Mary Kekatos reported Monday at ABC News that new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in the 2025-26 school year parents had obtained a vaccine exemption for a record high 4.2 percent of kindergarteners in America. While a small percent of students, this is a significant increase over the 3.6 percent of kindergarteners with a vaccine exemption the previous year and approaches double the 2.2 percent exemption rate in the 2020-21 school year.

For other parents, sidestepping vaccine mandates has been part of the reason, or even the entire reason, they have chosen that their children attend private schools in states where the mandates only apply to government schools, or attend homeschool. In these alternative schooling options parents can avoid shots for their children without obtaining exemptions.

While parents have been increasingly choosing not to have their children take all the pushed shots, states including California and New York have been changing the law to nearly eliminate the ability to opt out for children attending government and even private schools.

This week, the FDA granted approval for Moderna’s mRNA flu shot, being marketed as mFlusiva, for people age 50 and up. Alex Berenson, whose reporting I highlighted for my May 9 article, provided a good review of the ultimate approval of the shot in a Thursday article at his Unreported Truths website. “Drug industry reform dies in darkness” is how he started his biting assessment.

Pointing to pharmaceutical companies Merk, Moderna, Pfizer, and Sanofi as top donors to AAP, Kennedy noted: “These four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC recommended childhood vaccine schedule.” Further, Kennedy brought up the concern of “whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been pursuing an investigation that addresses similar concern about potential financial influence behind AAP’s pushing of an expanded childhood vaccine schedule. In a Wednesday press release, Paxton noted that the investigation has indicated that “the amount of influence that the AAP has over the entire childhood medical industry has become undeniable.” The press release also mentioned that Paxton “has issued a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”) to the AAP to determine the basis of AAP’s vaccine recommendations and how that affects the broader landscape of childhood vaccine recommendations.”

Echoing the comments last year from Kennedy, Paxton’s press release noted that “the AAP’s top corporate donors are pharmaceutical companies that would suffer financially from a reduced number of vaccines being recommended on the CDC’s revised schedule.” And, making the nature of Paxton’s concern clear, the press release quoted him as follows:

‘Parents deserve vaccine recommendations that are driven by science and the best interests of their children, not by financial gains or bribes from Big Pharma,’ said Attorney General Paxton. ‘My office will fight to protect kids’ health and uphold transparency in the medical industry alongside President Trump and Secretary Kennedy. If the American Academy of Pediatrics is giving medical guidance that is fueled by financial incentives, we will expose and put an end to this unlawful behavior.’

We’ll see what happens with Paxton’s ongoing investigation. In the meantime, parents should consider that, as suggested by Kennedy and Paxton, their children’s doctors may be influenced by AAP recommendations that are guided more by advancing the profits of pharmaceutical companies than by promoting health.

Over at his Unreported Truths website, Alex Berenson, provided on July 23 a good analysis of this new series of fearmongering reminiscent of what we saw a few years back concerning coronavirus. Pshaw, he answered to the lot, concluding:

A fecal parasite, and three viruses: one highly contagious disease spread through the air, the second generally confined to rodent hosts, the third blood-borne.

Cyclospora, measles, hantavirus, Ebola.

They have almost nothing in common. Except the media efforts to use them as a cudgel against the Trump Administration.

And this.

They haven’t killed anyone in the United States this year.

Not one person, young, old, or in-between.

Meanwhile, despite all the good news you’ve heard about the opioid epidemic, almost 70,000 Americans have died from overdose in the last 12 months.

Priorities, priorities.

Berenson’s comment regarding media efforts to use the infections “as a cudgel against the Trump Administration” fits right in with a contentious interview of United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. by Dana Bash on Sunday at the CNN show State of the Union. The interview featured Bash alternately playing up and down various health concerns, while discarding Kennedy’s differing views. Bash’s approach came in consistently supportive of the party-line arguments for government mandates and pharmaceutical industry profitability. In response, Kennedy offered that the “underlying priority” should be “to protect the Constitution,” while calling her out again and again for misstating the facts in regard to health-related matters she introduced in the interview.

Fauci being able to receive the Dan David Prize, as I explained, was suspect even if there were no evidence showing that the money would not just be landing in Fauci’s lap out of the blue. This month, that situation has radically changed due to the release of additional information by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) suggesting layer upon layer of chicanery orchestrated by Fauci while he was a US government employee to ensure he would obtain the Dan David Prize as well as other monetary awards from third parties.

A one-page analysis accompanying 135 pages of documents provided by Paul argues that there was much funny business associated with Fauci’s receipt of these monetary awards. The analysis states:

1. NIH’s number two official personally assisted in ensuring Dr. Fauci received a $900,000 prize. In early 2021, NIH Principal Deputy Director Dr. Lawrence Tabak was tracking at least eight awards for Dr. Fauci at once, telling him his goal was “to support you in the strongest possible way” and mapping out how to get the cash cleared. The largest by far was the $900,000 Dan David Award from a foundation affiliated with Tel Aviv University.

2. NIH’s leadership acted as Dr. Fauci’s advocates, not neutral gatekeepers. Dr. Tabak and NIH’s ethics lawyers argued Dr. Fauci’s case up two levels, to HHS counsel and the independent Office of Government Ethics for getting the prize money approved, even drafting an escalation to the HHS Chief of Staff that leaned on Fauci’s “visibility.” When NIH ethics officers told Dr. Tabak that Dr. Fauci could not accept an award, Dr. Tabak told NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, “We went all out, and failed.” An NIH ethics official, Holli Jaffe, offered to “take the bullet” and break the news to Fauci, and noted the ethics counsel had been given “very specific orders” she felt she couldn’t deviate from.

3. Dr. Fauci told the foundation he would accept the prize before the ethics review was finished. On January 30, 2021, more than two months before he was given the green light from counsel, he wrote, “I told them (the Dan David Foundation) that I will accept the award,” citing a 2011 prior review and an assurance from “the Israeli person” that nothing had changed. Dr. Fauci’s ethics compliance on this appears to be a case of asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

4. Dr. Fauci asked his accountant how his prize would affect his taxes. In a March 2021 letter to his personal accountant, Dr. Fauci wrote that he would receive the Dan David Prize from Israel in May of that year, asking, “do we need to figure this in my estimated taxes for 2021?” By that point, he had already told the foundation he would accept the money and was planning how to keep it.

5. Dr. Fauci authored his own award nominations and had other scientists sign them. Dr. Fauci supplied the material and colleagues submitted it under their names. Recruiting Duke University’s Dr. Barton Haynes in 2018, Dr. Fauci wrote, “As usual, I will supply all of the material.” His office ran a similar operation for the 2022 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science, with NIAID staff working to line up outside scientists to nominate him and Dr. Fauci’s own deputy suggesting names, and for the 2020 Dan David nomination, which his chief of staff, Dr. Greg Folkers, drafted and Dr. Fauci himself helped write.

6. The nominations were traded among elite scientists, with major cash prizes on both ends. Dr. Fauci nominated others for the same prize he later won, telling Dr. Haynes, “I nominated Zeke Emanuel… last year and he won.” The favors came back around: after Dr. Charles Dinarello nominated Dr. Fauci for the $900,000 Dan David Award, Dr. Dinarello asked Dr. Fauci to nominate him for the Shaw Prize, another seven-figure award, and Dr. Fauci agreed. The records raise the obvious question of a quid-pro-quo given the large amount of prize money at hand.

7. Staff treated the prize payout as a team win, and Fauci wasn’t the only one hoping to collect. When the approval came through, Fauci’s assistant wrote, “Congratulations….you’re rich!” and his chief of staff, Dr. Greg Folkers, said, “I want my 15%.” The prize money was wired that May, with his personal passport and banking details provided by NIH staff on government email. In the same round, NIH National Cancer Institute’s Dr. Steven Rosenberg also won a Dan David Prize, meaning two of NIH’s most prominent figures each pocketed roughly $900,000 from the same foreign institution in the same year.

With the new evidence and related allegations in hand, now seems like a good time for the US government to carry out an extensive review concerning all the third-party awards Fauci received, as well as concerning how widely corruption related to third-party awards has extended at NIH.

As reported Sunday at the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu appeared on screen at Bolsonaro’s campaign kick-off event, while Milei spoke in person to the assembled campaign supporters. In his message via video, Netanyahu expressed congratulations to Bolsonaro upon the launching of the campaign and noted that Bolsonaro is “a great champion of the friendship between our peoples.”

Meanwhile, Trump, who did not participate in Bolsonaro’s campaign event, is a longtime ally of Bolsonaro’s father and is seen by many Brazilians as using tariffs against Brazil to boost Bolsonaro’s election prospects. And, back on June 2 at Truth Social, Trump commented as follows regarding a recent meeting he had with Bolsonaro: “It was very nice having Flávio Bolsonaro in the Oval Office of the White House — A smart young man who loves his Country, Brazil, very much!”

Bolsonaro is expected to be busy campaigning for the next few months, but maybe he can spend some time as well on perfecting his dance moves so, if he wins the race, he can immediately fit in with the current three amigos.

The regime change operation has not succeeded, but the impoverishment effort has been a big success.

During Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, the impoverishment effort has reached new highs, including with a new oil blockade against the island nation. Meanwhile, there have been a series of public threats from Trump and other executive branch officials that the US government will attack Cuba and overthrow the Cuba government.

Given this situation, it is peculiar to see this week that the US government is in the process of sending to people in Cuba humanitarian assistance valued at 100 million dollars. That is quite a chunk of change in aid, but it is miniscule compared to all the harm to which the US has systematically subjected the Cuban people over the decades because the country has a government independent of US dominance.

If you start seeing Trump administration officials boasting about their demonstrated compassion for the Cuban people, do not believe them for a second. The US government in this situation is no better than a hoodlum who mugs you on a sidewalk and then tosses a couple bucks at your feet.

Twenty years back, the US passport was in the top rank in the world, along with Denmark and Finland, for visa-free of vias-on-demand travel. Now it trails behind the passports of 36 other nations. Maureen O’Hare provided the details in a Tuesday CNN article you can read here.

This week, a poll indicates that Paul is far from the only American worried about the US government’s new focus on obtaining ownership interests in companies. Reporting Monday at CNBC on a CNBC poll conducted earlier this month, Matt Peterson wrote that “only 19% of voters say it is appropriate for the federal government to own a portion of U.S.-based companies, while 49% say it isn’t.”

Under the Trump administration’s direction, travel to America, I noted, was made less desirable through the imposition of burdens including new visa fees and more rigorous vetting of travelers, including involving searches of their electronic devices, upon arrival. Planned reviewing of travelers’ social media histories was also adding to the discomfort level of trips to America.

Here is an update. The trend continues. Travel to America in the first four months of this year has dropped yet more. And, it looks like Trump remains a significant factor in why many foreigners looking at the options of places around the world to visit are taking a pass on America. Eric Boehm provided details in his article “Why Foreign Tourism to the U.S. Is Declining Under Trump” in the August/September issue of Reason Magazine. Noted Boehm in his article:

International travel to the U.S. declined by 5.5 percent last year, according to TravelPulse, an industry newsletter. It was down another 4.3 percent in the first four months of 2026.

While some people will shrug their shoulders and view the declining visits to America as not a big deal, Boehm pointed out that the change carries with it economic detriment for Americans. For example, wrote Boehm, “[w]hen foreigners stop showing up, it means less work, smaller earnings, and fewer tips” for Americans working in the hospitality industry.