>In early August, soon after joining the FDA, Tidmarsh announced actions that would effectively remove from the market a drug ingredient made by a company associated with Tang. Tidmarsh’s lawyer then sent a letter to Tang proposing that he extend a “service agreement” for “another 10 years,” which would see Tang making payments to a Tidmarsh-associated entity until 2044. The email was seen as attempted extortion, with such payments being in exchange for Tidmarsh rolling back the FDA’s regulatory change.

Straight up extortion.

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Kapura 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

it's crazy how much of the current regime's position is "crime is legal if it's my guys doing it."

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watwut 2 days ago | parent [-]

To be fair, that was always conservative position.

Edit: I do not mean it cynically or as a joke. I think that is exactly what conservative position was for years. The only difference now is that it is not possible to euphemism away or plausible deniality away out of it.

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smithoc a day ago | parent [-]

It's not, and the current administration isn't conservative.

The MAGA movement has completely purged all the conservatives from the Republican party.

They've increased the deficit by a trillion dollars, built an army of ICE agents and deployed them to terrorize people in cities around the country, added billions of dollars in import taxes, taken state ownership stakes in multiple companies.

They're closer to Stalin or Mao than to any conservative ideology of a small government that stays out of people's business.

	▲	tastyface a day ago \| parent [-]
		And yet the non-MAGA Republicans in Congress are (almost) fully complicit. After all, just a handful of their votes would be sufficient to shutter the whole operation.

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teddy-smith a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This makes me wonder how much of the Tariffs are extortion of other countries.

How randomly they seem to be applied to makes me wonder if theres back room deals going on.

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yongjik a day ago | parent | next [-]

Trump tariffs are extortion. It's orthogonal to whether it's a good policy for the US, but nobody outside the US has any doubt about it being extortion. It's not even a back room deal kind of stuff; "Give America your money or I'll raise tariffs" is how Trump is openly talking to every country.

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tastyface a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Backroom? The Korean government publicly gifted Trump a golden crown just last week!

	▲	yongjik a day ago \| parent [-]
		Well as a Korean I can't say I'm proud of what happened, but if the choice is between "get robbed by someone who fancies himself a king" and "get robbed by someone who fancies himself a king, but also get a nuclear submarine deal" ...