Commentary Culture Investigations

Advances in AI and biotech pose new challenges to human life. Senators Ted Cruz and Raphael Warnock want to do something about it.

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Over the weekend, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) released Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary from during the COVID pandemic, exposing his egotism and deep connections with the liberal media elites who worshiped him. Featured predominantly in the writings was CNN’s Jake Tapper, who conveniently omitted any mention of the major breaking news during his two-hour time slot for The Lead, on Monday. Interestingly, the diary exposed how Fauci was feeding interview questions to Tapper.In an entry dated “July 26, 2020 (Sunday),” Fauci wrote: “Brett Giroir on Tapper (State of the Union) talking bullshit about testing with Jake pressing him. I gave Jake some questions to ask him.”As NewsBusters reported at the time, Tapper was incredibly hostel toward the Coronavirus Task Force’s Admiral Brett Giroir, MD. At one point, Tapper claimed he was having audio problems and rudely interrupted Giroir, as he was answering a question clearly, and assailed the Admiral (Click “expand”):TAPPER: Are you happy where testing is right now?GIROIR: I’m never going to be happy until we have this under control. And we’re going to continue to push every single day to improve the testing, the type of testing that we have, and the rapidity of turnaround. Where we see the growth here is in point of care. We will have about 50 million tests available in August, about 65 million in September.TAPPER: Hold on one second, sir. I’m having audio problems. But let me — let me — I’m while I’m fixing my audio, let me ask this to you. The Harvard Institute of Global Health says that the U.S. should be conducting three to five million tests per day, three to five million tests a day. We’re doing, as you noted, less than 800,000.Experts also note that the Trump administration has not fully activated all of the labs available, including hospital labs, commercial non-clinical labs, academic labs, veterinary labs.I know that you’re saying that things have improved a lot. And they have. But you also concede that they’re not where they need to be. Why is the Trump administration not doing everything it can to get testing where it needs to be?GIROIR: So, every one of those things examples that you said, we’re – we’re absolutely doing. So, I’m not quite sure why you’re saying we’re not doing them. Just this week, I had a call with over 500 university presidents, provosts, and vice presidents, and we have been talking to governors for at least a month, maybe two months, about activating the university labs.It’s unclear which questions Fauci fed to him, but Tapper would go on a diatribe against Giroir and accused him and others on the task force of being afraid to upset President Trump (Click “expand”):TAPPER: The Trump administration has invoked the Defense Production Act. True. They have done so with to — for swabs, to get N95 masks, to get ventilators. Accurate. Has the Trump administration, has the President invoked the DPA to get labs up to speed, lab hiring and lab equipment? And you don’t even need to do the DPA to do that for federal labs. That’s what I’m talking about.There seems to be this reluctance to push the President to do what he needs to do to get the testing up to speed. I know that he’s under the misguided impression that more testing is bad and makes him look bad, which, as you know, is completely false.And I’m wondering if you and others are just afraid to do this because you don’t want to upset him, afraid to ask him to do what he needs to do, to invoke the DPA, to force the federal labs to get up to speed to where we need to be, so that we can isolate the virus.As you know, when you say people who need a test can get a test, there’s a huge percentage of people who have the coronavirus who are asymptomatic, and they, quote, unquote, “don’t need to be tested,” according to this standard.But the point is, in order to identify and isolate the virus, it needs to be much more widespread, the testing, so we can see people who are carriers who don’t have symptoms. That’s the point.Are you afraid to bring this up to President Trump because it will upset him?  At one point, Tapper got into one of his infamous screaming matches with a guest (Click “expand”):TAPPER: But it’s not enough!GIROIR: Of course, it’s enough. Tell me one thing that we should be doing with any of these private labs that we’re not doing or they’re not doing on their own, and I’m happy to do it. I talk to hundreds of people each week, academics, the Rockefeller Foundation, really smart people that we’re working with. We have a national implementation forum for testing that we’re going to be getting together this week. I talk to ACLA, APLU, universities, private labs, hospitals, you name it. We’re getting input on a daily basis. If there’s a stone that needs to be turned that is left unturned, you tell me what it is. But, from my vantage point -TAPPER: I just told you!GIROIR: – we have invoked all the authorities.TAPPER: Get federal labs — get federal labs to hire more people and get more equipment, so you can increase turnaround times. Invoke the DPA, so that commercial labs all over the country, ones that you’re not using — five veterinary labs is not impressive to me, sir.GIROIR: No, no, no.TAPPER: Get all of those labs up to speed.GIROIR: I didn’t say that. No, no, no. No, I said five veterinary labs have their CLIA certification to officially test human patients. There are a lot of labs who are doing surveillance testing that don’t need the CLIA certification. And maybe I will nuance this a little bit. Surveillance testing is a way that -TAPPER: But no one thinks that testing is up to speed where it needs to be. No one – no one thinks it’s where it needs to be. And yet you have spent this entire interview talking about how great and perfect everything is.GIROIR: No, I – I – TAPPER: But this is the weakest part of the response to this virus, is testing and where it is not -[Crosstalk]GIROIR: I started out — I started out by saying that we are never going to be happy with testing until we get turnaround times within 24 hours. And I would be happy with point-of-care testing everywhere. We are not there yet. We are doing everything we can to do that.Later in the diary entry, Fauci recounts getting a message from Tapper about the interview. “Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furius [sic] at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severly [sic] questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all,” he wrote.That wasn’t even the first time they commiserated about Giroir.In entry labeled “April 19, 2020,” Fauci documented: “Had conversation with Jake Tapper who is asking where the 27 million tests by end of March came from (Brett Giroir). Fact is I have no idea how he got that number. Deb Birx has no confidence in Giroir, nor do I.”

CNN via SnapStream

The name “Tapper” appears 41 times throughout Fauci’s diary.Two mentions were particularly revealing as they showed Fauci had repeatedly dined with Tapper and his wife Jennifer at their home, during the pandemic, during a time he was demanded people be isolated, during a time when he demanded the sick die alone and scared in hospitals.“Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building,” he gushed on “July 1, 2020” like a high school girl writing about her crush while laying on her beg and kicking her legs in the air. Again, on “October 23, 2020,” he fondly noted: “Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.”Having others feed him and steer his questions seems to be something Tapper enjoyed. A revealing New York Times story in 2017 exposed how then CNN boss Jeff Zucker was actively in Tapper’s ear from the booth during an infamous and contentious interview with then-Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway.Tapper may not mention it on his show, but he knows we all see his dirty laundry.Click here to read the transcript.News Analyst Jorge Bonilla contributed to this report.

European Parliament on Wikimedia Commons

Unless you’re chronically online or into British TV, you probably haven’t heard of former Member of Parliament Ann Widdecombe, who was found murdered in her Devon, U.K. home on July 9. Widdecombe was well-known for her conservative views; and it was most likely for these views that she was struck 21 times in the head with a hammer. Yet, every major U.K. and U.S. news network that bothered to mention this violent death carefully avoided implying a political motive, even while most of them made very clear that Widdecombe’s suspected murderer was a “white British national.”So far, more articles have mentioned the fact that Widdecombe’s alleged murderer was white and British than have actually mentioned his name, Joshua Kerry. British police have refused to speculate on motive, and so have the news networks.The BBC stated that Kerry “was charged with one count of murder on Monday night (7/20) following an investigation led by counter-terrorism detectives,” without specifying why counter-terrorism units were involved in the case.”‘It is vital that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information which could in any way prejudice these proceedings’” said Chief Crown Prosecutor Frank Ferguson, as reported in The Guardian.That’s an odd statement, and we seem to only see it made in these types of political cases where the perpetrator is likely a leftist.“Police had previously said there was no information to suggest Widdecombe’s murder was an act of terrorism or politically motivated,” CNN reported, paragraphs before clarifying police were, in fact, investigating a political motive. CNN also cited the Devon-Cornwall police statement, where the only information given about the apprehended suspect was that he was “a white British national.”The news media repeated that line ad nauseam. Reuters’s latest piece on the case admitted that Widdecombe “was targeted, although the motive remains under investigation.” The only information they gave on the suspect was that he was “a white British national from Rotherham.”CBS also reported that police “were seeking a White male suspect, who former U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as ‘clearly dangerous.’”Imagine the backlash and cries of ‘racism’ if the suspect had been any other race, or an immigrant. In those kinds of cases, the media just finds it easier to describe the alleged criminal as a local, or simply not give any identifying information at all. The Independent gave a rather detailed account of Kerry’s background, including that his “uncle described his nephew as a ‘gentle giant’ who is ‘polite’ and ‘very shy.’” However, they noticeably omitted any political or ideological ties.In his only statement about Widdecombe’s death, Starmer gave no indication of a political or ideological motive, though he has done so for many cases before when the victims of crime were not white, Christian, or right-leaning.So, if the media wants to earn back some of their lost credibility, they need to lose this double standard and accurately and consistently report on perpetrators. 

‘Lamenting is not a strategy.’

New York City’s government-owned grocery stores won’t just sell name products at 30% below their market value – they’ll also have their own store-brand products to compete with private free market businesses.Buried in the details of Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s scheme to open city-owned grocery stores selling products below market value is a plan to launch New York City private labels, branding them as government products competing with private enterprise, free market products.“Private label” products, commonly known as store brands, are sold to stores by (often well-known) third-party manufacturers, with the retailers’ name on the labels. Labeled as the retailer’s unique brand, these products are then sold at prices below those carrying the actual manufacturer’s name-brand label.Mayor Mamdani’s official website notes that the project’s Request for Proposals (RFP) “seeks operator(s) to accomplish the following goals,” among them:“Private label: Operator(s), in collaboration with NYCEDC, will identify and pursue opportunities to launch an N.Y.C. Groceries private label across a variety of product categories.”The Democratic Socialist mayor’s plan for city-owned grocery stores selling items at a 30% discount from that charged by grocers, including small bodegas, has been widely criticized because it will bankrupt private businesses by forcing taxpayers to subsidize the government stores.The result will be Soviet-style bread lines, scarcity, government allocation of food and, ultimately, higher prices, economists and historians warn.Products carrying government labels, such as “N.Y.C. Groceries,” fit neatly into the Socialist paradigm of replacing private enterprise with government control of resources.”If he goes forward with his agenda, within about 12 months, those (privately-owned) grocery stores will all be bankrupt,” Economist Stephen Moore Economist explained in an interview with Newsmax:“And then subsidies from city government. And then they’re going to go bankrupt. They’re going to come to Washington and say, ‘Give us a bailout.’” Economist Stephen Moore on Zohran Mamdani: “If he goes forward with his agenda within about 12 months, those grocery stores will all be bankrupt.” pic.twitter.com/wNF80E9Ae8— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) July 27, 2026 What’s more, the taxpayer subsidies will never end, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Kelly Loeffler noted in a social media post: “So not only will New York taxpayers pay $70 million to build government-run grocery stores – they will also pay subsidies in perpetuity to keep them afloat while funding unfair competition against legitimate small businesses.”“One more problem with socialism: you eventually run out of other people’s money,” Administrator Loeffler added.“Hi @ZohranKMamdani, I did some math for you,” New York State Comptroller Candidate Joseph Hernandez writes in a post:“Grocery runs on 1-3% margins. You’re promising 30% off. That gap doesn’t vanish, taxpayers cover it.”….“Subsidized city stores selling 30% below market could push 10-20 bodegas citywide toward closing. “This isn’t affordability. It’s a tax hike disguised as a discount and a private business killer affecting mostly hard working Hispanic immigrants just trying to do the right thing and make a living.”Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) summarized the history of similar efforts in the past to issue a dire warning about Mayor Mamdani’s plan:“This is COMMUNISM. We have history to show exactly what will happen: 1) Gov opens subsidized grocery stores at 30% below cost. 2) Local stores can’t compete and go under. The city store becomes the only option. 3) Shelves go empty. Rationing starts (“2 per customer”). There will be daily rushes, hoarding, and lines around the block. 4) Quality quietly tanks. Wilted produce, thinner cuts, fewer choices. 5) The subsidy bill balloons forever. You didn’t solve hunger. You just built another Soviet bread line.” Hi @ZohranKMamdani, I did some math for you.Grocery runs on 1-3% margins. You’re promising 30% off. That gap doesn’t vanish, taxpayers cover it.Per store: $5.4M/year in sales, but a 30% discount means giving up $1.6M in revenue, a $1.5M annual loss, per store.Across 5… https://t.co/R1JSPD92Sb— Joseph Hernandez (@hernandezforny) July 27, 2026 

The Gaelic football finals in Dublin inspired madness and passion.

She’s for some minor cuts.
TrackAIPAC’s candidate for U.S. Senate from New Hampshire offered her full-throated support to the state’s transgender community—including backing medical gender treatments for children as young as 12 so that they can “transition” to the other sex, the Washington Free Beacon can report.
Karishma Manzur, a Ph.D. scientist who often touts her fondness for facts and evidence, made the comment last August during an appearance on the barely watched YouTube show #NHtok live, hosted by Arya Shams and Marissa Emanuele.
“Every human being has the right to live the life they want to live, and if anyone needs any kind of care, health care, mental care, that is between the person, the individual, their health care providers, and their loved ones,” said Manzur. “Reproductive care, transgender care, cancer care, I mean, it’s just a health care, care for their mental health.”
The candidate then made clear that when she said “every human being,” she meant everyone, including pre-teens.
“The other day, I was talking to a father, and his child is, I think it was a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old child, and they are in the process of trying to figure out if they’re transitioning, etc.,” Manzur said. “And he said, you know, you cannot imagine, Karishma, how difficult it is just to raise a teenager.”
“The teenage years are just so difficult for a child and the parents and the family and the community,” Manzur went on. “Then, on top of it, there’s so much more complexity going on with a child who might be considering transitioning or exploring who they are, what their identity is. It is such a private moment. It is such a delicate moment.”
At no point during the conversation did Manzur ever suggest it might be inappropriate or unsafe to transition a 12-year-old. A majority of U.S. states have enacted laws and policies restricting gender-altering medical treatments for minors.
“Every person deserves the right to live and thrive, no matter who they are, and so that is our duty,” Manzur offered later in the show when asked a follow-up question on the same subject.
She is running a long-shot progressive primary challenge for Senate against Rep. Chris Pappas, an establishment favorite. A University of New Hampshire poll in June showed Pappas with 53 percent support compared with Manzur’s 29 percent. The comfortable 24 percent margin is, however, a marked drop in support for Pappas from past polls as the race heads toward the September 8 primary. The Democratic primary winner will likely face off against Republican John Sununu in November.
Manzur is running on a boilerplate progressive platform with a buffet of warmed-over far-left ideas including Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and making large investments in “social housing.” She has also accused President Donald Trump of “leading us to fascism.”
And, like all good progressives since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, she has positioned herself as a fierce opponent of Israel and vowed she would not take any money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel U.S. interest group that probably wouldn’t be keen to donate much anyway.
Manzur has falsely accused Israel of genocide and repeated debunked claims of famine in Gaza. In September, she told a local New Hampshire television station that 680,000 Palestinians had been killed during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. In August, she upped the number still further.
“We are basically looking at the destruction of two million human lives. They’re being tortured to death. They’re being starved to death, bombed to death,” she said during an appearance on the YouTube show Matt Connarton Unleashed.
The true number of dead—which does not distinguish between fighters, militant operatives, and civilians—is believed to be in the tens of thousands.
Manzur has herself also taken part in pro-Hamas protests, including crashing New Hampshire Democrats’ Eleanor Roosevelt Fundraising Dinner on Oct. 17, 2024. A photo from the incident shows her holding a “ceasefire now” sign while sporting a keffiyeh.
(NH Journal)
Manzur, a native of Bangladesh, is the daughter of Major General Muhammad Abul Manzur, who was accused of being a mastermind of the assassination of former Bangladeshi president Ziaur Rahman. The elder Manzur was later executed after being taken into custody under circumstances that remain murky.
Former president George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security spent years trying to deport Manzur’s family back to Bangladesh, though Karishma Manzur herself managed to get her deportation order suspended in 2007. The whole family appears to have managed to stay in the United States.
The post ‘Care for Their Mental Health’: Senate Hopeful in New Hampshire Backs Sex-Change Procedures for 12-Year-Olds, Has Dodged Deportation Orders appeared first on .

It’s a lot of work to go through just for Democrats to tell a majority of the state’s voters that they’re wrong.

YouTube Screenshot

The Anthony Fauci diary has proven to be a treasure trove of exposing, among many other things, the  very close relations between Fauci and the media that was supposedly covering him. Apparently it turned out that they went beyond covering him to the realm of covering up for him to the extent that they were unable to tolerate any criticism of Fauci.One of the big examples of Fauci’s comfy relationship with the media was the coverage/coverup of him by CNN’s Jake Tapper to the extent that he got as nasty in 2020 over criticism of Fauci in the Trump White House, specifically by Trade Adviser Peter Navarro, as he was when snapping at Lara Trump in the same year for suggesting that Joe Biden suffered from cognitive decline.Here is the segment from the July 15, 2020 edition of The Lead in which a highly agitated Jake Tapper went full snarl at the very idea that his beloved Anthony Fauci could be subjected to criticism.Here are a few lowlights of Tapper’s pompous lecturing:We begin today with the politics lead. The White House war on science and medicine has only gotten worse. But, today, the nation’s top infectious disease expert is punching back, amid new attacks from the White House, or, more specifically, from Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, who wrote in a “USA Today” op-ed that Dr. Fauci has been wrong about every coronavirus issue they have discussed, a claim that seems quite difficult to believe for any sentient being who has been following this story….That’s Dr. Fauci being characteristically diplomatic.Let me not be diplomatic.The White House campaign to undermine Dr. Fauci is dishonest, it’s disgusting, it’s deranged. And at a time of a deadly pandemic, it is the ultimate in irresponsibility. Literally, more than 136,000 Americans are dead because of this virus, and, instead of an aggressive national testing and contact tracing program, the White House is instead launching an aggressive smear campaign against the guy trying to save our lives….And let’s also just remember the context of this is that President Trump has misused science and scientific agencies in order to push forward lies, for whatever reason. A perusal of Fauci’s diary reveals the over-the-top close relationship between him and Tapper which helps explain the extreme unprofessional bias exhibited in the clip above. Examples of the Tapper-Fauci chumminess appear multiple times in the diary. Here are a but a few diary excerpts:April 13, 2020: Phone call with Jake Tapper. Jake wanted to make sure the interview did not cause me any problems.April 26, 2020: Deb was on CNN with Jake Tapper and did not answer the question of whether it was a mistake for the POTUS to talk about injecting or swallowing bleach. Jake wrote me a text afterwards and said: “Birx has lost her way I fear. She has chosen to focus on defending the president and attacking the press. Odd.July 1, 2020: Had dinner over Jake Tapper and Jen Tapper’s home in DC. Terrific couple. Friendship building.July 26, 2020: Jake Tapper woke me up at 11:23 AM (I went to bed early) furious at POTUS for tweeting about the fact that Jake severely questioned Brett Giroir on SOTU CNN show today. Jake was really pissed at the craziness of it all.October 23, 2020: Had dinner at my home with Jake and Jennifer Tapper. Relaxed, good time. Jake clearly believes that Trump is totally nuts.Exit question: Will Jake and Jennifer dine again with Dr. Fauci after his testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday? Friendship building.

From the Soviet Union to East Germany to North Korea, The New York Times has a long and infamous history of going soft on communist countries. On Monday, one day after the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, it added Cuba to the list.Under the headline “Cut off from Fuel, Cuba is Still Surviving,” read the subheadline “President Trump has tried to strangle Cuba by blocking its oil imports. But six months later, the island is finding ways to endure.That set the tone for the article. Amid stories of Cubans making their own fuel and using lithium batteries and Chinese solar panels and electric rickshaws, Mexico City bureau chief Jack Nicas knew who to blame for Cuba’s economic woes, “[Trump] imposed an oil blockade that has pushed the island into its worst ever energy crisis, with mass blackouts now lasting nearly all day. And yet, more than six months later, the Cuban government and people are still standing.”Beyond Trump, Nicas blamed the U.S. for Cuba’s general state of affairs, “Over nearly seven decades of U.S. pressure, Cuba has defied the odds and improvised to survive. Now it seems that Mr. Trump, like many U.S. presidents before him, is also finding that toppling the government founded by Fidel Castro is not so simple.”After highlighting some interviews with locals, Nicas returned to Trump:Other than a single Russian oil tanker in March, allies have not been willing to test Washington’s effective oil blockade.As a result, Cuba has been powering its electric grid solely with domestic oil and gas and a growing network of solar parks sponsored by China. Together, they are enough to support roughly half of Cuban demand, according to Jorge Piñón, who studies Cuban energy at the University of Texas.Nobody Nicas interviewed put the blame solely on Cuba’s government. He wrote “Exhausted Cubans told us they were angry at both Havana and Washington. Yet no one said they planned to take to the streets. Aside from banging pots and pans, the Cuban people have hardly staged protests.”That’s not true, but at least Nicas did find one man to tell him, “You go out to express your opinion on the street, and they throw you in jail or fine you.”However, another man furthered the America-blaming by referring to his solar panels and rickshaw, “Now he can power the entire battery by parking it in the sun for a day. ‘To me, this is the future,’ he said. ‘We’re going to overcome the U.S. blockade.’”On Tuesday, Nicas admitted in a video report that the electric grid was already failing due to government mismanagement, but still try to suggest Trump was most at fault, “It’s been more than six months since the Trump administration’s oil blockade on Cuba set off what is becoming a humanitarian crisis.”Nicas’s concession is also an understatement. Cuba’s 20+ hour per day blackouts predated the blockade.In a separate article, Sam Sifton interviewed Nicas about his trip and whether the government had any say in the matter, “How hard was it to get your visa? Did government minders follow you around?Nicas recalled insisting that he would be fair to the communists, “It took a lot of convincing to get. I met with top Cuban diplomats in Mexico City, Havana, Washington and New York over six months, and sent many letters, to persuade them that we would tell this story fairly. Once we got to Havana to report, we met with Cuban officials a few times, but they otherwise didn’t bother us. We traveled around freely, decided our story targets and chose whom we interviewed.”Elsewhere in that interview, Nicas conceded “some saw the Cuban government at fault” for the country’s problems, but none of those people managed to make it into the main article.