The Measles Message Was Ready Before the Deaths Were Announced
How an unresolved medical announcement became an election-year weapon before the evidence was public
By Sayer Ji | August 26, 2026
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:
- Sept 14th, 2025, THE COUP: How Big Pharma’s $2 Million War Chest Bought This Wednesday’s Senate Hearing
- Sept 21st, Hybrid Warfare on Home Soil: The Unprecedented Campaign to Remove RFK Jr. & Your Role in Defending Him,
- October 26th, False Uprising: The Coordinated Effort to Unseat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Escalates in DC
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.
Former CDC Scientist Whose Studies Were Used to ‘Debunk’ Vaccine-Autism Link Will Plead Guilty
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 24, 2026
A former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist who played a crucial role in research rebutting any link between vaccines and autism is expected to plead guilty next week to wire fraud and money laundering.
Poul Thorsen, 65, is finalizing a plea deal with prosecutors relating to charges stemming from a 2011 federal indictment, Nathan Kitchens, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, told The Defender.
Thorsen, who began working for the CDC in the late 1990s, faces two counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering related to over $1 million in CDC grant money. The funds were earmarked for autism and public health research, but Thorsen allegedly used them to buy a home, two cars and a motorcycle.
Kitchens declined to comment on whether Thorsen will plead guilty to all or some of the charges.
Thorsen has been held in federal custody without bail since his extradition from Germany to the U.S. in May. The case is being heard at a federal court in Georgia, where the CDC is headquartered.
Researcher James Grundvig, the parent of a child with autism who was vaccine-injured, called the expected guilty plea “a very big deal.”
Grundvig, who wrote “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC,” which focused on the Thorsen case, praised U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for extraditing Thorsen “in record speed.”
He said Thorsen likely understands that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have “all the goods” to prosecute him.
“I guess Thorsen’s realizing, since he’s in American jail already and has no chance for bail, he might as well make a plea deal,” Grundvig said.
Dr. Dave Weldon, a physician and Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1994 and 2009 — and who President Donald Trump nominated to lead the CDC in late 2024 before retracting his nomination in March 2025 — welcomed the plea agreement but said it isn’t enough.
“It would be a miscarriage of justice if a plea deal failed to include a thorough investigation of allegations of scientific fraud,” Weldon said.
Danish independent vaccine safety researcher Vibeke Manniche, M.D., Ph.D., said some of the federal funds Thorsen is said to have misused may have been intended for vaccine-autism studies. Manniche said the guilty plea calls Thorsen’s research into question.
“An obvious question is whether he also has been cheating with data to achieve the results he sought,” Manniche said. “That we don’t know. A good rule in gold-standard science is replication, and it would be wise, for so many reasons, to replicate his work,” independently of the institutions Thorsen had been affiliated with.
Grundvig noted that the Thorsen indictment included unnamed co-conspirators, suggesting that the investigation may implicate more people — and also the controversial autism research that Thorsen helped publish in 2002 and 2003 that was cited as proof of no link between vaccines and autism.
“I think that’s going to be the second part of the story,” Grundvig said. “It could be an avalanche of bad news for both pharma and the CDC.”
Thorsen studies cited in dismissing over 5,000 vaccine injury claims
Despite questions around how those studies were conducted, the Madsen-Thorsen papers were used in 2011 to dismiss over 5,000 claims filed by the parents of autistic, vaccine-injured children. The claims were part of the Omnibus Autism Proceeding pending before the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
In “Master Manipulator,” Grundvig — whose son’s case was one of the claims dismissed as a result of Thorsen’s research — described Thorsen as “a world-class villain whose manipulation of health data gave CDC and big pharma what they wanted: a report clearing thimerosal of any possible role in the autism crisis.”
According to Weldon:
“The real crime is not absconding with research dollars, but unresolved allegations around his research which served as the basis for the CDC and the U.S. government dismissing vaccine injury claims by thousands of injured children. These actions set back vaccine safety research by more than two decades.”
Grundvig suggested the Thorsen investigation and his guilty plea may call into question the dismissal of the omnibus cases, as it would “then make all of those vaccine omnibus proceedings completely fraudulent because it was based on a fraud, and that should reopen the cases.”
Hooker, whose omnibus claim for his son was also dismissed, said Thorsen likely didn’t act alone in misusing federal money or misrepresenting vaccine-autism research — and that the role of some of his key collaborators should be examined.
“There should be a separate investigation against Dr. Diana Schendel, who was Thorsen’s direct grant supervisor and lover and approved all of his invoices for expenditures from his CDC grant money. Dr. Schendel undoubtedly knew of Thorsen’s activities but did not report them to the authorities and could have spent some of the stolen grant money as well,” Hooker said.
Schendel maintained an inappropriate romantic relationship with Thorsen and later accepted a position at Denmark’s Aarhus University to lead autism research there. She remains employed at Aarhus University — and at Drexel University — today.
Thorsen continued to live in Denmark for years after the 2011 U.S. indictment. He worked there as a gynecologist despite an extradition treaty between the two countries and an INTERPOL warrant for his arrest.
Hooker added:
“Other co-conspirators who knew of the inappropriate relationship between Thorsen and Schendel over the seven-year grant history at CDC include Coleen Boyle, Ph.D., former director of the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities), and Dr. Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsop, former branch chief of the Developmental Disabilities Branch at the CDC.
“These individuals at a minimum should be brought in for questioning. Both have also been implicated in the MMR-autism fraud from the DeStefano et al. 2004 paper, where data showing a strong relationship between MMR timing and autism in Black boys was illegally destroyed.”
Thorsen’s vaccine-autism studies full of ‘irregularities’
When he first joined the CDC as a visiting scientist, Thorsen’s research focused on birth defects and developmental disabilities.
However, by the early 2000s, Thorsen shifted his focus to autism research. His work in this area left a strong imprint, fueling future narratives that autism isn’t linked to vaccines.
According to a 2017 report by the World Mercury Project — predecessor to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — Thorsen’s influence on U.S. vaccine projects and policies “is extensive” because his studies were used to dismiss a possible link between vaccines and autism.
One of the most influential studies became known as the “Madsen study,” a population-based study of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.
Published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine and co-authored by Thorsen, the Madsen study concluded that there is “strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.”
However, according to the 2017 World Mercury Project report, the Madsen study was “flawed” from the outset because the researchers reviewed clinical records of only 40 of the 316 children who had autism in the study’s cohort.
A peer-reviewed analysis published last year cast further doubt on the study’s conclusions.
In 2003, Madsen and Thorsen co-authored another influential study, published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study did “not support a correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines and the incidence of autism.”
Thimerosal is a mercury-based adjuvant used in some vaccines, which some scientists and advocates for people with autism have suggested may trigger autism.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, said there are “numerous data irregularities” in the Thorsen studies.
In their critique of the 2002 paper, Hooker and Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, found significant errors in the paper. They concluded the study’s unadjusted results “do not support rejecting the causal link” between the MMR vaccine and autism.
In a critique of the 2003 Madsen-Thorsen study, Hooker and researcher Jeffrey Allen Trelka concluded that the study’s findings “may have been skewed by participant selection and changes in diagnostic groupings.”
Other critiques of the 2002 and 2003 studies raised concerns about ethical considerations. Both studies relied on Danish population data. According to the 2017 World Mercury Project report, the studies bypassed ethical reviews required for this category of research, as required by federal law.
When the CDC discovered Thorsen hadn’t obtained the required ethics approvals, the agency didn’t report the errors, and the studies weren’t retracted. Instead, CDC officials engaged in a cover-up, the 2017 report states.
“Given these irregularities, Thorsen should also be under investigation for data fraud as he clearly withheld data and could have altered data” from Danish official sources, Hooker told The Defender.
Manniche said that if it is proven Thorsen tampered with the data in his studies, it would be a “terrible tragedy,” because “parents were told that the MMR vaccine was safe and sound and that it couldn’t harm the child.”
As of July 31, there were 1,931 reports claiming onset of autism or autism spectrum disorder following MMR vaccination contained within the federally run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Will Thorsen sing?
Grundvig suggested that, as part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Thorsen may have an incentive to provide testimony or information targeting other CDC figures.
“Thorsen’s 65 years old, born in 1961 … does he want to die in an American jail?” Grundvig asked. “I don’t think so. So, I think he wants to make, and will make, a plea deal. The only way he’s going to make a plea deal is with someone like Kennedy and maybe others in the Department of Justice that look at a bigger case,” Grundvig said.
Grundvig suggested this “bigger case” may involve the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO Act.
“There’s a bigger fraud involved than just stealing money, and I think it goes back to the vaccines, it goes back to the studies that the CDC cooked up,” potentially implicating Schendel and Madsen.
“Will he be used as a star witness against the CDC old guard and all of the shenanigans that went on massaging of science, of science papers, influence on Pediatrics and other journals, in order to get all of this done back in the early 2000s in order to exonerate vaccines and erase the autism signal?” Grundvig asked.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Newsom Signs Content Takedown Law Following Nick Shirley Investigations
The precedent is that a legislature can keep inventing new categories of people entitled to content removals
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 24, 2026
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that critics say is designed to silence citizen journalists like Nick Shirley and let taxpayer-funded organizations, some of them suspected of fraud, remove documentation of their activities from the internet.
The law, which was signed on Saturday and goes into effect on October 1, 2027, is officially there to protect the privacy of employees and volunteers working in organizations serving immigrants, but the way it does it is by giving them the power to demand that their images and personal information be deleted from the internet, based on a claim of “reasonable fear.”
No police report or court approval is needed for this, only the claim. There is no exemption for journalists or journalism.
The bill, which was authored by Democrat Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, was dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” by those opposing it, as it is seen as a direct attack on his work.
Shirley has been investigating and documenting alleged fraud in programs meant to help immigrants, and has had millions of views on X for his videos, including one showing empty buildings in Minnesota registered as daycares that he said were used to defraud the system of $110 million.
The new law in California will apply to all organizations providing legal representation, advocacy, case management, humanitarian relief, translation, counseling, and healthcare to immigrants. It also sets up an address confidentiality program, modeled on California’s Safe at Home program.
Those who don’t comply with the demands for content removal can be fined $10,000 and also face civil and criminal liability and imprisonment.
Shirley responded to the signing of the bill into law by saying that it was created only after he exposed fraud in immigrant communities, and accused Newsom and California politicians of showing their true face as “corrupt politicians” who, “when the fraud is exposed, create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.”
He also said that the law makes “immigration support service providers” a protected class in California, and noted that thanks to this, if he films a hospice “with no patients that are receiving millions through Medicaid,” the owner can prevent him from publishing the footage, and if he does anyway, he could get a huge fine.
Questions About The Shady Anti-Iran Letter Appearing In The Guardian
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 23, 2026
As the U.S. and Israel continue to wage war on Iran, the Guardian published an open letter signed by a number of academics- mostly U.S. and UK-based- condemning Iran’s internal policies.
The letter accused Iran of engaging in “deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain” called to “reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism” and even called on anti-imperialists in the West to focus their energy on critiquing Iran’s internal issues as Western governments wage war on Iran, writing, “We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.”
Iran, like most countries, no doubt has internal issues that need to be solved, but asking Western academics to focus on those issues as the West wages a brutal war on Iranian civilization at the behest of Israel seems badly timed, to put it mildly.
Furthermore, the letter made no mention of the open meddling that Israel and the United States has done in Iran’s internal politics and disputes, including the U.S. sanctions on Iran designed to make Iran’s “economy collapse” which is why “the people took to the streets” in January, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent boasted.
The letter did not mention the fact that Israeli media has boasted that the Mosssad was “arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed” and that Israel “set up its own poison machine” in Iran to infiltrate the protests, nor did it mention the fact that Trump boasted that “The United States sent guns to the Iranian protestors … we sent them a lot of guns, we sent them through the Kurds and … the Kurds kept them, ‘we sent guns to the protests, a lot of them”.
The intentions behind the letter seem more suspicious given that it was published in the Guardian, a pro-war propaganda outlet which has manufactured consent for the war on Iran from day one.
The Guardian’s “rights and freedom” section, sponsored by the CIA-linked billionaire Pierre Omidyar, published endless atrocity propaganda claims in the lead-up to the Iran war, including the widely debunked claim that Iran killed tens of thousands of peaceful protestors in a matter of days in January.
More recently, the Guardian ran a smear piece on the journalist Bushra Shaikh for her reporting on the U.S. Israeli war on Iran on the ground, including by linking to a petition set up by pro-war Zionists calling for the British security state to investigate Shaikh for her reporting.
What makes the letter in the Guardian even more questionable is the fact that it appears that many of the signatories were tricked into signing it.
The historian Robin D. G. Kelley, whose name originally appeared on the letter, took his name off, saying that “the circumstances in which we were asked to sign the letter were a bit shady” and that “what appeared in print wasn’t exactly what I had initially seen”, implying that the letter was changed after getting signatures.
Even more shady is the fact that the authors of the letter appear to have fabricated the signature of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Journalist Vijay Prashad obtained a message written from prison on a paper plate where Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, “Iran is showing the world (especially the 3rd world) how to fight against the Empire. Their drones are rewriting the rules of war. And countries across the Global South are studying this phase of the war for that use! They remind me of Vietnam, a poor country that whipped the most powerful army on earth… That’s where we are today”.
Given that this is his actual view, it makes it highly unlikely that Abu-Jamal would sign a letter which accuses Iran of “hollow anti-imperialism”.
Who is behind this shady letter is yet to be seen, but it certainly has many hallmarks of a pro-war psy-op.
FDA Acting Commissioner Woodcock Admits Adverse Events After COVID-19 Vaccination
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | August 21, 2026
This one email from FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock in May 2021 epitomizes everything wrong with our government’s treatment of vaccines and the vaccine injured.
Woodcock emails Fauci and Collins (head of NIH) to inform them that “a number of people” including healthcare workers she personally knows contacted her about injuries from every one of the available Covid-19 vaccines. She admits that:
(1) these injuries would not be picked up by FDA or CDC surveillance systems;
(2) there is no money set aside to study these harms (while billions are given to pharma companies for vaccines);
(3) no one will take these injured people seriously;
(4) no one knows how to treat them;
(5) there is no effort to study this serious issue; and
(6) “the industry” will not support the necessary studies.
I also agree with her sentiment that, “if you let a problem fester, then it will come back to bite you later…” Later is here.
Beware of Yoram Hazony’s Attempts to Subvert Nationalism
Kosher nationalist movements are merely stalking horses for Zionist geopolitical endeavors
José Niño Unfiltered | August 22, 2026
As the historic American population begins to awaken to its own dispossession, the establishment has deployed a new strategy of promoting “kosher nationalism.” By co-opting the language of sovereignty and tradition, these figures infiltrate the populist ranks to ensure that dissent remains impotent, performative, and above all else, harmless to the interests of the Jewish networks that have long dictated the terms of our political discourse since the end of World War II.
The most devious operator in this theater of managed opposition is Yoram Hazony, a man who has masterfully curated the boundaries of acceptable nationalism by purging anyone who dares to prioritize the actual survival of the American people over his own ethnic interests. Sitting across from Tucker Carlson in January 2026, Peter Brimelow—the British-born founder of VDARE, the immigration restriction website that New York State authorities forced into closure in 2024 through a prolonged legal campaign—recounted how Hazony had barred him from the National Conservatism conference. “He disinvited us from his National Conservative Conference because he was trying to gatekeep,” Brimelow told Carlson, adding that the two men then traded “a series of bitter exchanges in VDARE.com.”
The original 2019 exclusion was not an isolated act. When the first NatCon conference was held in Washington in July 2019, BuzzFeed News reported that Brimelow, American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor, and Identity Evropa leader Patrick Casey had all applied and been rejected, with Hazony addressing White nationalism directly in his opening remarks. Brimelow and Hazony subsequently exchanged pointed public criticism, with Brimelow characterizing the NatCon operation as an “extreme Zionist Gatekeepers Ball.”
John Derbyshire made a similar point back in 2019, identifying Hazony as the “sparring partner” of VDARE editor Peter Brimelow, a label that stuck because the friction between the two camps was never really about tone or manners. It was ultimately about substance. Brimelow’s entire project has centered on restricting immigration and restoring America’s White demographic core, a position that a genuine nationalist movement would be expected to enthusiastically champion. Hazony rejected him anyway, and that rejection is the thread that unravels the whole National Conservatism project once you pull on it.
To understand how a movement ostensibly built on the premise of “National Conservatism” became a vehicle for such systematic exclusion, one must look past the slogans and examine the architect of the project, whose entire career has been a singular exercise in advancing Zionist interests under the guise of American political theory.
Yoram Hazony was born in Rehovot in 1964 and raised in Princeton after his father, a former Princeton engineering professor, brought the family to New Jersey. He earned a BA in East Asian studies from Princeton in 1986 and a PhD in political theory from Rutgers, co-founding the conservative magazine The Princeton Tory as an undergraduate in 1984. By his own account, he was left “mesmerized” by an encounter as a Princeton undergraduate with Rabbi Meir Kahane—the Jewish supremacist advocate whose party, Kach, was later banned from Israeli elections for promoting racism against Arabs. After completing his doctorate, rather than pursue an academic career, Hazony joined the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post and wrote speeches for the rising political star Benjamin Netanyahu.
He then co-founded the Shalem Center in Jerusalem in 1994 with funding from Ronald Lauder and Sheldon Adelson, where he served as president and then provost until 2012. He subsequently founded the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, dedicated explicitly to Jewish political thought and Zionist theory, and in 2019 he teamed with David Brog—the former executive director of Christians United for Israel—to launch the Edmund Burke Foundation, which now runs the National Conservatism Conference.
He describes himself as “a Jewish nationalist, a Zionist, all my life.” Observers at Jewish Currents have documented how Hazony helped pioneer an alliance between the Israeli settler movement, the Kahanist camp, and Netanyahu’s Likud party, while championing Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law, which declared Jewish national self-determination as belonging exclusively to Jews within Israel. Every institution he has built traces back to this same Zionist core, which means the American movement he exports is never quite separable from the Jewish interests he was raised to defend.
That biography matters because Hazony has spent a decade dressing a Zionist project in the language of American populism. His book “The Virtue of Nationalism” argues for a world of independent nation states instead of supranational bodies like the European Union or the United Nations. This perhaps stems from a deep-seated Jewish apprehension that institutions such as the EU or the UN could crystallize into centralized, antagonistic entities capable of constraining Jewish geopolitical projects. Consequently, Hazony and his peers advocate for a world of atomized nation-states, viewing a landscape of quarreling, enfeebled powers as the optimal safeguard for their interests. By prioritizing a fractured international system, they ensure a climate of instability that favors the established Jewish influence networks, which have long mastered the technique of dividing populations—big and small—to consolidate their own power.
In a similar token, Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery provides an interesting nationalist dimension to his political agenda. In the book, he portrayed political loyalty as something inherited through family, tribe, and nation rather than chosen through liberal consent, and warned repeatedly against the “consuming fire of cultural revolution” that erodes marriage, borders, and religious tradition. On paper, this reads like a full-throated endorsement of the populism that figures like Pat Buchanan have argued for since the 1990s.
However, this nationalist rhetoric undergoes a convenient transformation when applied to the Jewish state, where the nuanced defense of sovereignty is swiftly supplanted by a rigid, unrelenting hawkishness against the enemies of the Jewish state. In sum, Hazony’s theoretical framework proves to be little more than a vehicle for his true objective: the tireless advancement of Israeli interests under the guise of Western nationalist arguments.
When Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, Hazony appeared on UnHerd alongside John Mearsheimer in a filmed debate hosted by Freddie Sayers. Hazony passionately defended Israel’s imperative to block Iran’s nuclear program as essential for national survival while debating the benefits and risks of U.S. involvement. He acknowledged the growing split among his own allies on the nationalist right, noting that “the nationalist conservatives have always had internal disagreements on issues like appropriate foreign policy” and specifically addressed the divergence with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, who were “absolutely dead against the US getting involved in this at all.”
Hazony’s counter-argument was that U.S. support for Israel as a regional security partner ultimately served American interests, allowing the United States to focus on vital concerns elsewhere. Mearsheimer argued the opposite, noting that Israel lacked the capability to permanently eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and that U.S. involvement would be catastrophic and would strengthen Russia and China’s geopolitical positions.
On February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, Hazony was among the intellectual voices who had spent months publicly building the case for exactly this kind of operation. In addition to arguing on UnHerd that Israel had to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capacity with or without U.S. support, Hazony defended the June 2025 Midnight Hammer strikes in The Free Press.
The fundamental problem in Hazony’s nationalist program lies in its practical application, which serves primarily to curate and sanitize the parameters of acceptable discourse. Rather than welcoming authentic solutions to the existential crises facing the West, Hazony and his lieutenants act as gatekeepers, systematically deplatforming gentile voices who prioritize the preservation of their own cultural and ancestral identity. In both rhetoric and practice, he remains fundamentally hostile to any ethnonationalist framework that elevates the bonds of blood and soil as the bedrock of political life. More importantly, the result of these political programs mainly consist of wars for Israel and other pro-Jewish ventures, while nationalists receive virtually nothing in return—for example, long-lasting immigration restriction. Keep in mind, this is a feature not a bug of this type of Faustian pact.
Nationalists must recognize that Yoram Hazony’s project is another containment strategy designed to undermine genuine nationalist movements in the West. It invites you to the table only to ensure that the menu never includes the actual preservation of the European state-building people of the United States. If we are to survive as a civilization, we must reject these managed movements and build an authentic nationalism that prioritizes our own sovereign survival over the pseudo-nationalist movements whose real agenda is the advancement of the organized Jewish community’s geopolitical interests.
Israel is sponsoring ads on Ted Cruz’s podcast. Is that legal?
By Connor Echols and Nick Cleveland-Stout | Responsible Statecraft | August 22, 2026
The Israeli government is running advertisements on a popular podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), raising questions about whether the staunchly pro-Israel lawmaker is indirectly receiving campaign funding from a foreign country.
Radio and podcast giant iHeartMedia has syndicated Cruz’s show, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” since 2022. Because of lobbying-related restrictions, the company cannot legally pay the senator for ad revenue. But, it turns out, that’s not the only way to ensure the money benefits Cruz.
Under an unusual licensing deal, iHeartMedia agreed to donate revenue “associated with (the show’s) advertising sales” to the Truth and Courage PAC, a super PAC dedicated to “ensuring that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate.” The company has given at least $1,738,000 of “digital revenue” to the Truth and Courage PAC since 2023, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The agreement has drawn significant scrutiny from watchdog groups, some of which filed a complaint against Cruz with the FEC alleging he “brazenly violated” laws that bar candidates from receiving corporate donations. Though the senator admitted to having met with representatives from the company to discuss the acquisition of the show, the agency ruled in his favor, finding that there was “no available information to indicate that Cruz solicited, directed, received, transferred, or spent the funds iHeart paid to the PAC.”
“Cruz’s role was limited to hosting the Podcast and he does not appear to have been involved with the decision for iHeart to pay the PAC, meaning that he did not direct or solicit any funds,” the commission found.
The Israeli government-funded ad revenue appears to operate in a similar gray area. The advertisements, which are part of the $7 million “I am Israel” campaign launched in June, are geared toward encouraging Christians to visit the country and see biblical sites for themselves.
“Israel isn’t a destination; it’s a revelation, where every site you’ve studied, every scripture you’ve memorized, every sermon that ever moved you suddenly has an address, a landscape, a heartbeat,” Ben Ferguson, Cruz’s co-host, says in one ad. “This is the trip that changes not just how you see the Holy Land, but how you see everything.”
Ferguson then urges listeners to “start planning your trip today” and tells them to follow “Visit Israel” accounts on social media. The ads do not disclose that Visit Israel is a public-facing entity of the Israeli ministry of tourism.
The campaign appears to exploit a loophole in election financing laws. Candidates and PACs are banned from receiving any funding “directly or indirectly” from foreign nationals, according to the FEC. But Cruz would only run afoul of campaign finance laws if Israel explicitly earmarked its contribution to go to the PAC, said Craig Holman, a leading expert on campaign finance laws and an ethics lobbyist at Public Citizen.
“Assuming there is no formal agreement, then the money is considered iHeartRadio funds, with which it can do as it pleases,” Holman said.
Holman blamed court decisions like Citizens United for opening the path to Cruz’s “surreptitious financial arrangement” with iHeartMedia.
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“The courts have fabricated a myth that outside groups are ‘independent’ of candidates and therefore fall outside the campaign finance limits and disclosure laws,” Holman told RS. “So, wealthy interests and even foreign governments launder money to outside groups with the explicit intent of the outside group spending that money to support a specific candidate. Israel is exploiting this court-created loophole.”
Neither Cruz nor iHeartMedia responded to requests for comment about whether the Truth and Courage PAC has received or will receive money from the “I am Israel” campaign. RS also reached out to a representative of the PAC, who did not respond.
iHeartRadio’s last publicly disclosed donation to the PAC was in May. The PAC does not share detailed information about the ad revenue it receives from iHeartMedia, and it does not have to reveal any further donations until the end of the third fiscal quarter in September.
The “I am Israel” campaign is part of the Israeli government’s efforts to reinvigorate the country’s tourism industry after years of war. In May 2019, 105,700 American tourists visited Israel. In May of this year, that number was only 22,600.
At the campaign’s June launch event in New York, which was hosted by the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon encouraged attendees to help boost these numbers. “We have accomplished so much in the last 3 years. We have defeated our enemies,” said Danon. “Now it’s your turn… Now you have to start again, bring the groups to Israel.”
The ads on Verdict target Christians in particular. The Israeli government has invested significantly in efforts to bolster support for Israel among Christians, including greenlighting a proposal to target churchgoers with pro-Israel ads during services and funding a Bible study program taught by IDF soldiers and West Bank settlers, as RS has previously reported. The Israeli government also secretly funneled $245,000 to Eagles’ Wings, a Christian Zionist organization based in New York, to lobby over 100 congressional offices for more military aid to Israel.
These initiatives reflect Israel’s concerns that it is losing influence among American evangelicals. While they have long been one of the most influential pro-Israel constituencies in the U.S., that support is now slipping; a 2025 poll found that only 24% of evangelicals under 35 years old support the Israelis over the Palestinians.
The Israeli ministry of tourism hinted at this dwindling support in a procurement document for the campaign. The goal of the June launch event was to broadcast “a message of ‘business as usual,’” according to the document, signed by Michael Yitzhakov, chief of staff of the Israeli ministry of tourism. The Israeli government agreed to pay the Jerusalem Post around $195,000 for the event.
Cruz is among Israel’s most zealous allies in Congress. “There is no military on the face of the planet, including the U.S. military, that goes to the lengths that the Israeli military goes to avoid civilian casualties,” he said in November 2023. Just last week, Cruz lauded Israeli companies for “betting big on Texas, investing $3.2 billion and creating more than 4,200 jobs across our state.”
Cruz is an adherent to Christian Zionism, a theological belief that Christians have a religious obligation to support the modern state of Israel. “I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed,” he told podcast host Tucker Carlson last year. “And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side.”
Over the years, Cruz has received significant financial support from pro-Israel donors, including Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, who gave $1 million to the Truth and Courage PAC in 2024. And, as he told Carlson last year, the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC “raises a lot of money for me.”
Connor Echols is the managing editor of Responsible Statecraft. He was previously the managing editor of the NonZero Newsletter.
The American Academy of Pediatrics Is Back at It Again…
Recommending that all children 6 months and older get the flu vaccine
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | August 20, 2026
AAP, the trade group, is back at it again with its predictable, self-interested recommendation that all children 6 months and older get a flu vaccine, announcing “flu vaccines have been thoroughly studied…”
What AAP ignores is that a Cochrane Systematic Review of flu vaccine studies concluded it “could find no convincing evidence that [flu] vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications, or community transmission of influenza.”
If AAP’s concern was about health, it would read these studies as well as those showing it increases the risk of having a respiratory infection. But we already know that AAP’s true concern is the pecuniary interest of its members.
Israel Lies again about Hind Rajab Killing in a Public Relations Whitewash Maneuver
By Robert Inlakesh – The Palestine Chronicle – August 20, 2026
Historically speaking, Israel has never once charged a single Israeli soldier for killing a Palestinian in Gaza throughout any of its large-scale assaults on the territory that began to ramp up in 2008.
The Israeli military made headlines again this Wednesday, after they admitted for the first time to having fired upon the vehicle in which 5-year-old Hind Rajab was ruthlessly murdered in January of 2024. However, this “admission” is being presented dishonestly and is a clear Public Relations maneuver manufactured by Israel to whitewash their actions.
Hind Rajab’s murder at the hands of the Israeli army is one of the most high-profile war crimes committed throughout the Gaza Genocide, so much so that it was turned into an award-winning docudrama film, ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’. The audio recordings of the young girl, released by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), who were desperately attempting to put international pressure on Israel to permit their workers to rescue her, went viral and captured the emotions of millions around the world.
Israel understands this well and has therefore chosen to strategically place the event under a criminal investigation, in order to portray a sense of accountability.
It was one of five incidents that the ‘IDF General Staff’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism’ claims to have investigated, three of which it chose not to pursue further and absolved its forces of any wrongdoing in:
– The killing of the seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian aid workers in April of 2024 while they were operating in Deir al-Balah. The victims were Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish, and dual American-Canadian citizens, who were targeted in three clearly marked vehicles. Some of the survivors attempted to flee in other vehicles and were subjected to double-tap strikes.
– The February 2024 tank strike on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) shelter that was located in Khan Younis, killing two of its employees and injuring others. Despite the location being known to be an MSF site, the Israelis simply claimed ignorance; they never presented any evidence that they struck a military target.
– The November 2023 strike on a clearly marked MSF convoy in Gaza City that killed two other employees. It was a convoy that was attempting to evacuate 137 civilians and had coordinated with the Israeli military, even halting at a crowded checkpoint for hours in order to receive the go-ahead from Israel.
Another incident that Israel claims it is opening a criminal probe into is the massacre of 15 Palestinian paramedics and first responders in Tel al-Sultan, Rafah. On March 23, 2025, when contact was initially lost with the emergency workers, Gaza’s media office believed the group had been kidnapped and appealed to the international community. Israel refused to acknowledge the incident had even occurred at the time.
Then by the end of the month, after the Israeli military had withdrawn from the area, an unmarked grave was discovered, where the bodies of the 15 paramedics, emergency workers and ambulance drivers were found. Reports indicated that the group was executed at close range, one by one, before the Israelis had buried them and their ambulances in order to discard the evidence.
Israel’s initial defense in late March was that a series of unmarked vehicles had headed towards them with their lights off and in the absence of emergency signals, prompting their forces to defensively open fire. This account was later contradicted by video evidence that emerged in April showing the opposite, prompting the IDF to change its narrative and claim it had mistaken the emergency lights for a threat.
By late April of 2025, the Israeli military concluded, as a result of an internal probe, that the incident could be attributed to “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings”. Later, the Israelis would again shift their narrative by claiming, without any evidence, that six of those killed had ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group.
Now it is going with a separate narrative, based on its latest so-called investigation, that the “firing conducted during the incident raises a reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.” Its forces were shown by independent investigations, including one conducted by Forensic Architecture, to have fired at least 900 bullets and carried out close-range executions.
Silencing the Voice of Hind Rajab
Media outlets from across the spectrum have reported that Israel is now launching an internal criminal investigation into the killing of Hind Rajab and admits to firing upon the vehicle in which she was killed, along with six of her family members. However, Israel’s internal investigation just drew another conclusion that seeks to whitewash the entire event, protecting its soldiers rather than taking accountability for its actions.
“The findings of the examination indicate that IDF troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them,” is what the Israeli military now claims as a result of its latest investigation. “Following review of the findings and due to apparent failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, it has been decided to initiate a criminal investigation of the incident by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division.”
Keep in mind that this is precisely the same excuse given to run cover for the executions carried out against 15 first responders and paramedics in the Rafah massacre; they are now stating they will be subject to a criminal investigation. It is an excuse that assumes that Israeli forces simply acted in self-defense and fired towards what they interpreted as a threat.
Also, two vehicles were struck in the incident, not one. Two PRCS paramedics were slain following a double-tap strike on their ambulance.
Numerous independent forensic and satellite investigations were conducted into the specifics of the incident, including one by the Washington Post and another by Forensic Architecture [in collaboration with EarShot and Fault Lines], which demonstrated Israeli forces fired 335 bullets into the Kia Picanto in which Hind Rajab and six of her family members were killed.
Evidence also shows that it was impossible for the vehicle to have traveled south as the Israeli military claimed it should have, following their instructions to locals that day, as the streets heading south from their location had all been blocked. The investigations also concluded that the car was fired upon from a short enough range for Israeli soldiers to see the innocent civilians sheltering inside it.
Israel’s shots also penetrated the vehicle from its right side. Even if the Israelis continue to claim the car was heading towards them – presumably somehow being driven by a terrified 5-year-old girl – the vehicle was clearly not shot from the front, meaning that it was conclusively not a threat.
That said, the Red Crescent workers based in occupied Ramallah spent around three hours on the phone with little Hind, desperately attempting to get Israeli permission to rescue her. By this point, it had become an international incident.
For 12-days, beginning on January 29 of 2024, Hind Rajab’s status was officially considered to be “missing” and presumed dead, until February 10, when her little body was recovered from the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, riddled with bullets.
When Israel was finally forced to address the issue, it claimed that its forces were not even stationed in the area and that there were no operations taking place at the time. It even launched an internal probe, which produced the same excuse with different wording.
This narrative more or less held for around two and a half years, as Israeli officials and the military periodically made small alterations to their claims, despite the evidence that emerged to debunk them. Israel even attempted to blame Palestinian fighters for the killings, another tactic they have used countless times to explain away their war crimes.
Historically speaking, Israel has never once charged a single Israeli soldier for killing a Palestinian in Gaza throughout any of its large-scale assaults on the territory that began to ramp up in 2008.
The harshest sentence ever dealt to an Israeli soldier for their conduct inside Gaza was to a member of the Givati Brigade in 2009, during what Tel Aviv called “Operation Cast Lead”, landing the combatant a total of 7.5 months in prison. This was not for killing, raping or torturing Palestinians; it was for stealing a credit card.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Some Shattering Illusions of Our Declining Empire
Americans are waking up to ugly truths
By George D. O’Neill Jr. | The American Conservative | August 19, 2026
Now that the lofty 250th-anniversary rhetoric about the greatness of our country has faded, it is time to face the reality of our country’s actual behavior. The U.S. fashions itself as a generous and benevolent world leader enforcing the “rules-based order”—a deceptive construct used by globalist elites to bully other countries. The rules are arbitrarily changed to suit the bullies and are regularly fashioned into pretexts for military action against uncooperative nations. In short, it is a hoax, untethered from the principles and ideals of our founders.
Almost daily we witness some spectacle illustrating the appalling corruption of our country’s leadership. The recent release of Anthony Fauci’s diary entries confirms long-held suspicions about the Covid-19 narrative, which we now know even Fauci himself did not fully believe. Think of the millions of lives ruined and harmed by that corruption. Yet this vain phony, when asked to testify before Congress, hid behind half a dozen lawyers and refused to answer any questions. What a fine example of transparency from one of our leading scientists and civil servants! What else are our leaders still hiding about the worldwide disaster caused by Covid-related deceptions and manipulations? There has not yet been any meaningful examination of our medical profession, which largely acted as cowards during the pandemic, adhering to the bogus official narrative at the expense of the welfare of their patients.
Our leadership has not even begun to scratch the surface of the horrors created by the many secret—and potentially illegal—biolabs scattered around the globe, supported by funds often hidden from voters under the guise of “national security.” The Fauci crowd appears to have been deeply involved in that dark world.
America’s Middle East policy remains a source of shame. The U.S. Treasury secretary brags about ruining the currency of the Iranian people, against whom we have waged a war of aggression. In Gaza, Washington has enabled a brutal assault on a vulnerable population. Not many years ago, most Americans considered standing up for the vulnerable and innocent an honorable act of a true American. Not our leaders. These days, opposing the harm of politically inconvenient innocents attracts name-calling, ostracism, and sanctions. What would our Founding Fathers have thought of that?
The current wars have exposed the shortcomings of our nearly trillion-dollar military and its multi-billion-dollar weapons systems. If the Covid mess is any indication, we should assume there is hidden and shockingly ugly information about the behavior and practices of the military-industrial complex. The failure of our various expensive defense systems to protect our Persian Gulf “allies” from Iranian missile and drone attacks is a tragic example of government dishonesty. Despite repeated failures, the administration continues to brag of its ability to destroy Iran’s military and shoot down its remaining missiles and drones. After years of being told we possess the “most powerful military” in history, Americans are beginning to realize it is a fantasy. The success of that false narrative rests on decades of fighting people riding donkeys and bicycles.
Our government classifies and redacts documents as a matter of course. Think of the billions of pages we are still not allowed to see—especially information about the most important events in our country’s history. Many significant, history-changing events remain shrouded in secrecy. How is it that information is still being withheld about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? After six decades, what bad behavior are they still “protecting” from the public? Most Americans suspect the official government narrative was false, yet officials continue to withhold information that might shed light on that crime. The same is true for the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., our government’s willful abandonment of U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam, the September 11 attacks, and the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Not to mention the disgusting manipulations and secret operations used to drag our country into the long list of dishonest, illegal, and failed wars we have “fought.”
Our political leadership’s frenzied efforts to hide the Epstein files make it look as though the “national security” excuse is merely a convenient tool to obscure malfeasance, rape, blackmail, bribery, and plain old corruption. They clearly believe they are not subject to the same pesky and inconvenient laws as the rest of us who live in the country. So much for equal protection under the law and the “rules-based order.”
We watch with horror the chaos, death, and destruction currently being wreaked on the world—and on our own country—by our “exceptional nation.” Why has the second Trump administration bombed at least seven countries and engaged in underhanded efforts to weaken and harm the political systems of others? None of this serves the interests of the American people; it serves only the special interests of our elites. All this from a president who campaigned on an America First policy, an end to forever wars, and the promotion of peace. It looks like we were fooled again. Presidential candidate after presidential candidate promises peace, and we get war after war. The system is subverted by corruption.
As the failure of the illegal war against Iran becomes increasingly obvious, more Americans are realizing that it in no way serves their interests. As the war against Russia in Ukraine grinds toward failure, American and European leaders continue more frantically than ever to promote the fantasy that Ukraine can defeat Russia in that sad and disastrous conflict.
There is one positive development: The American people, especially the younger generation, are beginning to recognize the corruption at the top of our country and the magnitude of the war lies. They understand that the special interests driving these belligerent policies care nothing about the well-being of the general populace or of our nation. There has always been skepticism toward powerful special interests, but we are moving past skepticism into righteous fury.
This is also true of our “allies,” who watched U.S. elites prioritize Israel over American security when the missiles started flying.
Ours is not an “exceptional nation.” It is not the “shining city on a hill.” It is not “a thousand points of light.” Not anymore. It is a declining empire with a declining military—one unable to protect its allies, yet still seeking to bully and harm any country that angers its corrupt elites.
Our military defenses are so ineffective that Iran—a country one-fourth our size, with an economy smaller than our bloated military budget—can practically name its next round of targets knowing our mighty military can do little to stop them.
With a governing elite that serves foreign and special interests rather than the people and a sweeping surveillance state that stretches from sea to shining sea, Americans are becoming increasingly disillusioned. A sobering question to consider: When the illusion finally shatters, who will be left willing to defend a government that wouldn’t defend its own?
George D. O’Neill, Jr., is a member of the board of directors of the American Ideas Institute, which publishes The American Conservative, and an artist who lives in rural Florida.
Former Top Fauci Aide Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges. Will He Flip on Fauci?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 19, 2026
A former key adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci pled guilty to concealing public records related to the origins of COVID-19 in a plea deal reached with federal prosecutors — a development some political figures and analysts suggest could implicate Fauci.
Dr. David Morens pled guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. According to The Washington Post, Morens, 78, told a federal judge he attempted to bypass federal recordkeeping laws by using his private email account to discuss research — and a terminated federal grant — related to COVID-19’s origins.
Morens, initially indicted in April on five federal charges, told the judge he intentionally redirected communications to his personal email account to protect Fauci and because the emails might be misinterpreted in the future, if and when they were publicly released.
Court filings show some of the emails were back-channeled to a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). According to CBS News, the official is likely Fauci, who directed NIAID until December 2022. Morens served as senior adviser in Fauci’s NIAID office between 2006 and 2022.
Morens diverted messages to his personal email while speculation swirled around whether COVID-19 emerged in nature, as Fauci and other Biden administration officials and key virologists publicly asserted at the time, or was developed at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and leaked from there.
Morens faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 under the terms of the plea deal, though his sentence may be shorter. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), “actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.” Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 12, Politico reported.
“By pleading guilty today, Dr. Morens has taken responsibility for what he did and will continue to do so,” Tim Belevetz, Morens’ attorney, said in a statement cited by the Post.
James Billot, editor of UnHerd, told Australia’s News24 Digital that Morens’ guilty plea represents the “first big scalp” in the COVID-19 origins investigation. “We are going to see a lot more of this thing coming out soon.”
According to Politico, Fauci was not “charged with or accused of wrongdoing in the case against Morens and is not referred to by name in court filings.”
But in a post on X, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is leading the congressional COVID-19 origins investigation, suggested Fauci may be implicated: “Long-time Fauci ally pleads guilty. Could his plea involve implicating Anthony Fauci?” Paul wrote.
Morens boasted about being able to ‘make emails disappear’
During testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024, Fauci denied he had a close working relationship with Morens, suggesting that Morens did not advise him on “institute policy or other substantive issues.”
However, Morens’ plea deal includes a statement that he often consulted with an outside researcher, Peter Daszak, Ph.D., then-president of the EcoHealth Alliance, to prepare briefings for Fauci that would suggest COVID-19 had natural origins.
In a 2021 email released by the House and cited by The Hill, Morens told Daszak, “I can either send stuff to Tony [Fauci] on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
In another 2021 email, Morens said he knew how to “make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d” — referring to Freedom of Information Act requests for federal records.
John Leake, vice president of the McCullough Foundation and author of “Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions,” wrote on Substack that Morens’ guilty plea to a single conspiracy charge is “akin to Al Capone being convicted for income tax evasion.” Leake suggested the plea will have minimal impact on the COVID-19 origins probe.
“Though Morens will likely serve time behind bars, his guilty plea and his punishment for this particular act of fraud strike me as a distraction from the elephant in the room,” Leake wrote — referring to “the illegal creation and subsequent illegal concealment of a bio-weapon in a Chinese biosecurity lab.”
But for other analysts and commentators, attention is swirling back to Fauci in the aftermath of Morens’ guilty plea.
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, suggested Morens has likely agreed to testify against other figures in exchange for his plea deal and possibly a more lenient sentence.
“He is now ready to talk in exchange for a lighter sentence. He surely will talk and it will be fascinating to know everything he knows,” Tucker said.
Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., agreed. Ebright has been a vocal critic of gain-of-function research, which lab-leak theory proponents have suggested likely resulted in the laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2 and its subsequent leak from the Wuhan lab.
He said Morens “likely” acted “under orders from his boss — Fauci.”
Ebright said:
“Morens’ guilty plea is an important first step in holding accountable the malfeasant U.S. officials who funded the reckless gain-of-function research in Wuhan that caused COVID-19.
“It seems possible, even likely, that Morens has been ‘flipped’ by prosecutors, and that Morens’ guilty plea is the product of a plea bargain in which Morens has agreed to testify against Fauci, Daszak … and others.”
Morens’ plea deal included a sealed file, which Ebright suggested indicates Morens has agreed to testify against others — a view supported by research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., who wrote on Substack:
“Finally, because the plea agreement incorporates a sealed supplement and a separate factual stipulation, the currently public record is incomplete. That gap matters especially to speculation that Morens is cooperating against others. Such cooperation is possible in the abstract but cannot responsibly be asserted from the sealed filing’s existence alone. …
“ … We predicted that [Morens] would be offered a plea deal and specific charges dropped in exchange for testimony against Fauci and others.”
Morens received gifts for ‘behind-the-scenes shenanigans’
The indictment against Morens extensively referenced two co-conspirators, referred to as “Co-Conspirator 1” and “Co-Conspirator 2.”
According to the Post, documents released as part of the congressional investigation indicate the two people in question are Daszak and Dr. Gerald Keusch, former director of the NIH Fogarty International Center, which funded foreign scientists.
Morens, Daszak and Keusch “repeatedly discussed limiting their conversations to private email,” the Post reported.
Under Daszak’s leadership, the EcoHealth Alliance received a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — NIAID’s parent agency — for a study titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” The Wuhan lab later received a subaward from EcoHealth Alliance funded by the grant.
As part of his plea deal, Morens acknowledged that he received “illegal gratuities” from Daszak — including meals at Michelin-starred restaurants and bottles of wine — to thank him for his “advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans” in helping Daszak “restore the termination of the bat coronavirus grant and counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab.”
According to the DOJ, “Morens then allegedly identified an official act that he could perform to ‘deserve’ the gift, which was to author a scientific commentary in a prominent medical journal advocating that COVID-19 had natural origins.”
In April, the New York Post reported that the commentary is likely a July 2020 paper Morens co-authored that was published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Tucker said Morens was “once a promising intellectual” who “turned to the dark side” by acting on “Fauci’s orders” — including publishing journal articles supporting the establishment COVID-19 narrative.
Tucker cited a September 2020 article Morens co-authored with Fauci and published in the journal Cell, calling for “rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence.”
“It was dystopian to the extreme and he knew it,” Tucker said. “It reflected his mood — absurdity in the service of power.”
Will other Fauci aides vie to ‘rat each other out’ in exchange for plea deals?
Morens’ guilty plea is the latest development in the ongoing congressional investigation into COVID-19’s origins. In 2024, when he testified before Congress as part of the investigation, Morens denied trying to bypass federal law by routing communications through his personal email account.
Earlier this month, Paul referred Fauci for prosecution on contempt of Congress charges for refusing to answer questions during last month’s hearing. According to the Post, the DOJ is reviewing the request. It’s the third time Paul has referred Fauci to the DOJ for possible criminal charges.
Last week, Fauci declined a request to voluntarily appear before another Senate panel.
In the waning moments of his administration last year, then-President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci for all of his official acts dating back to 2014 — the year that the NIH approved a grant for Daszak’s bat coronavirus research.
Legal experts previously told The Defender that while the pardon shields Fauci from federal prosecution for his official acts, it does not prevent states from filing charges against Fauci. And it does not shield him from contempt of Congress charges or perjury in subsequent testimony.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended all funding for EcoHealth Alliance after finding the organization had failed to properly monitor coronavirus experiments.
In April, the NIH reportedly pulled all grants issued to virologist Ralph Baric, Ph.D., who worked with Fauci and researchers at the Wuhan lab before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In June, the FBI charged two NIH researchers, including the Fauci-linked Vincent Munster, Ph.D., with allegedly smuggling mpox and other dangerous pathogens into the U.S. earlier this year.
Documents released last month suggest that in 2021, the FBI pressured U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents not to question Daszak on his return to the U.S. from China, where he had traveled as part of a World Health Organization investigation into COVID-19’s origins.
Last year, Daszak became president of Nature.Health.Global — a nonprofit that performs research on public health and pandemic prevention. Morens works for the nonprofit.
Ebright suggested that the “rat race now is on” for Fauci’s former close aides and allies to “rat each other out.”
“Morens, Daszak, Keusch and the others likely already are vying to be first to flip and thereby to snag the best plea deals.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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- 37 Palestinian journalists held in Israeli jails, rights group says
- Israel’s Hilltop Youth Recruits Minors to Terrorize Palestinians (with video)
- 100 Colonial Plans Advance in West Bank Since Start of 2026
- New Maps Show How Israel Has Thwarted Hopes for a Palestinian State
- Israel trying to ‘eliminate’ living conditions for Palestinians in West Bank
- Matt Gaetz’s Brilliant Exposé on Israel Partisans’ Claims of “Antisemitism”
- No Tricks Zone
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
- Fear Of Debate: Alarmist German Climate Scientist Calls On Mainstream Media To Discredit Skeptic Voices
- End-Of-August Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hasn’t Fallen In 20 Years, Official Data Show!
- News-Making Nepal Region Has Had As-Warm Or Warmer Periods Than The 2000s In The 1600s, 1700s, 1800s
- 2025 Study: ‘There Exists No Unequivocal Experimental Evidence For The CO2 Greenhouse Effect’
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