Tangle - The TrumpRx launch.

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

On Thursday, the Trump administration rolled out TrumpRx, a government website offering consumers discounted prices for common prescription drugs. The platform functions as a hub for consume...rs, connecting them to manufacturers’ sites or offering coupons for purchases at pharmacies. President Donald Trump said TrumpRx will create millions in consumer savings, with those savings likely concentrated among the uninsured. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!In the foxhole.In this month’s members-only edition of Press Pass, Executive Editor Isaac Saul wrote about the challenges facing the media industry, how our political divisions are starting to show up as a business challenge, and some changes to Tangle on the horizon. Plus, our employee feature this month is Associate Editor Lindsey Knuth. In case you missed it, the edition went out at 3 am ET last night (instead of the intended 3 pm) — but you can read it here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of TrumpRx? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Ari Weitzman and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking in a little bit of our take. I'm your host for today's episode, Tangle's managing editor, Ari Weitzman. And today we're going to be talking about Trump RX, the government website offering discounts on prescription drugs. How good that is, which drugs it covers. is it an improvement over what's offered today?
Starting point is 00:00:42 We'll dive deep into all of it and get you all the answers, plus all of the coverage from across the political spectrum on opinions about this new offering that you've come to expect from Tangle. Before we dive in, though, just wanted to make sure our podcast listeners knew about press pass, which is a newsletter-only product that we offer that gives you a sneak peek behind all the stuff that's happening at Tangle and lets you know a little bit more about some of the people
Starting point is 00:01:09 who make the work that we do possible. Today we're profiling Associate Editor Lindsay Canuth, our young Wisconsinite, and all the things that she provides to Tango's offerings on a daily basis. Plus a little bit more about our business, the things that we're facing right now, the media headwinds, all of that stuff.
Starting point is 00:01:25 You get it if you subscribe to PressPass at reetango.com. So if you're interested, go do that now. And I will pass it over to our senior editor, Will Kayback, who's filling in for John, reading in the newsletter. today. So take it away, Will. I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Ari. All right, here are today's quick hits. Number one, convicted sex offender Galane Maxwell, a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, pleaded the Fifth Amendment during a closed
Starting point is 00:02:01 door House Oversight Committee deposition. Maxwell's attorney said she would only answer questions if granted clemency by President Donald Trump. Number two, the U.S. military boarded a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker in the Indian Ocean. The ship is under U.S. sanctions for transporting illegal shipments of Russian oil, and the Pentagon said it was, quote, operating in defiance of President Trump's established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean. Number three, Iran's security forces began a crackdown on political opponents of the government, arresting at least seven politicians and summoning seven others to court. Number four, a Hong Kong court sentenced Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison.
Starting point is 00:02:43 The businessman and newspaper owner was convicted of publishing seditious articles and violating Hong Kong's national security law, and he has called himself a political prisoner. Finally, number five, the Cuban government said international airlines can no longer refuel in the country as it experiences a shortage of aviation fuel. President Trump has threatened tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with oil. So we're here this evening to celebrate the launch of one of the most of the most of the most. transformative health care initiatives of all time. There's never been anything like it. Starting tonight, dozens of the most commonly used prescription drugs will be available at dramatic
Starting point is 00:03:36 discounts for all consumers throughout a new website. It's called trumperx.gov. That's trumprx.gov. For years, politicians from both parties have promised to bring down prescription drug prices. and make health care more affordable, but they all failed. It was all words, as usual. They failed and they failed badly. They tried doing this, some of them, most of them didn't even try, because they never really had a shot at it, but I'm actually getting it done, and it is done, actually.
Starting point is 00:04:11 This launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many, many times, and it's not even close. You're going to see numbers that you're not going to believe. to believe. On Thursday, the Trump administration rolled out Trump Rx, a government website offering consumers discounted prices for common prescription drugs. The platform functions as a hub for consumers, connecting them to manufacturer's sites or offering coupons for purchases at pharmacies. President Donald Trump said Trump Rx will create millions in consumer savings, with those savings likely concentrated
Starting point is 00:04:48 among the uninsured. In September, President Trump announced Trump Rx as, part of a series of initiatives to bring down prescription drug costs. In the first year of his second term, the president has negotiated agreements with several major pharmaceutical companies to sell their products at lower prices in the U.S. In some cases, pegged to the prices they charge in other countries, which is known as most favored nation pricing. Prior to striking those deals, Trump threatened to cap how much drug manufacturers could earn from Medicare if they did not agree to lower prices. Trump RX had 33 drugs listed at launch, with savings between 33% and 93% off the list price. In a Thursday post, the White House highlighted examples of the expected price reductions for common medications.
Starting point is 00:05:36 It said the monthly cost of GLP1 medications like OZempic will drop from $1,028 to an average of $350, while fertility drugs like Gonal F will drop from $9666 to $168 on average. It also said that additional drugs will be added to the site as Trump negotiates additional deals with manufacturers. Quote, Americans have long been paying the highest drug prices anywhere in the world, while other countries often paid pennies on the dollar for the exact same drugs, President Trump said on Thursday, under the agreements my administration has negotiated, the United States will pay the lowest price paid by any other country.
Starting point is 00:06:20 Some healthcare experts have questioned how many consumers will benefit from the savings. In many cases, the list prices on Trump RX are higher than what insured patients pay for the same prescription, even with the significant discount applied. As such, the savings may be limited to those without insurance, particularly if insured consumers are not able to count the cost of drugs purchased through the site toward their deductible or out-of-pocket maximum. Currently, Trump RX only offers discounted pricing to consumers paying in cash. Quote, my guess is that for most drugs, at least most brand-name medications, people are likely to get a better deal using their insurance rather than purchasing a drug through a direct-to-consumer website.
Starting point is 00:07:03 Today, we'll break down the Trump RX launch with views from the right, left, and health policy experts. Then, managing editor Ari Weitzman gives his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Here's what the right is saying. The right is mixed on Trump RX, with many saying it delivers on the president's promise to lower drug costs. Others, meanwhile, argue that the site subverts free market principles.
Starting point is 00:07:47 In PJ Media, Matt Margolis wrote, Trump reduces medication costs and the left isn't happy. Democrats love talking about affordability, but they rarely follow through. If they genuinely cared about bringing down drug costs, they'd be applauding President Trump's latest effort to slash prescription drug prices. Instead, they're attacking him.
Starting point is 00:08:09 Trump RX promises to deliver massive savings on medications, including wildly expensive weight loss drugs like OZemB and Wegovi. In every sense, it achieves something that Democrats have talked and talked and talked about, but never succeeded in doing. For decades, American patients have been subsidizing drug costs, for Europeans and their so-called free health care systems. Europeans typically pay far less for new medications than Americans do, which means that U.S. patients should theoretically benefit from Trump's pricing changes.
Starting point is 00:08:40 So why is the left more outraged over the fact that Trump's program is causing prices to go up in other countries than the fact that Americans have been subsidizing socialized medicine abroad? In reason, Mark Oshdreich called the new site Obamacare in Germany, Trump's handwriting. For most people, the discounts aren't really discounts. Roughly 90% of Americans are insured, and their co-pays are almost always cheaper than Trump RX's cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates, more than 60% off by law, so Trump RX adds little there. All of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. CVS, Walgreens, and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop-up that punts you to a manufacturer's
Starting point is 00:09:29 checkout page. Trump Rx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one. If this sounds familiar, it's because the blueprint was drawn a decade ago. Washington shoved through the Affordable Care Act with the same central planning arrogance, resting on monopolistic dealmaking and government dictated price regulation. Trump RX employs the same toolkit. One company receives favorable treatment, the government demands discounts in exchange for tariff protection, and Washington exerts raw power with no regard for the consequences. This leads to squeezed margins, less research, smaller generic drugs being driven out, and higher prices in the long run. Now here's what the left is saying. The left is skeptical of Trump RX's value, with some noting it only covers a small
Starting point is 00:10:29 number of drugs so far. Others say the logic of Trump's approach to drug pricing is flawed. In the Atlantic, Nicholas Florko described the real winner of Trump RX. The big winners of yesterday's announcement seem to be not patients, but drug companies. The Trump administration got drug makers to the negotiating table last year by writing letters to the companies threatening to, quote, deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from the continued abusive drug pricing practices." Drug makers were able to turn that threat into a PR opportunity. When Pfizer cut a deal to participate in the program, the company's CEO was brought to the
Starting point is 00:11:10 West Wing, where Trump called the drug company, quote, one of the greatest in the world. Drug companies have also successfully protected their ability to charge whatever they please for some of their biggest moneymakers. Many of the pharmaceutical industry's best-selling products, some of which are among their most expensive offerings are absent from the Trump Rx website. Take K. Truda, Merck's cancer drug that was the world's bestseller until it was recently surpassed by the weight loss and diabetes injection terseptide. That drug retails for roughly $12,000 for a three-week course of treatment, and it is missing
Starting point is 00:11:46 from Trump RX. Of the top 10 bestselling prescription drugs in 2024, only one, OZemPEC, is listed on Trump RX. In Bloomberg, Lisa Jarvis said The push for lower U.S. drug prices uses bad logic. In exchange for tariff relief, companies agreed to match Medicaid prices to those paid by peer countries, to invest in research and manufacturing in the U.S.
Starting point is 00:12:11 And to sell certain drugs at a discount on Trump RX. That might sound like a win for patients and taxpayers. But the lack of concrete details about the benchmark being used, the prices paid by other countries are confidential, makes it nearly impossible to evaluate the deals. Earlier legislation is already working to reduce Medicaid drug costs, meaning the U.S. might already be getting a better deal than its peers. It's also easy to imagine how countries and companies could game the system.
Starting point is 00:12:43 Manufacturers, for example, could raise list prices abroad, making the benchmark the U.S. uses appear higher while quietly offering backdoor discounts. None of this is to suggest that the Astroxie, astronomical cost of health care in the U.S. or the system's emphasis on treatment over prevention aren't problems in desperate need of fixing. Rather, it is to say we should price drugs based on the system in which they are delivered. That would require developing a thoughtful, transparent process for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of drugs, something pure nations with lower prices
Starting point is 00:13:17 already have. And now here's what health policy experts are saying. Some experts say, government intervention and drug costs risks driving up prices. Others suggest Trump RX's out-of-pocket payment requirement will hurt those it intends to help. In Cato, Jeffrey A. Singer wrote, Trump RX, when government tries to build a market. Third-party payment arrangements tend to drive up drug prices. When insurers or government programs are paying most of the bill, patients have little incentive to resist high prices. In fact, they often push back when payers try to steer them toward lower-cost drugs or pharmacies because any savings go to the insurer, employer, or the government, and not to them. Insurers, for their part, know that denying coverage or refusing
Starting point is 00:14:09 to pay list prices can cause backlash from beneficiaries who feel entitled to whatever their plan covers. Injecting government into this space risks crowding out private innovation and inviting the familiar problems of political favoritism, coercion, and regulatory corruption. If the administration wants to expand direct-to-consumer drug purchasing, the most effective role it can play is not to build a federal platform, but to eliminate policy barriers that hinder private actors from competing, innovating, and lowering prices on their own. Trump RX risks substituting political allocation for consumer choice in a space that is only now beginning to function like a real market. In stat, Sean D. Sullivan and Ryan and Hansen said Trump R.X has a fundamental flaw.
Starting point is 00:14:58 The promise is seductive. Lower prices on brand name medications available to anyone willing to bypass their insurance and pay out of pocket. But for most Americans, this initiative represents not a solution to our prescription drug price dilemma, but rather a distraction from it. The fundamental flaw in the Trump RX model lies in a misunderstanding, or perhaps a willful misrepresentation of how most Americans pay for their prescription medications. Most insured people pay far less out of pocket when using their insurance coverage than they would by paying, quote, discounted cash prices, even when those prices are subsidized by manufacturers. Consider a common but hypothetical scenario for older Americans.
Starting point is 00:15:42 A patient with diabetes and high cholesterol needs two brand name medications, Genuvia and Rapatha. Through insurance, they might pay a $35 copay for each drug, about $840 per year. The Trump RX website will offer Genuvia for diabetes at $100 per month and rapatha for cholesterol management at $239 per month. A discount from existing manufacturer list prices of $330 and $570,000. $3 per month, respectively, which is $4,068 per year. Paying cash requires an additional $3,228 out of pocket, or nearly 6% of their total income. For seniors already choosing between medications and groceries, this isn't a discount.
Starting point is 00:16:32 Using Trump RX would represent the equivalent of a tax on those least able to afford it. All right, that is it for what the right, left, and health policy experts are saying, I'm going to pass it over to Ari now to read his take. That leads me to my take. There's an old saying about drug pricing. I don't remember where I heard it, but it goes like this. It costs the drug company five cents to make each pill. But it cost them $2 billion to make the first one.
Starting point is 00:17:12 At the end of the day, any legislative framework that finds a way to offer fair prices to consumers under that dynamic is just simply going to be complicated. and any step that the government is able to take forward should be celebrated. TripRX, it does not help most people in general, but it will help people who need GLP1 drugs and fertility medication when those treatments aren't covered by their insurance. And we should celebrate that. That's the bottom line. Any other claims about this are just noise.
Starting point is 00:17:43 But why GLP1 and fertility drugs? Out of all the discounts Trump RX is offering, how does that benefit get narrowed down to only a few options for only certain people? Let's start with what Trump RX is, which I think Forbes's Jesse Pine summed up best. And I quote, Trump RX is not a government-run pharmacy. Instead, it's a centralized directory and coupon generator that connects cash-paying patients to pre-negotiated manufacturer discounts on 43 specific brand name drugs. End quote.
Starting point is 00:18:16 Now, let's unpack four of those elements specifically. One, pre-negotiated manufacturer discounts. Two, cash-paying patients. Three, 43 drugs and four specifically name brand drugs. First, pre-negotiated manufacturer discounts. This is important context for making sense of drug prices. Drug companies sell their product for a list price, which, frankly, is a gratuitous sham. Based on exclusivity or perceived value or whatever, pharmaceutical companies charge whatever they want for their drugs,
Starting point is 00:18:51 then negotiate those prices down through considerable discounts to pharmaceutical benefit managers, the dreaded PBMs. This process obfuscates the true net price. These drugs cost insurance providers at the end of the day, and it often leaves uninsured people paying exorbitant prices that effectively serve not as needed profit for these drug companies, but as added margin for manufacturers. So if you are uninsured and you're looking for a prescription drug, Trump RX may provide a benefit for you. Second, cash-paying patients.
Starting point is 00:19:26 What if you're a person with insurance? If you do have insurance and your insurance covers the medication you need, then that's it. Trump RX probably won't offer you any better price than what you get through insurance. If your insurance doesn't cover a drug you want or need, that's a different story. Just under 85% of Americans have some form of prescription drug coverage, and about 80% of drugs are covered by those plans. Prescription drugs most commonly not covered by insurance are those
Starting point is 00:19:53 prescribed for weight management, sexual dysfunction, hair growth, and fertility. If that's your situation, then Trump Rx may provide a benefit for you too. Third, the 43 drugs Trump Rx covers. Trump RX discounts come in one of two ways, either negotiated discounts to manufacturer prices or coupons to be presented at pharmacies. Let's take an example. I take an albuteral inhaler as needed for occasional asthma. The Trump RX offer for their name brand albuterol inhaler, AstraZeneca's Air Supra, shows how I can buy an inhaler from AstraZeneca for a helpful 60% reduction of $201 from
Starting point is 00:20:34 its, frankly, extortionist list price of $503.93. I don't even need Trump RX to get that price. I can go straight to the website and receive the discount that the government negotiated. Other drugs have rebates in the form of printable coupons. If I want Prestiq to help treat depression, I can print out a 54% off coupon, get a prescription for the drug from my doctor, and go to a pharmacy and receive this discount off the list price. But I have better options in both of these cases.
Starting point is 00:21:06 Which leads me to number four, name brand drugs. Most drugs offered through Trump RX are available. already through generic alternatives. Pristique's generic form, Desvillifaxine, is available for about $30. And I can get a generic albuterol inhaler for under 50, if not better, with a similar coupon through Good RX or any other website similar to that. I'd have to be severely under-informed to choose instead to go through the manufacturer's website itself. Though, happily, I'm one of the 85% of Americans with health insurance coverage,
Starting point is 00:21:39 and albuterol is one of the 80% of drugs covered by my insurer. For almost all the other drugs offered through Trump RX, generics beat out the discounted prices. So that leaves two kinds of drugs that I can get for cheaper from the government website than through other alternatives unless I have really good insurance coverage. Those two are fertility drugs and GOP ones. But that's still not the whole story. To get us the rest of the way there,
Starting point is 00:22:06 I need to expound on our coverage of the Biden administration's Medicare Part D negotiations in 2023. We missed an important piece of context in our coverage that has haunted me for years, and providing that context from three years ago now helps to answer today's questions. Essentially, Medicare was able to negotiate down the prices for 10 drugs, including diabetes treatments, cancer treatments, and blood thinners for people covered by Medicare Part D, thanks to a rule passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, allowing the government to negotiate prices. We focused on how much these changes would actually help consumers in our coverage, whether price fixing was a better word than negotiating to describe the changes,
Starting point is 00:22:49 and what externalized costs would come from bringing these prices down, like a disincentive to invest in innovation for drug companies. All of those were good things to cover. What we didn't explore was why these 10 drug prices were, were coming down without much of a fight from pharmaceutical companies. The IRA said that Medicare can negotiate the prices of the 10 most expensive drugs in the program in 2023, but only the ones that had already been FDA approved for a long time, specifically seven years for small molecule or chemical drugs, and 11 years for biologics, or those
Starting point is 00:23:28 derived from living organisms. FDA exclusivity regulations and patents offer protection for pharma companies from competitors. Those protections are five years after approval for small molecule drugs and 12 years after approval for biologics. Usually, these protections get extended a couple years further, meaning the IRA really took a few years of maximal profitability off the drugs covered by the law. Later this year, the next 15 most expensive drugs with nearly expired patents
Starting point is 00:24:02 will be negotiated for Medicare Part D. or B to take effect in 20, then another 20 will be negotiated in 2029. Those Medicare wins are time limited, since generics will soon come to market to beat out those prices. The discounts offered for GLP 1 and fertility drugs through Trump RX are similarly limited in time. However, and importantly, those limits are significantly longer. For GLP 1s, the patent for some Megalitune, or OZEPIC and Wago, expires in 2026. A Brazilian alternative is currently facing the long FDA approval process, but secondary patents will inhibit the availability of generics and megalitude in the U.S. market
Starting point is 00:24:47 until the early 2030s. Meanwhile, Treseptide or Manjaro and Zeppown is patent-protected all the way through the late 2030s. As for fertility treatments, many drugs are used to help stimulate gamete production or egg and sperm aren't available. in the United States through generics or biosimilars, despite the fact that patents aren't restricting their development. In particular, recombinant HCG or Ovidro, and FCH, or GONOF, have competitors in Europe, but not in the U.S. Trump RX offers Gano F for $168,
Starting point is 00:25:24 an incredible savings of about $1,800 over its availability through good RX or similar platforms. It also offers cetratide, name brand Cetrolix acetate, which is already available as a generic. However, the Trump RX pricing offers another strong discount over what you can get today on the market, slashing the price from about $200 down to $20. For people who will be helped by GOP1 medication and fertility drugs, insurance often doesn't provide much savings, and these discounts through Trump RX will be an enormous benefit. Maybe in the future, other drugs will fall under that umbrella too. But right now,
Starting point is 00:26:03 the drugs that are under that umbrella are fairly limited. So we can say the new government site takes a small bite out of the enormous health care affordability problem in the United States, but not that big of a bite. This is not a monumental achievement, but it is a step forward. And that's worth appreciating. All right, that's it for my take. If you want to hear me do a take of something that doesn't require me pronouncing long chemical names or reading off big numbers,
Starting point is 00:26:35 you just got to send an email into Will, W-I-L-L-Ru-Tango.com, and Lund W-W-N-W-L-Rut-ROT com. Either way, I'm going to send it over to my friend and our executive editor, Isaac Saul, to answer your questions for today. I'll talk to you next time, probably pronouncing some more long names or reading off numbers.
Starting point is 00:26:50 Have a good one. We'll be right back after this quick break. Well, not so fast. It's actually Will jumping back in here. We had a little bit of a, late stage kerfuffle today for recording the podcast. Isaac's port that connects his microphone to his computer broke, so he's not able to record today's reader question. I'm going to step in and read it. Just a quick note up front, as you'll see in a second. This question is addressed specifically to
Starting point is 00:27:30 Isaac, so the response comes from him specifically as opposed to the Tangle staff. All right, here is today's reader question. It comes from Will in Boulder, Colorado. What's up, Will? Love the name. How does Tangle avoid creating a cult of personality around the My Take section? If the goal of Tangle is to help liberals and conservatives see across the aisle, what prevents the creation of a Tangle bubble, where Isaac's take is now the standard of truth? Here was Isaac's response to that question. This has always been something I've consciously tried to avoid. I first added in the My Take section only after beta testing this newsletter.
Starting point is 00:28:11 Before it was added, the number one response, I got from readers was, well, what do you think? You're a politics reporter and I'm curious for your opinion. People wanted some kind of closing analysis to round out the newsletter and so I added a section sharing my own view. Immediately, the touch of personality seemed to make the product more interesting and engaging for readers and it gave me a chance to be transparent about my views, which speaks to the Tangle mission. Still, from the very start, I never wanted my voice to be the part of the newsletter responsible for defining the truth. That's why every take starts with this disclosure.
Starting point is 00:28:49 Quote, reminder, my take is a section where we give ourselves space to share a personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism, or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email or leave a comment. And I would just note for our podcast audience, that message is the same. Now, as we've grown, we've consciously taken a few steps to try to ensure my opinion remains what it was always intended to be. Just one voice of many. First, we're including more voices.
Starting point is 00:29:19 So far in 2026, we haven't gone a single week where I've written every single take. Tangle has an editorial staff of diverse and challenging thinkers, like Ari Weitzman, Will Kayback, Audrey Moorhead, and Lindsay Canuth. And you're going to keep hearing more from them, like you are today from Ari. Second, we've added in staff dissents to show that diversity of thought in other ways.
Starting point is 00:29:42 We might not always have a dissent to feature, but showing readers our internal disagreements when we have them keeps tangled true to its goal of providing multiple perspectives in every edition. Third, we're simply trying to limit the size of the My Take section. Now, that's easier said than done, but we're slowly trying to bring the word count of that section down so that it doesn't dominate the entire newsletter. And of course, we make an effort to reflect on our work.
Starting point is 00:30:08 We grade our own reporting and analysis at the start of each year. I write pieces all the time about being wrong or changing my mind, and we encourage our audience to challenge us, debate each other, and continue to have dialogue about these messy, complex ideas. None of this, to me, is a recipe for a cult of personality, though I do think it's a way to make nonpartisan balanced and open-minded news much more engaging and interesting. All right, that is it for today's reader question.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Again, reading in Isaac's voice. Now, I'm going to take back over and take us home, starting with our Under the Radar section. All right, here is today's Under the Radar story. On Monday, lawyers for Rumaesa Ozturk, a Tufts PhD student arrested in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, disclosed in a letter that an immigration judge had terminated her removal proceedings. Osterisk was reportedly targeted for co-authoring an op-ed calling for U.S. divestment from Israel. And in their letter, the lawyer said the court dropped the case after concluding that the government did not meet its burden of proof to show she needed to be removed from the country. The letter states that Osterk could be subject to redetention if the Trump administration appeals the ruling to the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the highest administrative body overseeing U.S. immigration law.
Starting point is 00:31:33 Reuters has this story, and we'll put the link to it in today's show notes. Finally, here's our Havanaise day story. Guinea worms are parasites contracted by consuming contaminated water, sometimes growing up to one meter long before painfully exiting the body through a blister. Although it is rarely lethal, guinea worm infections were common not long ago, affecting 3.5 million people in 20 countries across Africa and Asia in 1986. However, thanks to an initiative started by former President Jimmy Carter, Guinea worm infection is now close to becoming the second human disease to be eradicated after smallpox. Only 10 cases of infections were reported last year, an all-time low and a 33% decrease from 2024. Quote, we think about President Carter's legacy, said Adam Weiss,
Starting point is 00:32:26 director of the Carter Center's Guinea Worm Eradication Program. We continue to charge ourselves with his mission of alleviating as much pain and suffering as we can. ABC News has this story, and again, we'll put the link to it in today's show notes. All right, that is it for today's edition. We will talk to you tomorrow. That's Wednesday.
Starting point is 00:32:47 And until then, have a great rest of your day, your morning, your night, whatever it might be. All right. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dube. Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will
Starting point is 00:33:07 Kback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.

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