thrall of the late, great mass gender-hysteria.” However, González expressed the need that many detransitioners have for healing and hope that goes beyond the physical. “When I speak with people who are ‘detransitioning,’ that is, seeking to realign their identity with their sex after experimenting with so-called ‘gender transition,’ many express profound sorrow at the marring of their bodies. Christians or not, it’s as if we can’t not know, in some sense, that we, as created beings, bear the eternal image of God,” he told TWS. “The good news of the gospel is that, though our bodies are all to some degree marked by the effects of human sin and the fall of mankind in the garden from the very beginning, our souls can be completely healed and set free to live in the fullness of joy, reflecting our Creator’s love.” “Followers of Christ worship a Savior who, though a ‘man of sorrows’ who was beaten almost beyond recognition, nevertheless healed us by the very stripes of his beating, and who can become for us, in his resurrection, the power and hope of restoration to a wholeness of personhood we’ve never before known,” González continued. “This promise of transformation and restoration to fullness of life in God is available for everyone who believes in Jesus, and it must be especially precious to those who’ve also been marked in their bodies by deep suffering, just as Jesus was.” As Jesus brought about salvation and final victory through his apparent defeat at Calvary, so the final vindication against TCH came after much suffering and trials. In 2023, Texas surgeon Eithan Haim, who had admitting privileges at TCH, blew the whistle on the hospital’s policy of mis-coding gender transition procedures for minors to conceal them from outside scrutiny—even after the hospital had publicly claimed to stop all such procedures to comply with a new Texas law. That provoked a relentless campaign of persecution of the Biden administration DOJ, which used aggressive intimidation tactics and tried to bankrupt Haim through more than a year of legal proceedings—without any good reason to charge him. Partway through the ordeal, a second whistleblower, TCH nurse Vanessa Sivadge, came forward to corroborate Haim’s claims. She was ultimately fired from TCH after the hospital denied her a religious exemption from participating in dispensing gender transition hormones to minors. This information prompted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) to launch the first investigation into TCH in 2023. After the Trump administration succeeded that of President Biden, the DOJ quickly reversed its position, saving Haim from prison time and joining the investigation into TCH. What began as big bad government colluding with a hospital to persecute whistleblowers has now concluded in a resounding victory for biology and for justice. “It is not possible to communicate what it is like to be terrorized by your own government,” Haim reflected in a comment to TWS. “The most powerful federal leviathan in the history of man was weaponized to destroy my life—not because I committed a crime but because I upheld one of our most sacred virtues.” “I’ve seen true evil up close and spent every second of every minute of every day for years living with that terror,” Haim continued. “But I’ve also witnessed extraordinary courage, honor, and dignity from those who sacrificed alongside me.” “I never doubted that sacrifice because I always believed it would one day be worth it,” Haim said. “Today is that day.” Originally published by The Washington Stand. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—“Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo questioned acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday about the progress of probes into abuses of power targeting President Donald Trump. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in July released documents and a memo detailing what she called a “years-long coup” against Trump after he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Bartiromo asked Blanche why there had not been any indictments over the targeting of Trump by the Obama and Biden administrations. “You heard the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee saying that there has been a conspiracy over 10 years. What have you done about it?” Bartiromo asked Blanche. “Well, look, that’s exactly what we’re investigating right now,” he replied. “And by the way, what is not in dispute is that the whole Russia hoax—there was absolutely nothing to it and so the question that the American people have to ask is, ‘Well then, why did they do it? Why did Comey say what he said? Why did the outgoing Obama administration do what they did?’” WATCH: The Steele Dossier, which was used to further allegations that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government to defeat Clinton and to justify partisan actions of the FBI during the Obama administration, was later discredited. Blanche told Bartiromo there was still a chance Obama administration figures could face charges. “You saw a continued effort all the way up until very recently—up until the raid of Mar-a-Lago just a couple of years ago—a continued effort to destroy President Trump, and whether that’s one conspiracy that that continued from 2015, 2016, all the way up to 2023 is what we’re looking at right now,” Blanche said. “But the way that we do that is with the grand jury process,” Blanche continued. “So it’s calling witnesses, it’s looking at documents, it’s having prosecutors study, it’s having the FBI look at it and investigate what happened, and we’re finding out some incredibly troubling things, and at some point, at the right time, that will be made public and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade.” Bartiromo also asked Blanche when indictments over the Russia collusion investigation prompted by the Steele Dossier would come. “Well, I mean, look, as has been publicly reported, the Southern District of Florida has an open criminal investigation that involves hundreds of subpoenas,” Blanche said. “It involves hundreds of witnesses, and so as far as timing and when we can expect it, we are working hard and we are working efficiently, but we are going to do it right. We are not going to rush something that isn’t ready. We’re not going to reach a conclusion before our investigation is over, but I assure you, and I assure the American people that we are completely focused on it.” “What is not ready?” a visibly irritated Bartiromo replied. “I mean, you know, we’ve been watching this, you know, play out for a long time and viewers and people watching are frustrated because it just keeps happening.” Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

May 16 (Reuters) — Two-term Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy lost his bid for re-election in Louisiana’s primary on Saturday, as Trump-backed challenger Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming advanced to a June runoff to choose the party’s nominee after a closely fought three-way battle. Cassidy, a physician who first earned the president’s ire by voting for his conviction in Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial in 2021, was projected to finish in third place in a political victory for Trump’s retribution campaign that recently unseated several Republican senators in Indiana who defied his push for state congressional re-districting.  He is the first elected U.S. senator to lose re-nomination since 2012. Letlow, who won Trump’s Senate endorsement before she had even announced her candidacy, led Fleming 45.2% to 28.3% with 98% of votes counted, the Associated Press reported. The two candidates will now face each other in a June 27 run-off election to determine which candidate will confront Democrat Jamie Davis, who was projected to win his party’s nomination, in the November general election. The winner of the runoff is likely to fill the seat, according to independent analysts who rate Louisiana as solidly Republican. “THANK YOU, LOUISIANA! Louisiana made it clear tonight: we are ready for strong conservative leadership that will stand with President Trump and never waver. Because of your support, your prayers, and your belief in this campaign, we are one step closer to sending that leadership to the United States Senate,” Letlow said in a post on X. THANK YOU, LOUISIANA!Louisiana made it clear tonight: we are ready for strong conservative leadership that will stand with President Trump and never waver.Because of your support, your prayers, and your belief in this campaign, we are one step closer to sending that… pic.twitter.com/gGlWLqOT6o— Julia B Letlow, Ph.D. (@jbletlow) May 17, 2026 Trump congratulated and praised Letlow on social media while gloating about Cassidy’s loss. “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump said in a lengthy post on Saturday night. In his concession speech, Cassidy thanked his supporters for allowing him to represent Louisiana for 12 years. “When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege,” Cassidy said.  Another Trump Foe Falls The Louisiana primary was the latest venue for an ongoing Trump retribution campaign that delivered primary defeats this month against at least five of seven Republican state legislators in Indiana, who opposed the president’s push for a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan to protect the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Letlow, 45, entered Congress when her husband Luke died of a COVID infection after being elected to the House in 2020. She ran to replace him in a special election and succeeded with Trump’s endorsement. Cassidy had targeted her support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives when she worked for the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She responded with ads calling Cassidy and Fleming “Never Trumpers” and emphasizing her presidential endorsement.  Cassidy, a 68-year-old doctor who specialized in the treatment of liver disease and helped found a Baton Rouge clinic that serves low-income patients, served in the Louisiana Senate and the U.S. House before unseating former Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in 2014 to become the first Republican to capture the seat since 1883. He now chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He was re-elected in 2020 with nearly 60% of the vote.  Cassidy Voted to Impeach Trump Cassidy had a series of conflicts with Trump beginning with his role in 2021 as one of seven Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He is now one of only three still in office.  Cassidy later called on Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after his indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents and declined to endorse Trump after he won the Republican nomination. Since Trump’s return to the White House, Cassidy has tried to work his way back into the president’s good graces by supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for U.S. health secretary.  But Cassidy’s support for Trump health policy has been short-lived, with him expressing open skepticism for Kennedy’s bid to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy and joining fellow Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to slow the health secretary’s agenda in Congress.  The most recent break came last month when Trump accused Cassidy of blocking the nomination of Casey Means as U.S. surgeon general, forcing the president to name radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier as his third pick for the job. Former Republican Senator Richard Lugar was the last elected incumbent to lose his bid for re-nomination in 2012.  

The Southern Poverty Law Center faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy for sending $3 million to members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. This indictment led me to update the book I wrote in 2020, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” At the end of the update, I give a list of concrete ways you can take action against the SPLC. Select passages from the update follow. Back in 2019, the SPLC smeared conservative Christian groups as “anti-LGBT hate groups,” [its education arm] Teaching Tolerance was spreading critical race theory and transgender ideology, and the SPLC was trying to convince donor-advised funds to blacklist “hate groups.” In the intervening years, however, things only got worse. … In 2023, the SPLC released its “hate map” for 2022, and it included 702 “antigovernment extremist groups.” Prominent among these “antigovernment extremists” was the “anti-student inclusion movement.” The “hate map” featured no fewer than 230 chapters of Moms for Liberty, along with the policy group Parents Defending Education. The next year, the SPLC added groups led by medical professionals, such as Do No Harm and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, to the “hate map,” branding them “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” because they oppose experimental transgender “medicine” to make men appear female and vice versa. The SPLC even branded Gays Against Groomers—a group of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who oppose the sexualization of children and transgender ideology—an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” suggesting that their key target of hate is… themselves. The following year, the center added Turning Point USA, the largest conservative grassroots youth organization in the country, to the map, stating that its “primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack.” The SPLC also added PragerU, a conservative group that makes YouTube videos to educate the public, to the map. … Despite the SPLC’s many scandals, President Joe Biden’s administration welcomed this morally bankrupt smear factory with open arms. … Documents showed that R.G. Cravens, manager of research and analysis at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, spoke at a conference for Justice Department prosecutors on Nov. 7, 2023. A program for the event noted that Cravens would focus on “the anti-LGBTQ movement” and “help investigators and prosecutors identify potential evidence and motivations for bias crime.” Under President Donald Trump, the FBI has officially distanced itself from the SPLC. FBI Director Kash Patel told The Daily Signal that the SPLC’s “disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership. Even so, Democrats’ defenses of the SPLC suggest that it may return to federal influence should another Democrat follow President Trump in the White House in 2029. … Why, exactly, does the SPLC face criminal charges? Before acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the criminal charges on April 21, 2026, the SPLC put out its own statement. The SPLC announced that it faced a criminal investigation for what it described as the use of “paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.” SPLC Interim CEO Bryan Fair said the informants were “necessary” to protect the SPLC from “countless credible threats.” He added that while the SPLC fed information to law enforcement, it did not “share our use of informants broadly with anyone.” He said the group no longer works with paid informants, even though they previously “saved lives.” The indictment claims, however, that the SPLC was funding the very “hate” it claimed it exists to destroy. The indictment refers to the payees as “field sources” or “Fs.” The list includes F-37, “a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” The indictment states that this field source “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly paid this field source more than $270,000. The SPLC does not face charges merely for paying members of white nationalist groups, but for defrauding donors, lying to banks, and conspiring to cover up the activity. … The indictment confirms my suspicions that the SPLC had not just been exaggerating “hate” by smearing conservatives, but also by supporting racist extremists. It also underlines the key warning of “Making Hate Pay”: that the SPLC has become a corrupt smear factory. If the SPLC lied to banks, as the indictment suggests, it will be very difficult for the center to weasel its way out of a guilty verdict. … What You Can Do Against SPLC If you work at a company that works with [the software company] Benevity, please consider asking your employer to opt out of using the SPLC “hate map” filter. If you notice Learning for Justice materials in your school, please speak up. If you worked for a company that the SPLC and its allies bullied into blacklisting “hate groups,” and are willing to speak on record or anonymously, I’d love to hear from you. If you hear someone considering giving to the SPLC, please let them know how corrupt this smear factory is. The Trump administration and conservatives increasingly know the truth about the SPLC—we need to make it so obvious that Democrats and the Left cannot ignore it.