The Dictatorship

Trump’s drug policy reforms are admirable — but he’s still waging the war on drugs

Published

3 months ago

April 25, 2026

Apr. 25, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

President Donald Trump took two substantial, morally correct actions over the past week to liberalize the federal government’s drug policies — both long overdue from any president.

In a crowded Oval Office last Saturday, with superstar podcaster Joe Rogan standing directly behind himTrump signed an executive order “to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.”

On Thursday, Trump’s Justice Department announced it would move cannabis products from Schedule I — the most severe classification for highly addictive drugs such as heroin, with prohibitions on uses for medical research — to the far more lenient Schedule III, which includes over-the-counter medications like acetaminophen. The department also said it would set a hearing for late June to reclassify marijuana more broadly to Schedule III. The reclassification doesn’t legalize or decriminalize marijuana on the federal level, but it will create clearer pathways for legitimate medical research and provide tax relief for marijuana cultivators, who were heavily penalized in tax payments under Schedule I.

These two moves, however, do not mean Trump will end the immoral and disastrous war on drugs.

These are good things. We should be investing more as a nation in mental health research and adults should be free to grow, purchase and consume marijuana. And we should someday finally get to a place in this country where young people won’t have their life options, such as their ability to secure student loans, housing and employment, irreparably limited because of petty drug busts.

Rogan took a break from promoting pseudoscience to personally lobby Trump on the mental health virtues of the psychedelic drug ibogaine. If it was a different podcaster speaking to a different president in the Oval Office, MAGA brains might even have said Rogan’s pitch sounded vaguely “woke”: “These drugs are illegal not because they are harmful, they are illegal because of the 1970 controlled substances act passed by the Richard Nixon administration. They did it to target the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement.” (Rogan probably missed the irony of comparing Trump favorably to a corrupt Republican administration that fought an unpopular war abroad while trampling on Americans’ rights at home.)

These two moves, however, do not mean Trump will end the immoral and disastrous war on drugs. He has, in fact, conducted it with brutality.

The Trump administration has carried out, in what many experts have described as an extralegal fashion, at least 52 military strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean. The strikes have killed at least 180 people, according to The New York Timesand include reported double-tap strikes on injured people clinging to the wreckage (a potential war crime). The administration said the boats were loaded with fentanyl and bound for the U.S. to kill Americans, thus making them enemy “combatants” rather than alleged civilian criminals. But it has yet to present evidence to back up those claims.

Trump had Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro seized and imprisoned, again supposedly in part because of the threat posed by fentanyl, even though the country has virtually no involvement in producing or trafficking the drug. The U.S. military literally has “boots on the ground” in operations against drug cartels in Ecuador and Mexico. The president also used the supposed menace of fentanyl smuggling from the Great White North to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian imports. But in all of 2024, Customs and Border Patrol seized just 43 pounds of fentanyl at the northern border, compared to 21,000 at the southern border.

The Trump administration has wielded the war on drugs itself as a weapon in its war on immigration. Thousands of people have been detained and deported under the pretext of nothing more than a long-past drug offense.

So why, then, did Trump take off his narc hat this week? Rogan and other psychedelic-friendly podcast bros have been calling out Trump for his disastrous and likely illegal Iran war that has made average Joes pay far more for everything, as well as for the fascistic and cruel tactics of his mass deportation regime. Looks to me like Trump, ever the showman and needy for approval, pulled a rabbit out of his hat: two momentous leaps in liberalization of federal drug policy.

But Trump hasn’t stopped the extralegal killings or the foreign incursions or the persecution of immigrants or the inexplicable trade warfare — all in the name of fighting a war on drugs. If this is what ending the drug war looks like to you, I daresay you’re high on your own supply.

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.

The Dictatorship

Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 7.10.26: Democrats pour into Maine race to replace Platner

Published

2 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Friday’s Campaign Round-Up, 7.10.26: Democrats pour into Maine race to replace Platner

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Maine’s closely watched Senate raceGraham Platner has until Monday to officially withdraw his Democratic candidacy. And according to multiple reportshe intends to wait until Monday to file the paperwork. It’s not at all clear why he’s dragging out the process.

In the meantime, the field of contenders hoping to replace him on the general election ballot is growing quickly. Former state Senate President Troy Jackson, for example, announced his candidacy less than an hour after Platner left the race. Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Company, is also in, along with former gubernatorial hopeful Nirav Shah, who led the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic.

As Thursday progressed, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows joined the party’s field, as did Jordan Wood, who recently lost a competitive House primary race in the northern part of Maine.

Over the past 30 years, there have been only nine instances in which a major party replaced its Senate nominee. Two of those nine won.

* Despite credible concerns about Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s eligibility to run for governor in Alabama, a state judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that argued he does not meet the residency requirement to run.

* In Texas’ closely watched Senate raceRepublican Attorney General Ken Paxton raised over $9 million in the second quarter (spanning April through June), while Democratic state Rep. James Talarico raised a staggering $30 million over the same three months. According to The Texas TribuneTalarico’s haul “is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year.”

* As Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s Republican gubernatorial campaign prepares for an Aug. 6 primary, the senator launched a new television ad this week that has been widely panned as racist.

* Rep. Mike Collins’ Republican Senate campaign in Georgia was already facing long oddsand it probably won’t help that the far-right congressman is now struggling with staffing issuesincluding the departure of two chiefs of staff.

* And while it’s undeniable that Republicans enjoy a financial advantage headed into the midterm electionsSenate Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with the Senate Democratic leadership, and its affiliated nonprofit raised $147 million in the second quarter. That’s the best quarter it’s ever had.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Mexican immigrant killed by ICE was not target, Democratic lawmaker says

Published

2 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Mexican immigrant killed by ICE was not target, Democratic lawmaker says

Christmas. 10, 2026, 11:47 AM EDT

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was not the target of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation that resulted in his fatal shooting, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, told MS NOW.

Salgado, a Mexican immigrant who moved to the United States 35 years ago, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday. According to Garcia, acting ICE Director David Venturella told her that neither Salgado nor his brother, who was in the vehicle with him, were the individuals that ICE officers were looking for. But Venturella “refused” to provide further information, Garcia said.

In a statement to MS NOW, a DHS spokesperson said that “officers conducted surveillance on a target’s address” where “they noted two white vans at the property. On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop.”

The New York Timesciting a DHS spokeswoman, also reported on Thursday that ICE officers had been looking for a different person.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has ruled Salgado’s death a homicide.

How the incident escalated to result in Salgado’s killing is unclear. Three other men arrested in the operation have disputed in handwritten statements to The Washington Post the claim by DHS that Salgado “weaponized his vehicle” against an officer.

“That is a lie,” Jose Trinidad Rojas said. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

The officers engaging in the operation were also not wearing body cameras, nor were there cameras on the car dashboard. A DHS spokesperson told MS NOW in a statement that officers had not been issued body cameras because of the government shutdowns over funding for the department, saying the process of acquiring the equipment for ICE field offices “was interrupted by the Democrats multiple government shutdowns.”

Salgado’s death has sparked a firestorm across the country. His family said he was in the process of obtaining his work permit and was en route to a construction site when he was killed.

They have also called for an independent investigation into his killing, pointing to the similarities in DHS’ claim about the circumstances of Salgado’s death to that of Renee Good’s in Minneapolis.

DHS has said its Office of Inspector General is probing the incident. A spokesperson for the FBI in Houston previously told MS NOW that it is “leading an investigation into the potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.

Rosa Flores is a national correspondent for MS NOW.

Sara Weisfeldt is a field producer for MS NOW.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

The Dictatorship

Victor Marx’s GOP primary win in Colorado creates a new challenge for his party

Published

2 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Victor Marx’s GOP primary win in Colorado creates a new challenge for his party

Voters in Colorado haven’t elected a Republican governor in more than two decades, and now that this year’s GOP gubernatorial primary has been called, it seems the streak will continue for four more years. The Associated Press reported:

Marine Corps veteran Victor Marx won the Republican primary for Colorado governor on Thursday, inching past a state senator who had the establishment’s backing.

Marx, described as a “high risk humanitarian” and the fastest gun disarmer in the world, defeated Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, his stiffest competition, in the June 30 election.

The results were incredibly close, and as of the latest tallies, Marx’s lead over Kirkmeyer was only about half a percentage point. That said, the advantage was good enough for news organizations to call the contest.

For her party, Kirkmeyer thanked her supporters and volunteers in a statement Thursday evening, signing off by saying, “I’m still proud of the campaign we ran … and, for the record, I still haven’t killed anyone.”

That might sound like a strange thing to say, but in this case, it was highly relevant: According to Marx, who founded a group called All Things Possible Ministries, he had an abusive stepfather who effectively forced him, at just 7 years old, to kill a man.

Asked in May how many people he has killed since then, the GOP candidate paused before telling Kyle Clark, an anchor at the NBC affiliate in Denver, “Does it matter?” He went on to call it an “odd question.”

(For the record, there are lingering questions about whether Marx actually killed a man as a child, and according to local law enforcementthere are unsolved murders from that time period.)

In case that weren’t quite enough, in the same interview, Marx explained that he also performs exorcisms, which he added can be completed over the phone.

He did not appear to be kidding.

A recent Slate report noted that party insiders not only expect him to lose badly, they’re also concerned that having Marx at the top of the GOP ballot “could imperil other Republican seats in the statehouse and Congress, plunging the fractured, marginalized party into chaos.”

Marx will face Phil Weiser, the Democratic state attorney general, in November. Watch this space.