DELEITURAS

The Trump Administration announced legal action Friday to stop two pharmacies, their owner, and three pharmacists from dispensing controlled substance medications, including powerful opioids that have been linked to abuse and diversion. The action is part of a coordinated effort by the Justice Department’s Prescription Interdiction & Litigation (PIL) Task Force to deploy all available criminal, civil, and regulatory tools to reverse the tide of opioid overdoses in the United States.

In a civil complaint unsealed today in the Middle District of Tennessee, the United States alleges that Celina, Tennessee, pharmacies, Oakley Pharmacy, Inc., d/b/a Dale Hollow Pharmacy (Dale Hollow) and Xpress Pharmacy of Clay County (Xpress), the pharmacies’ owner, Thomas Weir, and pharmacists John Polston, Michael Griffith, and Larry Larkin were dispensing, and billing Medicare for, prescriptions in violation of the Controlled Substances Act and the False Claims Act. According to the United States’ complaint, the defendants’ unlawful dispensing of opioids has been tied to the deaths of at least two people and numerous others have been treated at hospitals for serious overdoses within a short time of obtaining controlled substances from the pharmacies.

“Pharmacies and pharmacists have a legal obligation to dispense controlled substances properly, so as not to put patients’ health at risk,” said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt for the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. “The Department of Justice will use every available tool to stop individuals and entities responsible for the improper distribution of controlled substances.”

The complaint alleges that the pharmacies and pharmacists filled numerous prescriptions for controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and in violation of the pharmacists’ corresponding responsibility to ensure that prescriptions were written for a legitimate medical purpose. Specifically, the complaint alleges that the defendants routinely dispensed controlled substances while ignoring numerous “red flags” or warning signs of diversion and abuse, such as unusually high dosages of oxycodone and other opioids, prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances in dangerous combinations, and patients traveling extremely long distances to get and fill prescriptions.  The complaint further asserts that the pharmacies falsely billed Medicare for illegally dispensed prescriptions.

Judge Aleta A. Trauger of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee issued the temporary restraining order.  Along with injunctive relief, the United States seeks civil monetary penalties and treble damages.

“The civil complaint unsealed today contains disturbing allegations of high-risk dispensing practices by the defendants,” said U.S. Attorney Don Cochran.  “Given the national public health emergency resulting from the opioid crisis in our nation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will use every resource at our disposal, including seeking injunctive relief and civil monetary penalties as we have here, to stop pharmacies and pharmacists from continuing to abuse their dispensing authority to fuel this epidemic.”

“The action supported today by the Drug Enforcement Administration should serve as a warning to those in the pharmacy industry who choose to put profit over customer safety,” said D. Christopher Evans, Special Agent in Charge of DEA’s Louisville Field Division, which covers Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. “Pharmacists serve on the front lines of America’s opioid epidemic and they share responsibility with physicians to protect those whom they serve from the dangers associated with prescription medications.  We will be vigilant in holding them accountable,” Evans added.

“The opioid epidemic has been devastating for Tennessee and neighboring states,” said Derrick L. Jackson, Special Agent in Charge at the HHS Office of Inspector General. “Physicians and pharmacists have a dual responsibility to ensure that these medications are only prescribed and dispensed when they are medically necessary.”

With the Mueller report expected to drop any day now, here is a guide to what the special counsel has investigated and how this heavily-anticipated document will be released.

Spoiler alert: a lot of questions about the report’s release and its contents have no clear answer. That’s largely a function of the lack of leaks from the special counsel’s office and the stoic approach that Mueller has taken during the 22-month investigation.

When will report be finished?

All signs point to Mueller nearing the very end of the investigation.

Several top prosecutors working on the investigation are leaving the special counsel’s office, including Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad. Weissmann was the lead prosecutor on Mueller’s case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was sentenced to prison on charges related to his work for the Ukrainian government.

Reporters have also seen Mueller team members removing boxes of files from their offices in Washington, D.C.

The grand jury that Mueller has used in the investigation has also reportedly not heard from witnesses since Jan. 24, the same day that Trump confidant Roger Stone was indicted.

What happens when Mueller finishes the report?

Once Mueller finalizes his report, he is expected to notify Attorney General William Barr. What happens then is up in the air.

Barr could announce that he has received the report, or he could provide portions of it directly to leaders on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

Congressional sources familiar with those committees’ business say they are as in the dark as anyone else about how the process will unfold. Barr could announce that he has the Mueller document before or after he informs Congress. He could avoid a public announcement and inform Congress that Mueller has concluded the investigation.

What will be in the report?

As with most questions about Mueller’s findings, it is unclear what he will actually say in the document provided to Barr.

Barr testified at his confirmation hearing that under the current statute governing special counsel’s, Mueller will be required to provide a summary of his findings to the Justice Department along with a rationale for any decisions to decline specific prosecutions.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation since its inception on May 17, 2017, recently laid out what information Barr is legally required to share with Congress.

“If the special counsel proposes to take an action and is overruled by the attorney general … we’re required to report that to the Congress,” he said at an event on Feb. 25.

The report may also be hindered by legal restrictions against indicting sitting presidents. But Mueller could, if he sees fit, suggest areas where Trump could face impeachment proceedings.

What will the public see? 

That also remains unclear.

Barr could release as much of the report as he wants, but he is first expected to write a summary of Mueller’s findings.

Whatever documents are eventually made public are likely to contain redactions for classified information. It is also unlikely that the report will contain any information gleaned from grand jury testimony.

Legal observers have cautioned the public against expecting Mueller to lay out all of the details of his investigation. But they have also said that it is unlikely that Mueller and Barr can completely avoid explaining whether or not Trump colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.

Congressional Democrats have vowed to subpoena the report if Barr withholds it. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has also pledged to subpoena Mueller if details of the report are withheld from Congress.

What will Trump do?

The answer to that question likely hinges on what the report says.

Trump has given mixed signals about how he will handle Mueller’s findings. On Wednesday, he said that the public should see the document, but he added that he would like to review it beforehand.

“Let it come out. Let people see it,” he said, before adding that the final decision is up to Barr.

The Republican has long decried the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt.”

What has Mueller investigated?

Mueller was appointed special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after President Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. A former FBI director himself, Mueller inherited “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s code name for the counterintelligence investigation into Trump campaign associates’ possible ties to Russia.

FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016. The probe targeted Trump aides George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.

After Comey’s firing, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe expanded the probe to include Trump himself. McCabe ordered an investigation into whether Trump himself was a Russian agent as well as whether he obstructed justice by firing Comey.

Mueller’s investigation has expanded in numerous directions since its beginning.

He has indicted or secured guilty pleas from 34 individuals, including six Trump associates. But so far, none of the indictments have involved coordination between Trump associates and Russians.

Mueller indicted 25 Russian operatives accused of hacking Democrats’ emails or planting disinformation on social media networks.

Four Trump associates — George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen — have pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s investigation.

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone was indicted on Jan. 24 on seven counts related to the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe. Mueller’s team alleges that Stone lied about his communications with associates and Trump campaign officials regarding WikiLeaks.

Manafort was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison on a variety of charges related to his consulting work in Ukraine.

Mueller also secured guilty pleas from Alex van der Zwaan and Richard Pinedo, both of who appear to have no direct links to Trump. Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business partner suspected of having links to Russian intelligence, was also indicted on witness tampering charges.

Has Mueller found any evidence of collusion?

Most of what Mueller has found in his investigation remains secret, but some clues have come out through the numerous indictments and guilty pleas secured during the probe.

And so far, none of those cases have revealed evidence that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russians to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The source of the collusion conspiracy theory — the Steele dossier — has come under intense scrutiny since it was published in January 2017.

The dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and Russian government, accused Trump associates Carter Page, Michael Cohen, and Paul Manafort of conspiring with Kremlin officials to influence the election. The dossier also alleged that the Russian government was blackmailing Trump with video of him with prostitutes in Moscow in 2013.

Circumstantial evidence has cut against the Steele dossier. Page has appeared before Mueller’s grand jury, but has not been charged with any crimes. Prosecutors have never accused Manafort of conspiring with Russia, even though he has already been sentenced in two cases brought by Mueller’s team.

Cohen, who is a cooperating witness for Mueller, undercut the dossier’s most specific allegation about collusion during congressional testimony last month.

The former Trump fixer testified under oath on Feb. 27 that he has never visited Prague. The dossier claims that Cohen visited there in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials to discuss paying off Russian hackers.

Are more indictments on the way?

This is another question that remains to be seen. Trump critics have held out hope that Mueller will issue a barrage of indictments against Trump family members like Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner just as he submits his report to the Justice Department.

Mueller has investigated a variety of areas that have so far not resulted in indictments. Mueller’s prosecutors also offered a plea deal to Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theorist who was in close contact with Stone during the 2016 campaign. Corsi has said that Mueller believes he may have had contact during the campaign with WikiLeaks, the group that published emails stolen from Democrats.

Mueller’s grand jury heard testimony from Corsi’s stepson on the same day that the indictment against Stone was handed down.

• A Republican-backed bill to make it legal for Georgians to obtain limited amounts of medical marijuana oil cleared its first hurdle in the state’s House of Representatives March 5.
• But its advocates were unsure if Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp would be open to sign it even if it did pass the state Senate as well.
• Kemp signaled openness to the bill in an interview that the bill’s advocates greeted as “wonderful” and its opponents characterized as a “sad day for science.”

Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signaled openness to a medical marijuana reform bill that passed the state House March 5 in an interview that the bill’s advocates greeted as “wonderful” and its opponents characterized as a “sad day for science.”

“When it passes with a constitutional majority,” Kemp said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published Monday, “it might not matter what I think.”

Kemp said he was impressed by the “strong vote” for HB 324, which passed the Georgia House 123-40, according to The AJC. The Republican-backed bill permits growing marijuana for the manufacturing of medical marijuana oil with up to 5 percent THC, the psychoactive component that causes the high. Patients with one of sixteen medical conditions must register for a medical marijuana card to legally possess it.

The bill does not legalize vaping or smoking marijuana, but its critics are afraid it will lead to the legalization of recreational use in the state. Its advocates say the bill will help children suffering from seizures whose parents have been traveling out of state to get oil for them, since Georgia’s current law makes it legal to possess the substance but provides no avenue to lawfully obtain it.

“I need to learn more about the bill, see what the Senate has to say,” Kemp continued in the interview. “And I’m trying to understand that we are probably putting people in violation of federal law.”

Georgia resident Dale Jackson said he was “very encouraged” by Kemp’s stance. Jackson has seen “quality of life” greatly increase for his 10-year-old son, Colin, because of medical marijuana oil. Jackson said it is a struggle to obtain the oil, but the benefits have been enormous. The change has been as simple as being able to take the whole family to a restaurant and not needing to worry about taking Colin home halfway through dinner.

“We’re really looking forward to the day my wife and I don’t have to worry about any law enforcement agency knocking on our door, but most importantly being able to give my son the medicine he needs,” Jackson told The Daily Caller News Foundation Tuesday.

Jackson has been actively advocating for HB 324 to Georgia’s state lawmakers and even the governor and lieutenant governor. He hopes proposed changes to the bill can be presented in committee next week and said talks have indicated the bill will become more “patient-focused” rather than “industry-focused.”

“A lot of people, especially in this particular movement, show up and have a rally and expect the world to change overnight. The world has changed every single day by one-on-one conversations, and that’s what a small group of us have been doing for five years now,” Jackson told TheDCNF. “I hope that we’re going to see the rewards of that effort this year.”

But others in Georgia believe the bill would do more harm than good. Sue Rusche of National Families in Action, a group that opposes the bill, told TheDCNF Tuesday that Kemp’s openness was “a sad day for science.”

“It means like many other states we’re going to be going down the road of rejecting safe and effective medicine and instead allowing unsafe or ineffective medicines,” Rusche told TheDCNF.

Her organization believes FDA-approved pharmaceuticals derived in some way from the marijuana plant are the better answer. She referenced Epidiolex, a seizure treatment made with a purified active ingredient derived from marijuana.

“It makes me very sad to see Georgia begin to think about cultivating marijuana, and if [Kemp’s] open that means that will happen,” Rusche told TheDCNF. “It means that we will have 60 dispensaries in our state dispensing a drug that has entirely too much THC for children, that has not been approved by the FDA, which means kids can be exposed to all kinds of potential problems including contaminants. That’s not good.”

Tom McCain is an advocate of the bill and executive director of Peachtree NORML, the Georgia chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He had been waiting for Kemp to say whether he would support HB 324.

“I think that is wonderful,” McCain said referring to Kemp’s comments, adding that he was “surprised.”

McCain said Kemp’s openness means that the bill has a much great chance of advancing out of the Regulated Industries and Utilities committee in the state Senate. That’s because the committee’s membership includes a “who’s who of the governor’s leadership,” McCain told TheDCNF. Its chairman, state Sen. Bill Cowsert, is Kemp’s brother-in-law.

“I was a little concerned that unless [Kemp] made some kind of statement that he was looking toward being favorable toward it, it wouldn’t get through the senate committee, but this is great news,” McCain told TheDCNF.

McCain, a 68-year-old former law enforcement officer, calls himself “illegally healed.” He was taking hydrocodone three times a day to deal with the toll his days on the force had taken. Returning to using marijuana like he did in his youth let him stop taking opiates and sleeping pills and get ride of their side effects, he told TheDCNF.

“I don’t go through all of that. I don’t go through the constipation. I don’t go through the sleeplessness,” he told TheDCNF. “If I want to go to bed, I take a couple tokes.”

Kemp had left open the possibility that he would be receptive to medical marijuana reform in January.

“I sympathize and empathize with them on that issue, and I support research-based expansion,” Kemp said when asked about medical marijuana in January. “Thankfully, there is some research that’s going on in this field that will give us some good data that will kind of tell us how to move forward.”

The Georgia Senate is not expected to vote on the measure for a few weeks.

Gregory Lepsky, 22, of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, was sentenced today to 16 years in prison for planning to construct and use a pressure cooker bomb in New York on behalf of a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Lepsky pleaded guilty March 13, 2018, before a U.S. District Court Judge, to an information charging him with one count of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, specifically ISIS.  Judge Shipp imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

On Feb. 21, 2017, Lepsky was arrested by the Point Pleasant Police Department in connection with an incident that occurred that day in his family’s home.  Following the arrest, law enforcement officers searched the residence and found a new pressure cooker stored behind a roll of bubble wrap in Lepsky’s bedroom closet.

During searches of computers and other digital evidence linked to Lepsky, law enforcement officers found evidence of Lepsky’s plan to build and detonate a bomb as part of his support for ISIS.  During several social media communications, Lepsky told others that he intended to fight on behalf of ISIS and that he would, if necessary, become a martyr by driving a “bunch of explosives” to where the “enemies” could be found and blowing himself up.

Law enforcement officers also located a series of instructions that had been published online by another terrorist group that gave specific, step-by-step instructions on how to build a pressure cooker bomb, which coincided with the delivery of the pressure cooker to Lepsky a short time before his arrest.  In addition, law enforcement officers recovered a message forwarded by Lepsky from another ISIS supporter stating that if a westerner could not travel to Syria to fight for ISIS, he could conduct a terrorist attack in his home country using improvised explosive devices.

At his plea hearing, Lepsky admitted that beginning in January 2017, he began to formulate a plan to detonate the pressure cooker bomb in New York City on behalf of ISIS.  Lepsky admitted that he used the internet to access ISIS directives, obtain bomb-making instructions, and purchase the pressure cooker and other items to be used in the attack.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, Judge Shipp imposed a life term of supervised release.

National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared to contradict the White House Sunday when he said that the United States withdrawal from Syria would not be immediate, but the Pentagon announced Thursday that without receiving any new direction, they’re moving forward with the mission.

“Timetables or the timing of the withdrawal occurs as a result of the fulfillment of the conditions and the establishment of the circumstances that we want to see,” Bolton said Sunday, which struck a different tone than the Dec. 19 announcement White House press secretary Sarah Sanders made, in which she said the U.S. had already begun pulling American troops.

Defense officials in the Pentagon told The Wall Street Journal that they haven’t received any new directives, and until they do, will move forward with the original withdrawal plans.

“Nothing has changed,” an anonymous defense official said. “We don’t take orders from Bolton.”

American troops sent to help with the pullout are reportedly already in the region, specifically in Kuwait and the al-Asad air base in Iraq.

President Donald Trump confirmed a Syria withdrawal Sunday, but shifted slightly on the timing, saying “we won’t be finally pulled out until [the Islamic State] is gone.”

The fate of U.S. troops in Syria was further muddled Tuesday when Turkish President Recep Erdogan said Bolton made a “grave mistake” when he demanded Turkey pledge protection of the American supported Kurdish fighters.

“It is not possible for us to swallow the message Bolton gave from Israel,” Erdogan said in the Turkish Parliament after refusing to meet with Bolton on his visit to Turkey.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed back on reports that the administration was contradicting itself Thursday on a trip to Cairo, Egypt, saying “there’s no contradiction whatsoever.”

“This is a story made up by the media. That’s fine, you all write what you like, but the President’s been very clear, and Bolton and I have been very clear about this too, that the threat from radical Islamic terrorism is real,” Pompeo said.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.— A CBP Air and Marine Operations (AMO) P-3 crew assigned to the National Air Security Operations Center-Jacksonville, was conducting maritime patrols when they located and tracked a panga-style vessel in the Eastern Pacific on Sunday, Feb. 17.

The AMO P-3 crew maintained the initial radar contact of the surface target of interest (STOI), a 35-foot long panga with two outboard engines.  The vessel was visibly riding low in the water although only three individuals could be seen onboard.

A Navy alert P-8 was launched to assist the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) with the interdiction the following day.

USCG interdicted the panga and conducted a search for contraband.  Three people claiming Ecuadorian nationality were detained and 719 kgs. of cocaine were seized.

The National Air Security Operations Center-Jacksonville forms half of the P-3 operations wing. With its partner center in Corpus Christi, Texas, Jacksonville operates P-3 aircraft throughout North and South America in defense of the borders of the United States and in active prosecution of attempts to smuggle persons or contraband. The center is an active partner with FEMA, the U.S. Department of Energy and NORAD in times of national crisis such as Hurricane Harvey or post-9/11.

AMO is a federal law enforcement organization dedicated to serving and protecting the American people through advanced aeronautical and maritime capabilities. AMO interdicts unlawful people and cargo approaching U.S. borders, investigates criminal networks and provides domain awareness in the air and maritime environments, and responds to contingencies and national taskings. With approximately 1,800 federal agents and mission support personnel, 240 aircraft and 300 marine vessels operating throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands, AMO serves as the nation’s experts in airborne and maritime law enforcement.

In Fiscal Year 2017, AMO enforcement actions resulted in the approximate seizure or disruption of 269,790 pounds of cocaine, 384,230 pounds of marijuana, 5,721 pounds of methamphetamine, 1,089 weapons, and $26.1 million; 2,573 arrests; and 37,009 apprehensions of illegal aliens.

Desperate looters have all but emptied stores and warehouses across western Venezuela as large parts of the country remain without power more than a week after a mass blackout.

The mobs overwhelmed Venezuela’s security forces, breaking into buildings and stealing cars, trucks and equipment. Hundreds of businesses in the Venezuelan oil capital of Maracaibo were emptied and left in shambles.

Looters broke through the cinder-block walls of a Pepsi plant and took thousands of cases of beer and soda, 160 pallets of food and destroyed or stole 22 trucks and five forklifts, Bloomberg reports.

“If people made enough to make ends meet, we wouldn’t be trying to get by like this,” Enrique Gonzalez, 18-year-old bus conductor, told Bloomberg. “This country has gone to hell.”

Police and other emergency officials have stayed away from the carnage and refused to help businesses and property owners protect their property and assets.

“It’s hard to swallow,” Bernardo Morillo, a 60-year-old mall manager, told Bloomberg. “The national guard stood by as this vandalism happened and the firefighters didn’t even show.”

A mass blackout hit large swaths of the country March 15. Experts blamed poor Venezuela infrastructure. Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro blamed the power outage on a U.S. cyber-attack. Maduro’s chief prosecutor Tarek Saab is pressuring the country’s supreme court to investigate opposition leader Juan Guaido for alleged sabotage, BBC reports.

Maduro is under pressure to step down as president as many world leaders have renounced his regime and recognized Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela. The Trump administration is applying increasing pressure to Maduro through sanctions and has not ruled out using military force to depose the South American leader.

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Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer group, filed the first lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration concerning the southern border Friday night.

The complaint, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the president’s declaration violates separation of powers principles because there is no emergency at the southern border justifying the invocation of extraordinary powers.

“Every halfhearted and palpably fabricated rationale to justify claims of emergency has been thoroughly and embarrassingly debunked,” said Public Citizen president Robert Weissman. “Unauthorized immigration is not surging. Terrorists are not invading from Mexico. Illegal drug traffic is coming primarily through legal ports of entry, not open border areas.”

The plaintiffs are three Texas landowners who were informed that the government will construct border barriers on their property. They are joined by the Frontera Audubon Society, an environmental group that operates a 15-acre nature preserve in the Rio Grande Valley.

The landowners say they will lose the use of their property if wall construction proceeds as planned, and fear damage to their homes during the course of construction. The Frontera Audubon Society warns of lasting damage to a critical animal habitat and claims its members will lose the opportunity to “birdwatch and experience nature along the [Rio Grande].”

The plaintiffs argue that the situation at the southern border does not rise to the level of a national emergency. Since no emergency exists in reality, the complaint says Trump exceeded his authority under the National Emergencies Act and unlawfully repurposed federal funds to erect the border wall.

“Because no national emergency exists with respect to immigration across the southern border, the president’s invocation of emergency powers through the declaration usurps legislative authority conferred by the Constitution on the Congress,” the lawsuit reads.

The president issued several directives Friday to access some $8 billion in federal funds for the border wall: in addition to the $1.4 billion appropriation Congress authorized for border barriers, the administration will reprogram $600 million from the Treasury Department’s forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counter-narcotics activities, and $3.6 million from military construction projects to build finance construction of the wall.

The government will spend that money sequentially, meaning they will exhaust the congressional appropriation and the Treasury Department forfeiture funds before redirecting Defense Department funds.

The Public Citizen lawsuit seeks an injunction barring acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan from redirecting DOD resources to comply with the Friday directives.

It’s not clear that the plaintiffs can sue at this juncture, however. Since the administration will deplete the congressional appropriation and Treasury Department funds before reprograming Defense Department monies, it may be weeks or even months before DOD funds are reallocated for the border barrier project.

The government has not yet replied to the lawsuit, the first in a deluge of forthcoming legal challenges.

The president also signed a bipartisan spending bill Friday to avoid a second partial government shutdown.

In the wake of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s controversial re-election, the Trump administration is looking to increase pressure on the socialist government with harsher sanctions.

The United States currently employs a mild amount of sanctions against Venezuela for its continued democratic abuses. The White House, for example, has penalized a number of the country’s government leaders; taken a swipe at its gold sector; and has barred investors from renegotiating the country’s defaulted debt. The entire effort is meant to force Venezuela’s left-wing leaders to end their dictorship-like rule and hold fair elections.

However, fearing harm against a citizenry already suffering under a collapsing economy, the White House has refrained from hitting Caracas too hard.

Under the stewardship of Venezuela’s socialist revolution that began with Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan economy has witnessed complete devastation. Well over 80 percent of the country’s population lives in poverty and around 64 percent of Venezuelans have reported losing a significant amount of weight since the food crisis began several years ago. The crisis has prompted over two million people to flee the country.

Venezuela’s oil industry — the country’s single largest source of income — has also crumbled. The state of North Dakota, for perspective, is now churning out as much out oil as Venezuela, despite the South American country sitting atop more oil reserves than any other OPEC member.

Despite such devastation already ingrained in the Venezuelan economy, Maduro’s recent re-election victory is forcing U.S. officials to reassess their options. The May election, which the international community widely deemed as fraudulent, gave Maduro another six-year term in office.

The Trump administration is now looking to target Venezuela’s oil exports to the U.S.

“Until now, we have been going around the edges,” a senior White House official said to The Wall Street Journal. “Now it’s a new dynamic. We are no longer going to be tinkering along the edges. Nowadays, everything will be put on the table.”

Such a move would likely hit the beleaguered nation harder than any previous sanction.

Venezuela, which depends almost completely on its crude oil exports, current ships around half of its oil production to U.S. consumers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Because the rest of its crude is used to repay debts with allies, Venezuela’s oil shipments to the U.S. are virtually the country’s only source of cash.

“Ultimately, we have all of the leverage there,” the White House official continued.

A growing number of Democratic presidential candidates are entertaining a push to add seats to the Supreme Court, as Republican success at filling the courts with judicial conservatives has infuriated progressive voters.

Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillibrand have expressed willingness to consider proposals for expanding the composition of the Supreme Court as of this writing.

The Trump campaign charged that those suggestions, called court-packing, keeps with other structural reforms to the U.S. political system some Democrats have endorsed since the 2016 election.

“This is just what the Democrats always do,” the Trump campaign told TheDCNF. “When they lose, they try to change the rules. This is no different from when they attack the Electoral College every time they lose the White House. Now it’s court-packing. They want to change our institutions to fit their own political desires.”

Another presidential candidate, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, advanced a more modest proposition. Speaking Monday night on MSNBC, the senator said term limits for Supreme Court justices might be appropriate, but he seemed reluctant to endorse expansion of the Court.

Democrats frame the issue as a credibility problem. By their telling, the campaign began when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to fill the vacancy occasioned by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death until after the 2016 election, and continued apace with the abolition of the filibuster for high court nominees.

“We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court,” Harris told Politico. “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”

O’Rourke struck a similar note Friday at a Burlington, Iowa coffee shop, telling onlookers that an expanded Court is “an idea that we should explore” to curb partisanship and political dysfunction. The former El Paso congressman floated a proposal to add six justices to the high court. Under that system, Democrats and Republicans would each appoint five justices. Those ten would then unanimously select the remaining five.

Other procedural changes for lower court nominations have inflamed Democratic anger, such that packing the courts — once thought radical — is now a viable political position.

“The GOP has also undermined virtually all of the customs that protected the minority and home state senators in the judicial selection process, such as White House consultation and blue slips, while ramming through circuit nominees with little process,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

After President Donald Trump took office, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee began holding confirmation hearings in which multiple circuit court nominees appear for testimony. Democrats say that’s a break with historical practice.

The committee has also effectively abandoned the minority party’s blue slip veto for appeals court nominations, which allows senators to block nominees tapped for judgeships in their state. Republicans say the blue slip process has not been consistently observed for circuit court confirmations and makes little sense for appellate nominees.

Interest in court-packing has also waxed due to a sustained interest group campaign. Career Democratic operatives, attempting to put liberal interest in the judiciary at parity with conservatives, founded a dark money political group that is urging Democratic candidates to endorse court-expansion ideas.

A Democratic Court-packing bid would likely require a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Given that daunting prospect, a near-term effort to expand the Court is unlikely to succeed. Yet the Democratic flirtation with court-packing might itself bring the justices to heel. Tobias suggested that a threat to the institution’s composition, even if unlikely, could deter the justices from moving the law rightward.

“Discussing that prospect and other proposals like term limits for justices or adding lower court judges may signal to the Court that it should not veer sharply to the right, as Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to be signaling to Trump and the nation with his rebuff of Trump regarding ‘Obama judges,’” Tobias said, referencing an episode in 2018 in which Roberts rebuked Trump for deriding a district court judge who enjoined the administration’s asylum reforms.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, accused Democrats of browbeating the Court’s newly entrenched conservative majority.

“Democrats will try anything to politicize the judicial selection process and the courts,” Severino told TheDCNF. “Now they are trying to bully and intimidate the Supreme Court’s justices into serving as a rubber stamp for a liberal political agenda.”

Popular history holds that a similar tactic animated an important change on the Supreme Court during the 1930s. A conservative coalition on the high court struck down much of President Franklin Roosevelt’s domestic economic program during his first term. Flush with victory after his landslide reelection in 1936, Roosevelt asked Congress for authority to appoint as many as six new justices.

Though the Democratic Congress overwhelmingly repudiated that request, Justice Owen Roberts, then the “swing vote” on the bench, began voting to uphold progressive economic measures, like the constitutionality of minimum wage laws. That shift was widely interpreted as a strategic move to protect the Court from Roosevelt’s scheme. Recent scholarship questions the accuracy of this view, sometimes called “the switch in time that saved nine.”

Still, Roosevelt’s plot is widely seen as notorious and misguided, and may explain why no candidate has yet given a court-packing alternative their unqualified endorsement. Instead, the Democratic 2020 contenders urge further discussions or decline to rule out the possibility.