Kennedy’s MAHA Ally Rips Trump’s Toxic Herbicide Ruling

🔥 New in The Lever: Billionaires and Bari Weiss’ takeover of CBS News is the culmination of a decades-long master plan.

👇 Spend three minutes reading this 956-word newsletter to learn about:

• Why a MAHA leader thinks chemical makers are extorting the Trump administration.
• Who’s eyeing their real estate prospects amid Gaza’s potential ceasefire.
• The tech powerhouse at the heart of the AI bubble.
• The deadly complications of Wall Street’s health care ploys.

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🐸 Think of the frogs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has bucked an Environmental Protection Agency ruling from the first Trump administration and determined that the chemical herbicide atrazine — an endocrine disrupter linked to cancer and fertility issues — does not pose a risk to life on Earth. Atrazine’s tendency to chemically castrate frogs through runoff pollution made it the target of Alex Jones’ infamous rant, “I don’t like ’em putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay!” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once an ardent critic of atrazine, but has softened on this and other issues since Trump’s confirmation — sparking disputes within the Make America Healthy Again movement.  

• Moms Across America, a MAHA environmental group that Kennedy advises, slammed the ruling. “Apparently, this administration accepts the fact that atrazine, which is banned in 60 countries… is acceptable to be in the drinking watersheds,” founder Zen Honeycutt told The Lever. “One can only imagine what the chemical companies hold over our policy makers to compel them to make this tragic decision.”

🕊️ Kushner’s lucrative ceasefire. Israel and Hamas have agreed to “phase one” of a ceasefire plan that should see Oct. 7 hostages returned in exchange for a partial withdrawal from Gaza. The deal was brokered by two of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers: special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner — a family friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and Witkoff also happen to be major real estate developers with millions of dollars in investments from partners in the region.

• Earlier this year, Kushner — a self-described “earnest businessman with no political ambitions” —  took a majority stake in an Israeli firm financing new settlements constructed in occupied Palestinian territory after waxing poetic about Gaza’s “waterfront property” and investment potential.

🔥 Up in flames. Tensions are rising between the Trump administration and Belgium over the fate of $9.7 million worth of contraceptives. Instead of distributing the leftover medication from the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump regulators plan to incinerate it in Belgium, where it is stored — rejecting multiple offers from the Belgian government to purchase and distribute the products. Thanks to a local ban, they can’t legally be destroyed until they expire, but the U.S. government appears happy to hold the pharmaceuticals hostage until they reach their end of their shelf life.

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The AI bubble is one giant kickback. (Source: Bloomberg)

Ride on. California gig workers now may organize after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation clearing the path for roughly 800,000 state rideshare drivers to join unions. The law came as part of an agreement with Uber and Lyft that, in exchange, slashed their coverage requirements for underinsured drivers.

Four ways to die by PE. Private equity, the scantly regulated high-risk industry best known for burying companies in debt and liquidating them for parts, wants to manage your health care — even if it means killing you. Research shows that when private funds enter the picture, patients suffer. Here are four ways you could die at private equity’s hands:

1. Visiting an emergency room. A new Harvard Medical School study of more than 1 million Medicare ER visits found that patient death rates are 13 percent higher in private equity-owned ERs than their counterparts, likely thanks to associated staffing and salary cuts. On average, private equity-owned hospitals reduce hospital staffing by more than 11 percent and pay ER staffers 18 percent less than non-private equity hospitals. They also transferred patients to other hospitals more frequently and shortened their stays in intensive care units — evidence of their reduced capacity for handling “high-risk” (read: very sick) patients. 
2. Going to the dentist. Corporatized dental care has long been accused of being a hotbed for medical malpractice, and matters could be getting worse as private equity increasingly sinks its talons into sprawling dental operations. Private equity-backed dental groups have been found to perform medically unnecessary and painful procedures: One firm allegedly extracted healthy teeth from patients to charge them for expensive dental implants, while another performed root canals on the baby teeth of children as young as three.
3. Getting surgery. Across numerous surgical procedures, patients at private equity hospitals were more likely to suffer life-threatening complications and die within a month of surgery. A study of more than 662,000 Medicare hospitalizations in PE-owned facilities saw 25 percent more hospital-acquired conditions, including falls and surgical site infections, compared to non-PE hospitals. 

• “Private equity acquisition of hospitals, on average, was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events despite a likely lower-risk pool of admitted Medicare beneficiaries, suggesting poorer quality of inpatient care,” researchers concluded.

4. Living in a nursing home. Medicare patients in private equity-backed nursing homes suffered an 11 percent higher short-term mortality rate than those in non-PE-backed facilities between 2004 and 2019, resulting in 22,500 additional deaths. Nursing homes linked to private equity tend to underperform in terms of patient mobility and reported pain levels. They also tend to have fewer caregivers on staff, which might explain why their patients are 50 percent more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medication.

• Moreover, private equity’s liquidity issues (caused by debt-backed buyouts) mean that managers often sell nursing home properties and lease the facility back, spiking rent by an average of 77 percent post-buyout.

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Habeas corpus? Never heard of him.