Morning Brief: ICE’s Anti-Terror Offensive And The Crackdown On Prescription Drug Middlemen

ICE arrests the family of the Colorado illegal alien terror suspect as the Trump administration rounds up 1,500 illegal immigrants in another sanctuary state. Drug giant CVS could be closing all of its pharmacies in Arkansas due to a first-in-the-nation law targeting pharmaceutical middlemen. And the FTC probes whether a dozen major advertising and watchdog groups illegally coordinated to blacklist platforms.

It’s Wednesday, June 4, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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Immigrant Terror Rising?

Topline: Immigration enforcement continues to ramp up as the Trump administration prioritizes criminal and national security threats.

Senior Homeland Security officials told Fox News’s Bill Melugin on Tuesday that federal authorities have arrested the immediate family of the Boulder terror suspect, Mohamed Soliman. Sources say the family is “being processed for expedited removal.”

The arrest came a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a general policy of expected removal for immigrants with ties to terrorists. “All terrorists, their family members, and terrorist sympathizers here on a visa should know that under the Trump administration we will find you, revoke your visa, and deport you.”

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, a group of illegal aliens, ranging from just 13 years old to 21, were recently arrested in connection with the brutal murder of Larisha Thompson. She was driving down the road when she was fatally shot. Authorities have charged six illegal aliens of uncertain national origin in connection with the murder. Investigators on the scene found evidence linking the firearm used in the attack to a recent burglary. An individual fired at a security camera while burglarizing a gas station convenience store. The SWAT team raided the home of the 21-year-old. The six illegal aliens have each been charged with murder, attempted armed robbery, and second-degree burglary.

And ICE has announced nearly 1,500 arrests in Massachusetts, a sanctuary state. Of those arrested, 790 illegal aliens, more than half of them, had criminal records or pending charges. Patricia Hyde, the acting director of the Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston Field Office, explained that Massachusetts’s sanctuary state policies force immigration enforcement agents to go into the community rather than simply pick up illegal aliens from jails.

Drug Middleman Crackdown

Topline: A first-in-the-nation law takes on pharmacy benefit managers, the drug middlemen both sides of the aisle have blamed for inflating prescription drug prices.

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) act as middlemen between drug manufacturers, insurance companies, and pharmacies – and by extension, patients. They negotiate with drug companies and pay pharmacies for filing prescriptions. In theory, they’re supposed to lower costs for Americans. However, over the last decade, PBMs have consolidated – now just three companies oversee prescriptions for more than 200 million Americans. They’ve been accused by both Republicans and Democrats of inflating prices for their own benefit and driving small pharmacies out of business.

A new Arkansas law, Act 624, bans PBMs from holding permits for prescription drug sales. In response, pharmacy giant CVS has said it might have to close all 23 of its pharmacies in Arkansas. CVS owns one of the Big Three PBMs, called Caremark. CVS has also filed suit against the state to prevent the law from going into effect – Express Scripts, another of the Big Three, has also sued the state.

“PBMs [are supposed] to negotiate better drug prices between the insurance companies and the pharmacies,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) told The Daily Wire. “But what was actually happening is the pharmacies were buying the PBMs and completely controlling and monopolizing the market. We call ‘em drug middlemen because that’s exactly what they are. They’re over-inflating prices and passing that inflation down to the consumer. … You had three of the largest PBMs in the country controlling 80% of the pharmaceutical market – complete control allows them to charge more.”

Sanders told The Daily Wire that this law is intended to help small pharmacies keep their doors open and criticized CVS for its response. “It shows where their priorities are. They would rather own the PBM than keep their pharmacy open and provide care to the patients they claim to care about. … I’m all for private industry making money, but not on the backs of the people who really need access to care.”

About a month after Gov. Sanders signed the act into law, President Donald Trump targeted PBMs with an executive order. The order encourages direct consumer purchases, cutting out the middlemen, and mandates more pricing transparency. Sanders said this momentum is building across the country and told The Daily Wire that she hopes consumers will have more access and see lower prices for prescription drugs once this law goes into effect next year.

FTC Probes Ad Collusion

Topline: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Media Matters and about a dozen other groups for allegedly pushing advertisers to boycott social media platforms over controversial content.

The FTC is probing whether Media Matters and these other groups violated antitrust law by mobilizing advertisers to boycott platforms like X – to prevent their ads from appearing next to content deemed controversial. The commission is also targeting Ad Fontes Media, which rates media outlets’ biases, investigating the group for “possible collusion.”

Some of the groups that are under investigation help brands choose where to place ads across the internet, and some of the groups, like Media Matters, call out so-called “hateful content” online. More than a dozen organizations are under investigation, and lawyers for the groups said the FTC requested broad information about their business practices.

“I’m concerned about advertiser collusion,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said last week. “If you’ve got an idea and you want the world to know it, you need eyeballs. … You talk online, and advertisers advertise next to what you’re saying, and they make money off of that, but if advertisers are getting into a back room somewhere and agreeing, ‘we’re not going to advertise next to that guy’s speech,’ right, that is a real problem, and it is a form of concerted refusal to deal that the antitrust laws have long prohibited.”

Ferguson also argued that the FTC’s investigation was nonpartisan – while he agreed that conservatives were disproportionately being targeted, the same principle would apply to progressive speech. “I don’t think anyone on the Left would be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of large businesses getting into a back room and saying, ‘hey, whenever anyone says anything favorable about abortion, we’re not advertising next to that, right?’ I don’t think the Left would like that any more than the Right would like the idea that such collusion could be affecting their speech.”

X CEO Elon Musk sued Media Matters in 2023 over this issue, accusing the leftist group of trying to stop advertisers from purchasing ads on X. That lawsuit is ongoing.