Rising living costs have been a persistent concern for Americans. Now, President Donald Trump is once again claiming that prices are coming down — but the latest inflation data tell a more complicated story for your wallet.
During remarks in Ohio on Aug. 11, Trump said that “prices are dropping fast,” while also touting the stock market and employment (1). The comment came as the latest government data showed inflation had eased slightly in July.
But there’s an important distinction between inflation slowing and prices actually falling. The latest data show that while the rate of inflation has cooled from its pandemic-era highs, the overall price level is still rising.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.4% in July from a year earlier, down slightly from 3.5% in June but still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Prices also rose 0.1% from June to July (2).
President Donald Trump won a second term promising fast relief on the cost of living. “Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” he told a Montana rally in August 2024. Twenty months in, the bills Americans actually pay have moved in several directions at once.
[. . .]
The sharpest promise was gasoline. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to get gas “below $2 a gallon” and to cut energy prices in half.
It never reached $2. It did fall to about $2.83 in January, a substantial decline, and he took the credit. Then fighting around the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude toward $90 a barrel, and the national average climbed to $4.33 by mid-September, according to AAA, more than a dollar above a year earlier.
Homeowners felt it beyond the pump. Over the year through August, gasoline was up 27.4%, fuel oil 52%, electricity 3.8% and natural gas 4.4%. Fuel oil is a sliver of the national Consumer Price Index basket, but that jump lands hard on households that still heat with oil, many of them in the Northeast. Gasoline alone accounted for more than a third of the month’s rise in the overall index.
Spokesman Kush Desai defended administration policies, noting that President Donald Trump “pledged to end Joe Biden’s generational inflation crisis, and the Administration has been laser-focused on delivering since Day One with a proven supply-side economic agenda.”
The Biden generational inflation crisis?
From 2017 to 2020, inflation was above 2% each year. Joe Biden wasn't president in those years, Chump was. Chump destroyed the economy in his first term. Biden came into office a year into the pandemic and still managed to address the economy. Chump's back in and inflation is worse than it was during his first term. But every year Chump was in office during his first term, we had an inflation rate of at least 2%. That's 8% higher when he left in January 2021 than it was when he was sworn in on January 20, 2017. 8% higher when he left in 2021.
That's reality. Reality is also that we are 46 days away from the midterms. Appearing on CNN's ERIN BURNETT OUT FRONT yesterday was Iraq War veteran Paul Reickhoff.
Adam Lynch reports:
How things change -- especially when midterms are closer. 46 days.
Sargent: Right. It never hurts to remind people that Trump is abusing his power in every conceivable way that he can. CBS News just published extraordinary photos of U.S. equipment and positions in the Middle East that have been badly damaged by the war. The pictures are powerful. There’s aircraft that’s been blown up, buildings reduced to rubble. It’s much worse than we knew. But here’s the kicker: U.S. service members anonymously sent these pictures to CBS due to restrictions on communicating with the media. As one service member told CBS News: “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed, getting punched in the face.” Nick, Pete Hegseth’s propagandists suppressed this info about what’s happening to United States interests and assets, and it’s getting leaked right around them. Your thoughts on all this?
Grossman: Right. It’s really bad. And I think we’re going to keep finding out about additional damage that this did, because the Trump administration’s main foreign policy priority has been lying to the American people. And so when the war did not go well—which started, I mean, really before it started, but it was clear that it wasn’t going well within a few weeks—and they’ve been still stalling and flailing and trying different things the entire time. And while they’re doing this, because they can’t admit their own failure, they are then trying to cover up all this damage. Because instead of correcting the problem, or instead of addressing the problem in the first place, they are trying to just keep it from the public. And they can’t. It’s too big. It’s too many bases that are not being defended. This is too much money, too many people involved. And the way they’ve tried to keep it out of the media—we can see, especially in the internet age, that you can’t keep images from getting to the public.
Sargent: You know, those photos really reminded me of Trump’s 2016 ads, in which he tried to demonstrate what he called “American carnage.” There were pictures of, you know, rusted-out factories through the Rust Belt. A lot of these pictures almost look like that. They’re like these American bases which are just have been bombed, they’re falling apart, their windows are broken, they’re deserted.
Grossman: Yeah. The United States has bases all throughout the Middle East, and this is the big geopolitical architecture that is changing. Trump has lost the Gulf. He’s lost freedom of navigation. It seems like he’s losing Saudi Arabia and losing the Middle East. And it’s not clear where the chaos of it will go, but it’s clear that they do not have a handle on it at all. And the damage to the American bases—on top of that, there’s all the munition shortages, the fact that they used a lot of the best stuff without really thinking through a plan beyond that. And there’s all the damage, various injuries to troops, that keep on coming out, more than to U.S. allies and to U.S. interests. And we’re seeing this come into politics now more and more because it is increasingly unignorable. It’s something where they were never in control of the situation, but now they have really lost control of it, and it is spilling over in all directions.
Sargent: You can almost look at these images, which are really quite striking—I want to underscore how striking the imagery of these bombed-out American bases really looks. It’s haunting stuff. You can almost see it as kind of symbolic of American decline, in the same way Trump used rusting-out factories to symbolize his critique of American decline, right?
Grossman: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And now that you mention it, I’m trying to think of when the last time there were a bunch of American military bases damaged, and photos of, like, American aircraft in pieces and American facilities in rubble. That wasn’t something that happened during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was more the sort of thing that we would see at one isolated location from a terrorist attack. Even if you think of the images out of Vietnam, it’s the withdrawal, the helicopter on the roof of Saigon. It’s not these large military defeats in which there’s all sorts of damage. So yeah, it looks like the United States is no longer that number one global power. I mean, still, of course, the U.S. has the biggest military, biggest economy, but is no longer acting like it, exercising the powers like it, the responsibilities and benefits of it—and being seen, I think definitely internationally, but increasingly domestically also, like this is a problem. There were a lot of advantages for the United States being the world’s premier power and being seen as such, and the responsibilities and benefits that go with it. And giving that away—I mean, it really was a choice, which really sucks. But while the American people might not care about foreign policy often, they do when things go really bad. And, you know, you can think of the 2002–2004 elections, foreign policy was a serious issue. I might say in 2024, you know, it wasn’t the number one issue—things like inflation were—but certainly Middle East, Gaza, Israel-Palestine were issues in the election. And now that it is reaching out into economic damage to everybody, with no end in sight, and compounding other economic damage Trump is causing, politically it seems unignorable.
Sargent: Well, the polling here has become absolutely crippling and completely underscores your point. The latest Quinnipiac survey found that approval of Trump’s handling of foreign policy is 33 percent to 60 percent disapproving. That’s 27 points underwater. On Iran specifically, approval of Trump’s handling of it is 29 percent to 65 percent disapproving—36 points underwater. And on the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump clocks in at 28 percent to 61 percent, or 33 points underwater. I mean, that’s just extraordinary stuff. It’s extraordinary failure, and an amazing repudiation of Trump’s handling of the commander in chief role, or whatever you want to call it. Donald Trump really campaigned as the guy who was just American military power personified. Trump’s strong, opponents weak. And he’s just falling apart across the board. It’s almost amazing to see, isn’t it?
[T]he list of terrible Trump Cabinet appointees (and other positions) is as endless as the number of jobs themselves — though that's to be expected when the first, maybe only, requirement is unrequited love, along with unwavering and public support of Donald Trump as president and person.
Bessent, Blanche, Patel, Noem — one could go on and on. And yet the worst still holds his job, perhaps because Trump doesn't fire white males, perhaps because Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth actually does efficiently and perfectly perform the real task before him — pandering to Trump and persecuting those he believes deserve it — while failing at all others.
Despite the perfect overlap with Trump's Secretary of Defense job description (it is not the War Department until Congress changes it), the country and Donald Trump needed Hegseth fired long ago. He endangers American lives, ruins morale among our best, blows up our relationship with former allies, miscounts or lies about tools left to blow things up, minimizes or lies about the damage to American personnel and assets, and fails to recognize that war in 2026 doesn't align with war in 2016, even.
Hegseth's list of failures rivals Trump's list of horrific appointments. And yet, he may have barely scratched the surface of the damage he can do to this country and the world.
The United States could be guilty of war crimes for a pair of deadly strikes on Iran, including one on a school, a new report has found.
Investigators said they found reasonable grounds to believe U.S. forces were behind an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the city of Minab, where more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren, according to Iranian officials.
Investigators reached a similar conclusion about a second strike on a sports center in the city of Lamerd, which damaged nearby homes and a school and killed or injured 22 civilians.
The findings come from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, a body examining the conduct of both the United States and Iran during the war that began in February, in a report set to be submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to Reuters.
[. . .]
As questions mounted over the strike that killed dozens of students, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bragged about the campaign’s firepower.
“We fight to win” and “We don’t waste time or lives,” he told reporters days later. “As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be,” he said, adding that the U.S. was “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.
We're the United States, we aren't supposed to target children. We're also not supposed to have an entire administration of incompetents but that's what we have thanks to Chump. Hegsteh may be the worst of the worst.
Susan Greene (DAILY MAIL) reports:
Burner phones. Pay phones. Borrowed devices. Whatever it takes to reach us without being traced.
Pentagon staffers are risking their careers to blow the whistle on the disarray and discontentment consuming the Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth.
'People should know what a mess it is,' one Army officer confided. 'Things have gone from bad to worse. It's unbelievably chaotic and demoralizing.'
A civilian staffer put it even more bluntly, calling their message to the public 'an urgent SOS.'
Six insiders – each with at least six years inside the military's headquarters – spoke with the Daily Mail about working for a man they call the least qualified, most explosive defense secretary in American history: a former Fox & Friends host who rebranded the agency the 'Department of War' and, they say, is now running it like a personal fiefdom.
In other bad news for Hegseth, the Bari Weiss insisted upon profile of his 'heroics' which aired on Sunday's low rated episode of 60 MINUTES? It's already getting the kind of criticism The Water Cooler Set avoided. The Water Cooler Set are TV writers for American publications who claim to be critics but are not. They run with the herd and they're all about 'safety' and having 'safe' opinions. Ava and I've battled against them at THIRD for years now. So Lesley Stahl did a strong report -- though not on the Chump administration -- and Norah did a kiss ass 'report' and The Water Cooler Set tried to play like this made for a great episode. No. Norah's not a reporter. She's never been a reporter. Everyone who's worked with her knows that. Poor Gayle King has to work with Norah again.
And The Water Cooler Set could have noted that. But they have no back bone and the 'safe' thing to do was to say "60 MINUTES is still 60 MINUTES!" No, it's not.
Lesley went after petty crooks who take money to get pardons from Chump. This had nothing really to do with Chump. It was con men who tell their clients, "Pay me X and I'll get you a pardon."
Lesley could have done a report on Chump's pardons. That's not what she did.
What Norah did?
Norah did the thing that Lara Logan did and that got Lara fired. She did what Bari wanted which was not journalism. And it was weak and weakly sourced and beyond stupid. One of her sources? His name wasn't given. He's talking about the crash in April in the Iran War and claimed to be in it but he couldn't reveal his identity.
What a load of nonsense.
It was about glorifying Hegseth and the stories were questionable.
Nick Hilden notes questions are being raised:
On Tuesday, a decorated Army general declared that the story of a shot-down pilot’s rescue during the war with Iran “could not be true.” The general’s statement came in response to an installment from the latest episode of 60 Minutes, decried by some analysts as "propaganda," which featured Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a rescued airman relating a tale that retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey found literally unbelievable.
The 60 Minutes segment focused on an American F-15 pilot who crashed in Iran shortly after President Donald Trump launched the war nearly seven months ago. After the episode aired, McCaffrey — recipient of three Purple Hearts — took to social media to express his thoughts, posting, “Very strange story. Could not be true. US Army stops parachute ops with wind speed of 15mph. I’ve jumped with higher wind speeds, and it feels like a train wreck. 100 mph sounds like all bones in body broken and limbs torn off.” This came in response to a post that ran down the details of the 60 Minutes piece, explaining, “So the story is that a guy with codename dude bravo survived a free fall to the ground in Iran after his F-15 was shot hitting the ground at speeds of close to 100 mph. He then ran 20 miles and found a cliff that was 7000 feet high and climbed that cliff and was extracted in a two day period.”
Again, Norah's not a reporter. No one considers her a reporter. It's segments like the one that aired Sunday night that have ensured she will never, ever be seen as a reporter.
And violating domestic laws? Hegseth's accused there as well over his campaigning for a Republican running for Congress in Iowa.
Zachary Oren Smith (STARTING LINE) reports, "The Steady State, a nonpartisan group of former national security officials, filed
a complaint
Friday, asking the US Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the Hatch Act by headlining a
ticketed campaign fundraiser for US Rep Zach Nunn at the Iowa State Fair
on Aug. 17
." Tom Barton (GAZETTE) adds:
The ticketed event at JR’s SouthPork Ranch benefited Team Nunn, a
joint fundraising committee that includes Nunn’s campaign, his
leadership political action committee and the National Republican
Congressional Committee. Admission ranged from $26 to $3,500, with the two highest tiers including access to a VIP reception.
The
complaint asks federal investigators to determine whether Hegseth used
the authority or influence of his office to affect the November election
and whether government resources used for his trip were properly paid
for or reimbursed.
Hegseth endorsed Nunn from the stage while discussing his work leading the Pentagon.
Hegseth is not the only Cabinet Secretary accused of breaking the Hatch Act. Charlie Savage (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
Attorney General Todd Blanche has
repeatedly participated in campaign events and spoken in partisan terms
about the coming midterm elections since his confirmation last month,
despite criticism that he violated a longstanding Justice Department
principle of steering clear of electoral politics.
This week he waded again into those waters — twice.
Since
August, Mr. Blanche has come under fire for making campaign-tinged
public appearances and comments. Last month, at a rally-style event on
Long Island, he praised Bruce Blakeman,
the Republican candidate for governor of New York. Last week, Mr.
Blanche delivered remarks at the Republican Party’s midterm convention.
On
Tuesday, he stood at the White House podium and disparaged Democratic
lawmakers while invoking the coming election, dismissing their concerns
about artificial intelligence as “nothing but an effort to influence the
midterms.”
And
on Wednesday, Mr. Blanche spoke at a campaign rally for Michael
Whatley, the Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina. Echoing his
convention speech, he portrayed crime rates, which continued a long-term
downward trend to reach new lows in 2025, as “President Trump and Vice
President Vance delivering on a promise.”
Worries about
the Justice Department abandoning its long-held commitment to appear
apolitical in order to maintain institutional credibility may seem
beside the point. Since January 2025, dozens of judges
have viewed its representations with suspicion, eroding the traditional
bonds of trust, known as the “presumption of regularity,” that the
courts typically grant the department.
The
second Trump administration has also unabashedly destroyed the
post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from the White
House in investigative decisions. Early on, Mr. Blanche’s predecessor, Pam Bondi, declared,
“We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump.” Last
September, after Mr. Trump publicly demanded that she charge several
perceived adversaries, the department pushed through short-lived
indictments of two of them.
Still,
Mr. Blanche is dismantling another post-Watergate principle: that
Justice Department leaders stay away from partisan politicking.
Joseph Tirrell, the Justice Department’s senior ethics official until the Trump administration dismissed him in July 2025, earlier this week criticized
Mr. Blanche’s participation in the Republican convention. He called the
attorney general’s comments at the White House briefing “borderline”
unethical, and his participation in the North Carolina rally “terrible.”
Chump has never been a good leader. He has destroyed our country's standing on the global stage. He is an idiot, a raving lunatic, who keeps talking of, for example, annexing this place or that -- Canada, Greenland, you name it. This is not normal. This is not rational. These are the remarks of a psychopath, of a Hitler storming through Europe and trying to take over countries. That's what it is. And America is loathed for his remarks and for his tariffs and for his prissy personality. Heather Digby Parton (SALON) observes of Chump:
Donald Trump recently claimed that when he goes to international gatherings, all the leaders stand up. Supposedly, they do this as a sign of respect for him personally: “They didn’t stand up for our last president; they didn’t care about him … they laughed at him. But our country is respected again.”
He’s been using versions of that line ever since he was first inaugurated back in 2017. But he’s always portrayed America as a disgusting hellscape seen by the rest of the world as a laughingstock — except when he is president, when we magically enter magically a “golden age” in which the entire planet turns to him as its undisputed leader.
Needless to say, this is utterly delusional. Foreign leaders do not stand at attention when he enters the room. The footage of such meetings is public, and we know that they do not see themselves as vassals to this president. He’s just making that up. And neither they nor the people in their countries “respect” America again. In fact, the opposite was clearly true during Trump’s first term, and people around the world respect the U.S. even less the second time around.
Which is completely understandable. The man who proved his incompetence in a global crisis and then incited an insurrection to overturn the election after losing his re-election campaign was returned to leadership once again four years later by the American people. As George W. Bush famously said, “Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice … won’t get fooled again.”
These are facts and Chump doesn't care for them.
He lies and lies again hoping to exhaust everyone with his lies so they just stare ahead blankly and don't correct him.
It's too bad for him that it's only MAGA who has the reflex reaction of "I must humor Chump." The rest of us don't. We don't give a damn about his hurt feelings, we don't give a damn about his out of control ego which exists because deep down inside he knows he's awful and a lousy leader.
The president has frequently bragged about his intelligence, often citing his results on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) as proof. In May, for example, he claimed to have gotten a “perfect” score, which he said shows his “extreme intelligence.”
Just one problem: The MoCA is not an intelligence test.
It is cause for concern. You know what's even more concerning though? That he's bragged about this to begin with. It's not an IQ test. And it's obvious that it's not. I get it, he lies to make himself look and sound better -- he lies all the time. But to lie about this test which is so clearly not an IQ test? To claim that this test which clearly exists only to see if you are bare minimum aware of your surroundings is something you've scored "excellent" on?
Chump was best buds with Jeffrey Epstein for decades. It ended when Epstein died in jail in 2019. Though dead, the sex trafficker remains in the news.
Mira Bhakta (THE HILL) reports:
A federal judge gave Attorney General Todd Blanche a deadline to comply with court orders Wednesday regarding the release of certain information in the Epstein files, threatening contempt charges for failure to comply.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan stated in a Wednesday opinion that Blanche and his office were not following court orders concerning redactions in requested documentation related to the activities of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
He gave the Department of Justice (DOJ) until Sept. 24 to provide the records or explain to the court why its orders were not “clear and unambiguous” — finding the attorney general’s argument against the records' release to be “without merit.”
Sullivan noted in his opinion that “a civil contempt finding at this juncture would be premature” but did not rule out the possibility if the deadline is not met.
Warren: “Was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?”
Warren: “Show me the receipts.”
Video of Exchange (YouTube)
Washington, D.C. — At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Chris Klomp, President Trump’s nominee to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on President Trump’s secret deals with drug companies.
President Trump has bragged about the administration’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) agreements with pharmaceutical companies, claiming that it has reduced prescription drug prices by as much as 600%, which Senator Warren noted would “mean companies should be paying you to take their drugs.” But the deals for prices on that website have still not been released by President Trump or by Big Pharma.
In April 2026, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren pressed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the deals struck with pharmaceutical companies. When pressed on whether he would publicly disclose the deals, Secretary Kennedy — with Mr. Klomp sitting right behind him — confirmed, “I’m happy to make the deals available.” But Secretary Kennedy has broken this promise.
“Mr. Klomp, was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?” asked Senator Warren. When questioned about Kennedy’s failure to share these deals with Congress, Klomp refused to explain why the contracts have not been released.
“Show me the receipts,” said Senator Warren. “Five months ago, the Secretary promised that he would deliver those contracts. It’s been five months, and we don’t have them.”
Senator Warren noted that pharmaceutical companies that have made these agreements have represented them in earnings reports as unlikely to affect their financial outlook. Earlier this month, the biotech company Insight Corporation wrote that it does not expect its deal with the Trump administration to “have a material impact on its future financial outlook.” One analyst described Pfizer’s deal as “immaterial,” and Novartis and Roche have made the same representations about their own deals.
The senator also questioned what giveaways Big Pharma companies may have received in exchange for striking these secret deals with the Trump administration. “I want to know what was given away in these contracts,” stated Senator Warren, including whether drug companies received tariff relief, exemptions from drug pricing demonstrations in Medicare, fast-track FDA approval, and higher prices abroad instead of lower prices in the U.S.
“I want to see what the deal is, and until then, you can stop telling us it was all great for the American people, but you just refused to show us the receipts. That’s not how oversight works,” concluded Senator Warren.
Transcript: Hearings to examine the nominations of Gerard Klomp, of Utah, to be Deputy Secretary, and Ge Bai, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary, both of the Department of Health and Human Services, James Gadwood, of Maryland, to be Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service and an Assistant General Counsel in the Department of the Treasury, and Andrew A. De Mello, of Virginia, to be a Judge of the United States Tax Court for a term of fifteen years.
Senate Finance Committee
September 15, 2026
Senator Elizabeth Warren: Last year, President Trump and the Republicans slashed health care for millions of Americans. It caused premiums to skyrocket. Americans are now paying the price. And President Trump’s one answer is to say, “Check out the Trump RX website” and the supposedly great deals that he has made with big pharma. So I want to take a look. These deals are secret, but from what we can see, they don’t look so great. That’s why in April, when Secretary Kennedy was here, I asked him if he would make the deals available to the committee. And Mr. Klomp, since you were the Secretary’s chief counselor, you were sitting right behind him when he said, “I’m happy to make the deals available, except for proprietary information and trade secrets.” Now that was five months ago. Since then, I have sent two letters to Secretary Kennedy, asking him to make good on that commitment, but he has not kept his word.
Mr. Klomp, was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?
Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, I do not believe he was lying. I believe that we need to make an important distinction between operative policy and internal deliberative materials. The principles of the deals, the frameworks, the results of them, in fact, from a pricing perspective, are fully available—
Senator Warren: I’m sorry, let me just start here. You signed a contract with each of these pharmaceutical companies, right?
Mr. Klomp: Correct.
Senator Warren: I taught contract law for 30 years. I want to see the contracts, and that is what I asked the Secretary for, and the Secretary said he would deliver those contracts. He might cross out certain proprietary information, trade secrets. I’m fine with that. I want to understand the numbers, and the only way I can do that is with the contracts. So where are the contracts?
Mr. Klomp: Senator, the numbers, for example, are freely available. You can see exactly the results of every contract on TrumpRX today.
Senator Warren: No, there are no contracts that are available that I can see who made how much money on what deal. I have your general summary, but that’s not what I asked the Secretary for, and it’s not what the Secretary promised to deliver. In fact, HHS continues to keep every one of these deals secret at the same time the president brags that he has lowered prices by 600%, which would mean, of course, that companies are paying you to take the drugs. Aside from that outlandish claim, if these deals were in fact so good, so profitable for the United States, then I would expect that they would lower Big Pharma’s profits. But what executives are telling their investors is not so much. Earlier this month, the biotech company Insight Corporation wrote in its earnings report that it does not expect its deal with the Trump administration to “have a material impact on its future financial outlook.” An analyst described Pfizer’s deal as “immaterial.” And Novartis and Roche have said the same thing about their own deals.
Mr. Klomp, you and Secretary Kennedy are keeping these pharma deals secret, the companies are saying they are immaterial, and you still want the American people to believe that they are somehow a really great deal for our country? That we’re getting great prices here?
Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, billions of dollars have already been saved in out-of-pocket transactions through GLP-1s—
Senator Warren: Then show me the receipts.
Mr. Klomp: —infertility, or otherwise.
Senator Warren: Show me the receipts. Why are you hiding these contracts?
Mr. Klomp: We’re not hiding anything. In fact, in the Inflation Reduction Act, you inserted the same provisions as Congress, recognizing that if trade secrets, proprietary information were to be shared, that would compromise the government’s ability to negotiate anything.
Senator Warren: I’m sorry, let me just stop you right there. You say you’re not hiding anything. Five months ago, the Secretary promised that he would deliver those contracts. It’s been five months, and we don’t have them. I would regard that as hidden. So where are the contracts that are so great and going to show how much money you have saved?
Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, I know that you care deeply about lowering prescription drug prices for Americans.
Senator Warren: I do.
Mr. Klomp: I agree with you strongly on this point. I know that you wouldn’t want to do something that would compromise the U.S. government’s ability to continue negotiating, which we are actively negotiating with other countries—
Senator Warren: No, these are contracts that are already written that I want to see.
Mr. Klomp: But our negotiations—
Senator Warren: And that Kennedy sat there, said he would do. You sat right behind him. Everybody nodded, and nobody did it. Look, I want to know what was given away in these contracts. I want to see whether these drug companies got tariff relief. Did they get exemptions from drug pricing demonstrations in Medicare? Did they get fast-track FDA approval? Did they get the U.S. government not pushing for lower prices here but for higher prices in other countries? I want to see what the deal is, and until then, you can stop telling us it was all great for the American people, but you just refused to show us the receipts. That’s not how oversight works.
Senator Warren has led efforts to push back against Big Pharma and use every tool available in government to lower drug prices:
- In August 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his refusal to release the Trump administration’s secret pricing deals with drug companies and for breaking a promise he made to Warren in a recent hearing. Senator Warren also released a new response from Secretary Kennedy that raises doubts about the accuracy of the Trump administration’s claims of cost savings from the secret pharma deals.
- In May 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), alongside Representatives Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), reintroduced the Patients Before Monopolies (PBM) Act with expanded bipartisan support, indicating growing momentum for a policy that will prohibit joint ownership of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies, a gross conflict of interest that enables these companies to enrich themselves at the expense of patients and independent pharmacies.
- In April 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on multiple commitments she secured during an exchange in a Senate Finance Committee hearing.
- In April 2026, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on TrumpRx, revealing how President Trump’s marquee drug pricing effort often provides higher prices for Americans while boosting Big Pharma’s bottom line.
- In April 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee; Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee; and 18 Senate Democrats introduced new legislation to force the Trump Administration to disclose the terms of deals signed with more than a dozen of the largest pharmaceutical companies and conduct an independent analysis to determine whether American families will see lower prices from the deals.
- In February 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Break Up Big Medicine Act to address rampant consolidation in the health care industry that drives up prices, squashes competition, and fuels corporate greed.
- In November 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) led 25 Senate Democrats in slamming the Trump administration for its failure to address rising health care costs for American families.
- In June 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wrote to AbbVie, Pfizer, Amgen, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson, calling them out for taking advantage of tax loopholes created by President Trump’s 2017 tax bill and lobbying for even more tax giveaways.
- In March 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, along with Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pressed Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his promises to “clean up corruption” and “stop the revolving door between industry and government,” following reports that Kennedy attended multiple “million-dollar” dinners with Big Pharma executives at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
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