In one of the most disturbing events in recent history, a generation of American schoolchildren was forced out of the classroom for months, in many places, years, by adults who ignored available facts and abused public trust regarding COVID-19. These children lost irreplaceable time learning, socializing, and developing. Many still have not recovered, and some never will.
Anthony Fauci may be the one making headlines now, and for good reason. But amid the fervor, we cannot forget the person bearing equal responsibility for this catastrophe when it comes to American children: Randi Weingarten.
Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), can keep insisting, “<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/dont-let-them-rewrite-the-pandemic/">We</a><a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/04/dont-let-them-rewrite-the-pandemic/"> spent every day from February on trying to get schools open</a>,” just as Fauci can keep demanding, “<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/25/fauci-absolves-himself-of-responsibility-for-lockdowns-in-testy-interview/">Show </a><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/25/fauci-absolves-himself-of-responsibility-for-lockdowns-in-testy-interview/">me a school that I shut down</a>,” but parents remember what happened. Their children were the collateral damage of a reckless alliance in which Weingarten weaponized Fauci’s rhetoric and recommendations as scientific cover to exercise enormous control over when, how, and whether schools reopened.
Fauci did little to help his own case by invoking the Fifth Amendment 111 times as senators asked him under oath to explain his COVID-era decisions. That alone carried obvious implications of wrongdoing, or at least an effort to conceal the full extent of his role in the damage that followed. And now, thanks to his newly released diaries, we know that in private he practically bragged about his influence over initial school closures and early reopening decisions that would set the course for the rest of the country.
Whatever justification existed for that initial caution disappeared by the summer of 2020, when <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e4.htm">evidence </a>increasingly showed that children faced far lower risks of hospitalization and death than adults, and early reports from reopened schools suggested that classrooms were not major drivers of community transmission. By May, <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/05/25/10-key-education-recommendations-for-reopening-the-k-12-classroom/?_gl=1*1ydi0ty*_gcl_au*MzQzMzgyMTgzLjE3ODY1NTYzODE.*_ga*NjQ5NDA4OTQ5LjE3ODY1NTYzODE.*_ga_W14BT6YQ87*czE3ODY1NTYzODAkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODY1NTYzODAkajYwJGwwJGgw">organizations </a>such as the Heritage Foundation released guidance on how schools could reopen safely, with states prioritizing a back-to-school plan that had students physically present, since closures were already harming children.
That should have been the end of the shutdown debate. Weingarten, however, made sure it was not. She capitalized on Fauci’s public words, using his authority to legitimize an ever-expanding list of union demands that kept her members home for as long as possible, children be damned.
In July 2020, the AFT threatened lawsuits and “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/aft-strikes-school-reopening-384133">safety </a><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/28/aft-strikes-school-reopening-384133">strikes</a>” against reopening plans, declaring that “nothing is off the table” in its fight to keep schools closed. It then demanded community positivity below 5%, transmission below 1%, surveillance and contact tracing, accommodations for high-risk employees, and authority to close schools again if their conditions were not met.
That same month, Weingarten brought Fauci before the AFT’s convention, where he warned educators that if they returned to their classrooms, they would become “<a href="https://www.aft.org/news/dr-anthony-fauci-calls-safety-paramount-reopening-schools">part </a><a href="https://www.aft.org/news/dr-anthony-fauci-calls-safety-paramount-reopening-schools">of the experiment</a>” in determining what would happen. With the country’s most recognizable public-health figure validating her “caution,” Weingarten could present the AFT’s growing list of demands as reliably rooted in science.
By February 2021, the AFT, a labor union with no scientific or public-health authority, was actively shaping federal reopening policy behind closed doors. In the weeks before the CDC released its February 2021 guidance, Weingarten and other AFT officials <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/texts-reveal-exchange-between-cdc-director-teachers-union-boss-before-school-reopening-memo/">spoke </a><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/texts-reveal-exchange-between-cdc-director-teachers-union-boss-before-school-reopening-memo/">repeatedly</a> with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on her direct phone line, persuading the agency to adopt two proposed changes that gave unions and school districts more grounds to delay full reopening or close classrooms again. They thanked the CDC for treating the union as a “<a href="https://californiapolicycenter.org/science-with-the-union-label/">thought </a><a href="https://californiapolicycenter.org/science-with-the-union-label/">partner</a>.”  
Through it all, the AFT dismissed the documented academic, developmental, and psychological <a href="https://abcnews.com/US/school-closures-put-children-risk/story?id=70329613">damage </a>inflicted on children by prolonged school closures. They simply did not care.
Weingarten would not call for schools to reopen fully, five days a week, until May 2021. By then, millions of children had already lost more than a year of learning and social development they could never get back.
And for more than six years now, parents have been forced to watch the consequences of Weingarten’s selfish and baseless decisions play out in our own children’s academic struggles, mental health challenges, and delayed development.
The 2022 Nation’s Report Card recorded some of the largest declines in student achievement ever measured. Four years later, national reading and math scores still <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/teens-reading-and-math-scores-have-stagnated-us-test-results-show">remain </a>below pre-pandemic levels. As of 2025, more than <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/658100/pandemic-hurt-children-social-skills-mental-health.aspx">one </a><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/658100/pandemic-hurt-children-social-skills-mental-health.aspx">in five parents</a> said the damage to their children’s mental health or social development still had not gone away.
Fauci may be the one invoking the Fifth now, but it was Weingarten who used his warnings as cover to hold school reopenings hostage to her union’s demands. Millions of families are still dealing with the ramifications of her influence. Her unscientific, entirely political power plays must not go unanswered, and Weingarten needs to be held accountable for continuing to prioritize political agendas over children.
***
Alleigh Marré is the executive director of American Parents Coalition and a mother of four.

Florida Schools Prepare To Open

The Generational Toll Of Randi Weingarten’s Pandemic Politics

American Federation of Teachers

Anthony Fauci

COVID-19

DW Opinion

Randi Weingarten

School closures

Anthony Fauci was worried that the COVID vaccine could potentially cause miscarriages. He just didn’t tell American women. Newly released text messages from Fauci’s government-issued phone show that in January 2021, as the vaccines were being rolled out across the country, Fauci privately raised concerns about pregnant women receiving them. “Since many people have significant cytokine storm and fever after the 2nd dose,” Fauci wrote to then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, “this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”  Walensky responded: “Definitely a good point.” A good point indeed.
Days later, Fauci appeared publicly and told Americans that he had no major concerns involving pregnant women. CDC Director Walensky noted without qualification in August 2021, “The vaccines are safe and effective” in pregnancy. Privately, they mused about theoretical miscarriages, while publicly they messaged unconditional confidence and safety in the vaccines.
The question is not whether Fauci&#8217;s theoretical concern ultimately proved correct. The question is why a concern serious enough to discuss privately with the CDC director and future surgeon general was not communicated with equal specificity to pregnant women being asked to make an irreversible medical decision in the absence of pregnancy trial data. Pregnant women were excluded from the original preauthorization COVID vaccine trials. The vaccines had just been introduced. There was almost no longitudinal data because, by definition, there couldn’t be. Questions specific to pregnancy and the female reproductive system remained unanswered. But a physician-scientist committed to informed consent would have been equally candid about the limits of what we knew and about the specific risks officials themselves were still considering.
Masks, schools, vaccines, children, the elderly, how far apart we should stand (six feet – not five or seven), where we should gather, and what we should put on our faces when we do – every COVID question had an answer, and the answer was usually Dr. Fauci.
And as the pandemic wore on, the spry, sometimes cantankerous government doctor who sparred with skeptical members of Congress became something else entirely: America’s high priest of science.
During a 2021 interview, Fauci argued that attacks on him amounted to attacks on science because, in his telling, “I represent science.”  Like the Bishop of Rome speaking ex cathedra, he seemed to believe that his pronouncements were beyond question.  And therefore, questions about his conclusions constituted an attack not just on him, but on the very concept of science itself – a bold if not egotistical claim.
Science cannot be embodied by any one person. The scientific method, which has brought humanity so many extraordinary advances, is actually anchored in the scientist&#8217;s fallibility. We test, we randomize, we replicate, and we invite others to prove us wrong.
Good science has always begun with humility. Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman noted, “The first principle [of science] is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” The pandemic provided no shortage of opportunities for public-health officials to fool themselves. Pronouncements about the vaccines’ effectiveness and safety in January were walked back in July as it became clear they did not prevent transmission and were associated with serious side effects. After the vaccines became widely available, women anecdotally noted irregular periods and bleeding, and some noted miscarriages and birth defects.
They often ended up in their physicians’ office asking, “Could this have something to do with the vaccine I just received?” That question should have sparked intense, apolitical scientific curiosity. Instead, women were asking it in an environment where skepticism itself had become suspect. Question the prevailing recommendation, and you could quickly find yourself branded “anti-science.”
Whether and to what degree the COVID vaccine itself, when given in the first trimester, increased miscarriage rates and birth defects was a very important question and a particularly thorny one to answer definitively, as many pregnancy-related questions are. But the concept of informed consent exists for exactly this purpose. The claim of an 82% miscarriage rate after close analysis appears to be based on a flawed assumption, but this does not absolve the vaccine manufacturers and the CDC.
Pfizer&#8217;s early postmarketing safety report on April 30, 2021 that showed an unverifiable miscarriage signal should have prompted immediate and somber investigation. An April 2021 NEJM study led by CDC researcher Tom Shimabukuro showed a relatively low/normal miscarriage rate, and it had to be revised because skeptics noted the methodology did not appropriately count pregnancies and miscarriages. The authors agreed and revised the number, increasing the rate (14.1%), but these were in keeping with “acceptable” miscarriage rates.  These were two signals, neither one reassuring. But the messaging from the public health gurus was full steam ahead when it should have been, “Discuss the risks with your doctor.”
And now there is an even more infuriating wrinkle. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SchmittForSenate/posts/during-the-missouri-v-biden-lawsuit-that-i-filed-as-missouri-ag-we-discovered-th/1604516054369336/">Sen. Eric Schmitt, who brought Missouri v. Biden while serving as Missouri’s attorney general</a>, says discovery in the case revealed that the Biden CDC was sending daily emails to Facebook demanding censorship of posts raising concerns specifically about the COVID vaccine’s impact on pregnant women.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — the Murthy in Murthy v. Missouri — was on the very text chain in which Fauci raised the theoretical miscarriage concern. You could hardly script the irony better. The same public-health establishment that privately understood there were unanswered questions was helping create a public environment in which raising those questions could get Americans labeled and even canceled as purveyors of “misinformation.” Anthony Fauci was allowed to ask that question. American women were not.
Doctors are most dangerous when they believe they cannot be wrong.  They need humility and should not tell their patients their experience cannot be real because it hasn’t yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. When the patient is pregnant, our obligation to humility becomes even greater. Pregnant women were making decisions not only about themselves but about their unborn children. They deserved every piece of information available to them. They deserved to know what had been studied. They deserved to know what had not. They deserved to know what risks officials were considering, even if those risks were only theoretical. Most importantly, they deserved the dignity of making the decision themselves, a true informed consent, which most did not receive.
Feynman, writing in 1986 after the Challenger disaster, noted: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”  Our public health apparatus did prioritize public relations and narrative control over reality. Disagreement with the vaccine narrative became something akin to heresy, and women know where that road leads. Fauci’s transformation from government physician to cultural icon allowed the media, and thus the general public, to conflate his judgment with settled science itself, rather than recognizing that he was an expert who was still as fallible as any other human.
Pregnant women raised their hands and said, “Something isn’t right here,” and we, as physicians, had a duty to help them get to the bottom of it. Many physicians failed that test because they chose to toe the company line rather than address difficult questions. Most of all, American women deserved to know that behind closed doors, the country’s most famous doctor had questions, too.
***
Dr. Benjamin Chacko is an Emergency Medicine Physician and the father of two sons.

Former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci Testifies Senate Committee On Homeland Affairs

Anthony Fauci Was Allowed To Ask Questions American Women Could Not

COVID

Covid vaccine

Anthony Fauci sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29 and declined to answer more than 100 questions. He invoked the Fifth Amendment. On Thursday, the committee voted 8-5 to hold him in contempt of Congress, setting up a referral to the Justice Department.
Millions of American schoolchildren got no hearing, no appeal, and no protection of any kind when the public health establishment he personified locked them out of their classrooms.
The people responsible are counting on you to move on. I refuse.
Fauci was the face of that establishment. The paper trail on school closures runs through two other addresses: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
In December 2024, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report after a two-year investigation. Its findings on schools should have ended careers. The Biden administration&#8217;s CDC broke precedent by giving a political labor organization privileged access to its supposedly scientific reopening guidance. The agency solicited edits from the AFT and accepted them.
Read that again. A federal health agency let Randi Weingarten&#8217;s operation help write the document that decided whether your child sat in a classroom or stared at a laptop in a bedroom.
The subcommittee found that the AFT opposed reopening and conditioned its cooperation on demands with no scientific footing, including an automatic closure &#8220;trigger&#8221; that could shutter buildings on command. Investigators concluded schools remained closed longer than necessary because of union interference. They also confirmed what millions of parents had already worked out on their own: children faced little risk of severe illness, and the evidence never justified keeping doors locked for a year or more.
The guidance was corrupted. The closures dragged on. The wreckage is measurable.
The 2024 Nation&#8217;s Report Card delivered the verdict. Reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders are five points below where they stood in 2019. A third of eighth graders perform beneath the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Basic level, the largest share ever recorded. High school seniors posted an average reading score 10 points below the first assessment in 1992, and 45% of them landed below Basic in math weeks before walking across the graduation stage. Congress spent $189.5 billion on school relief. Achievement fell anyway.
The human cost runs past any test. During a four-week stretch of early 2021, emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts among girls ages 12 to 17 ran 50.6% above the same weeks in 2019. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek estimates pandemic-era learning loss will drain roughly $31 trillion in lifetime earnings across this century, with individual students forfeiting between 2 and 9% of their income depending on how long their state kept buildings dark.
Kids who learned to read over Zoom will still be paying in 2070. The adults who made that happen will be comfortably retired.
Not one of them has faced a consequence.
Weingarten certainly hasn&#8217;t. Last month delegates at the AFT&#8217;s 89th convention in Washington re-elected her to another two-year term atop a union of 1.875 million members. She spends her days promoting a book called “Why Fascists Fear Teachers.” The leader whose organization helped shape the guidance that emptied American classrooms now casts herself as democracy&#8217;s last defender. The audacity is remarkable. The impunity is worse.
Here is the lesson we cannot let fade. Health guidance was handed down as decree. A union with a direct stake shaped that decree behind closed doors. Parents who objected were branded enemies of science. School board meetings filled with mothers and fathers pleading for their children, and officials waved them off. The National School Boards Association wrote the White House, suggesting confrontations with parents might qualify as domestic terrorism. The group apologized weeks later. Attorney General Merrick Garland had already ordered the FBI to get involved.
That is how power gets used against children. Quietly, through email chains and edited drafts, by officials who never face a ballot.
Accountability has to mean more than one contempt vote. Congress should subpoena all communications between federal health agencies and teachers unions from 2020 through 2022 and publish them all. State legislatures should bar any agency from handing unions a seat at the table on closure policy. Governors should pull that authority from bureaucrats and give it to officials who answer to voters.
Families should keep the exits open too. Every state that expanded education savings accounts, charter access, or open enrollment after 2021 gave parents something no committee can hand down: the power to walk away from a system that failed them.
Fauci has lawyers, a presidential pardon, and the right to say nothing. The class of 2033 has none of it. Those students carry gaps in reading and arithmetic that grown men and women chose to inflict on them, and they are owed the truth about who made the call.
We are not going to forget. We will keep saying their names.
***
Ryan Walters is the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma.

Coronavirus Pandemic Causes Climate Of Anxiety And Changing Routines In America

Fauci Took The Fifth. America’s Kids Never Got That Option.

On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order that backed fewer routine vaccines for kids.
I&#8217;m actually rather indifferent to this. The reason I&#8217;m indifferent to this is that different countries have different standards for the number and the schedule for childhood vaccines.
Some of these vaccines are recommendations; they&#8217;re not mandates. But when you are talking about the vaccinations that are most likely to prevent health problems, they&#8217;re not all equivalent.
The HPV vaccine is for a sexually transmitted disease that typically leads to cancer. Thus, it seems it should be a matter of parental choice. If you are deeply worried that your kid is going to get HPV from something based on their activity, that is not quite the same as the MMR vaccine, which is for something that is infectious.
The reason the Europeans do it differently very often has to do with their nationalized health care systems: how often you are expected to visit the doctor, the prevalence of particular diseases in particular countries, etc. So that’s a little more complicated than people may think.
But I will tell you what is not particularly complicated. There is no data, none, that links vaccines to autism. This is not a scientifically-backed concept.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2483?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
But this is what the president was promoting on Monday. I object to this because data and science show this is inaccurate.
This has been a big push by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for years. The president suggested that breaking up the vaccine schedule would decrease the prevalence of autism. The data do not exist for this proposition. They don&#8217;t.
Trump stated, “It is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world. So we&#8217;re reducing them. We&#8217;re changing it to visits over a period of a year or year and a half so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot.”
When he says “one big shot,” he says that as though it&#8217;s a water bottle filled with vaccine.
I don&#8217;t have a problem with changing the vaccine schedule, but suggesting that this is going to reduce autism diagnoses in the United States is not backed by any evidence.
The person most associated with promoting this nonsense is gone — Andrew Wakefield. He published a paper in 1998 suggesting that there was a link between vaccination and autism. In the original paper — which was later retracted by The Lancet — Wakefield and 12 co-authors <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2831678/">claimed</a> to have investigated a consecutive series of 12 children referred to the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine with chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder. The authors reported that the parents of eight of the 12 children associated their loss of acquired skills, including language, with the MMR vaccine.
Number one: That was self-reported. Number two: That was an extraordinarily small sample size. Number three: Wakefield had been selecting these people, and his research had been funded by lawyers acting for the parents who were trying to sue the vaccine manufacturers.
The British General Medical Council found that Wakefield had acted unethically and had shown callous disregard for the children in his study, upon whom the invasive tests were performed. And all of this was fueled by Wakefield pushing single vaccines rather than, for example, the combined MMR. The new schedule that Trump is suggesting separates M from MR, measles from mumps and rubella, as opposed to one shot.
The reason all this was combined was to minimize inconvenience and ensure kids got the full battery of vaccines. Separating them off, the idea goes, means three separate visits. How many parents want to go to the doctor three separate times, as opposed to just doing it once and being done with it?
I&#8217;m not arguing that we can&#8217;t make changes to the vaccine schedule based on the best possible science or good decision-making, but the attempt to link this with autism diagnosis is not scientific.
RFK Jr. argued that there has been a skyrocketing increase in autism diagnoses after 1990.
The reason that exists is that the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1975. It funded schools to a greater extent because of disability claims. In 1990, the federal government reset the standards for disability claims in schools, and they included autism.
So it turns out that if you are a school and you wish for additional federal or state monies, a great way to do that is through additional autism claims. It’s the same thing with ADHD, by the way.
How do I know that this is a case of incentives creating outcomes? Because there is a study done this year that compared autism prevalence by functional severity.
Anyone who has ever met kids with actual severe autism, moderate to profound autism, knows it is real.
But if you&#8217;re weird or if you have a particular skill set or if you&#8217;re kind of smart, people will say that you&#8217;re autistic now, which is stupid.
Autism is a real thing, and severe autism is disabling. Kids with severe autism very often cannot talk. They cannot interact in society. Having moderate autism means that you largely cannot fully interact. You very often need full-time care.
It is not the same thing as “You&#8217;re a weirdo with a 158 IQ.” Autism is not just “Your buddy’s a little bit weird around people.”
Guess what? It turns out that prevalence by functional severity, meaning diagnoses of moderate to profound autism, has been down since 2000. The diagnosis of moderate to profound autism was 1.5 per 1000 children in 2000. It is 1.2 per 1000 children in 2016.
Real hardcore autism is actually slightly down between 2000 and 2016. How about mild autism? The diagnosis rate for eight-year-olds has more than doubled. In 2000, it was 3.1 per 1000 children. Now it is 7.3 per 1000 children. Borderline autism has absolutely skyrocketed.
If autism diagnoses are increasing across the board, wouldn&#8217;t you expect more moderate to profound cases? Why is moderate to profound declining, while mild and borderline are wildly increasing?
So if you’re mild, borderline, or have no significant challenges, there has been a massive increase in diagnoses; if you&#8217;re moderate to profound autism, a decrease in diagnoses.
What could explain this? Could it be the possibility that, just as the number of COVID-attributed deaths skyrocketed when the federal government started paying hospitals based on COVID deaths, and so people started mislabeling heart attacks as COVID, could it be we&#8217;re getting a mass overdiagnosis?
It turns out that public policy has this impact on a wide variety of maladies. There was a pretty massive increase in disability all the way up to about 1978-79. That’s because the federal government started making Social Security disability more widely available then.
It turned out that a lot of people were engaging in fraud. And so a bunch of restrictions were imposed, resulting in a complete flatlining of disability spending between 1978 and roughly 1990.
Then there was a recession, and people started claiming disability to get the money; the government loosened it up, and boom, exponential growth.
It&#8217;s almost as though people respond to incentive structures.
Why am I pointing this out? Because data matters.
And this, to me, remains the greatest sin of people like Anthony Fauci. They destroyed any faith in data.

follow the science

The Cardinal Sin That Shattered America’s Trust

Ben Shapiro

Opinion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Vaccines

The first batch of text messages released from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s government-issued phone is raising more questions about what Fauci privately thought about COVID-19 vaccines, and how that differed from what he expressed to the public during the pandemic.
The messages, released this week by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY), show Fauci privately discussing concerns about the potential risks of COVID vaccination for pregnant women, including the theoretical possibility of miscarriage.
In January 2021, Fauci communicated with Vivek Murthy, who would soon become surgeon general, and then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky about the issue. In one message, Fauci said that a second dose of an mRNA COVID vaccine could “theoretically” be “associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
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<div id="attachment_1154917" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1154917" class="wp-image-1154917 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-10-at-8.55.41-PM-1024x348.png" alt="" width="1024" height="348" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-10-at-8.55.41-PM-1024x348.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-10-at-8.55.41-PM-300x102.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-10-at-8.55.41-PM-768x261.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-10-at-8.55.41-PM.png 1260w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Sen. Ron Johnson</div>
In another exchange, Murthy expressed his own concerns about the vaccines, telling Fauci, “I’ve been hearing the concern about the mRNA causing mutations in the developing fetus as well.” The following day, Murthy flagged an announcement from the World Health Organization advising pregnant women to avoid the Moderna COVID vaccine at the time.
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<div id="attachment_1154939" style="width: 1410px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1154939" class="wp-image-1154939 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-11-at-10.06.12-AM.png" alt="" width="1400" height="1434" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-11-at-10.06.12-AM.png 1400w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-11-at-10.06.12-AM-293x300.png 293w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-11-at-10.06.12-AM-562x576.png 562w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-11-at-10.06.12-AM-768x787.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px" />Credit: Sen. Ron Johnson</div>
The messages were released just days after the Department of Health and Human Services turned over Fauci’s government-issued phone to the Senate. The phone reportedly contains roughly 34,000 text messages and more than 500 voicemails. Johnson and Paul have indicated that additional material could be released after the senators complete their review. So far, fewer than a dozen of the messages have been made public.
The texts are particularly notable because of how they compare with Fauci’s public messaging about COVID vaccination and pregnancy. Just days after his private discussion about the potential miscarriage risk, Fauci publicly offered a much more reassuring assessment of the vaccines for pregnant women. In one interview about a week later, Fauci stressed multiple times that there are &#8220;no red flags&#8221; showing adverse effects for pregnant women. He later said that it&#8217;s &#8220;pretty clear&#8221; pregnant women should get vaccinated.
Fauci did not publicly discuss the possibility of miscarriage that he had raised in private, nor did he mention Murthy’s concerns about potential effects on a developing baby.
The text revelations come on the heels of Fauci&#8217;s pandemic-era diary entries, which were recently made public by Paul. In one diary entry, Fauci described suffering a pulmonary infarction months after receiving a COVID vaccine. Critics say someone publicly urging Americans to receive the vaccines, and shaping mandates, should have been transparent about his health episode.
National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya said the discrepancy between Fauci&#8217;s private and public comments helps explain the erosion of trust in public health officials. “It&#8217;s shocking to me that he was sharing private thoughts and that, when he was out in public — and he was out in the public A LOT — he didn&#8217;t share those private thoughts with the American public,” Bhattacharya told Fox News on Monday.
Folks online flooded social media with backlash, too. Peter Hasson, a former news editor, said he and his wife had to scrape by during the pandemic because his then-pregnant wife refused to be vaccinated, apparently sharing the same private concerns as Fauci and other medical professionals before we had more data.
&#8220;My wife was pregnant and in her clinical year of PA school at this time,&#8221; Hasson <a href="https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/2086937594953077140">said</a>. &#8220;But virtually none of the hospitals or doctors offices in the &#8230; area would accept PA students for clinical rotations if they weren’t vaccinated — even if they were pregnant, even if they had the antibodies — because they were following Fauci’s advice.&#8221;
&#8220;My saint of a wife put our baby daughter first and still didn’t get the shot because she didn’t want to risk anything that might mess with the baby, but we had to spend months and months living out of Airbnbs in various rural small towns across Texas — the only places in the state where hospitals couldn’t afford to turn away help from PA students, vaccinated or not — while eating the rent on our empty apartment at the same time. It was worth it but it literally cost us tens of thousands of dollars while we were a one-income household living on a journalist salary,&#8221; Hasson added. &#8220;And so now, to see Fauci had the same concerns she did? Infuriating.&#8221;
A Senate committee recently voted to hold Fauci in contempt after he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer questions before Congress. The contempt referral is currently sitting with the Justice Department for review.
Fauci, though, received a highly controversial preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden on his final day in office. The pardon covers federal offenses Fauci may have committed dating back to 2014, and grants him a full and unconditional pardon for any such offenses.

Dr. Fauci Testifies In House On COVID Origins

SEE IT: Fauci’s Texts About Vax Miscarriage Risk Don’t Line Up With Public Statements

SEE IT: Fauci Texted About COVID Vax Miscarriage Risk. That’s Not What He Said Publicly.

COVID-19 Vaccine

fauci diaries

Pregnancy

When I was a boy, I had the mother who, on summer mornings, would not let my brothers and me play outside or turn on cartoons until we’d written one page in our journal.
Despite our protest, Mom held firm, assuring us that we’d appreciate it when we were older.
Shockingly, as a seven-year-old, satisfying the nostalgic itch of future Cabot was not at the forefront of my mind.
So, predictably, in a rush to get outside each morning, the pages of my childhood journal would often be filled with nothing more than the exaggerated exploits of my childhood self.
“I am the fastest second grader at Barnwell Elementary School.”
“I catch bigger fish than any of my friends.”
“I am so smart. I could easily do my older brother’s fifth grade math homework.”
Even as a young boy, I documented my supposed feats and accomplishments in an ironic fashion, finding humor in filling the pages of a private journal with over-the-top braggadocio.
But as we now know, some among our nation’s elite see no irony in such private arrogance.
The diary of Dr. Anthony Fauci  – released this month by Senator Rand Paul – reads more like the chronicles of a self-absorbed seven-year-old than a senior health official directing the response to a global pandemic.
“I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable [people] in the world,” he gushes in one entry.
“I am such a valued spokesperson and a good communicator,” he writes later.
“Apparently, a lot of people at the Pentagon admire me very much.”
Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Fauci repeatedly took to his journal to catalog fawning quotes from an online fan club, which called him “easy on the eyes.”
Elsewhere, in a particularly illuminating passage, Fauci describes a crowd “squealing and screaming” for him, admitting that it was “a little bit embarrassing.” However, in the good doctor’s view, such a greeting was understandable, for the next line reads “it was just a manifestation of how people need a symbol of integrity and truth.”
Fauci’s journal, in addition to offering an inside look at unparalleled narcissism, should serve as a cautionary tale for young men the world over.
It’s a self-serving, hubristic monument to ego. It’s everything a man’s journal should not be.
If one wants to see what a journal ought to be, they should look to the works of the truly great men through history. The explorers, generals, presidents, and pioneers.
When Lewis and Clark were trekking through the unmapped unknown, they came upon the Great Falls of the Missouri River. The Corps of Discovery was forced to drag their heavy dugout canoes 18 miles overland through impenetrable terrain, facing thick clouds of mosquitoes and oppressive summer heat, fearing attack from grizzly bears and Native Americans at every turn.
How did William Clark describe the grueling detour in his personal journal?
“This portage occupied us eighteen days.” That’s it.
Or take the humility of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who just before the D-Day invasion wrote: “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.&#8220;
While he was prepared to shoulder the blame in case of failure, when the operation was a success, he was quick to deflect praise away from himself, writing, “No man could have done the job alone.&#8221;
When George Washington assumed command of the Continental Army in 1775, he did not celebrate his newfound fame or brag about how he was perceived by his fellow countrymen.
Instead, he wrote in his personal diary, &#8220;I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.&#8220;
And a year later, when he led his ragtag troupe across the icy waters of the Delaware River, in what would become a legendary moment in American history, he wrote simply, “The army crossed the Delaware despite severe weather.”
These are men whose real-life exploits defy belief, but you wouldn’t know it from their journals.
Twenty-five years later, I still love to journal. But these days, I’m less concerned with documenting my imagined feats and accomplishments.
I’d rather the pages of my journal be filled with the adventures of our growing family, because in 50 years, I know I’ll be more interested in reading about the latest phrase my two-year-old invented, or the way my six-month-old laughs at his brother during bathtime. These are the little fleeting moments that will someday fade.
I don’t need to document every celebrity I meet, each show I appear on, or each flattering message from a supporter. Because none of that actually matters.
But I still think I’m the fastest kid at Barnwell Elementary School. 
***
Cabot Phillips is an editor, writer, and commentator for The Daily Wire. He can be heard regularly on the Morning Wire podcast. Most recently, Phillips served as the Editor-in-Chief of Campus Reform. Prior to his work there, he was the Digital Grassroots Director for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. Phillips is also a YouTube partner, creating and starring in numerous videos which have amassed over 500 million views on varying online platforms.

image_a0e36266

The Journals Of Great Men Look Nothing Like Fauci’s Diary

Rand Paul

Republican senators read Anthony Fauci the riot act at the recent Senate hearing about the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ personal and public machinations during the disastrous COVID-19 pandemic. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was eloquent in blasting Fauci for saying one thing and doing another, all the while personally profiting from the global tragedy. But it was Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) words to Fauci that are most memorable:
<blockquote>
It wasn’t just about the money, really, was it? It was really about a power trip. I mean, through all of this, you want to be the most famous scientist in the world. You were so focused on getting every award and every drop of cash that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV. You wanted to be the Sun God of Science. You wanted to be the guy who was in charge of it all.
</blockquote>
The “Sun God of Science” comment resonates — and not just because Fauci previously boasted that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science” and “they’re really criticizing science because I represent science.” It resonates because Fauci is emblematic of a breed of scientist whose scientific work takes a remote back seat to his overblown ego and non-science agenda.
Another area of science that has its share of sun gods is climate. Former chief NASA climate scientist James Hansen launched the climate hoax with his infamous June 1988 Senate <a href="https://junkscience.com/2023/06/wrong-again-james-hansens-1988-senate-testimony-edition/">testimony</a>, held during a heat wave and in a Senate room where staffers had left the windows open overnight. After launching climate hysteria and then two decades of promoting it, Hansen had the temerity to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/02/11/censorship-is-alleged-at-noaa-span-classbankheadscientists-afraid-to-speak-out-nasa-climate-expert-reports-span/44e8063d-2f26-4c66-84cd-b2d3ec59bf08/">accuse</a> the Bush administration in 2006 of trying to censor him because it wanted to review his (a government employee’s) public statements on climate.
Another climate sun god for the books is Michael Mann, whose infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph and intrigues against climate skeptics were exposed by the 2009 <a href="https://commonwealthfoundation.org/commentary/2010/01/19/mann-made-global-warming/">Climategate</a> scandal. Subsequent criticism of Mann led to an ongoing 14-year defamation lawsuit, in which Mann wound up being <a href="https://x.com/JunkScience/status/2014399914126532914">sanctioned</a> by the trial judge for providing false evidence to the jury on the key issue (damages). Mann has even falsely <a href="https://junkscience.com/2021/01/michael-mann-still-fancies-himself-as-a-nobel-prize-winner/">claimed</a> to be a Nobel Prize winner.
Despite all this, Mann was nevertheless cited as a credible source by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) — a veritable museum of dubious Sun Gods of Science — in the now-exposed and discredited scientific reference manual for judges it prepared last year for the Federal Judicial Center.
The NAS allowed the manual’s chapter on climate science to be written by climate activists involved in pending litigation against the oil industry. Although the Federal Judicial Center removed the climate chapter from its own edition, NAS retained it in the copy on its website.
Scientists must be judged by the tangible scientific knowledge and gains they produce — not the size and marketing of their egos. Neither Fauci, Hansen, nor Mann has any Nobel Prize-level scientific accomplishment under their belts. They have never earned any special deference from the rest of us mere mortals. Instead, Fauci helped fuel the COVID pandemic, and Hansen and Mann promoted climate panic — both of which have been disastrous for science and the society that science is supposed to serve.
***
Steve Milloy is a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute and posts on X at @JunkScience.

US-POLITICS-VIRUS-HEALTH

Fauci And The Danger Of Following The Sun Gods Of Science

James Hansen

Michael Mann

A key Senate committee voted Thursday morning to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt for repeatedly refusing to answer questions about his handling of the COVID pandemic.  
The Senate Homeland Security Committee, led by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), voted 8-7 to adopt a resolution from the Kentucky Republican holding Fauci in contempt. All Republicans voted in favor and all Democrats voted against. Fauci pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times after he was called in to give testimony last week on coronavirus funding at the Wuhan lab in China and the government response to the pandemic. 
“We are voting on whether a witness who has received the benefit of a sweeping federal pardon can be ordered by this committee to answer questions and then defy that order without consequence,” Paul said. &#8220;All that was required from Anthony Fauci last week was to tell the truth. He had no liability if he told the truth.&#8221;
“More than a million Americans died from COVID. Many of them died alone. Workers were forced to choose between a mandate and a job they needed. Businesses closed and never reopened. Children lost years of school. They will never get back. Americans lost the freedom to work, to worship, and to decide what went into their own bodies. Nothing we do today can undo those losses, but silence does not honor them either,” he added. 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-every-page-of-faucis-tell-all-diary">READ IT: Every Page Of Fauci’s Tell-All Diary</a>
Paul told The Daily Wire on Wednesday that he planned to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department after his resolution passed committee. 
“Historically, votes like this have gone to the full Senate, but I think there’s no absolute rule that says we can’t send it directly to the Department of Justice,” Paul said. “So my plan is that if we win the vote on Thursday, to immediately send it to the Department of Justice with a recommendation for prosecution, even if it passes the whole Senate.”
If convicted of contempt of Congress, Fauci could be <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10974">fined</a> up to $100,000 and sentenced to up to one year in prison. During the Biden administration, Trump allies Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were sentenced to prison after being held in contempt of Congress.
President Joe Biden issued a last-minute pardon to Fauci for his conduct during COVID just hours before he left office.
Before the vote, Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) claimed that holding Fauci in contempt would “harm our ability to conduct future investigations and disregard constitutional protections long recognized by the U.S. Senate.” He also said he would oppose Paul sending the criminal referral without approval from the full Senate. 
Democrats repeatedly failed to get motions passed to delay the vote on the contempt resolution.
As part of Paul&#8217;s investigation into Fauci, the committee obtained and released his diaries, which were maintained on government servers. The committee also obtained Fauci&#8217;s phone records from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Anthony Fauci Testifies with Rand Paul and Homeland Security Committee

Fauci Held In Contempt After Refusing To Answer Questions About Bombshell Diary

Gary Peters

Senate

A Senate panel investigating Dr. Anthony Fauci has reportedly obtained a copy of the cellphone he used during the COVID-19 pandemic ahead of a key committee vote Thursday to hold him in contempt of Congress. 
The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/anthony-fauci-covid-phone-senate-96ebd8be?st=68LAAW">Wall Street Journal</a> reported Wednesday that the Department of Health and Human Services, which is led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, transferred a copy of the phone&#8217;s records to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 
Fauci used the phone during his tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to The Journal, which also revealed that Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have obtained &#8220;millions of additional Fauci-related pages&#8221; from government servers.
On Wednesday, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/when-it-comes-to-anthony-fauci-rand-paul-is-just-getting-started?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Mary+Margaret+Olohan&amp;category=Original&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=When+It+Comes+To+Anthony+Fauci%2C+Rand+Paul+Is+Just+Getting+Started">The Daily Wire</a> interviewed Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, whose release of Fauci&#8217;s private diaries helped set the stage for an explosive Capitol Hill hearing where Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.
“Historically, votes like this have gone to the full Senate, but I think there’s no absolute rule that says we can’t send it directly to the Department of Justice,” Paul said. “So my plan is that if we win the vote on Thursday, to immediately send it to the Department of Justice with a recommendation for prosecution, even if it passes the whole Senate.”
Paul’s office sent two criminal referrals to the Biden Justice Department, the senator said, and two more under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“This will be the first time that our entire committee or the majority of our committee sends it,” he noted. “So we’ll see what happens. We’ll discuss with [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune whether or not he thinks he can get the votes to do it on the floor.”
A floor vote would require 60 votes to pass, meaning Democrats would have to cooperate. Last week, Thune said that Fauci’s answers were “completely inadequate” and that the floor vote was “certainly an option that ought to be available to us.”
Paul told The Daily Wire that he does not expect Democrats to support a contempt vote and that he wants the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci for contempt of Congress. He plans to send the DOJ a legal brief arguing that Fauci could not invoke the Fifth Amendment because President Joe Biden&#8217;s pardon eliminated any risk of self-incrimination, leaving him with only an obligation to answer truthfully.
Statutory penalties for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/192">contempt of Congress</a>, a federal misdemeanor, carry fines between $100 and $100,000 and a mandatory sentence of one to 12 months in prison.
“This is an important case because I think a lot of people anticipate that President Trump is going to issue similar pardons to many people in his administration who will end up being called before Congress, and the precedent here is important,” Mark Osler, a law professor and pardon power expert, told the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fauci-fifth-amendment-congress-justice-department-paul-868a0dfcf016d830571fb6a78afae4f9">Associated Press. </a>
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

US-POLITICS-HEALTH-VIRUS-HEARING

Fauci’s COVID Phone Turned Over To Senate Panel Ahead Of Contempt Vote

Coronavirus

Health

Investigations

News

Pandemic

Politics

U.S. Senate

“I wasn’t part of the problem” during Covid-19, insisted CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday. “Let me just say, for the record, that I am not saying that the entire Covid reaction was accurate. It was a scary time, and people made mistakes.” Bash later added that “What we were doing in Covid… is getting the best information, the best science that we can and putting it out there.”
But Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary shows that the media was more interested in pushing specific narratives and promoting Fauci than it was in getting the “best information” to the public. On April 17, 2021, for example, Bash herself texted Fauci, “I just watched the whole Jordan thing. Again, you’re a better man than I&#8230;. As our friend Wolf Blitzer said to me yesterday – no one would have blamed you if you said simply ‘Mr. Jordan, go f&#8212; yourself.’”
Bash was referring to a House Oversight Committee hearing in which Representative Jim Jordan pointed out many of the “mistakes” Bash now admits were made.
The next day, Bash sent Fauci another text “pointing out that Vanity Fair recently had a headline that said: Jim Jordan trips over his own asshole trying to debate Anthony Fauci.”
Since Senator Rand Paul released Fauci’s diary, journalists have claimed that he had no real authority to impose lockdowns or mandates, suggesting it wasn’t their job to hold him accountable. “Dr. Fauci did not have the authority to force anyone to do anything,” the New York Times <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1de9a5f6-7f9b-447d-a6cf-454f3904954f?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">stated</a>.
But his diary shows how members of the media worked to help Fauci win policy debates against President Donald Trump. As early as March 11, 2020, Fauci was aware that the press was heavily on his side, noting, “the CNN commentators (Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, David Gergon, David Gregory) all discussed me as the adult in the room and the person [we] should all trust.”
In this way, the media worked to undermine the authority of the democratically elected president by upholding Fauci, an unelected bureaucrat, as the ultimate expert and truth-teller. While today they claim that Fauci had no power, six years ago they insisted he be granted nearly unlimited power.
When Trump said Fauci disagreed with a decision in May 2020, Fauci noted that “Chris Cuomo, and Jake Tapper are trying to clarify this in my defense on their shows.” In October 2020, Kaitlan Collins contacted Fauci about a campaign ad and tweeted out a statement for him, which “went totally viral on twitter [sic] and several networks and cable reported it.”
Fauci had personal relationships with several members of the press. On April 13, 2020, he noted that CNN’s Jake Tapper called him “to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.” On July 1, 2020, Fauci wrote that he had dinner with Tapper and his wife. “Terrific couple. Friendship building.” In October, they had dinner again at Fauci’s home.
Journalists didn’t try to hide their affection for Fauci. Chris Cuomo “gave a wonderful explanation to viewers how close and good friends we are and how I checked in on him every night including weekends for weeks during his COVID illness,” Fauci noted in May 2020. “Never saw something like that on TV.”
It’s no coincidence that much of Fauci’s diary is spent recording his various appearances and interviews. Under pressure from the media, political leaders deferred to Fauci when crafting policy, including on issues like school closures, his diary <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/145efd6c-86b7-482c-b4b8-f7635507796e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">shows</a>.
Rather than, as Bash claimed, sharing the “best science” with viewers, TV and print journalists aired Fauci’s views without examining the evidence. If they had examined it, they would have reported on the publicly available data Fauci privately discussed in his diary. Fauci knew, for example, that vaccines <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/85c12387-d7b7-4030-9098-eb5104e7c211?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">did not prevent</a>infection and transmission and that natural immunity <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2b5df709-c1c1-49d3-90cc-0b2576248bcc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">was protective</a>. These facts made vaccine mandates unnecessary, yet he <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4ac32575-f61a-43e6-a09b-a020e21d056e?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relentlessly</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a2d50c08-d88d-42bf-bfd7-7a0b31cd3cc4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">sought</a> to implement them.
Years later, news outlets have failed to accurately report on Covid, even retrospectively. For instance, they ignored documents <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/4d90b8be-87d4-4ddb-ab36-06c0df3989fc?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">revealing</a> that the CDC received concerning reports about vaccine-induced myocarditis in 2021, and that the CDC Director lied about it. And in 2023, mainstream media outlets did not cover extensive records showing that Fauci and other scientists initially believed Covid originated from a lab in Wuhan before <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/071fc69c-b472-40f6-bb19-2e2b08a7a310?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">collaborating</a> to dismiss the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
While news anchors like Bash may still believe that Covid was well-managed despite a few “mistakes,” it is by now undeniable that their preferred policies created enormous backlash not just against Fauci personally, but against medical institutions, the Democratic Party, and the media itself.
Much of this backlash is due to the kind of duplicitousness displayed in Fauci’s diary. Scientists and officials privately acknowledged the realities of gain-of-function research, vaccine-induced myocarditis, and natural immunity, all while giving the public entirely different messages and using censorship to enforce compliance.
The liberal media’s response to the Fauci hearing shows a broad lack of understanding, or lack of desire to understand. With defending Covid lockdowns and mandates still a political liability, it would be strategically wise for journalists to avoid doubling down. So why do they continue to insist that criticism of Fauci is baseless? Why can’t they reckon with what really happened during Covid?
In 2020 and 2021, The New York Times and Washington Post published article after article in support of school closures. They claimed Covid could <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/87cced0f-80ec-4740-b2f5-0309b35815e1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“soar”</a> if schools reopened, that it was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/46423805-72cc-495a-97eb-3f1831066983?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">risky</a> for children to play together, and that virtual learning provided black families a <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ee52dc86-25b1-4acc-a595-f959dd34929a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">relief</a> from racism. They published headlines like <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c96a5af3-f7d9-4416-93f3-35fe13a398f9?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Can We Stop Telling ‘Corona Kids’ How Little They Are Learning?,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d349090c-ca97-4d2a-a95b-6a23e88b0142?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Racist Effects of School Reopening During the Pandemic—By a Teacher,”</a> <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c272127a-2785-4a4b-bf44-b16f84308569?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss?”</a> and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a1c9c63a-ac68-4be5-a707-431dbd7c1ef1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Actually Wearing a Mask Can Help Your Child Learn.”</a>
This was all despite the fact that European nations had safely reopened their public schools in 2020 and education ministers in the European Union announced that they saw no negative consequences from reopening schools. As David Zweig <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/c387c76e-9078-450c-8c6c-5193f63a498a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">points out</a>, no one in legacy media reported on this.
At first, when the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, China, many in the liberal media questioned the approach, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/d7592799-bbab-40e9-bea6-9347ae1257c4?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noting</a> that it would violate human rights and be ineffective. Democratic politicians <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/555f575b-3cbe-44fc-a08e-e8600245cfb1?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">encouraged</a> people to go to Chinatown and said that concern about Covid was <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/efee174c-e87b-49ff-9e9b-c09977d01ec7?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">racist</a>.
But when it became clear that Covid offered unprecedented power for the professional expert class, the media and the broader Left changed their approach. “Many progressives see the coronavirus response,” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/1be47999-c7b5-4554-be92-3b6d21143db6?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">noted</a> NPR in May 2020, “as a chance to prove that policies they support can work and should be made permanent… Now there is a crisis, and Democrats want to use this moment to remake the system.”
Covid could thus be used for social restructuring, locking in government spending, and continuously attacking Trump as a mass killer. Before Covid, Trump had remained politically resilient. In January 2020, the percentage of Americans satisfied with “the way things are going” went up to <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fe4735fd-16d0-4f6e-8a2c-39ab27d4d56a?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">45 percent</a>, the highest since February 2005. And Trump had signaled that if he achieved a second term, he would take aim at many of the Left’s core achievements, including in the areas of education and immigration.
Covid offered a chance to thwart this trajectory while cementing the authority of the managerial class over democratic institutions in the name of “safety” and “saving lives.”
The Left equated wrongthink and “misinformation” with murder, justifying unprecedented censorship. When three epidemiologists from Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard simply suggested an alternative approach in the Great Barrington Declaration, the New York Times called it “dangerous” for not supporting lockdowns. Journalists denounced dissenters and “the unvaccinated” in increasingly dehumanizing terms.
<a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ae808a81-31bc-47b3-8e97-e7e4e1dc3086?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“I’m Furious at the Unvaccinated,”</a> one column was titled in The New York Times. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/fed65b3d-1936-42f2-83dc-7137eeee445c?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Unvaxxed, Unmasked and Putting Our Kids at Risk,”</a> read another. <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/2da283db-7774-45c6-aa93-eecfce685cdf?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“The Unvaccinated Are a Risk to All of Us,”</a> a Bloomberg headline stated.
The unvaccinated, explained CNN’s Don Lemon, were <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/f578a6c0-ebb5-4da9-9611-15ef58896575?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“idiotic and nonsensical.” </a>It was time to “start shaming them” or “leave them behind,” he said. Wrote a columnist in the Los Angeles Times, <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/8fe97ded-98ab-4af4-a043-f216a8f0c036?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">“Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but may be necessary.</a>” Others warned of “compassion fatigue” for the unvaccinated and platformed doctors who said they would refuse to treat them.
Liberal politicians who the media supported denounced their own citizens. President Joe Biden <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5a22104a-7e52-4313-a378-24e7e5884122?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">said</a> in the fall of 2021 that his “patience [was] wearing thin” and that we needed to “protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers.” He declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/a8932eea-429a-4907-97e5-5b66354d89ed?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">warned</a> “the unvaccinated” that they would face a “winter of severe illness and death.”
“Do we tolerate these people?” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/5ae06228-5b4f-4110-aade-80d5c82d7052?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">asked</a> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, about the unvaccinated. They “are very often misogynistic and racist.” French President Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/ba52db55-af3a-4c3c-ae01-5c74e4e71974?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">vowed</a> to put “pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting… access [to] social activities.” Someone who refuses the Covid vaccine, he said, is “not a citizen.” <a href="https://substack.com/redirect/347e4a6d-8101-4cd4-9e90-805d751c1172?j=eyJ1IjoiMjk0dHMifQ.cmJkfm0X0r0SrUjdPQSLO8z8KA2siPUsFk8HgV3kFag">Said</a> a commentator in The Washington Post, “Macron is right: It’s time to make life a living hell for anti-vaxxers.”
So-called “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-maskers” represented resistance to rule by experts, and their very survival was evidence that the experts, and the journalists who endorsed them, were wrong.
***
This is the first section of the author’s full essay. You can read the rest on Public <a href="https://www.public.news/p/journalists-are-still-defending-fauci">here</a> and <a href="https://www.public.news/">subscribe</a> to the newsletter.
Alex Gutentag is a Senior Editor for Public and writes about censorship, government abuse of power, and other topics. She has been a columnist for Tablet and a contributing editor for Compact. She is based in California.

Meet the Press – Season 73

COVID Bitter Clingers In The Media Will Never End Their Fauci Love Affair

Chris Cuomo

Dana Bash

House Oversight Committee

Jake Tapper

Justin Trudeau

Screenshot 2026-08-05 at 10.51.46 AM

When It Comes To Anthony Fauci, Rand Paul Is Just Getting Started

And for his final act, Aaron Rodgers blasted Anthony Fauci on ESPN.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
&#8220;I&#8217;m pleading the Fifth 😂😂
You&#8217;ve gotta be kidding me&#8221; ~ <a href="https://x.com/AaronRodgers12?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AaronRodgers12</a> <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/PMSLive?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PMSLive</a> <a href="https://t.co/kg3y0uMxxR">pic.twitter.com/kg3y0uMxxR</a>
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) <a href="https://x.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/2084338121101983920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 3, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, ostensibly playing out his last season in the league, gave Pat McAfee a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aaron-rodgers-rips-into-fauci-during-live-on-espn">response</a> for the ages when asked how he&#8217;s feeling about the year ahead.
“I’m gonna plead the fifth. Like that absolute coward Tony Fauci. Absolute coward. Are you kidding me? &#8230; What are you scared of Tony? I thought you were science?”
WHAT ARE YOU SCARED OF, TONY. I felt that one in my chest. Black and gold, baby. That&#8217;s my quarterback.
But the 42-year-old veteran didn&#8217;t stop there. For his own two minutes of hate, he tore into &#8220;The Science,&#8221; the network covering it, and the gaslighting that came bundled with both:
<blockquote>How much time did they spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis&#8217;s wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? I bet they didn&#8217;t. &#8230; What are you gonna say about me now?</blockquote>
My heart rate spiked just typing that. The crowd was roaring. Somewhere in the back, a Yinzer was chanting &#8220;YES&#8221; like it was a third-down stop. The Terrible Towels were out in July. Their quarterback was finally getting his day in court, four years after the media was his judge, jury, and executioner, and he made the most of it.
When my kids ask why the Steelers are goated, I&#8217;m going to show them this clip. Not the Immaculate Reception, not Santonio Holmes’ Super Bowl toe-tap — this. The moment one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game looked into a camera and said, on behalf of everyone who got laughed out of the room for asking questions: I was right, and I&#8217;m not sorry.
And there was no better man to deliver it. Rodgers wasn&#8217;t vaccinated during the 2021 season; instead, he pursued alternative treatment under the supervision of a holistic doctor. He told reporters that August he&#8217;d been &#8220;immunized;” a precise, deliberate word, and the press treated it like a shibboleth. The one adjective that was supposed to sort the compliant from the heretics.
“Command room: We can now confirm his vaccination status. Still, no word on his wife’s location.”
However, when he tested positive weeks later, and the truth came out, the same outlets that had spent a season obsessing over one man&#8217;s vaccine record just about detonated.
ESPN, CNN, all the big guys, they went on a two-week rampage treating his status like a hull breach. Like the ship had hit the iceberg. Like WWEleven had broken out. Because a healthy, able-bodied adult took ivermectin instead of a vaccine.
And the fallout of the wall-to-wall coverage of the anti-vax villain? A $14,650 personal fine and a $300,000 hit to the Packers, for the crime of not forcing a mask onto their quarterback during press conferences. Prevea Health walked away from a nine-year partnership overnight. State Farm quietly slashed his airtime. He got the full scarlet-letter treatment for refusing to performative compliance for the crusade, right alongside the millions of Americans who said no and paid for it with their jobs.
Now, four years later, training camp is underway, the sun&#8217;s out over Latrobe, the Steelers haven&#8217;t laid a finger on him for saying any of it, and Anthony Fauci&#8217;s little girl diary just got read into the Congressional record. I&#8217;d wager Aaron Rodgers is having a pretty good week.
He told Yinz so.
Turns out Fauci <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rfk-jr-owns-dana-bash-proving-media-fed-covid-hysteria?author=Chloe+Trapanotto&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=RFK+Jr.+Owns+Dana+Bash+Proving+Media+Fed+COVID+Hysteria">understood</a> early that COVID behaved like a bad flu, that the virus likely came from a lab in Wuhan (when are we gonna reprimand China for this?), and that the vaccine was never going to stop transmission the way &#8220;the science&#8221; insisted it would.
The Science God probably would’ve told us the truth, but he was a tad busy posing for magazine covers, having dinner with important people, and directing his employees to enter his name for cash prizes.
And last week, instead of answering for it to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, he pleaded the Fifth 111 times. Coward, indeed.
Fauci can deny it happened all he wants, and so can CNN and ESPN, but Rodgers isn’t going to let them forget that it did, and neither are we.
But for now, in between his rants and record-setting rundowns, he’ll be on the field. Because as he told McAfee, he doesn’t care anymore about anything but playing his best ball.
He&#8217;s going out with a bang; let&#8217;s hope it ends with a ring.

Baltimore Ravens v Pittsburgh Steelers – NFL 2025

For Aaron Rodgers, Vindication Has A Pittsburgh Accent

Aaron Rodgers

ESPN

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