Category: Update

The revelations of the Fauci Diaries, and the non-revelations of the Senate grilling of Anthony Fauci, continue to receive commentary and reaction.

“Senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the journals this weekend, days before Fauci is scheduled to testify under subpoena,” wrote Connor Boyack on Substack. “Fauci’s vanity is going viral on 𝕏 because vanity is easily observable, a little funny, and confirms what half the country already suspected about him.”

So why wouldn’t Fauci answer even technical questions? Medical YouTuber John Campbell expressed more than just wonder. His video includes segments from Rand Paul worth watching:

“Let the record show,” says the senator, “that the witness has refused to answer whether there is a folder in front of him. . . .” That was after the mere second time Fauci responded with his pleading the Fifth Amendment.

For analysis of the hearing, you may not be able to find better commentary than from Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein on the Dark Horse podcast — where they explain precisely what kind of monster Fauci is:

But not everyone is on board with the criticism of the former bureaucrat. Consider this discussion on the Rising program, between libertarian Robby Soave and Democrat Lindsey Granger:

Soave begins by noting Fauci’s private recognition, prior to March 2020, that the infamous “wet market” was not the source of the coronavirus, but the amplifier. Fauci is thus clearly revealed as a liar and conspirator against the truth of the Lab Leak Hypothesis. Soave’s interlocutor, however, gamely-if-absurdly tries to defend the Fauc, minimizing the insider’s lies as non-crimes.

Meanwhile, at NPR, we can see subsidized media still pushing the zoonotic (“wet market”) explanation, as in Rachel Carlson’s “Animal spillover? Lab leak? What the science says about the origins of COVID-19” — this July 29, 2026, article is an embarrassment.

NPR is still pushing a lie. Astounding? Or just doing what insider and wannabe-insider Democrats (and other proponents of uniting big government with big business) must believe, to maintain their discredited ideology?

Boyack reminds us of the context not only of the diaries, but of the day-earlier revelation that Fauci had set up a network to give his own self awards and money. “Something clarifying happens as you read through these documents. They stop being a story about one man’s (deficient) character and become a story about a system doing exactly what it was built to do. Institutions produce whatever they pay for, and this one paid for prestige. Prestige requires certainty; certainty cannot survive open questions; therefore open questions had to be reclassified as threats. (Remember what Fauci said in November 2021? “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.”)”

The problem is the system itself. And it is not science. It is bureaucracy, and more than that: a scam. Fauci represents, but is not, that system. How many Americans will come to their senses about it?

NOTE: Paul Jacob wrote about the Fauci hearing on Thursday.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, was the face and voice of the COVID pandemic response from 2020 to 2022 until his retirement from his position as the highest-paid federal official.” A good summation of the broad facts of the case by Jeffrey Tucker, to start out his recent op-ed in The Epoch Times.

“He was valorized as the science itself.” A good reminder . . . of Fauci’s cringiest claim.

Not the worst lie of Dr. Evil, but the most embarrassing.

You might be surprised to learn that he was never appointed the official spokesman or even the head of the COVID pandemic response. He was one of many members of the Coronavirus Task Force but it was he who nonetheless took the lead on public messaging for those critical two and a half years.

Though he had never been formally accused, much less convicted, of any crime, Fauci received a preemptive full and unconditional pardon from President Joe Biden on Jan. 19, 2025. It was one of Biden’s final acts before leaving office. The pardon covers “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon.”

This pardon sets Fauci free from the long arm of the law. But there’s a hitch in this arm-shortening move by lame duck Biden: perjury. Senator Rand Paul interrogated Fauci in congressional hearings, and one of those interrogations occurred after Biden’s pardon date. The Kentucky senator believes he has the goods on Fauci.

Fauci lied. To Congress. And Rand Paul thinks he can prove it.

Will he succeed?

Well, the title of Jeff Tucker’s op-ed is “What to Expect at the Anthony Fauci Senate Hearing,” so it is well worth a careful read. Tucker explains the key biological feature of the virus, and its mysterious (or not-so-mysterious) “furin cleavage site,” a functionality that allowed a virus transfered among bats to go big-time in human populations. 

Among the many revelations in Paul’s files are that Fauci’s aide David Morens used personal email for “damage control” with Daszak. We now have evidence that Fauci directed Andersen to report [furin cleavage site] concerns to FBI/MI5 while shaping public messaging. We have records of Fauci’s long ties to intelligence (back to 2003), including briefings, which Paul says influenced origins assessments.

Paul Jacob covered the Lab Leak Hypothesis in general, and Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci in particular, in these pages in multiple columns, and discussed the key gain-of-function feature of the virus in March and October of 2022. 

Discovering and publicly proving who inserted a “furin cleavage site” into a bat coronavirus to cause the late pandemic is a worthy endeavor. Fauci appears to be the main suspect; evidence shows him above the body with a smoking gun — or at least with receipts for buying the gun and hiring the gunman. Can Rand Paul convince the public, though?

It was, the president said, “the largest group of Trump Derangement Syndrome people ever put together at one time.” 

Donald J. Trump dominated the night at 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. An event known for its roasts of politicians and media figures, this year was not an exception save for one thing: this time the chief comedian appeared to be the president himself.

“This year the association decided not to have a comedian, so they considered using Jimmy Kimmel,” Donald Trump quipped. Earlier, he had declared that this second attempt at the event — the April date having been scuttled by an assassination attempt — would be better than the first, just as his second administration was better than his first. “The second time is always better,” he said, and then pushed the wry statement into a joke: “And the third time will be better yet.”

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage attempted to give contrast: “‘I gave up on traditional press,’ he said, boasting about how popular he is on TikTok.”

His jokes about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have been funnier, if more awkward. Like in most of politics, opinions differ.

But can we all agree that the Babylon Bee’s story was far, far funnier?

President Donald Trump’s big speech on Thursday focused on election integrity. The gist? Elections are severely compromised in these United States. Highlights included his

• contention that China tried to influence the 2020 presidential elections;
• blaming the “Deep State” for deliberately keeping this information from him during his first administration;
• declaring that electronic ballot technology and “voting machines” are insecure, and that Maduro’s Venezuela government worked secretly to affect outcomes in 2024;
• insisting that over 250,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in federal elections.

The president disclosed reports and information that he said backed up his main points.

“Trump closed by once again pushing Congress to pass the Save America Act,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “which would restrict mail-in ballots and require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. 

“‘Every American, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest and fair election system,’ Trump said.”

Press reports on the president’s speech tend to run strongly negative, as in this U.S. News and World Report headline: “Trump Says These Documents Prove His False Claims of Election Fraud. Here’s What They Really Say.”

The latest batch of disclosed UFO documents has been released on war dot gov. In the first SIGN report, one hundred sightings were recorded and appraised, from July 1947 to January 1948. The persistent data of the most peculiar incidents were not easily explained:

This report from Air Materiel Command HQ, dated “23 APR 1948,” shows that eight decades ago the American military was taking the UFO subject seriously. The report shows military personnel and hired academics debating and tabulating witnesses’ reports and puzzling over the mysterious data with no small amount of seriousness.

On the Fourth of July a dozen UFO sightings were reported in the Pacific Northwest, and duly tabulated. Here are three from Oregon:

Note that these were reported 20 days before the “flying saucer” craze began further north, near Mount Rainier, in the most famous UFO sighting of all time (because much was made of it at the time; because we got the term “flying saucer” from a misunderstanding in the reportage; and because the event is often cited). Nineteen forty-seven was a busy year for UFO sightings, and the Kenneth Arnold observation and report of nine wobbly-but-super-fast craft while flying over the Cascades in Washington State made the national new. Here it is reported merely as sighting no. 17:

Towards the end of the report a determination on one incident was made that it was, indeed, a hoax. Appended to the report is a long article on “The Biology of the Flying Saucer,” which is not what you might suspect from the title.

There is a great deal more of interest in this fourth “tranche” of de-classified UFO documents, as well as a lot of dubious minor stuff that does not bear very much attention.

This is how governments disclose secrets?

Apparently.

“America appears to be in the midst of an outbreak of — I’m sorry, but there’s no better way to say this — explosive diarrhea.”

That was not the first sentence of Nicholas Florko’s July 11, 2026, reportage in The Atlantic. But perhaps should have been.

The article is titled “America’s Home-grown Parasite Problem.”

And no, it is not about the politics of the transfer state. You may have heard that The Atlantic has lately been turning away from its decade-long bout of woke diarrhea, but analysis of parasitism and subversion in a sociological sense — say, along the lines of Herbert Spencer, Franz Oppenheimer, or Stanislav Andreski — is too much to hope for.

The article is about something more, uh, down-to-earth: the parasite known as Cyclospora cayetanensis. Which can cause an illness, cyclosporiasis. It is all gruesome stuff, and can be read about in The Atlantic.

On Tuesday last week, Paul Jacob discussed the phenomenon of Europeans and other soccer — er, football — fans attending the World Cup games and getting to know Americans during and between gams, which occurred all over the states.

They were enthusiastic.

Like many other commentators, Paul quoted FreddyLA7, a Deutschländer who microblogged his American odyssey on X and became famous.

No sooner said than an emendation became necessary, for Freddy closed up his X account.

FreddyLA7 stated on Instagram Stories that he had planned to delete his X account at some point. His account’s deletion occurred shortly after Germany’s elimination from the World Cup, following a penalty shootout loss to Paraguay on June 29 (when Paul’s commentary was being prepped).

But there is more to the story: FreddyLA7 stated that the online response to his posts became “too toxic” and was “ruining the fun” of his travels, citing the platform’s toxicity and intense online backlash from the comment sections as reasons for deactivating his account.

All sorts of people — such as actor-author Stephen Fry — talk about how toxic X has become. They usually blame it on Elon Musk. Or, as in Fry’s case, “capitalism.” That is because it is leftists who make this complaint.

But it was not right-wing trolls who discouraged FreddyLA7. Everyone knows that. X may be toxic in varying ways, but the idea that the blame squarely falls upon conservatives and “reactionaries” and anti-leftists is preposterous. Freddy bugged the left because he was enthusing about America. And the left, today, tends to hate America . . . as well as the very kinds of Americans Freddy found charming.

“Too many people seem to have a problem with us having a genuinely good time here in the country,” said Freddy.

A year ago, on June 24, 2025, a resolution was introduced into Congress to once again impeach President Donald Trump. But that was not the most interesting Trump-related story of the day. The president, walking towards Marine One (the name of the helicopter when in service of the president) was accosted by reporters who asked about Iran and the country’s commitment to peace:

The subject was Iran, but Trump brought up Israel’s breaking of the peace, and stated that Israel and Iran “have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” Trump’s expletive-laden remarks followed an incident where Israel reported intercepting a missile launched by Iran, shortly after he had celebrated an “epic ceasefire” between the two nations.

On the same day, Trump also posted on Truth Social, urging Israel not to launch further attacks on Iran, specifically writing: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

Since then, the president has sided with Israel’s desire to escalate a regime-change war with Iran. This has not proven successful, by most observers’ judgments, and the president has tried repeatedly to obtain some lasting peace. This has been a less-than-coherent peace process, however. Exactly a year after his “they don’t know what the” comment, Trump expressed chagrin at what he said was an Iranian attack on a cargo ship. Then followed retaliation:

U.S. forces launched strikes on Iran on June 26 in response to a drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said later the same day that it targeted American positions in the region in response to the U.S. attack, but did not clarify what those positions were. The United States has not issued any statements on Iran’s latest action.

Ryan Morgan, “U.S. Strikes Iran in Response to Attack on Cargo Ship,” The Epoch Times (June 26, 2026).

The political reaction has been pointed, from the White House:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called Iran’s attack a violation of the ceasefire reached by the two countries.

Vice President JD Vance followed up in a post on X, saying “violence will be met with violence.”

“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement,” Vance also wrote. “We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the [memorandum of understanding] is being applied, they can pick up the phone.”

The Epoch Times, ibid.

Six years ago, as we were beginning to unravel the lies at the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, we encountered one doctor’s very specific prevarications about his role in the Wuhan laboratory that had developed the virus. Paul Jacob wrote about him in “Twelve Monkeys in Charge?,” published here on June 18, 2020. The man’s name? Lieber.

In the midst of all this has been one Dr. Charles Lieber, a 61-year-old nanoscience researcher, who recently “has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of making false statements and will be arraigned in federal court in Boston at a later date.  Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28, 2020, and charged by criminal complaint.” He allegedly lied about his relationship with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and his role as a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China.

Where SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus of the current pandemic — apparently came from.

The case received scant attention at the time. Paul Jacob took note of this lack of attention in early 2021.

But what happened to Dr. Lieber after that?

Lieber was convicted of six felonies in December 2021, including two counts of making false statements to the FBI and investigators from the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health regarding his participation in the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program, as well as four counts of filing false tax returns. Convicted in December 2021 he was sentenced to one day in prison — time already served (before trial) — as well as “two years of supervised release including half-a-year of house arrest and a $50,000 fine,” according to The Harvard Crimson in early April 2023.

The Lieber case is not directly related to the Wuhan gain-of-function research, or its funding; it is a separate issue rising out of a Department of Justice investigation of academic espionage at American universities.

Precisely how Lieber’s nanotech work fit in with the Wuhan effort we do not know. The investigations, so far, appear to be focused on following the money.

Sure, this story is about money, too. But a different stream of money. Different from the Fauci-EcoHealth Alliance-Wuhan lab stream.

In April 2025, after release from home confinement, Lieber became a full-time chair professor at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, a graduate school of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, China. He has also been employed as SMART Investigator at the newly-established Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation. Some see this as a case of “brain drain” of U.S. talent to China.

To clarify this situation — which Paul Jacob brought up mainly as a way to show the failure of major media to investigate the bizarre relationship between China and American scientists — here we go: there is no direct link between the crimes for which Lieber was convicted and the creation of the infamous “China virus.” Lieber’s crime was hiding money, not hiding a virus; he hid his relationship with China while declaring to his American funder, the National Institute for Health, that he had no such ties.

A kind of fraud? A spy-like fraud, perhaps.

But undoubtedly there is more to uncover.