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.

Why? The apparent reason is that Blumenthal’s coverage related to Iran and the war has strayed too far from the US government’s preferred narratives. Blumenthal has also been critical of several of the US government’s other foreign interventions. In short, Blumenthal has refused to become a propagandist for US intervention and military aggression against Iran.

Read here a Monday report from The Grayzone about the nasty “welcome home” the US government’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gave Blumenthal after his international flight arrived at Dulles Airport in Virginia following his trip to Iran.

This sort of singling out of journalists who seek to present information outside the parameters preferred by US government higher-ups flies in the face of the freedom the First Amendment is supposed to protect.

The action taken against Blumenthal brings to mind the June of 2024 prevention of independent political commentator Scott Ritter from travelling to Russia via the CBP’s confiscation of Ritter’s passport at the airport before he could take his outbound flight, followed up a couple months later by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation searching Ritter’s home and seizing more than two dozen boxes of items from Ritter’s home. Talking with reporters outside his home shortly after the search and seizure occurred, Ritter stated:

There’s no doubt that I’m being targeted because of statements I’ve made about U.S. policy in Ukraine. I’m being targeted because I have made an effort to try and improve relations between the United States and Russia to bring about arms control to bring about peace.

Ritter has continued with his public, independent analysis of US foreign policy, and so likely too will Blumenthal, despite the adverse efforts of the US government. Yet, in America, individuals should not have to suffer government persecution for exercising their right to communicate. Plus, actions like those taken against Blumenthal and Ritter threaten to prevent or temper the independent communication that other individuals may otherwise have pursued. Ritter expressed this concern to reporters outside his home after it was searched, stating:

This has a chilling effect on free speech, the idea that you have a free speech right in America but when you execute in a manner that the U.S. takes exception to and they launch a search warrant, that’s an intimidation factor.

In America, the people are supposed to be able to criticize government actions freely and to report speculation and facts about which the government and certain special interests would rather people not be aware. This is a fundamental freedom protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution. It also serves as an important check to help ensure that government power can be limited and directed in response to exposure and critical commentary regarding its exercise.

Blumenthal and Ritter have been heroes of free speech, providing Americans and people across the world with information that powerful interests would rather see suppressed. It is a terrible violation that the US government is attacking them for taking this action and, in so doing, discouraging other Americans from similarly exercising First Amendment rights.

Jacob Bogage, in a Friday Reuters article, pointed out an uncomfortable truth for Trump as Trump continues boasting about stock market gains. “Trump has increasingly cast Wall Street’s gains as a measure of his presidency, treating record stock prices as proof ​that his policies are working even as many Americans remain squeezed by high living costs and millions own no stock at all,” explained Bogage. Just over half of capital market investments are owned by one percent of American earners, while the bottom half of American earners own just one percent. In fact, notes Bogage, roughly 40 percent of Americans do not own even a single share of stock.

Meanwhile, most Americans are perceiving significant economic problems. In a Tuesday The Guardian article, Gaya Gupta related that a new Harris Poll survey found that an astounding 95 percent of Americans, which would include most American stock owners and nonowners, “believe the US is suffering an affordability crisis.” Further, noted Gupta, Americans’ assessment of the direction the economy is moving has been becoming more negative over the last few months. Wrote Gupta:

Despite stable employment and record-high stock markets, more Americans believe the overall economy is getting worse (57%) than in February (46%), when the poll was last conducted and before the war in the Middle East sent gas prices soaring. Fewer people today also believe the economy is getting better (16%, compared with 28% in February) and more say their financial security has gotten worse.

The economic pessimism reflected in the polling, Gupta further wrote, extends even to Republicans and rural voters who have been comparatively supportive of Trump and other Republican candidates.

Yet, when the US missiles started flying, it soon appeared that little effort had been made to ensure they would strike military targets instead of just bring death, destruction, and terror on a grand scale. The US government has since largely kept mum on the matter. But, a Tuesday report by Zachary Cohen at CNN indicates that the US military’s initial attack on Iran relied largely on targeting information that had not been updated in over 10 years.

The targeting was further marred, wrote Cohen, by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth having “made deep cuts to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response programs and slashed CHMR staff at military commands by more than 90%.” The drastic reduction applied to the military group responsible for overseeing the Iran war initial attack targets as well. Cohen explained, “That included removing civilian harm specialists from target development strike teams and reducing the team of 10 at Central Command to only one full-time staffer, sources told CNN.”

Here is how Cohen sums thing up in the beginning of his article:

Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in critical databases that intelligence about potential targets in Iran was severely out of date and approved some strikes — including one that hit a school, killing nearly 200 hundred children and adults, according to three sources familiar with the decision-making process.

Messages indicating the intelligence was based on years-old intelligence that needed to be re-vetted were embedded in a system used for developing targets and required a senior officer to approve adding a site to the strike list, according to the sources.

The decision by senior commanders to ignore the warnings was made for “expediency,” two of the sources said, in a rush to provide targets at the start of the war. But it also directly contributed to the accidental strike on the school, the sources added.

The strike killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers, according to Iranian state media. Those numbers would make the strike one of the worst civilian casualty incidents in recent US military history. The US military launched an investigation in the days after the strike.

US military officials “knew within days (of the strike on the school) how the mistake happened,” one of the sources said. “It was obviously old info.”

Months later, the Pentagon has not released its investigation into the incident.

Continue reading Cohen’s article here.

CrossTalking with Daniel McAdams, Julia Roknifard, and Leila Hudson.