Rand Paul Successfully Gets Revenge on Anthony Fauci

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 8-5 along party lines Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment during his congressional appearance last week.

“There will be repercussions for your refusal to testify,” warned Committee Chair Senator Rand Paul at the time. Paul has long sought to punish Fauci for his role in overseeing America’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fauci 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. Paul’s claim was never proven, and the issue was eventually wiped away via a pardon to Fauci issued by former President Joe Biden.

Last month, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer warned Fauci that the pardon would not cover his latest congressional hearing. He then posted hundreds of pages from Fauci’s pandemic-era diary to his website, summarizing the unredacted collection with a conspiratorial slant and a pink pen, which Fauci said was “aimed at embarrassing and intimidating” him.

Exactly what comes next for Fauci is not clear, even to the Republicans trying to charge him.

“There is not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t law so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” Paul told CNN on Tuesday. “It’s a referral, it’s a recommendation.”

Thursday’s decision will likely be passed along to Vice President JD Vance, who as the de facto president of the Senate will need to sign off on the atypical request. It’ll then be passed to the Justice Department, which will determine on its own accord whether to bring formal charges against Fauci. But legal experts have already warned that the charges are unlikely to succeed in court.

If the DOJ moves in that direction, it will likely boil down to a long, tumultuous legal battle.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump is crashing out about a report that he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the U.S. military’s depleted munitions stockpile.

Trump took to Truth Social less than an hour into Thursday to hit back at The Washington Post for reporting that tensions between Hegseth and the president had “boiled over” on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last week.

“The U.S. has massive amounts of ‘munitions,’ especially of certain types,” Trump wrote. “Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history.”

“The ‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!” Trump wrote. Notably, Trump didn’t deny unloading on Hegseth.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has challenged reports that the country’s weapons stockpile is low, and still managed to threaten the leakers with jail time. If the story is false, then why would it be treasonous to tell it?

The shortages of long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors caused Trump to pull back from launching any massive strikes against Iran, one source familiar with discussions told the Post. On Monday, the president claimed he’d changed his mind about launching “the biggest attack since World War II.”

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that the confrontation “literally never happened,” but didn’t respond to the claims about the U.S. weapons stockpile.

“This B.S. story was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the Secretary, for whatever reason. Unfortunately for them, the President loves the Secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job. FAKE NEWS!” she wrote on X.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Sean Parnell joined in, writing on X, “We told the Washington Post the same thing. They ran with the fake, anonymously sourced B.S. anyway. Complete & total Fake News.”

It’s been more than five months since Trump launched his military onslaught against Iran, and multiple reports have raised concerns that the United States is running out of weapons.

Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs have come back to bite him.

In a court filing submitted in the U.S. Court of International Trade Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection official Brandon Lord wrote that as of July 31, the government had allocated approximately $100 billion for companies that had to pay higher import fees due to the president’s illegal levies.

The memo also noted that, as of July 31, the CBP entity created to track and deliver tariff refunds had received more than 252,000 refund declarations for 25.1 million import entries.

While the refund figure is steep, it still doesn’t cover everything the Trump administration owes. In another legal filing, Lord revealed that the government generated roughly $166 billion from the tariffs. That would mean the government is currently repaying 60 percent of what it owes, and that there are still significantly more funds to be doled out.

The filing was submitted in response to a class action lawsuit brought by a coalition of small businesses that suffered under Trump’s tariff plans. Collectively, they claim that there are still obstacles to obtaining the refunds they’re legally owed through CBP.

Trump’s tariffs were one of his major second term policy points. But the ultraconservative Supreme Court ruled in February that his tariff plan—which was introduced under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—was beyond the power of his office, effectively dismantling the president’s foreign and economic agendas in one fell swoop.

Yet the president was still trying to spin his costly, unconstitutional tolls as a win during an interview with Fox News Tuesday.

“Tariffs have been incredible. We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars,” he told the network. “Supreme Court gave us a little shot, but we’re allowed to do it in a different manner.”

But Trump’s other unconventional tariff attempts are also facing legal challenges. Last month, Trump was sued mere hours after he attempted to invoke new duties under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which some economic law scholars told CNBC would likely not pass muster with the courts since the president is “using the statute in a fundamentally different way.”

One of Elon Musk’s wayward rockets seems to have crashed into the moon, but the Trump administration isn’t worried about it.

Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon Wednesday morning, reportedly with the impact of three tons of TNT. The crash sent up a big cloud of dust and left a new crater on the moon’s surface, The Independent reports. Images of the impact may take days to appear from ground telescopes and satellites orbiting the moon. The SpaceX rocket is from a Falcon 9 spacecraft that was carrying a lunar lander to the Moon last January.

When asked about the explosion on Fox News, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was dismissive, crediting SpaceX with recovering 600 of its rockets in other cases, and said this explosion wasn’t a big deal in terms of space trash.

“It’s very infrequent to have things like the Falcon 9 second stage crash into the moon,” Isaacman said. “It’s not a big deal right now, the moon has clearly seen better days.”

Isaacman then pivoted into how once reusable rockets are ready, they would be landing on the moon to help “contribute to the city block you’re trying to build on the surface.”

Isaacman has a close business relationship with Musk, having financed SpaceX missions in the past, and wants to carry out Musk and President Trump’s dreams of building a base on the moon. If there were major problems with spacecraft crashing into the moon, he’s not likely to hurt his own position, or make Musk look bad, by telling the public in a news interview.

Space debris is a growing problem from increased rocket launches, and could become a major issue if any important satellites are damaged. If more of Musk’s SpaceX rockets veer out of control, his moon base plans could hit a major snag.

President Trump on Wednesday filed an emergency motion to stop the British Broadcasting Corporation from gaining broad access to intimate details about his finances.

The emergency stay is the latest development in how Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, triggered by a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance,” is backfiring. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett allowed the BBC to move forward with gaining access to the financial information of at least 400 business entities owned by Trump’s family trust. Lett set a Thursday deadline for the BBC to get hold of his financial records.

Now Trump is scrambling to stop what he started from blowing up in his face.

“The BBC’s motive could not be more transparent—to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit, as well as the benefit of President Trump’s other political opponents,” the deposition read. “The moment those records reach the BBC, the injury is complete and irreversible.” His lawyers also accused the BBC of having “clearly political motivations.”

Trump’s legal team is asking Lett to allow Trump to go back and change the language of the suit, so that his lucrative business dealings as president are not subject to public scrutiny.

The BBC has yet to respond.

It seems obvious that Trump bit off more than even he can chew here. If his plea to change the discovery parameters fails, we may see him drop the lawsuit entirely.