Opinion
All Small Business is Essential

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Crime
First Good Battlefield News From Trumpās Global War on Fentanyl

From
for the Daily WireMaltz attributes slowing fentanyl smuggling directly to Trumpās controversial 25% trade tariffs, which compelled the first Mexican military raids against production labs in Sinaloa Cartel-controlled CuliacĆ”n, Mexico.
Itās early but not too early to note that President Donald Trumpās all-out World War on cross-borderĀ fentanyl smugglingĀ into the United States, the highly lethal synthetic opiate responsible for 120,000 American overdose deaths in recent years, is achieving remarkable impacts for the first time in a decade.
A key indicator of broader total smuggling at and between the southern borderās ports of entry ā U.S. law enforcement seizures ofĀ fentanylĀ ā has dropped 50% since the November election, indicating a greater decline in total fentanyl smuggling.
That decline is attributable to Trumpās reset of U.S. Customs and Border Protection orders to aggressively hunt the drug as they and thousands of active-duty soldiers are now free of the distracting duty of processing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border every month throughout Joe Bidenās term. Trump policies quickly ended that mass migration distraction,Ā as I wrote in The Daily Wire on March 20.

A 2024 seizure of fentanyl pills manufactured in Mexico. DEA photo.
For context on the change with inbound fentanyl flows, from 2019 to 2023, the amounts seized rose every year in tandem with American overdose deaths and remained high in the 2,000-pound monthly range during 2024.
But In December and January, President-elect Trump threatened devastating trade tariffs against Mexico if they did not seriously crack down on cartel production and smuggling even before he entered office.
From October 2024 to January 2025, Southwest Border seizures of fentanyl fell from 2,000 pounds in 85 seizure events, to 990 pounds in 47 seizure events, CBPĀ seizure data shows. Then in February 2025, seizures plummeted even further to 590 pounds in 45 events.
Combined, those January and February numbersĀ are 50% less than the same period in 2024 and among the very lowest monthlies recorded since 2020.

City of Scottsdale, AZ, police department.
Ranking administration officials, Border Patrol supervisors who hunt the drug on the ground, and media reporting from cartel laboratory-infested regions of Mexico tell us that Marchās seizure numbers will solidify a reversal of a deadly decade-long upward fentanyl smuggling trend.
āTrumpās policies are having an impact, one hundred percent,ā Acting Administrator of Trumpās Drug Enforcement Administration Derek Maltz told me for this Daily Wire story. And for Americans concerned about the scourge of fentanyl, thereās much more they will find surprising.
A Remarkable Display Of Cartel Pragmatism In Response To Trump

Derek S. Maltz, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Photo by Gabe Skidmore. Wikimedia Commons.
What Maltz said next almost defies commonly believed narratives about Mexicoās cartel crime syndicates ā especially the idea that they are more impulsively violent than strategic and pragmatic. Yet, according to Maltz, cartel leaders appear to have opted for a surprising strategic change in the face of Trumpās campaign against them over fentanyl.
The cartels appear to have determined that since Trump is so bad for business, they have decided to quit smuggling it into the American market and send it to Europe and other parts of the world instead. What to do about the lost revenue? Easy. Make up the difference by shipping greater volumes of less-politically and physiologically lethal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, Maltz said.
āWe got their attention with a lot of talk about the deaths in America, and the cartels got very concerned. It became a business decision.ā Maltz told me.
Indeed, cartels in the fentanyl crosshairs are facing a unique, existential threat that no prior president in modern times has imposed, over just this one line of cartel business.Ā While itās too early for anyone to declare victory in Trumpās unprecedented war on fentanyl, Maltz attributes slowing fentanyl smuggling directly to Trumpās controversial 25% trade tariffs, which compelled the first Mexican military raids against production labs in Sinaloa Cartel-controlled CuliacĆ”n, Mexico.
After his November 2024 election win, Trump vowed to follow through with executive orders that would establishĀ punishing tariffs on ChinaĀ for tolerating the export of precursor fentanyl-making chemicals to Mexico. And almost since inauguration day, Trumpās moves have compelled theĀ destruction of laboratories.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
He designated nine Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations subject to global financial isolation, surveillance and terrorism charges for anyone who partners with them.
The cartels no doubt also felt heat from unspecified threats of possible U.S. military action against them and their labs. Indeed, Trump has increased U.S. spy flights over Mexico, repositioned CIA officers into Mexico, deployed war ships to the Pacific and Gulf of America, and put specialized light infantry divisions on the southern border facing Mexico.
An Unlikely Source Of Credit For Trump: The New York Times
As part of the Trump administration, Maltz might be expected to lose some credibility by crediting his bossās policies for good news about fentanyl.
Maltz is hardly alone, however, in attributing Trumpās policies to early apparent success.Ā Natalie Kitroeff, theĀ New York TimesāĀ Mexico City bureau chiefĀ toured some manufacturing labsĀ in the city of CuliacĆ”n with another reporter in December 2024, the Sinaloa Cartel-controlled city believed to be Mexicoās central hub for manufacturing fentanyl with well over 100 labs.

Getty Images. View of the historic center of CuliacĆ”n, capital city of the state of Sinaloa, with the main Alvaro ObregĆ³n street that runs from north to south.
In a March 2025Ā interview on the newspaperāsĀ The DailyĀ podcast, Kitroeff said she returned to CuliacĆ”n after Trumpās inauguration āto see whether all of the pressure that Trump had put on Mexico had led to real changes, whether any of this actually made a difference.ā
After serendipitously witnessing Mexican troops raiding labs as she drove through CuliacĆ”n on a follow-up trip, Kitroeffās conclusion was clear.
āIt was really remarkable. The dynamics, it seemed, had completely changed from the last time we were there,ā she said, adding that her cartel sources ātold us there was basically no production of fentanyl happening in the city. It had totally plummeted, fallen off a cliffā because āthere is such an intense crackdown by the government right now.ā
āIs this all because of Trump?ā the showās host Michael Barbaro asked Kitroeff.
āYeah, I think thatās what it looks like to a lot of people, a lot of regular Mexicans, a lot of cartel members, and a lot of security experts who have been studying this for a long time,ā she responded.
āI think itās pretty clear that the amount of progress, arrests, raids, lab busts, the pace of these actions is something that weāve not seen in recent history in Mexico. One analyst told us, weāve seen in one month what we might have seen in years,ā Kitroeff continued. āI think what weāve seen is that at least in this context, in this month, and in this place, the tariffs worked, for now at least.ā
The reporter and Maltz said production still goes on elsewhere in Mexico.
But Maltz said his government intelligence suggests the cartels are contemplating shipping the drug to Europe, Australia and to other wealthy developed countries but not as much to the United States because of the Trump heat.
āTheyāre going to produce it and ship it over that way instead,ā he said. āThereās a very good chance that other parts of the world may be getting shipments of fentanyl from the cartels, unless they just curtail the production altogether, which I donāt see happening.ā
He and others also note that U.S. law enforcement began seizing higher volumes of cocaine and methamphetamine smuggled over the border since Trumpās election instead of fentanyl, also suggesting a self-preserving cartel strategy change.
What About American Deaths?Ā

Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Another vital indicator that warrants tracking as a means to judge the long-term success of Trumpās muscular fentanyl initiatives: overdose deaths.
Itās just too early to know how the apparently falling smuggling rates translate into saved lives. Significant declines in overdose deaths began a year ago, according to theĀ latest Center for Disease Control report on the subject, which lags real time by four months. Death rates fell by 24% for the 12 months through September 2024, from 114,000 to a still outrageous 87,000. The CDC attributes the decline to better life-saving treatment and awareness programs inside the United States but also to a factor it dubs without elaboration āshifts in the illegal drug supply.ā

National Center for Health Statistics. CDC.
That factor almost assuredly is a reference to a secretive deal that President Joe Biden bartered for Mexico in December 2023 to deploy 35,000 troops with orders to militarily contain illegal immigration flows in deep southern Mexico to help Bidenās presidential reelection campaign defend its border policies against Trump. Mexico responded to Bidenās favor request with major impactful force throughout the Biden or Harris reelection campaign that dramatically reduced human smuggling,Ā as I frequently reported, and also no doubt hindered some fentanyl smuggling.
Trump watchers and all Americans who authentically care about the extreme damage this drug from Mexico has wrought on the United States should hope seizures continue to plummet as this likely means less is getting smuggled over. But AmericansĀ deserveĀ to know if āshifts in illegal drug supplyā is saving far more American lives.
If that body count number alone continues an even faster decline, Trump will have earned his countryās enduring gratitude and a place of reverence in American history. So far, anyway, the early results give rise to optimism.
* * *
Todd Bensman is a Senior National Security Fellow, Center for Immigration Studies and a two-timeĀ National Press Club award winner.Ā He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a 23-year veteran newspaper reporter. He is the author of āAmericaās Covert Border War,ā and āOverrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.ā
Opinion
Some scientists advocate creating human bodies for āspare parts.ā

From LifeSiteNews
The Stanford researchers admit that some people may find these ideas about clones repugnant but justify them on the basis of research already in progress.
In the 2005 sci-fi thrillerĀ The Island, Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor discover that they are clones, created as an āinsurance policyā for wealthy people who might need them for āspare parts.ā Now,Ā scientists at StanfordĀ are proposing that we make this dystopian fiction a reality. On March 25, 2025, Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi wrote inĀ MIT Technology Review:
Recent advances in biotechnology now provide a pathway to producing living human bodies without the neural components that allow us to think, be aware, or feel pain. Many will find this possibility disturbing, but if researchers and policymakers can find a way to pull these technologies together, we may one day be able to create āspareā bodies, both human and nonhuman.
These researchers say that āhuman biological materials are an essential commodity in medicine, and persistent shortages of these materials create a major bottleneck to progress.ā Using techniques reminiscent of Aldous HuxleyāsĀ Brave New WorldĀ (in which fetuses destined for menial tasks are selectively poisoned to diminish their intelligence), they propose using human stem cells and artificial wombs to create human clones which they call ābodyoids.ā The article describes it this way:
Such technologies, together with established genetic techniques to inhibit brain development, make it possible to envision the creation of ābodyoidsāāa potentially unlimited source of human bodies, developed entirely outside of a human body from stem cells, that lack sentience or the ability to feel pain.
The researchers say that these neurologically impaired human clones could provide an almost unlimited source of organs, tissues, and cells for use in transplantation. They admit that some people may find these ideas repugnant but justify them on the basis of research already in progress. They correctly point out that we areĀ alreadyĀ using neurologically injured people as research test subjects.
āBrain deadā people who are biologically alive but who have been declaredĀ legallyĀ dead are currently being used as test hosts for the implantation of genetically modified pigĀ liversĀ andĀ kidneys. These brain-injured people who are being used as xenograft hosts are certainly alive (since they are stable enough to be used as test subjects for implanted animal organs) until they are killed at the end of the experiment for further anatomical and microscopic analysis. The Stanford scientists use this ethically problematic practice to justify creating human clones for research: āIn all these cases, nothing was, legally, a living human being at the time it was used for research. Human bodyoids would also fall into that category.ā
The scientists admit that human cloning raises ethical problems, saying that the use of bodyoidsĀ Ā āmightĀ diminish the human status of real people who lack consciousness or sentience.ā But the article is clearly written in the spirit of the ends justifying the means. In their call for action, the authors conclude, āCaution is warranted, but so is bold vision; the opportunity is too important to ignore.ā
On the contrary, the value of every human being is what is too important to ignore. We value and protect every person because they are made in the image of God, regardless of the way they were brought into the world. Using unconscious people as research subjects is wrong, both in the case of brain-injured people declared ālegally deadā (under the logical fallacy ofĀ brain death), and also with this new proposal for bioengineering human clones. Salve Regina University philosopherĀ Dr. Peter J. ColosiĀ explains it this way:
You, as the person who you are, exist even when you are not conscious, and this means that other human beings who are not conscious could also do that. In the branch of philosophy that I am calling Christian personalism, there have been many convincing arguments developed to show the reasonableness of the presence of a person in all classes of nonconscious or minimally conscious living human beings.
Also, it is wrong to create people with the sole purpose of using them to fulfill our own desires.Ā Dr. ColosiĀ makes this clear:
Furthermore, the creation of human beings with the deliberate intent to destroy some of them for the sake of othersā¦is a clear example of what Pope Francis has referred to as āThe Throw Away Cultureā: The throwaway culture says, āI use you as much as I need you. When I am not interested in you anymore, or you are in my way, I throw you out.ā It is especially the weakest who are treated this way ā unborn children, the elderly, the needy, and the disadvantaged.ā
Creating people to be used as commodities for āspare partsā is unconscionable. Do we really want to be spending our taxpayerĀ dollars this way? Yet Stanford Medicineās Center for Clinical and Translational Research and Education just received aĀ $70 million NIH grant. The purpose of this grant is to āaccelerate the translation of newly discovered biomedical treatments into interventions that improve patient care and population health.ā
READ:Ā The case of Zack Dunlap shows the incoherence of ābrain deathā
Rather than accelerating, we need to stop, expose, and defund these morally abhorrent attempts to purposely bioengineer neurologically impaired human clones as a source of āspare parts.ā A pro-life ethic protects all human life from experimentation and abuse.
Heidi Klessig MD is a retired anesthesiologist and pain management specialist who writes and speaks on the ethics of organ harvesting and transplantation. She is the author ofĀ The Brain Death Fallacy,Ā and her work may be found atĀ respectforhumanlife.com.
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