Public Citizen Statement on Purdue Pharma's Guilty Plea
Today, Purdue Pharma, the maker of the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, will plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, according to justice department officials. Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen, released the following statement in response:
"Purdue Pharma is a bankrupt company that will operate in the future as a social benefit corporation, or possibly not at all. Criminal charges for its wrongdoing are decades late and almost beside the point.
WASHINGTON
Today, Purdue Pharma, the maker of the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, will plead guilty to three federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, according to justice department officials. Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen, released the following statement in response:
"Purdue Pharma is a bankrupt company that will operate in the future as a social benefit corporation, or possibly not at all. Criminal charges for its wrongdoing are decades late and almost beside the point.
"For there to be accountability for the corporate-fueled opioid addiction epidemic, which has cruelly taken hundreds of thousands of lives, there must be prosecution of those members of the Sackler family who, along with other executives and owners, were responsible for Purdue Pharma's deadly deception, as well as a stripping away of their ill-gotten gains from an evil scheme to push addictive drugs for profit.
"The DOJ should have prosecuted Purdue and its owners and executives back in 2007, the first time it brought charges against the company, instead of immunizing it with a non-prosecution agreement, as Public Citizen stated at the time. Public Citizen research shows these leniency agreements do not deter corporate recidivism. Today's guilty plea comes too late for the millions of lives that Purdue's crimes destroyed over the past decade."
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Trump Ramps Up Aggression Against Venezuela With Seizure of Ship Not Under US Sanctions
The Venezuelan government condemned the seizure as "a serious act of international piracy;" meanwhile, a US official said the Coast Guard was pursuing a third tanker in the Caribbean.
Dec 21, 2025
The Trump administration's "total and complete blockade" of "all sanctioned oil tankers" off the Venezuelan coast was already denounced by critics as "an act of war"—and the United States further escalated its aggression on Saturday by seizing a tanker that is not on a list vessels under US sanctions.
US Coast Guard troops led Saturday's seizure of the Centuries, a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, after it left Venezuela.
"The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco-terrorism in the region," US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X. "We will find you, and we will stop you."
On Sunday, an unnamed US official told Reuters that the Coast Guard "is in active pursuit" of a third tanker near Venezuela, "a sanctioned dark fleet vessel" that "is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.”
The Venezuelan government condemned Saturday's seizure as "a serious act of international piracy."
Venezuela “denounces and rejects the theft and hijacking of a new private vessel transporting oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew, committed by military personnel of the United States of America in international waters," Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said in a statement.
“These acts will not go unpunished,” she vowed, adding that Venezuela will pursue "all corresponding actions, including filing a complaint before the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral organizations, and the governments of the world."
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump declared a blockade of all oil tankers under US sanctions that are traveling to or from Venezuela.
Saturday's action followed the US seizure of the Panamanian-flagged Skipper—which is under sanctions—off the Venezuelan coast on December 10.
The Centuries seizure also comes amid the Trump administration's bombing of at least 28 boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, attacks that have killed more than 100 people and have been condemned as acts of extrajudicial murder.
In addition to the blockade and boat strikes, Trump has deployed an armada of warships and thousands of troops to the southern Caribbean, authorized covert CIA action against the socialist government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and has threatened to invade the South American nation. This latest wave of aggression continues more than a century of US meddling in Venezuela's affairs and sovereignty.
Numerous world leaders have denounced the US aggression toward Venezuela. On Saturday, leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva said during a summit of the South American Mercosur bloc in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil that an "armed intervention in Venezuela would be a humanitarian catastrophe."
In the United States, multiple efforts by members of Congress—mostly Democrats, but also a handful of anti-war Republicans—to pass a war powers resolution blocking the Trump administration from bombing boats or attacking Venezuela have failed.
Echoing assertions by Venezuelan officials and others, one of those Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said earlier this week that Trump's aggressive escalation "is all about oil and regime change."
Some critics have called Trump's actions a renewal of the "gunboat diplomacy" practiced by the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. The US has conducted scores of military interventions in Latin America, including dozens of regime change operations.
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Dems Demand Answers as Trump Photo Disappears From DOJ Online Epstein Files
"What else is being covered up?"
Dec 20, 2025
Congressional Democrats on Saturday pressed US Attorney General Pam Bondi for answers regarding the apparent removal of a photo showing President Donald Trump surrounded by young female models from Friday's Department of Justice release of files related to the late convicted child sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Amid the heavily redacted documents in Friday's DOJ release was a photo of a desk with an open drawer containing multiple photos of Trump, including one of him with Epstein and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and another of him with the models.
However, the photo—labeled EFTA00000468 in the DOJ's Epstein Library—was no longer on the site as of Saturday morning.
"This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump, has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release," Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted in a Bluesky post. "AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public."
This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release.AG Bondi, is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.
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— Oversight Dems (@oversightdemocrats.house.gov) December 20, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Numerous critics have accused the Trump administration of a cover-up due to the DOJ's failure to meet a Friday deadline to release all Epstein-related documents and heavy redactions—including documents of 100 pages or more that are completely blacked out—to many of the files.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded to the criticism by claiming that "the only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law—full stop."
"Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim," he added.
Earlier this year, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly redacted Trump's name from its file on Epstein, who was the president's longtime former friend and who died in 2019 in a New York City jail cell under mysterious circumstances officially called suicide while facing federal child sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Trump has not been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein.
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said during a Friday CNN interview that the DOJ only released about 10% of the full Epstein files.
The DOJ is breaking the law by not releasing the full Epstein files. This is not transparency. This is just more coverup by Donald Trump and Pam Bondi. They need to release all the files, NOW.
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— Congressman Robert Garcia (@robertgarcia.house.gov) December 19, 2025 at 5:06 PM
"The DOJ has had months and hundreds of agents to put these files together, and yet entire documents are redacted—from the first word to the last," Garcia said on X. "What are they hiding? The American public deserves transparency. Release all the files now!"
In a joint statement Friday, Garcia and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said, "We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law."
"The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ," they added.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—who along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Trump last month and required the release of all Epstein materials by December 19—said in a video published after Friday's document dump that he and Massie "are exploring all options" to hold administration officials accountable.
"It can be the impeachment of people at Justice, inherent contempt, or referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice," he added.
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Israeli Forces Massacre 6 Palestinians Celebrating Wedding at Gaza School Shelter
"This isn't a truce, it's a bloodbath," said a relative of some of the victims, who included women, an infant, and a teenage girl.
Dec 20, 2025
Funerals were held Saturday in northern Gaza for six people, including children, massacred the previous day by Israeli tank fire during a wedding celebration at a school sheltering displaced people, as the number of Palestinians killed during the tenuous 10-week ceasefire rose to over 400.
On Friday, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank blasted the second floor of the Gaza Martyrs School, which was housing Palestinians displaced by the two-year war on Gaza in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.
Al Jazeera and other news outlets reported that the attack occurred while people were celebrating a wedding.
Al-Shifa Hospital director Mohammed Abou Salmiya said those slain included a 4-month-old infant, a 14-year-old girl, and two women. At least five others were injured in the attack.
"It was a safe area and a safe school and suddenly... they began firing shells without warning, targeting women, children and civilians," Abdullah Al-Nader—who lost relatives including 4-month-old Ahmed Al-Nader in the attack—told Agence France-Presse.
Witnesses said IDF troops subsequently blocked first responders including ambulances and civil defense personnel from reaching the site for over two hours.
"We gathered the remains of children, elderly, infants, women, and young people," Nafiz al-Nader, another relative of the infant and others killed in Friday's attack, told reporters. "Unfortunately, we called the ambulance and the civil defense, but they couldn't get by the Israeli army."
The IDF said that “during operational activity in the area of the Yellow Line in the northern Gaza Strip, a number of suspicious individuals were identified in command structures," and that "troops fired at the suspicious individuals to eliminate the threat."
The Yellow Line is a demarcation boundary between areas of Gaza under active Israeli occupation—more than half of the strip's territory, including most agricultural and strategic lands—and those under the control of Hamas.
"The claim of casualties in the area is familiar; the incident is under investigation," the IDF said, adding that it "regrets any harm to uninvolved parties and acts as much as possible to minimize harm to them."
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces, including approximately 9,500 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Classified IDF documents suggest that more than 80% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were civilians.
Around 2 million Palestinians have also been displaced—on average, six times—starved, or sickened in the strip.
Gaza officials say at least 401 Palestinians have been killed since a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect on October 10. Gaza's Government Media Office says Israel has violated the ceasefire at least 738 times.
"This isn't a truce, it's a bloodbath," Nafiz al-Nader told Agence France-Presse outside al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday.
Israel says Hamas broke the truce at least 32 times, with three IDF soldiers killed during the ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
Israel is also facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague. A United Nations commission, world leaders, Israeli and international human rights groups, jurists, and scholars from around the world have called Israel's war on Gaza a genocide.
Friday's massacre came as Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump's Mideast envoy, other senior US officials, and representatives of Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates met in Miami to discuss the second phase of Trump's peace plan, which includes the deployment of an international stabilization force, disarming Hamas, the withdrawal of IDF troops from the strip, and the establishment of a new government there.
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