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MS NOW Reports host Antonia Hylton brought on The Bulwark’s senior national correspondent Jonathan Cohn on Wednesday to help her make sense of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In a frustrating display of someone trying to have it both ways, Cohn admitted that there are legitimate questions that could be asked of Fauci but still managed to accuse Republicans of running “a show trial” aimed at putting Fauci “in jail.”Hylton led Cohn by asking, “Do you think any of them asked serious questions? Or would you say that the majority of this has been about scoring political points? I ask because Dr. Vin Gupta was on with my colleague Stephanie Ruhle just a little bit ago, and he said that, for example, Senator Lankford had some questions that he thought were actually interesting and fair. And so I wonder if you can basically help us cut through the noise here, separate sort of fact and—from fiction and from drama.” Really devastating lines of questioning from @SenJamesLankford….Lankford: “There are a lot of issues and a lot of questions that have come up, and hopefully, some day in the future, we’ll be able to get all this clarity and pull it together. More than a million Americans that… pic.twitter.com/Q4tOP2Xz1N— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 29, 2026 For context, Lankford asked Fauci if he brought up concerns that lockdowns were leading to children not getting their measles vaccines, which would lead to more excess deaths, at task force meetings. He also asked whether he had access to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s classified report that supported the lab leak hypothesis. Lankford further inquired about the cons of working with countries, such as China, with authoritarian governments.Cohn began by agreeing that there are fair questions to be asked, “Yeah. So, I mean, look, there are a few questions that are legitimate. And, you know, looking back over the pandemic, I mean, I think a lot of us have said for a long time, it was a, you know, it was a once-in-a-century challenge. We did some things right. We did some things wrong. Human beings were making decisions. We should continue to look back and say, have a sober examination of what we got right, what we got wrong, so we could do better next time.” The Bulwark’s national correspondent, Jonathan Cohn, tells MS NOW that “This is a show trial. This is Rand Paul deeply invested in this narrative that there was a conspiracy, as Ron Johnson deeply invested in this narrative, that scientists are misleading the country. It’s Donald… pic.twitter.com/LaGIggpZxs— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) July 29, 2026 However, Cohn then turned, “The problem is that that is not what this show is. This is a show trial. This is Rand Paul deeply invested in this narrative that there was a conspiracy, as Ron Johnson deeply invested in this narrative that scientists are misleading the country. It’s Donald Trump deeply invested in taking out vengeance on Fauci, who he thinks helped ruin his first term.”Alluding to Fauci always pleading the fifth, Cohn continued, “That is why Fauci doesn’t want to answer questions, because he fears, legitimately, the real purpose of this is not to get to the not to have a careful, thoughtful retrospective on how we handled the last pandemic and do better next time. It is an effort to get him, you know, extract vengeance on him and put him in jail.”Even if one grants the argument that some questions are more legitimate than others, it would follow that Fauci should have answered the legitimate ones, especially considering he was given a preemptive pardon.Here is a transcript for the July 29 show:MS NOW Reports7/29/202611:08 AM ETANTONIA HYLTON: But do you think any of them asked serious questions? Or would you say that the majority of this has been about scoring political points? I ask because Dr. Vin Gupta was on with my colleague Stephanie Ruhle just a little bit ago, and he said that, for example, Senator Lankford had some questions that he thought were actually interesting and fair. And so I wonder if you can basically help us cut through the noise here, separate sort of fact and—from fiction and from drama.JONATHAN COHN: Yeah. So, I mean, look, there are a few questions that are legitimate. And, you know, looking back over the pandemic, I mean, I think a lot of us have said for a long time, it was a, you know, it was a once-in-a-century challenge. We did some things right. We did some things wrong. Human beings were making decisions. We should continue to look back and say, have a sober examination of what we got right, what we got wrong, so we could do better next time. The problem is that that is not what this show is. This is a show trial. This is Rand Paul deeply invested in this narrative that there was a conspiracy, as Ron Johnson deeply invested in this narrative that scientists are misleading the country. It’s Donald Trump deeply invested in taking out vengeance on Fauci, who he thinks helped ruin his first term. And that is what this is all about. And, you know, and that is why Fauci doesn’t want to answer questions, because he fears, legitimately, the real purpose of this is not to get to the not to have a careful, thoughtful retrospective on how we handled the last pandemic and do better next time. It is an effort to get him, you know, extract vengeance on him and put him in jail.

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It takes a lot of extreme pretzel twisting to write in detail about Anthony Fauci’s diary yet somehow skip the famous journalist who figures very prominently in that same diary who worked with Fauci to both cover up for him while also working to attack his opponents. And that journalist is Jack Tapper who, amazingly, appears not once is CNN’s story on Fauci’s diary published by CNN on Tuesday, “Diary entries, a subpoena and an anticipated clash: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rand Paul’s long-running battle returns to the Hill.”CNN reporters Sarah Owermohle and Adam Cancryn had the unenviable task of completely whitewashing Jake Tapper out of a diary in which he appears dozens of times.Ahead of the hearing, the committee released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal diary from 2019 to 2022. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday night on Fox News that he had recently handed the files over to Paul and Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson after finding them on government servers following an eight-month search.Neither HHS nor Paul’s committee alerted Fauci ahead of time that they had obtained his diary and that they planned to publish it in full, according to a person familiar with the matter.Imagine the surprise on Fauci’s as well as Tapper’s face when they found out about the diary. You definitely won’t find out anything about Tapper’s reaction to the diary in the CNN story since he (as well as his colleague Dana Bash also mentioned in the diary and NOT mentioned in the CNN story) has been sent into the Phantom Zone so far as his connection with Fauci is concerned. Could this be the current rule at CNN? That any mention of Tapper being in Fauci’s diary is now taboo?Back to the whitewash:The diary entries also narrate Fauci’s growing concerns about Covid-19, frustrations with the government response and conflicting relationships with both Trump and Biden administration officials.The diaries also narrate Fauci colluding with a certain television news host to protect him and viscously slam all who dare criticize the beloved Fauci. Who, oh who, could that person be?On April 2, 2020, he fretted that now HHS secretary RFK Jr. was preparing to publish a book about him that “will almost certainly be slanderous.”Good news! Jake Tapper did not appear in RFK Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci. However, he did make dozens of appearances in Fauci’s diary. You won’t find out about that at CNN as yet. Could the explanation for that absurdly noticeable oversight be job security? Reporters Owermohle and Cancryn will probably be subjected to well-deserved mockery for skipping all mention of Jake Tapper who appears prominently in the diary they wrote about, but at least they get to keep their jobs. CNN engages in collective defense of their cast of anti-Trump heroes.

Those inside the Iranian regime who still fear their people have ample reason to fear a prolonged naval siege of their country.

All the protectionist measures he ascribes to Canada are mirrored by U.S. policies.

If the ‘sociology of education’ professor can be cleared of allegations of plagiarism, then who will ever be convicted of it?

Since Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released on Saturday nearly 2,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diaries that delivered one bombshell after another about how he handled the coronavirus pandemic, ABC and NBC had yet to say a word on the leading morning or evening shows. However, that changed Wednesday morning with stories explaining away his behavior ahead of what became an explosive Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.ABC’s Good Morning America only mustered a partial segment tallying 89 seconds, starting with co-host Robin Roberts announcing Fauci was “set to testify on Capitol Hill” for “a grilling by longtime critic Senator Rand Paul over his role in handling the COVID pandemic.”

WATCH: ABC News finally covered the Fauci diaries on one of their leading newscasts, previewing the hearing on Wednesday’s ‘Good Morning America’ and lamenting Fauci would “face a grilling by longtime critic Senator Rand Paul over his role in handling the COVID pandemic” and… pic.twitter.com/NwKhugcUFa— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 29, 2026

D.C.-based correspondent Jay O’Brien also said it’d “be a fiery hearing” with Paul going after “Fauci, 85-years-old, once the nation’s top infectious disease expert who retired in 2022.”He added Paul has “accused Fauci of everything from misleading the COVID — mishandling the COVID response, to misleading the public about COVID’s origins, to even lying to Congress, all of which Fauci strenuously denies” with his attorney calling Paul’s behavior a “years-long public crusade.”Incredibly, O’Brien seemed to cast doubt on the veracity of the diaries: “Ahead of this hearing, Paul releasing more than one thousand pages worth of what he says are diary excerpts that Fauci wrote in the early days of the pandemic.”O’Brien did read the infamous January 2020 entry voicing support for the pandemic having originated from the Wuhan lab, but argued this matched Fauci’s public comments:[Fauci] says it’s “not the source, but the amplifier” of the virus, something the senator accuses Fauci of never saying publicly although the doctor later said that in a public interview or something similar….Fauci, remember, has a preemptive pardon from former President Biden over concerns, Biden said, of possible political prosecution[.]Fact-check: Pants on fire.Grabien’s Tom Elliott noted Fauci went around to tamp down on others voicing these concerns, including with the CIA:

In this passage, Fauci recounts a “very strange” meeting with the CIA, where they presented intel pointing toward a lab leak. Fauci, clearly annoyed, calls the CIA woman presenting the findings as “pathetic in her naivety an obvious lack of appreciation of any of the science of… pic.twitter.com/My7ngQsymB— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 26, 2026

Further, Fauci was heavily involved in a now-infamous article in Nature Medicine by supposedly leading scientists to declare the virus came from a wet market with the lab-leak theory unlikely:

3 – THE PROXIMAL ORIGIN COVER-UP: Jan 31, 2020. Lead virologist Kristian Andersen privately writes that the SARS-CoV-2 genome appeared “inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory” — i.e., looks engineered.His initial hypothesis, in his own words: “SARS-CoV-2 was… pic.twitter.com/URrhuSwHk0— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 7, 2026

Fauci’s media allies also denounced those invoking the possibility of a lab leak:

SUPERCUT!Media mock Trump, @TomCottonAR for “debunked” Covid lab leak theory pic.twitter.com/nb0621y2e7— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 26, 2021

SUPERCUT!Media: It’s Trump’s fault we failed to investigate China lab-leak theory pic.twitter.com/NTQwU1JU8g— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 7, 2021

Even in 2024, Fauci said the science “weighs more heavily” toward a wet market origin: 

Fauci on Covid: Lab leak is possible but evidence “weighs more heavily” in favor of animal transmission pic.twitter.com/nEsIKYW1ga— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 4, 2024

And during the hearing, Paul showed a montage of Fauci arguing on CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NewsNation, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in favor of the wet market origin.Over on NBC’s Today, senior Washington correspondent and fill-in co-host Hallie Jackson cracked open the network’s blackout by declaring: “Fauci, who helped lead the U.S. response to COVID, is appearing in front of a Senate committee, a hearing that is expected to be contentious after the public release of entries from Dr. Fauci’s personal journal.”As part of a segment tallying two minutes and 50 seconds, White House correspondent Monica Alba began by saying Fauci — who “became household name during the pandemic” — now has “his private reflection…gaining attention after a Republican Senator posted them online as part of an ongoing probe into the origins of the virus, all setting the stage for what is expected to be a fiery hearing today on Capitol Hill.”

NEW: NBC finally acknowledged the Fauci diaries with a full story on Wednesday’s ‘Today,’ insisting Fauci has been “open” “in the past…to the lab-leak theory” pic.twitter.com/NKDj6mLDJF— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 29, 2026

Like with ABC (see above) and CBS did (see here), Alba refused to go below the surface in Fauci’s narcissism and his close ties to the media. She also peddled the false claim about Fauci never having dismissed the lab-leak theory (click “expand”):ALBA: New revelations this morning from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal journal, published by Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is clashed with the former infectious disease expert for years.FAUCI [on 07/20/21]: [I]f anyone is lying here, senator, it is you.ALBA: Most notably, over whether COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China, or came from a market in Wuhan featuring exotic animals.SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KY): We put the evidence into the public sphere. So, I would just suggest that he tell the truth, and if he tells the truth, he has no liability.ALBA: In January of 2020, weeks before the world shut down, Fauci wrote, “Now we know the market was not the source., it was the amplifier. Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to human.” In the past, Fauci has said he was open to the lab-leak theory.FAUCI [on NBC’s Meet the Press, 11/27/22]: I have a completely open mind about that, despite people saying that I don’t. ALBA: Still, Senator Paul posting he’ll be asking Fauci “under subpoena” about what he calls “the COVID cover-up.”On the flip side, she did go further than ABC’s O’Brien on Fauci celebrating his levels of fame and anti-Trump punditry (click “expand”):Fauci, in the more than 1,100 release pages, also reflecting on his newfound fame, including conversations with celebrities like Barbara Streisand, who asked about vaccines and Julia Roberts, who called him her personal hero. Fauci writing, “It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous, and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable.”Throughout the entries, Fauci makes his feelings about President Trump known, calling him a “true embarrassment” and saying he was “spewing nonsense” in the weeks before the 2020 election shortly after the President had been hospitalized for COVID, and when Mr. Trump said he was “considering firing” Fauci.To see the relevant transcripts from July 29, click here (for ABC) and here (for NBC). 

The whole disgraced eco-sphere of public broadcasting continues to prove why having its tax dollars stripped was one of the most spot-on moves Congress has made in recent years.

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The Rhode Island affiliate of NPR and PBS, Ocean State Media, said the quiet part out loud by legitimizing attacking “polluters” who cause climate change. “What if polluters had to pay for the effects of climate change,” read the July 28 headline for the Possibly podcast with host Megan Hall and Nat Hardy, which is a co-produced by the left-wing Institute for Environment and Society at Brown University. The entire gist was drumming up Democrat propaganda for an insane bill in the Rhode Island General Assembly that “aims to make fossil fuel emitters pay for the impacts of climate change.” Hardy praised the legislation as a “climate superfund bill. It’s a pretty new idea to address the impacts of climate change.”Since this is “public” radio, there was no serious opposition quoted to this leftist push. This sure sounds like a slippery slope that would lead every schlub driving a gas-guzzling vehicle to be on the hook for a potential climate penalty. The bill, called the Climate Superfund Act, purports to target “large fossil fuel companies” retroactively based on arbitrary estimates of emissions released over the past thirty years. Aside from the fact that such retroactive penalization would almost assuredly spike energy costs on consumers, there are significant constitutional questions involved. These include potential violations of the Supremacy Clause under federal preemption and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Hall and Hardy didn’t address any of this of course, and just proceeded to carry water for the dystopian overreach. As Hardy propagandized:If you caused the damage, you pay to fix it. And the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel companies are causing the more powerful storms, heatwaves, and other impacts we’re seeing from climate change.Hall chimed in her enthusiasm for a state-level climate regulatory infrastructure: “Interesting! I didn’t realize states could do something like that.” If the constitutional problems are any indication, no they can’t, which is why similar laws passed by Vermont and New York are being put through the legal wringer via lawsuit. Hardy alluded to the lawsuits as dropping a roadblock in Rhode Island’s ambitions, but gave no description of the major constitutional issues in question. Rather, Hardy lobbed subtle ad hominems at groups protesting the legality of the bill:But we also saw testimony against the law, both from local groups, and from some national groups who represent the interests of oil and gas companies: the American Petroleum Institute and the confusingly named Consumer Energy Alliance.What this makes patently clear is that if NPR and PBS want to continue pushing this kind of climate-obsessed nonsense, they can do it on their own dime instead of the taxpayer dollar.

Far Left organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, and others were revealed by the State Department’s recent report as Cuban-backed organizations. The report also details how Cuba has managed to infiltrate the United States and other countries with communism. (RELATED: The Spy Island Next Door) 
The Spectacle Podcast hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay dive into Rubio’s report and expand on Cuba’s underlying influence in spreading communist ideology. Melissa and Scott also discuss various models of communism from Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong’s CCP. They also explain current implications for the Trump administration in combating Cuba’s control. (READ MORE: The Castroist Playbook Comes to America) 
Tune in to hear their discussion!

Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify.
Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records concerning the House January 6 Select Committee’s transfer of approximately 30 million lines of telephone toll data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (Judicial Watch, Inc., v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:26-cv-02557)).
The lawsuit was filed after the FBI failed to comply with an October 2025 FOIA request for:

Communications of former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Denver Riggleman (R-VA) with FBI officials regarding the reported acquisition or offer to provide the telephone toll data.
All FBI records and internal communications regarding the reported acquisition or offer to provide the telephone toll data collected by the House January 6 Committee.

In February 2022, the FBI opened “Arctic Frost,” an investigation into alleged efforts by Trump campaign associates to obstruct Congress’s certification of the 2020 election. The probe aggressively targeted dozens of GOP officials and organizations before closing in January 2025.
A December 2023 FBI FD-302 interview summary reveals that Kinzinger proactively offered the January 6 Committee’s massive database to the FBI. The summary states:
Kinzinger stated the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (the “Select Committee”) collected and linked a substantial amount of telephone data, and noted the FBI may already possess such data. While former Congressman Denver Riggleman worked with the Select Committee, he (Riggleman) had a contact and was able to obtain toll information, including for White House “root” or switchboard numbers via congressional subpoena. Kinzinger noted that he (Kinzinger) did not conduct the analysis himself, but that Riggleman had identified certain telephonic connections between numbers identified as being associated with the White House and certain individuals….
Kinzinger indicated that Riggleman may have never received direction on what to do with the toll data, which included approximately 30 million lines of data. Kinzinger believed it was in an electronic format, but did not know if it was the original [redacted] returns.
In October 2025, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported that “the FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones for ‘tolling data’ as part of its Arctic Frost investigation. One Republican member of the House of Representatives was also impacted. The Arctic Frost investigation formed the basis of [Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s elector case against President Donald Trump.”
“The FBI must stop concealing the truth. Thirty million lines of Americans’ phone records weaponized by a partisan committee and federal investigators against President Trump and his supporters represents one of the most brazen abuses of power in modern history,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The American people deserve every record — no more stonewalling.”
Judicial Watch has conducted a massive, independent investigation into the events of January 6.
On July 6, 2026, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department released to Judicial Watch over 1,000 hours of body-worn camera footage in 1,627 videos from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol event. The videos were released because of an April 2026 court ruling in a DC FOIA lawsuit. The videos are available via the Judicial Watch website here.
In August 2025, Judicial Watch announced that the U.S. Air Force would finally provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. Babbitt was the only official January 6 homicide victim. The Biden administration had previously denied Babbitt and her family these honors in retaliation for being at the U.S. Capitol that day. This decision came on the heels of a massive, nearly $5 million Trump administration settlement to her family for wrongful death and other claims against the U.S. Government.
In July 2025, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department for records on accelerated January 6 prosecutions after Trump was elected president in November 2024. The Biden administration, anticipating President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to issue pardons for January 6, 2021, defendants, is believed to have accelerated prosecutions in the final months of Biden’s term.
In March 2024, Judicial Watch received Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Justice Department in a FOIA lawsuit that showed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.
In October 2023, Judicial Watch received the declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.
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The post Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records on January 6 Committee’s Transfer of 30 Million Phone Records appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Francesca Hong, the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, is no ‘sewer socialist,’ unless that term no longer has meaning.