A left-wing judge handpicked by Hawaii Senators “Crazy” Mazie Hirono and Brian “Piece of” Schatz just handed a massive win to one of the biggest targets President Donald Trump is taking on in his second term, and it affects most of us.
At the State of the Union the president brough up this big fight, making it clear he intends to keep crushing prescription drug prices instead of living in pharma’s pocket like so many politicians have.
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Reining in drug prices — that’s a big one. It’s important, it’s America-first, and it’s righting a long-time wrong. But not everyone in government is on board.
Which brings us to a terrible little federal courtroom in Hawaii.
U.S. District Judge Shanlyn Park is a Joe Biden appointee sitting in maybe the most pathetically Blue state in America (yeah, even more Democrat than California or New York in the 2024 election). And ol’ Park has refused to toss out most all of the pharmaceutical industry’s lawsuits against Hawaii’s Act 143 — a law that simply required drug companies to actually deliver 340B drugs to contract pharmacies serving low-income patients.
Now, Act 143 was a copycat of laws originally put on the books in deep Red states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Imagine that, the Aloha state having the sense to follow good conservative governance. So of course, Big Pharma takes it as challenge and went off suing has hard and often as they can (it’s kind of pastime for them anyway) and naturally the Hirono-Schatz judge just waved ’em on through.
AbbVie and PhRMA are two of the biggest players in this industry that, as President Trump keeps pointing out, charges Americans the absolute highest drug prices in the entire developed world. They sued the moment Hawaii tried to protect its patients. Judge Park, who is adored by the pro-DEI jet set, obliged that audience and Big Pharma by keeping nearly all of those claims alive, tossing only one minor secondary allegation.
Let’s call this what it is: a Democrat-favored judge doing Big Pharma’s dirty work.
The 340B program exists so that the hospitals and clinics that serve regular people, places that operate in small and rural communities — and are a real part of those communities — can stretch their dollars and actually get medicine to patients. It costs taxpayers nothing. Let me say that again: It. Costs. Taxpayers. Nothing. It disproportionately helps rural working-class voters, even in Hawaii, but it doesn’t mean squat to the Affluent White Female Liberals who do all the interfering.
Drug companies have spent years systematically trying to dismantle this program. Now, they’re using the same Biden judiciary goons who keep interfering with every other aspect of the administration to finish the job.
So thanks to Park, the suit is going forward, and if Big Pharma wins they’ll use it as a weapon to blow up the protections in all the other states, the Red states that put this on the books in the first place.
Trump has made big strides on health care and prescription drugs. I’ve seen people on the right argue that’s not so, or that it’s not an issue that matters — wrong on all counts. It does matter, and he is notching wins. This case could be a setback. And if it is, it’s because of exactly what Trump said is behind it: Democrats. And their pet judges.