Prof. John Mearsheimer joins Daniel Davis LIVE to discuss the latest developments in the Iran war, U.S. strategy, Israel, and the broader geopolitical consequences of the conflict.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro stood in Lancaster County on Tuesday and announced two “measles-associated deaths” — the first the commonwealth has reported in 35 years — calling them “preventable” and urging residents to get vaccinated.
Within a day, the county’s own coroner publicly disputed the state’s characterization.
On Tuesday, a Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH) press release reported two measles-associated deaths in unvaccinated Lancaster County residents. The department initially withheld the individuals’ ages, medical circumstances and immediate causes of death, citing privacy concerns.
On Wednesday, Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons said on X that the Lancaster County Coroner’s Office had recorded zero deaths caused by measles — only one death of a person who tested positive for measles.
The coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, told the Philadelphia Inquirerthat one of the deaths involved a newborn who died shortly after birth from a lacerated spleen. Measles antibodies were present in postmortem testing, but Diamantoni said the death was not caused by measles.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a “measles-related death” as a death in someone with a positive measles test that occurs within 30 days of a measles rash onset “and is not due to other unrelated causes” such as trauma. The WHO standard raises questions about how the Pennsylvania health authorities classified the infant’s death.
DOH spokesperson Neil Ruhland told The Defender that the department classifies a death “measles-associated” if “laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present,” even when the medical certifier or coroner doesn’t find measles was the immediate cause.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Debra Bogen said on X both individuals “tested positive for measles” and that DOH is not required to report deaths to coroners. The department has not disclosed any information about the second death.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Shapiro sparred over the announcement. Shapiro blamed Kennedy and the Trump administration for circulating vaccine “misinformation.” He declined help from the federal government with the ongoing measles outbreak.
After the conflicting claims from DOH officials and the coroner’s office made headlines, Kennedy said on X that Shapiro’s announcement of two measles deaths on Tuesday appeared premature and may have been “altogether fabricated” by one of his staffers hoping to score a political win.
Kennedy called Shapiro’s Tuesday press conference “a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain.”
Pennsylvania has deep financial ties to vaccine industry
At the podium on Tuesday, Shapiro didn’t disclose his administration’s extensive financial relationships with vaccine manufacturers specifically, and the pharmaceutical industry broadly.
Investigative journalist Sayer Ji documented roughly $5.5 billion in public and private investment in commonwealth-backed pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies under Shapiro, including about $300 million in direct support from Pennsylvania.
That total includes a $10.65 million grant Shapiro personally announced to flu vaccine manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur on June 26 — 60 days before the Lancaster press conference — and $21 million in commonwealth support for a GSK vaccine-manufacturing expansion in Lancaster County itself.
The GSK expansion project is just minutes from where the press conference was held. Ji reported that the project is “the largest Commonwealth-supported economic development project in Lancaster County history.”
Additional commonwealth-backed investment has gone to Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen Biotech, Eurofins Lancaster Laboratories (also in Lancaster County), and Innovate in PA 2.0, a tax-credit program supporting startup capital and a statewide clinical trial network.
On Oct. 1, 2025, Shapiro signed an executive order stating that Pennsylvania “manufactures more than one-half of all vaccines administered in the United States.”
The order was intended to position the state to maintain its own vaccine guidance independent of federal recommendations, should the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alter the childhood vaccine schedule.
DOH and governor work to expand health department powers
The draft regulation was published Aug. 8, with public comment open through Sept. 21 — meaning the two unresolved measles deaths became national news 17 days after the regulation’s publication.
The proposed rule would significantly expand the DOH’s authority. The proposal includes expanding the list of reportable diseases from 52 to 125 and adding an open-ended “emerging disease” category.
It also calls for broadening immunization-reporting requirements and formalizing access to medical records, facilities and schools during investigations.
Provision 27.60 of the proposed regulation gives the DOH authority to order disease-control measures — like masking, social distancing and vaccine mandates — for disease “prevention, containment or mitigation.”
Researcher James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., noted in his Substack analysis that the preamble to the proposed rule specifically mentions a lawsuit that struck down school mask mandates.
Lyons-Weiler said the proposed rewrite appears specifically designed to give the state the legal authority that it lacked to implement such measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In other words, the COVID-era legal defeat is not an incidental historical reference. It is part of the rationale for rewriting the rule,” he said.
‘Vaccines are on the ballot’
In a separate Substack post, Ji suggested that the political response to the Lancaster deaths didn’t emerge organically. He said that a well-resourced messaging apparatus was already positioned to convert the measles announcement into a national narrative.
Six days before Pennsylvania’s announcement, Protect Our Care — a Democratic Party health advocacy group staffed by former Democratic National Committee members, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services counselors and others — and 314 Action released results of polling designed to test vaccine-related messages for their power to damage Republicans electorally.
According to Ji, participants were presented with claims about measles returning, the Trump administration disregarding scientific evidence and Republicans weakening childhood vaccine recommendations.
The poll showed that 50%-54% of respondents said the messages lowered their opinion of GOP members of Congress.
Protect Our Care concluded that “vaccines are on the ballot” and that vaccine policy was the GOP’s greatest midterm weakness. In an Aug. 20 newsletter, the organization wrote: “needlessly putting kids in the hospital or morgue is a political loser.”
Ji reported that when Pennsylvania announced the deaths on Aug. 25, Protect Our Care immediately stated that Trump and Kennedy had fueled the crisis, “resulting in” the deaths. President Brad Woodhouse said, “Trump and RFK Jr. have blood on their hands … Mr. Kennedy, fucking resign already.”
Protect Our Care is not a charity; it is a lobbying group. Ji said that Shapiro’s office has worked closely with Protect Our Care since 2020, and noted the group’s own website describes its work as using a “campaign mentality” and running “tightly orchestrated, narrative-shaping initiatives.”
Ji was careful to frame this as raising questions rather than proving coordination. The timeline shows that the messaging infrastructure existed and was quickly activated, not that its timing or content were coordinated in advance with the state’s announcement, Ji said.
The information together — the coroner’s dispute over cause of death, the unmentioned funding to vaccine manufacturers, the regulation expanding the department’s own authority, and a political messaging operation that moved within hours — raises concerns about the deaths and Pennsylvania’s response.
Legendary Journalist Seymour Hersh just published another major story on his Substack quoting sources who alleged the possibility that the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was an asset of the Israeli Mossad, as well as the U.S. F.B.I., potentially for blackmail operations.
According to Hersh, “I have been told that specific evidence about Epstein’s connections to foreign and domestic intelligence services, particularly Mossad and the FBI, though they do exist in government files, have yet to be the subject of materials made public by the Trump administration’s Justice Department and have not come under scrutiny by Congress and the media.”
One “well-informed international source I’ve known for a long time” told Hersh that “if all the details were to come out about Epstein and Israel it could cause problems for the past and present members of some in the Trump administration, as well as for senior officials in prior Democratic administrations”.
According to the source, in the 1980s, a Mossad agent was sent “to fly to New York City, buy off-the-shelf listening devices and cameras and covertly install them in a room of Epstein’s apartment in New York City.”
He reportedly “was explicitly told to purchase off-the-shelf camera equipment in New York for the risky mission, but, as he sadly related to his friends, he didn’t follow those instructions and instead relied on the high-end equipment on which he had trained for Mossad.”
The Mossad agent reportedly said, “that his operation had been compromised and the FBI caught him and immediately realized—given his nationality and the use of expensive Israeli gear—that Israel was aware of Epstein’s client list and its obvious blackmail and extortion potential in the world of international trade and intelligence collection”.
Hersh’s source raised the possibility that following the FBI uncovering the Israeli plot, Epstein “provided the FBI with any of the tape recordings or videos” and may have even gone “further, and supplied both Israel and the FBI with films and recordings”.
Hersh reported that “Epstein’s ties as an ongoing asset to the FBI kept him out of trouble and also left a large and politically devastating collection of recordings and films that have yet to be discussed publicly or even acknowledged by the Justice Department or the FBI, as well as by the Trump White House” though he added the caveat that “no one I spoke to for this report mentioned any specific information linking Trump to the Epstein whorehouse”.
One senior U.S. official told Hersh that, “there was yet to be a serious nonpartisan investigation of the role of some senior members of the FBI who knew of and abetted Epstein’s collection of compromising videos.”
Hersh’s source’s allegation of the Mossad using Jeffrey Epstein for blackmail purposes has long been echoed by the former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe who has argued that “Epstein was recruited by (Ghislaine and Robert) Maxwell and then by Ehud Barak who was director of military intelligence at the time then Prime Minister … and then they started work compromising people … and my understanding is they compromised quite a number of American politicians and other politicians as well”.
Giving a specific example, Ari Ben Menashe alleges that the Mossad used compromising material on then-President Bill Clinton obtained from Jeffrey Epstein to sabotage a U.S. deal with Iran.
Within the Epstein files, a confidential human source of the FBI, Charles Johnson, who worked for Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s attorney, alleges that he “shared phone calls between Dershowitz and Epstein during which he/she took notes. After these calls, Mossad would then call Dershowitz to debrief. Epstein was close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak and trained as a spy under him.”
The possibilities become even broader after the allegations from Seymour Hersh’s sources.
They raise the possibility that not only was Epstein recruited by Mossad, but the FBI learned of its plot to use compromising material on powerful figures and joined the Mossad in the blackmail operations, instead of stopping it.
Saudi Arabia has reiterated that it will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without the creation of an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, amid reports that US President Donald Trump is seeking to link a civil nuclear agreement with Riyadh to Saudi normalisation with Israel.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Trump has referred the US-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement to Congress for review but has stipulated that it will not take effect unless Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords.
“The president’s position has not changed, and the agreement will not move forward unless Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords,” the newspaper quoted a US administration source as saying.
The reported condition follows the signing of the nuclear agreement last month by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
A Saudi source quoted by Israel’s Channel 12 rejected linking the nuclear agreement to normalisation, saying Riyadh’s position on relations with Israel remained unchanged.
“The Saudi position is clear, firm and unwavering,” the source said. “There will be no diplomatic relations with Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The source maintained that Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear program forms part of its broader strategic partnership with Washington and should not be conditional on establishing relations with Israel.
Things are becoming increasingly clear about the US green light for the Israeli enemy to press ahead with its attacks on southern Lebanon. According to US Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, Washington has not, so far, reached an agreement with Tel Aviv to halt its assaults.
Even more strikingly, asking ‘Israel’ to stop attacking southern Lebanon apparently amounts to asking it to “do everything,” according to Issa, himself of Lebanese origin, whose broken Arabic carries a distinctly Lebanese accent.
The remarks by Issa were made Wednesday, after a meeting with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel Latif Derian.
“So far, we haven’t agreed with them (Israelis) to halt attacks (on southern Lebanon),” Issa told reporters.
The US ambassador, meanwhile, made it clear that Washington is instead pressing disarmament of Hezbollah Lebanese resistance group as the condition for ‘Israel’ to fulfill its own obligations under the ceasefire that was lately reached in June.
“There is no agreement to end the Israeli aggression because Hezbollah has not handed over its weapons,” Issa added.
Hezbollah “does not want to do anything, so why ask Israel to do everything?”
He claimed, however, that Washington remained open to talks with Hezbollah “if they have something to offer us”, but dismissed what he described as unproductive contacts, saying negotiations could not amount to “visits and coffee”.
Asked whether Washington was effectively making Hezbollah’s disarmament a precondition for ‘Israel’ to halt its attacks and withdraw, Issa simply framed the issue as a question of “who should act first.”
“If two people are in dispute, one of them asks the other to start implementing what is required of him so that he, in turn, implements what he is required to do,” he said.
The problem with the analogy, however, is that one of the two parties, which is Hezbollah, has already stopped attacking northern occupied Palestine, while the other, which is the Israeli enemy, goes ahead with daily airstrikes, artillery shelling, assassinations, demolitions and systematic destruction across southern Lebanon.
But apparently, asking ‘Israel’ to stop such aggression is asking it to do “everything.”
Iran will respond swiftly and decisively to any US attempt to revive a mechanism known as “prize courts” to detain oil tankers and seize Iranian oil shipments, a senior Iranian security official stated on Thursday.
According to Nournews, the official said that if Washington uses the mechanism to detain Iranian oil tankers and confiscate their cargoes, the Islamic Republic of Iran would take “serious and swift measures” to impose reciprocal costs on US interests in the Gulf.
“If America is going to detain Iranian oil at sea and then confiscate it under the title of war prize, it must also be prepared to expose American interests to corresponding retaliatory measures,” the official warned.
The official said US interests in shipping, energy, insurance, finance, and Gulf-related infrastructure would not be insulated from the consequences of such action.
He added that companies and institutions involved in owning, financing, insuring, or operating US interests in the region have been identified and are being monitored.
Iran warns against escalation in Gulf
The official further stressed that Iran does not seek to harm regional trade or disrupt the activities of neutral states, but cautioned that this should not be mistaken for an inability to respond.
“If the Americans believe they can take advantage of the complexities of the maritime navigation network and intermediary companies to avoid bearing the consequences of their actions at the hands of Iran, they are mistaken in this belief,” the official said.
“Beginning the organized detention and confiscation of Iranian oil will mean the beginning of a two-way process,” the official said, warning that “America cannot grant itself the right to confiscate while simultaneously expecting its interests in the Gulf to remain immune from any reciprocal response.”
The official stressed that the final decision on the nature and scale of any Iranian response would depend on the conduct of the other side. However, he warned that if Washington escalates its economic and maritime confrontation with Tehran, Iran also possesses the means to increase the cost of such a policy.
US reportedly weighs revival of ‘prize courts’
The warning follows reports by US media on Wednesday evening that the US Department of Justice is working to revive “prize courts,” an old mechanism that could allow Iranian oil tankers to be detained and their oil and other confiscated cargoes converted into US-owned assets.
According to Nournews, the seized cargoes could subsequently be sold, with the proceeds transferred to the US Treasury.
The US Justice Department is preparing to revive long-dormant maritime “prize courts” to speed up the military capture of Iranian oil tankers and cargo as US property, Bloomberg reported.
The plan would allow the US to seize oil and other cargo from enemy or even neutral vessels, sell it, and transfer the proceeds to the US Treasury.
Aaron Reitz, a US attorney involved in the initiative, confirmed that the Justice Department is “now reviving” what he called an “ancient body of maritime law.”
The move is expected to face legal challenges, as prize courts have gone largely unused since the Spanish-American War of 1898 and have been dormant since World War II.
The plan comes as US forces have already illegally intercepted and seized multiple Iranian-owned or Iran-linked ships since imposing an unlawful blockade in April.
The US lectures the world about “freedom of navigation” — then digs up antique courts to “legalize” piracy against whoever it decides to bully next.
17 days later national headlines now report of two measles-associated deaths whose status is current unresolved with several clear anomalies that has the public, politicians and Kennedy himself asking serious questions about their validity.
Regulation 10-242, filed with the Independent Regulatory Review Commission as IRRC No. 3490, runs hundreds of pages and would remake 28 Pa. Code Chapter 27 — the same chapter that governed isolation, reporting, and outbreak control long before Covid. Public comment closes September 21. Shapiro’s gubernatorial election vote happens on November 3 the stakes are high.
The political context is harder to ignore.
The rule update would erode parent consent in a child’s health care, create a mandatory vaccine tracking database, and give the Department of Health access to children’s medical records without parental consent.
Specifically regarding measles, the newly proposed rule would create a category called § 27.160 isolation plus outbreak quarantine of “presumed susceptibles.”
The rule would pair isolation with outbreak quarantine of those presumed ‘susceptibles’ and keep them out of a setting until they prove they are not susceptible, take a measles vaccine, or no cases occur there for 21 days.
In an outbreak concentrated in communities with religious or philosophical exemptions, that is not a technical tweak. It is a lever.
The proposed rule would do far more than update a measles protocol. Under the draft, the department or a local health authority “may enter an apartment, building, health care facility, school, college or university, or other location” during an investigation if the official shows agency credentials. No warrant is required. People may not “interfere.” In schools, officials would get “reasonable and timely access” to students for contact tracing or partner services and could “meet and speak with a student or other person in private.” The text does not require parental notice, parental presence, or parental consent before that interview.
Reportable diseases, infections, and conditions would expand from about 52 to 125, including COVID-19 and an open-ended “emerging disease or condition”
House Republican Leader Jesse Topper called the package “oppressive COVID-era policies” and demanded it be withdrawn.
“Submitting these regulations seems to be devoid of any understanding of our recent history of dangerous government overreach…”
Shapiro’s office and the legacy media have treated the outbreak and, still unconfirmed, measles deaths as proof of leadership and treated Kennedy as the face of “anti-science.”
The regulation tells a different story. It is a bid to restore, by rule-making, authorization the failed pandemic response taught many Pennsylvanians to fear and reject. While a contested measles emergency still dominates the news the rule’s public comment file is open. The election is not far behind.
The US has accused Chinese hackers it described as “state-backed” of breaking into NASA, the Federal Reserve and other sensitive government networks, just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump.
Beijing rejected the allegations, with the Chinese Embassy in Washington saying China “opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks” and urging the US to “stop using cybersecurity issues to smear or discredit China.”
The Justice Department and FBI announced on Wednesday that they had seized three internet domains linked to two hacking platforms allegedly operated by a Chinese group known as QTFY. US authorities claimed the operation targeted NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Senate and several government departments, as well as hospitals, telecommunications providers, power companies, financial institutions and defense contractors.
Washington described the campaign as Chinese state-sponsored activity and alleged that the company behind it provided hacking services to China’s Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army. However, officials did not disclose what sensitive information was allegedly stolen or what damage, if any, was caused.
The latest accusations come little more than a month after Trump similarly accused Beijing of meddling in US elections, claiming China had illicitly acquired some 220 million American voter files during the 2020 election cycle in what he called the “largest compromise” of election data in US history.
China dismissed that allegation as “groundless” and “entirely fabricated.” Trump’s assertions of election “hacking” were met with skepticism even among some of his supporters, as the documents released by the White House only showed Chinese interest in collecting publicly available or commercially obtainable American voter information.
Trump himself openly acknowledged after meeting Xi in Beijing in May that Washington conducts extensive espionage against China.
“We spy like hell on them too,” Trump told reporters. “We do a lot of stuff to you that you don’t know about,” Trump claimed he had told Xi, describing the two countries’ espionage activities as a “double-edged sword.”
Beijing has made similar accusations against Washington, claiming last October that the NSA had conducted a years-long cyberattack on China’s National Time Service Center, which supports critical sectors including finance, energy, transport and defense. The NSA did not confirm or deny the allegation.
The renewed cyber accusations come ahead of Xi’s expected visit to the US on September 24. Trump has said he plans to host the Chinese leader following their May talks in Beijing, as the two sides seek to manage disputes over trade, technology and cybersecurity, as well as Washington’s sanctions threats against nations that continue trading with Iran.
China strongly deplores and firmly opposes the US once again smearing it under the pretext of cybersecurity, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular press conference on Thursday.
Lin made the remarks when asked about the US Department of Justice’s announcement on Wednesday that it had carried out court-authorized seizures of domains used by two hacking platforms which Washington claimed were operated and used by “China state-sponsored hackers to target US critical infrastructure and other sensitive networks.”
“We have noted relevant reports. China firmly opposes and combats hacking activities in accordance with the law. At the same time, China firmly opposes the dissemination of disinformation for political purposes,” Lin said. “The so-called US statement lacks factual evidence and turns facts on their head. China strongly deplores and firmly opposes the US once again smearing China under the pretext of cybersecurity.”
“The US is widely recognized as the world’s biggest hacking and surveillance empire, with an appalling record backed by irrefutable evidence,” Lin said, noting that China has serious concerns about US cyber activities.
Previously disclosed cases, including the US National Security Agency’s cyberattacks and infiltration targeting China’s National Time Service Center, exposed the dangerous activities of the US government in attacking China’s critical infrastructure and conducting cyber pre-positioning for large-scale sabotage in the future. However, the US has not responded to any of these cases, Lin said.
As major cyber powers, China and the US should take the lead in upholding and observing international rules in cyberspace and jointly build a peaceful, stable and mutually respectful China-US relationship in cyberspace, Lin said.
“We urge the US to abandon double standards and political manipulation, and work with China in a responsible and constructive manner to properly address cybersecurity risks through dialogue and consultation on an equal footing,” he said.
In Lancaster, PA, an unresolved medical announcement entered a political machinery that had already tested the fear, selected the target, and prepared the response.
On August 25, Pennsylvania announced that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents had suffered “measles-associated deaths”—the first such deaths reported by the Commonwealth in 35 years.
By the end of the day, the announcement was no longer merely a public-health report. It had become an indictment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump, and the Make America Healthy Again movement.
But the most revealing fact is not simply how quickly the deaths were politicized.
It is that the political message had already been built.
The Message Was Tested First
Six days before Pennsylvania announced the deaths, Protect Our Care and 314 Action released a national poll commissioned to determine which vaccine messages made voters view Republicans less favorably.
The poll did not merely measure public opinion about vaccination. It explicitly measured electoral damage.
Respondents were presented with claims about measles returning, the Trump administration disregarding scientific evidence, and Republicans weakening childhood vaccine recommendations. Between 50 and 54 percent said the messages made them view Republicans in Congress less favorably.
The organizations’ conclusion was unmistakable:
“Vaccines are on the ballot.”
Protect Our Care called vaccine policy the Republican Party’s “greatest existential and political liability in the midterms.”
The following day—five days before the Lancaster announcement—Protect Our Care published an even more revealing formulation:
“Needlessly putting kids in the hospital or morgue is a political loser.”
The emotional frame was already loaded: endangered children, preventable hospitalization, death, and Republican culpability.
Then came August 25.
Pennsylvania announced two “measles-associated deaths.” That same day, Protect Our Care declared that Trump and Kennedy had fueled the measles crisis “resulting in” those deaths and circulated a national package of headlines assigning political blame.
The event had arrived. The narrative was ready.
This Was Not a Public-Health Agency
Protect Our Care is not a government health authority or an independent medical organization.
It is a 501(c)(4) advocacy group that says it uses a “campaign mentality” to influence policy, support political “health care champions,” shape media narratives, and hold elected officials accountable. Its own website says it commissions polling and operates “tightly orchestrated, narrative-shaping initiatives” whose messages are distributed to lawmakers, the media, partners, and allies.
In December 2025, the organization expanded a project called Public Health Watch to oppose Trump and Kennedy “in real time.”
It staffed the project with veterans of national elections, progressive political campaigns, rapid response, and “war rooms.” Its stated methods included strategic messaging, storytelling, pressure campaigns, and constructing a “compelling narrative” for public officials, communicators, influencers, and the broader public.
That is not a conspiracy theory.
It is the organization’s own description of its operation.
Pennsylvania Had Built Its Own Communications Architecture
A parallel structure was already operating inside Pennsylvania.
In October 2025, Governor Josh Shapiro created a Vaccine Education Advisory Workgroup and directed state agencies to align vaccine communications, promote vaccine uptake, counter what the administration considered misinformation, and establish a centralized state vaccine portal.
At its first meeting in December, the workgroup discussed information “tailored to different demographics,” responses to “harmful, inaccurate, and misguided” vaccine claims, and engagement in areas with historically lower vaccination rates.
By April 2026, Pennsylvania said the group was guiding “tailored outreach to populations at higher risk for diseases like measles and hepatitis B.”
Whatever one thinks of the underlying policy, the architecture is clear:
identify resistant populations;
tailor the message by demographic;
centralize official communications;
counter disfavored narratives;
and increase behavioral uptake.
By the time Lancaster became the center of the measles story, the communications infrastructure was already in place.
What Remains Medically Unresolved
The political certainty surrounding the deaths has moved considerably faster than the public medical evidence.
Pennsylvania later clarified that it uses the term “measles-associated” when laboratory or epidemiological evidence of measles is present—even when measles is not assessed by the medical certifier or coroner as the immediate cause of death.
One of the deceased has been reported to be an infant whose death remains under review by the Lancaster County coroner. The coroner was not investigating the second death. A county commissioner said the coroner had reported no death certified as caused by measles and described the infant as having died with measles while apparently dying from another cause.
Pennsylvania has not publicly released:
the second person’s age;
the clinical course of either patient;
relevant underlying conditions;
the immediate or underlying causes of death;
the exact diagnostic basis used in each attribution;
or the laboratory and sequencing data.
Genotyping is not required under CDC criteria to confirm a measles case; PCR, serology, viral isolation, or direct epidemiological linkage may qualify. But the state has not disclosed which evidence supported either death classification.
The public therefore cannot presently determine the precise causal role measles played in either death.
Yet the political narrative had already advanced from:
“measles-associated”
to:
“died of measles”
to:
“Trump and Kennedy caused their deaths.”
Political attribution outran medical disclosure.
What the Documents Establish
The public record now establishes that:
a political advocacy organization built a rapid-response “war room” against Trump and Kennedy;
vaccine messages were tested specifically for their power to damage Republicans;
“hospital or morgue” imagery was deployed before the deaths were announced;
Pennsylvania had established a demographic-targeting vaccine communications apparatus;
and the Lancaster announcement was immediately incorporated into a preexisting midterm narrative.
That is an overt influence operation in the ordinary meaning of the term: an organized effort to shape public perception and behavior toward a political outcome. Sadly, it is not a novel phenomenon. I’ve documented influence operations targeting Secretary Kennedy and the MAHA grassroots movement previously on this Substack:
The remaining question is whether the actors merely converged on the same opportunity—or coordinated its timing, framing, and amplification.
The answer requires records, not rhetoric: the complete cause-of-death findings, diagnostic documentation, the timeline on which the August 25 event and talking points were prepared, and communications among the Governor’s Office, Pennsylvania Department of Health, political organizations, and outside advocacy groups.
Lancaster deserves public health.
It also deserves public proof.
Because when a government announcement is converted into electoral blame before the underlying evidence is released, transparency is no longer optional. It is the only meaningful defense against propaganda scripted ahead of certainty.
To follow this real-time unfolding story, see my reporting on X.
Norman Finkelstein’s new book debunks Zionist tall tales
By Kevin Barrett – September 13, 2026
Last May, an Israeli commission published a report alleging an organized campaign of rape and sexual abuse by Hamas during its October 7, 2023 concentration camp breakout. The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, chaired by Cochav Elkayam-Levy, titled its report “Silenced No More.”
October 7 rape claims, like similar accounts of babies beheaded and roasted in ovens, have long been greeted with skepticism in nations whose media and politicians are not owned and operated by Zionists. Perhaps for that reason, the Israelis felt the need to “document” their rape stories in the Elkayam-Levy report.
But in publishing their “rape” report, the Israelis inadvertently exposed the mendacity of their own assertions. The Commission included many “rape survivor” testimonies that read uncannily like the breathless stories of alleged Holocaust survivors who claim they were raised by wolves, or who, like Anthony Blinken’s stepfather Samuel Pisar, claim to have sneakily walked backward toward the door of the gas chamber and then snuck out right before it was closed and the gas was turned on.
The “Hamas rape” stories are exaggeratedly lurid and full of outrageously improbable or impossible details. But the real problem is that all Hamas fighters wore bodycams recording everything they did—and roughly half of the 3,000 or so who entered Israel were killed, and in most cases their body cams were recovered by Israeli authorities. The Ekayam-Levy Commission says it had access to 10,000 pictures and videos from those bodycams as well as others from Israelis filming with phones. And then there are the Israeli surveillance cameras. If, as the Commission alleges, Hamas pursued a deliberate policy of terrorizing Israelis with widespread sexual violence, obviously there should be, at minimum, hundreds of images and videos documenting these heinous acts.
But there are none. Zero. As Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein shows in his new book GAZA’S GRAVEDIGGERS: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places… continue
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