Fauci Pleads the Fifth and Kills Republicans’ Big Covid Hearing

Anthony Fauci will not testify before Congress Wednesday.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was subpoenaed to testify before a Republican-led Senate committee regarding his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But he won’t—instead, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment in his opening statements.

Fauci remarked that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—who issued the subpoena and has repeatedly called for Fauci’s arrest—has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.” Paul posted hundreds of pages from Fauci’s pandemic-era diary to his website over the weekend, summarizing the unredacted collection through a conspiratorial slant and with a pink pen, which Fauci said was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating” him.

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that he is following his attorney’s advice by pleading the Fifth.

Mere moments into the hearing, Paul had one of Fauci’s attorneys, David Schertler, thrown out of the room after he attempted to speak on behalf of his client.

“Let the record state that Dr. Fauci will still have the advice of the other half a dozen attorneys that he brought along today,” Paul remarked after Schertler was removed.

In a written statement shared ahead of the hearing, Schertler argued that Paul displayed an “intense and seemingly pathological” obsession with Fauci that began during a July 2021 Senate HELP Committee hearing. At the time, Paul claimed that Fauci was responsible for the deaths of millions of people and had orchestrated a cover-up. Fauci, in turn, said that Paul “had no idea what he was talking about, and if anyone was lying it was him.”

“Chairman Paul’s public crusade against Dr. Fauci can only be described as an obsessive vendetta,” Schertler continued. “It triggers what the Supreme Court has called a ‘basic function’ of the Fifth Amendment—‘to protect innocent men … who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’”

Fauci has testified before Congress countless times over the course of his 38-year career atop the health agency. He advised seven U.S. presidents over that time, and oversaw research on a range of issues including HIV/AIDS, ebola, influenza, zika, and finally, the coronavirus.

Paul charged Fauci with lying to Congress during a July 2023 hearing on Covid, though the issue was eventually wiped away via a pardon issued by former President Joe Biden.

But Republicans haven’t paid any heed to that pardon. On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer warned Fauci that the pardon would not cover his latest congressional hearing.

“Americans are still reaping the consequences of Dr. Fauci’s actions,” Comer told Fox News. “Biden’s pardon doesn’t cover Dr. Fauci’s testimony this week and if he continues to lie, he must be held accountable.”

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump sees Senate Majority Leader John Thune as one of his “biggest headaches,” despite insisting that their relationship is “fine” publicly, according to reporting from The Atlantic.

The president’s displeasure with Thune has been brewing for some time, as the senator stands squarely in the way of Trump’s voting rights–suppressing SAVE America Act. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week that Trump’s patience with Thune was “running out,” and Trump himself told a Georgia rally crowd to call Thune directly regarding the SAVE America Act that same day. And on Monday, Trump strangely demanded that Thune pass a “full and deep throated” SAVE America Act.

“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The Dumocrats will do it on day one, and can’t believe how lucky they got with this Senate leadership. Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!”

Thune has yet to flinch, making Trump’s private comments even more believable.

“If somebody can show me how we get an outcome, how we get a result, how we get an answer to this, I’m all for it.… But if we are going to be sitting here in endless quorum calls, I don’t know if that’s in anybody’s best interest,” Thune said to reporters on Monday. “We could stay here until Christmas, Democrats aren’t voting for this. I’m just telling you.… And Republicans are not getting rid of the legislative filibuster.”

It’s unclear how long Thune’s resistance can last. Trump is absolutely desperate to get the SAVE America Act through, and he’ll be even more so as he approaches the end of his second (and hopefully final) term. Thune’s moderate Senate allies, such as Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, are outgoing, while the majority of the party willingly capitulates to whatever Trump demands, and will likely continue doing so.

President Donald Trump personally intervened to block disaster aid to four Democratic-led states, overriding his own government agencies.

Politico reported Wednesday that Trump blocked aid to New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York after regional Federal Emergency Management Agency offices and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that all four states met the requirements for receiving aid due to a record-breaking blizzard in February.

The news outlet viewed emails between federal and state officials in addition to more than 150 pages of documents sent to FEMA by state officials. Presidents have the final say on granting federal disaster aid, but it’s rare to deny requests from state governors after FEMA determines that the estimated damage goes beyond preestablished levels.

“I can’t think of a time a declaration was denied” for a state that met FEMA and NOAA standards, a former FEMA official anonymously told Politico.

There have been 69 snow-assistance requests that met FEMA standards since President George W. Bush, and all but one have received presidential approval—including during Trump’s first term. The lone exception was a New Mexico request in 2016 that was under investigation for mishandling FEMA funds.

The four states that requested aid this year were seeking a total of $227 million in assistance to take on unexpected snow removal costs.

The Trump administration has denied any wrongdoing, claiming the aid denials were not political. In a statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said that “there is no politicization to the president’s decisions on disaster relief.”

Trump handles disaster requests “with great care” to ensure state aid is used “to supplement—not substitute, their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters,” Jackson added.

But earlier this month, Trump administration officials admitted in court that the White House has deliberately canceled clean energy funding to states that didn’t vote for him in the 2024 presidential election. The president has also withheld childcare funding to blue states. Trump doesn’t seem to believe he has an obligation to help citizens of the U.S. under his charge if he perceives a slight against him.

The Trump administration is planning to scrap Medicare subsidies, which could leave seniors facing higher rates for their prescription coverage next year.

After 2026, the government will stop providing billions in subsidies to insurance companies that keep premiums low for Medicare prescription plans, known as Part D, Trump administration officials told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday.

Roughly 25 million people have Part D plans, and the average monthly payment was roughly $36 in 2026. Medicare recipients will learn of their new rates in the fall, right around the midterm elections, in which affordability is sure to be a key issue.

A Trump administration official told the Journal that 25 percent of Medicare enrollees would see their premiums stay the same, 30 percent would see an increase of less than $10 to their monthly bill, and 45 percent would see a monthly increase of between $11 and $20.

Note: The Trump administration has already overseen a price increase for some 700 prescription drugs covered by Part D plans.

The administration official claimed that the subsidies had encouraged insurers to raise rates, and that there would be other means of keeping premiums low. If not, there were other affordable options, the official said.

But Americans are already struggling under the weight of rising prices. Health insurance premiums have drastically outpaced the growth of employee paychecks, a strain that is only compounded by the growing cost of groceries, climbing utility bills, and elevated oil and gas prices.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed he would not cut Medicare funding, though his One Big Beautiful Bill is set to reduce the program’s funding by an estimated $500 billion over the next eight years. Earlier this year, the president admitted he believed it was “not possible” to keep paying for Medicare, although the White House removed a recording of those remarks after posting them.

CBS’s 60 Minutes is getting another Trump-styled makeover.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat is leaving The New York Times to join the storied broadcast magazine in a new role, 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton announced Tuesday.

Douthat has served as one of the Times’ principal conservative voices for more than two decades, writing for the daily’s opinion section since 2009. His latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, was published in 2025.

Despite being an early skeptic of Donald Trump’s politics and popularity, Douthat has since downplayed the president’s authoritarian and fascist tendencies while attempting to rationalize Trump’s behavior.

He has also criticized Democrats for their “resistance” showcases, spurring condemnation from those on the left that Douthat has been incorporated into a sort of “anti-anti-Trump” persona among the American intelligentsia, apparently ready to castigate Trump’s critics even as he himself scrutinizes the president and his policies.

Douthat will join the show alongside author Sebastian Junger, CBS News correspondent Trevor Phillips, and filmmaker Gianna Toboni, according to Bilton.

Bari Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist herself, has changed seemingly everything at CBS News since she was tapped to run the fabled network late last year. Weiss was appointed despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on now former correspondent Cecilia Vega’s 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, ranging from Vega to 60 Minutes’ veteran executive producer Bill Owens and the program’s de facto face Scott Pelley.

In March, Weiss attempted to install another questionable commentator in the show’s lineup—wellness influencer and Epstein pen pal Peter Attia—though his job offer was quickly revoked.