text: US President Joe Biden on Friday criticized Republicans and drug companies during a stop at a California community college as he campaigned for fellow Democrats in next month’s midterm elections.
  Biden’s trip included stops in California on Friday and Oregon yesterday as the president looks to position his party as a champion of consumers and lower healthcare costs at a time when inflation ranks among voters’ top concerns. The midterm elections are on Nov. 8.
  “We took on Big Pharma and we beat them, finally,” Biden said, referring to the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions that allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, cap the cost senior citizens are charged for prescriptions and lower insulin prescriptions to US$35 for Medicare beneficiaries.
  Biden promised to cap the insulin price at US$35 for all Americans if Democrats keep the US House of Representatives and US Senate.
  Most forecasts show Democrats with a slight advantage in the Senate and Republicans with a larger advantage in the House.
  Biden said that Republicans would repeal the prescription drug price caps and take away Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices if they take control.
  The president’s motorcade was greeted in Irvine by more than 1,000 raucous protesters calling for Democracy in Iran, where anti-government demonstrations have raged for several weeks.
  Outrage over the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death on Sept. 16, three days after she was arrested by Iran’s notorious morality police, has fueled the biggest wave of street protests and violence seen in the country for years.
  “He was moved by the protests that he saw from ... Iranian Americans who were there,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said later. “It struck him and he wanted to comment about that at the top.”
  “I want you to know that we stand with the citizens, the brave women of Iran,” Biden said late on Friday. “It stunned me what it awakened in Iran. It awakened something that I don’t think will be quieted for a long, long time.”
  “Women all over the world are being persecuted in various ways, but they should be able to wear in God’s name what they want to wear,” Biden said.
  Iranian activists yesterday called for fresh nationwide protests.
  Despite blocked access to Internet services and platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, activists issued an online appeal for a huge turnout for protests yesterday under the catchcry “The beginning of the end.”
  They have called on people across Iran to show up at spots where the security forces are not present and to chant “Death to the dictator” — a reference to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
  Additional reporting by AFP
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