On 5th August the Cherokee Nation banned hyperscale data centres on tribal and trust land after surveying 1,593 citizens and finding about 64% opposed. So 18 states now have an active ban or moratorium and 25 of 50 are restricting or considering it. But remember that a state rule can be pre-empted from Washington and a county vote can be reversed at the next election. But tribal land is neither. The Cherokee Nation has more enrolled members than any tribe in the United States and it is a sovereign. The industry's entire political strategy is pre-emption. Turns out here there is nothing to pre-empt.

On 5th November 2019 a pivotal trial of the kidney drug avacopan missed. The two sided p value was 0.1025. Four days later a ChemoCentryx executive emailed a colleague, “We cannot afford to miss a superiority outcome here.” The FDA set out the rest in a notice dated 27th April 2026. Company staff searched the unblinded data and picked nine patients whose scoring could be revisited, six on avacopan and three on placebo. On 13th November, before any re-scoring was requested, a company executive asked an outside statistical consultant to rerun the analysis on what the notice calls “a hypothetical dataset accounting for the anticipated results.” It assumed five of the six avacopan patients would flip to remission and none of the placebo three would. He replied that the new p value showed statistical significance. The re-scoring went out the next day. It came back exactly as the hypothetical had assumed. Five of six avacopan patients flipped. No placebo patient changed at week 52. The FDA notes that no week 52 change was requested for them. The database locked again on 20 November at p 0.0132. Approval followed in 2021. The New England Journal of Medicine retracted the paper on 29th June. The European Commission revoked the European licence on 4th August. Health Canada has told doctors not to start new patients. Britain and Australia are reviewing. TAVNEOS is still sold in America. Amgen bought ChemoCentryx in 2022, three years after the conduct described, strongly disagrees with the FDA, and has asked for a hearing. Second quarter sales were $150 million. Amgen carries $2.4 billion of TAVNEOS rights on its books, $2.3 billion of it American. At 30th June it had written off none of it.

The 5th amendment is about not compelling self-incriminating testimony. Invoking the 5th in response to “what color is your tie” has nothing to do with self-incrimination. It is simply arrogant contempt.