Live Q&A: Judge Refuses FDA Request, Gives 8 Months for Pfizer Data; Trump Social Network Nears

The Food and Drug Administration’s request for 75 years before it fully releases information on how it approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has been shot down by a federal judge. The FDA now has just over 8 months to provide these documents for public review. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the FDA to produce more than 12,000 pages of these documents before January 31, then release 55,000 pages every 30 days until all the documents are made public. Judge Pittman stated, “the court recognizes the ‘unduly burdensome’ challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA … But, as expressed at the scheduling conference, there may not be a ‘more important issue at the Food and Drug Administration … than the pandemic, the Pfizer vaccine, getting every American vaccinated, [and] making sure that the American public is assured that this was not rush[ed] on behalf of the United States. “Accordingly, the court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance.” Meanwhile, shares in Trump’s upcoming social network jumped close to 20 percent on Thursday, after an update on the Truth Social page on the Apple store showed that the app is expected to be released on February 21, which is Presidents’ Day. And in other news, The Supreme Court is showing signs it may overturn Biden’s vaccine mandates on private sector employees and on federally funded health care facilities. Epoch Times reports, “In a rare Friday sitting the high court seemed broadly receptive to the idea that states have authority to impose vaccination mandates but questioned the ability of federal agencies to do the same.” The general tone of the justices is that the Biden administration is running these mandates as a workaround, and that it should instead be left to Congress and state law.