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Kennedy launches MAHA Action Plan; Kemp signs bill that ends partisan DA races in five Atlanta counties; Harris brainstorms court-packing on a podcast; Yorkshire dad creates awareness; more.
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Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Your roundup includes: a Sage Steele standing ovation that proves the pandemic isn’t over; RFK Jr.’s landmark plan to wean America off SSRIs and the doctors who profit by writing them; Brian Kemp signing a structural-earthquake election bill that has Fani Willis filing lawsuits before the ink is dry; Kamala Harris brainstorming her way to court-packing on a podcast nobody watches; and one Yorkshire dad who decided the best way to raise prostate-cancer awareness was to set himself on fire and tow a French police car with his penis.
⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING⛑️
As alert readers recall, I am currently in the nation’s capital attending a large conservative action conference. Yesterday’s keynote was delivered by a well-known former ESPN/Disney commentator who was canceled during the pandemic. The emotional heart of her speech, the longest anecdote, was her description of being coerced into taking the jabs under threat of being fired from her high-paying media gig, and then being censored and ultimately canceled for saying she didn’t feel right about it.
Meanwhile, her media peers got to talk about all their own politics, like abortion, the election, and whatever other silly progressive opinions they had.
Yesterday’s audience was electrified. She got a standing ovation. In 2026. Over covid themes.
As I have said many times, the pandemic isn’t over. Not even close. And the standing ovation tells you the audience of conservative influencers agrees.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
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Early this week, CNN reported, “RFK Jr. launches plan to curb ‘overprescribing’ of psychiatric drugs.” Finally, some hope for Democrats! Secretary Kennedy correctly called it a “groundbreaking, historic win for American health.”
Over the last twenty years, novel medicines treating mental disorders have been a rare area of nearly miraculous progress. Previously untreatable schizophrenia and other profound mental illnesses have become manageable, providing a lifeline to desperate families tortured by one of the most tragic and difficult situations imaginable. Patients who would have required restraint became students, employees, and productive citizens able to live independently for the first time.
But ironically, because of the drugs’ success, they came with a darker side. It was a lucrative temptation, a fetid corruption that spoiled all the success, inflicted on trusting Americans by the same types of doctors who pushed covid vaccines without informed consent, without a moment’s critical thought, and without even buying us dinner before they slipped us the jab.
The old saw goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. These days, if all you have is an SSRI, everyone looks like an SSRI-shaped nail. Worse, these drugs are chronic, daily medications, a one-way street that not only come with serious side effects, but have such serious withdrawal symptoms that cessation often requires medical supervision and sometimes even inpatient care.
Withdrawal from SSRIs is often described as being worse than trying to quit heroin. (Without any of the upside.) The drugs turn doctors into dealers, and patients into desperate, depressed junkies who are high-functioning but definitely aren’t having much fun.
🔥 A couple of decades ago, about six months after being involved in two consecutive car accidents with two careless drivers, my doctor —who was not a psychiatrist— diagnosed me as “depressed” and prescribed an antidepressant. He never even asked about the auto accidents during the four-minute consultation over my sleep problems.
I tried the pills. But didn’t like how they made me feel, and I quit. Ironically, while searching for alternative treatments, a ‘holistic’ doctor spent an hour taking my history and sent me for an MRI. Only after getting those films —a year later— did I finally connect my symptoms to a neck injury.
Yesterday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major new plan to reduce overprescriptions of psychiatric medications, support alternative treatment options, and discontinue medications when no longer effective. This was a bold plan. As CNN’s quoted medical experts made clear, the psychiatric industry categorically rejected claims that antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines are overprescribed —if anything, they claim underprescription— and who believe Secretary Kennedy is generally a nincompoop.
The guild always defends the guild. So far as I can tell, the proposals were intensely popular with patients and heterodox providers, and terrifying to pharma and the medical-industrial complex.
CNN reported Kennedy’s plan but completely failed to describe it. It just leaped straight from the announcement to quoting ‘experts’ who disagreed with Kennedy. Fortunately, the “MAHA Action Plan” is published right on the HHS website. Ironically, comparing CNN experts’ criticisms to the Action Plan, it addresses nearly every one of their complaints, and pretty much sounds identical to what the experts claimed was actually needed.
One suspects the experts never read the Action Plan before offering their critiques. (Reading action plans is depressing.)
In a widely shared clip of Kennedy’s comments, he mentioned a new billing code that will allow doctors to be reimbursed for de-prescribing antidepressants and helping wean patients off them when they aren’t producing a “clinical benefit.” Take two of these LESS and call me in the morning.
In other words, finally, doctors will have an economic incentive to not prescribe mind-altering drugs and to stop antidepressants when they don’t work— even when stopping isn’t easy. A billing code that pays doctors to un-prescribe is the most subversive line item ever to appear in the Federal Register. Pharma built the SSRI economy on a billing code that rewarded prescribing. Kennedy is reversing the racket using its own machinery. Brilliant.
For any other Administration, in any other news cycle, this would be covered as a major initiative. Tens of millions of Americans are potentially affected by the new MAHA Action Plan. In 2023, roughly 1 in 9American adults took an antidepressant, with higher rates among women (1 in 6), and in shocking numbers of children as young as three years old. (It even affects Democrats most, since there is at least a 20-point gap in mental health diagnoses between the parties.)
“We will support patient autonomy, require informed consent and shared decision-making,” Kennedy said, “and shift the standard of care toward prevention, transparency, and a more holistic approach to mental health.” In other words, they’re going to make doctors tell patients what they’re getting into, such as not being able to quit taking the pills without first spending a month in rehab.
It’s worth noting how this massive initiative was announced during the sweet spot of the midterm elections. I’m betting a lot more of this is coming.
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On Wednesday, local Atlanta affiliate WSBTV-2 reported, “Gov. Kemp signs controversial nonpartisan election bill for 5 metro Atlanta counties.” Fulton County DA Fani Willis was hardest hit.
You can measure the significance of this election bill by the Democrats’ hysteria. Gwinnett County DA Patsy Austin-Gatson called it a “deliberate act of voter disenfranchisement.” Fani’s statement said, “The targeting of the five African American women Democrats who were chosen by voters of their counties to serve as district attorneys is racist, sexist, and clearly unconstitutional.” She forgot homophobic.
“The whole rationale for this bill doesn’t make any sense,” Augusta Democrat state Senator Harold Jones complained. “It’s an effort to suppress the vote,” whined Sandra Lee Williams, Atlanta North Georgia Labor Council president.
Democrats are already filing lawsuits over a change that won’t take effect until 2028. Of course.
Most of the coverage —and it was widely covered in Georgia— failed to describe what the bill actually does. In the five metro Atlanta counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton, the bill changes a list of races to nonpartisan, meaning that candidates won’t be grouped or identified by political party on ballots. The affected offices include: district attorneys like Fani Willis, county commissioners, tax commissioners, clerks of court, solicitor generals, and county surveyors.
Sheriffs, though, will remain partisan races, which made Georgia liberals even madder.
Democrats fret that Atlanta residents won’t be smart enough to remember which candidates to vote for without party labels appearing right on the ballot. Republicans argue the change will result in higher-qualitycandidates running for office. If that’s not a veiled slam against Fani Willis, I don’t know what else it could be.
Either way, it is a structural change that Democrats did not see coming and could potentially cure Georgia’s “blue dot” problem, where the state’s progressive voters are all clumped in the metro Atlanta area.
That’s not all. True, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has endured his share of valid criticism from Republicans. He may have discovered a second gear. On top of the nonpartisan bill, this week he also did this:
Since early voting for primary elections has already started in Georgia, it is unlikely that changed maps will affect the 2026 midterm elections. But new maps would be available for 2028. This is also racist. The chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia called it a “brazen attempt to take away the voting power of Black Georgians.”
As Democrats loved to remind us while the Autopen ran amok, elections have consequences. State Republicans are finally taking the gloves off.
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In a sign of growing Democrat desperation, yesterday Fox News reported, “Harris’ ‘no bad idea brainstorm’ for Dems includes packing SCOTUS, eliminating Electoral College” They propose to save democracy by changing it all around.
During a Wednesday night livestream on the “Win with Black Women” podcast, failed presidential candidate and professional chortler Kamala Harris suggested to several dozen viewers that the Democratic Party needs an “expanded playbook” of ideas for the 2026 midterm elections.
She called it “no bad ideas brainstorming,” in a tone you might use when addressing an inattentive kindergarten class.
“We invite all ideas, that we say… look, this is a moment where there are no bad ideas, a no bad idea brainstorm is what I’d like to call it,” Harris loquaciously lectured. “And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi-member districts.”
“Let’s talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.,” Harris continued, on a roll. “These are the things I think that we’ve got to do.” How is that “brainstorming?” These are all just Democrats’ stale ideas, reheated for a boring podcast like a slightly fuzzy Hot Pocket a stoner found under the couch.
These were not even fresh ideas tossed on a whiteboard during a creative brainstorming session; they’re just the same structural hacks Democrats and their academic/NGO brain trusts have been flogging for years whenever they lose under the existing rules. More amusingly, Democrats rolled out these constitutional reform ‘proposals’ on a niche Zoom‑to‑YouTube show with about 26,000 subscribers and four‑digit live audiences— fewer than 10% of C&C’s subscribers.
It’s like they are losing a football game and want to brainstorm adding more referees, putting more players on the field, and giving their side two extra downs per possession to compensate for historic injustices. There are no bad ideas. Republican social media reacted swiftly with amusement. “Well, maybe a few bad ideas,” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) tweeted.
Whenever the rules work for them —such as the filibuster— Democrats pound the table about norms and traditions. When the rules favor Republicans, Democrats pound the table about reform and fairness and suggest making a few minor ‘updates’ to that dusty relic of a Constitution, like your wife complaining about a kitchen last decorated during the 1970s. Those Formica cabinets with the pineapple handles are hideous, and don’t get me started about the avocado-green counter tiles.
If it weren’t for double-standards and Calvinball, you might suspect Democrats had no standards or rules at all.
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This week, the New York Post ran the equisitely unlikely and totally 2026 headline, “Man uses his penis to pull police car down the street — to ‘raise awareness’ for prostate cancer.” Just wait. It’s even better than that.
As you know, modern medical science is constantly searching for new and effective ways to raise awareness about terrifying novel health issues like the horrific threat of monkeypox. Usually, raising awareness involves wearing a colored ribbon, speed-walking a 5K, or possibly something more extreme but sponsored, like eating 100 Nathan’s hot dogs.
But recently, a man in England decided that ribbons and hot dogs were just not getting the job done. He decided to raise awareness for prostate cancer and school bullying in a way that was so completely, utterly, and undeniably testosterone-fueled guy-thinking that I am frankly surprised he is not a permanent Florida resident.
His name is John Stephenson, 50, who lives in West Yorkshire, is a martial arts expert, and a former bare-knuckle fighter. This is important background information because it explains why his brain operates on a different frequency than most of us. If you or I want to raise awareness for something, we might tweet out a strongly worded opinion and brace for the backlash. But when John Stephenson wants to raise awareness, he sets himself on fire.
And then he pulls a two-ton French police car down the street.
With his penis.
“People think I’m a bit mad,” Stephenson explained, “but I like to set myself challenges.” Who among us disagrees?
🔥 I am not making any of this up. This is an actual news story in a major American newspaper, which employs actual reporters whose job it is to write sentences like, “John Stephenson, 50, hauled a 2-ton French police car 131 feet along a residential street using his manhood after being set ablaze.”
Let us pause for a moment to consider the delicate logistics of this operation. First, you have to find a French police car. I don’t know why it had to be French, but maybe French cars are more aerodynamic, or possibly they just surrender easier. Then, you have to acquire a tow rope. Then, you have to attach one end of the tow rope to the car, and the other end to… well, you know. The package.
Since, apparently, pulling a two-ton car with your reproductive organs is not sufficiently manly or challenging, you must also douse yourself in lighter fluid and strike a match.
Why the fire? According to Mr. Stephenson, “I’ve pulled a car with my testicles before, and I’ve pulled a car on fire, so I thought: why not combine them both?” Why not, indeed. “But this time, do it with my penis,” he added.
This is the kind of flawless, irrefutable logic that built the British Empire.
🔥 You might be wondering whether it hurt. Mr. Stephenson candidly admitted that it did. “I won’t lie, it did hurt quite a bit,” he told reporters, in what is surely the greatest understatement in the history of the English language, or at least, spoken with a British accent. But he added that the blessing was that his mind was distracted from the pain in his genitals by on being on fire, which I suppose is a pretty good technique. If your hair is currently ablaze, you are probably slightly less concerned about the structural integrity of your nether regions. Slightly.
The good news is that Mr. Stephenson successfully pulled the car 131 feet, and he reported that despite a few marks, “everything is still intact, so hopefully no harm done.” Hopefully. And he definitely was not trying to extend anything. Meaning, the event. (What did you think I meant?)
In even better news, he achieved his goal: he raised awareness for prostate cancer. In hindsight, it was a brilliant strategy. Prostate cancer is a serious issue affecting one in six men, and early detection is crucial. But men are notoriously stubborn about going to the doctor, especially for that particular exam. We will minimize symptoms, prioritize reorganizing the tool chest over checkups, and conclude everything is just fine until something actually falls off.
But if you tell us, “Hey, you need to go get your prostate checked, or else you might end up having to pull a Renault Clio down Main Street with your Johnson while engulfed in flames,” we will be in the waiting room before you can finish the sentence.
His other innovation was combining causes, which makes perfect sense, since he probably preferred not to do it more than once. On top of prostate cancer awareness, Mr. Stephenson was also raising money for a charity that provides vacations for families of children with cancer, and as I mentioned, was raising awareness about bullying in schools. Three-in-one!
Plus, if there is one thing that will definitely stop a school bully in his tracks, it’s the knowledge that his victim’s dad is a fiery amateur MMA fighter who tows police cars with his groin.
So let us applaud John Stephenson, a man who literally put it on the line for a good cause. (Or three good causes.) He has proven that true heroism isn’t about wearing a cape or flying through the air. Sometimes, true heroism is about tying a rope to your most sensitive appendage, lighting a match, and dragging a hatchback across Yorkshire.
I just hope he remembered to engage the parking brake when he was done.
Have a fabulous Friday! Coffee & Covid will be back Saturday morning, hotel-blogging style for the third day running, with one final report from the conservative conference frontier before I head home.
Rose Rambles... 