A Senate committee held hearings on Wednesday featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci, who headed up America’s COVID response, only to see him plead his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times. Fauci avoided answering challenging questions about pressuring states to shut down schools and businesses, his department’s alleged funding of harmful “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and squelching debate about the “lab leak” hypothesis, even though his newly revealed diary shows the scientists he consulted found the idea likely.National Public Radio freelance science reporter Ari Daniel’s Thursday takeaway from Fauci’s embarrassing non-performance? “Anthony Fauci hearing could lead to ‘chilling effect’ for public health.” (Is the phrase “chilling effect” the last resort of a liberal on the wrong side of an argument?)….the renewed attacks on Fauci, once the nation's leading infectious disease expert, have caused Democrats, health workers and researchers to worry that these events may further erode public health staffing and infrastructure in the U.S.Daniel’s points conveniently parallel that of a partisan Democrat and Fauci defender from the hearing. "These firings and these cuts — they're creating a chilling effect, honestly," Andy Kim, D-N.J., said at the hearing, while also thanking Fauci and decrying what he called the demonization of public servants. "A chilling effect for the next generation of people who might consider stepping up to serve our nation, to be the next generation of researchers who now are wondering whether or not this is the right thing for them to do at a time when they see some of their colleagues, or those that they looked up to, being attacked."Other public health professionals agree that what played out on Capitol Hill earlier this week is part of a larger corrosion of the field to which they've dedicated their lives, endangering its future and undermining health outcomes in the U.S."I thought that we were healing as a country around COVID-19," says epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina. "I think what yesterday did was open some really deep wounds."Jetelina, a dedicated masker, is also a favorite guest on the PBS News Hour.….in her view, such attacks on the man who once helped lead the federal COVID-19 response, combined with a hollowing out of agencies like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, add up to a broader assault on the people and programs that keep Americans healthy.Yes, the woman who regularly appears on national television of her own accord, to be the recipient of friendly publicity, is apparently scared to put her neck out.Jetelina believes that the current environment is forcing individuals to make difficult decisions about what to do professionally, especially in light of what happened to Fauci this week. "If you see someone like this — a public servant for the past 50 years — be just completely vilified," she says, "it makes me wonder about the next emergency. Like, do I want to raise my hand and put my neck out there?"There's no time to waste, says Benjamin, since questioning the legitimacy of science "makes us less healthy as a nation," more vulnerable to current pathogens and future pandemics, and interferes with the essential objective of the field — treating and healing communities.Got it? Oppose having your childrens’ schools shut down, your businesses bankrupted, funerals and church services outlawed, and you’re “questioning the legitimacy of science.”NPR also has a sordid history of dismissing “lab leak” claims favored by conservatives, showing utter contempt and suggesting believers are rejecting science (of course, Fauci considers himself the very embodiment of science). Never mind the Chinese Communist government entity called the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studied bat coronaviruses and is located at the Ground Zero of the COVID pandemic. Surely pure coincidence.There was actually some detectable progress from NPR: The previous day’s story on the hearing itself was a bit more respectful of the “lab leak” theory than earlier NPR stories: “One thing is certain: Six years after the start of the pandemic, there is still debate.” There certainly wasn’t debate before at NPR, which issued this particularly arrogant/ignorant NPR tweet in December 2020: “A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China. There is zero evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.” The headline to the accompanying story by NPR’s Joel Rose: “Even If It's 'Bonkers,' Poll Finds Many Believe QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories.”

The Bluesky Brigade left Twitter in a huff as soon as Elon Musk bought it and now their insanity has a new home. Trump-loathing Jeopardy host Ken Jennings was viciously attacked as a 'transphobe' for just playing harmless New York Times games like Spelling Bee. As Grateful Calvin reported on Twitchy, Jennings posted screenshots and wrote, "My wife and I have a game where we try to invent the day’s grossest-sounding word on NYT Spelling Bee." In response, a Bluesky scold reposted his comment, saying, "I wish people who care about trans people could understand that playing nyt games is still an insult to trans people." Jennings replied with a little sarcasm: "This may be true of others but I actually got express permission from the trans community to keep NYT games and recipes. I also have a news subscription, which is arguably worse, so I had to specifically send in a written request. Took 30 days but I got approved." So according to the Bluesky Brigade, not only is the leftist newspaper somehow "transphobic," so is the leftist game show host who recently unspooled against Trump inside that blue bubble that "The ‘prosecute the former regime at every level’ candidate has my vote in 2028." But Bluesky users are telling Jennings 'I hope your dick rots off.' What a sewer.  3/ Doesn't matter how insane the accusation is. 80% chance he apologizes. Being one of the very best straight white men is really important to his online brand, and he's quite online. He's gotta or every time he logs on Bluesky he'll hear from people wishing his dick rots off. pic.twitter.com/fQb4zzynPu— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) July 31, 2026In 2023, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation made a series of demands or they would designate The Times as transphobic: Stop printing biased anti-trans stories, immediately. Listen to trans people: hold a meeting with trans community leaders within two months. Hire at least four full-time trans writers and editors within three months. Can you imagine conservatives demanding “at least four full-time” conservatives be hired, pronto? Clearly, the Left believes The Times desperately wants to avoid being criticized from the Left. GLAAD approvingly quoted a journalist claiming “The Times knows damn well that its articles are being cited in state legislatures around the country as justification for the hundreds of genocidal, anti-trans anti-queer bills that are being introduced left and right.” That’s right, opposing the trans agenda and insisting there are two less-than-fluid genders equals “genocide.” They’re clearly not opposed to defamation. They’re actively engaging in it. 

MS NOW/SnapStream On Friday, as socialists continued their rise as a part of the Democratic Party through primary election victories, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough took his own route with socialism claims of his own and instead claimed the Republicans were actually the socialists. He also seemed to minimize the actual rise of socialists in the Democratic Party, a topic his show has recently covered extensively, as he called the DSA “fringe.”The conversation started at the very beginning of the premier liberal morning show as, between Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s bickering about who would lead the segment, Scarborough remarked, “Let’s start with the socialists… that nobody’s talking about.”After Brzezinski agreed, Scarborough continued, “but everybody should be talking about it because socialists are taking over some of the most important companies in America's economy.” On Friday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough labeled Republicans as “the socialists that nobody’s talking about" amid the rise of the DSA. He then downplayed the DSA as a “radical fringe group” even as they continue to be poised for more victories in Democratic primaries. pic.twitter.com/zLNc8v8cP0— Nick (@nspin310) July 31, 2026 The focus of the show’s socialism claims was based on government investment into AI and semiconductor chip companies through funds from the congressionally passed CHIPS Act.Brzezinski detailed the investment, and Scarborough interrupted, “Also known as socialism.”Scarborough turned to formulate a long-winded “question” to frequent guest Richard Haass, and claimed Republicans were the actual socialists: “...This is socialism. This is pre-Thatcher style socialism.”He then blamed Republicans solely for high budgets and high debt, even though greater blame could be placed on high spending in recent Democrat administrations, especially in the Biden years:“And the great irony. Here you have Republicans, small government Republicans running up the biggest deficits, the biggest debt ever, crippling this country. Not future generations. They're going to cripple this generation with the biggest budgets ever, the biggest spending ever, the biggest socialized schemes ever. “Scarborough went on to read his own tweet about the topic, a new trend of lazy content on the show, as he proclaimed, “Trump socialism schemes spread as Republicans seize control of seven more private companies.”Then, in the second attempt to formulate an actual question to Haass, Scarborough mocked fears of a DSA rise because they were a “fringe” small group:Richard, they point at a radical fringe group in the Democratic Party and claim, ‘oh, this is what Democrats are doing, they’re socialists.’ And yet you actually have Republicans practicing socialism.Haass responded, “What it does show more than anything is it just underscores that today's Republican Party has ceased to be a conservative party.”Later, Scarborough ended the Republican socialism discussion, “But Republicans, in the most socialist of ways, are picking winners and losers now.”After they spent months downplaying the actual rise of the DSA and defending socialist-aligned candidates like the now-disgraced Graham Platner before finally being forced to cover controversies of DSA candidates like Darializa Avila Chevalier, Morning Joe and Scarborough himself have taken the route of gaslighting and ‘Hey, look over there’ in the socialism fight.The transcript is below. Click "expand":MS NOW's Morning JoeJuly 31, 202606:03:31 AM Eastern(...)MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So, we begin.JOE SCARBOROUGH: YeahBRZEZINSKI: May I? Oh wow!SCARBOROUGH: Let's start with the socialists -BRZEZINSKI: Oh, okay.SCARBOROUGH: That nobody’s talking about –BRZEZINSKI: Okay. We can do that.SCARBOROUGH: – but everybody should be talking about because socialists are taking over some of the most important companies in America's economy.BRZEZINSKI: The Department of Commerce is taking equity stakes in seven companies, developing semiconductor technologies for artificial intelligence and advanced computing systems -SCARBOROUGH: Also known as socialism.BRZEZINSKI: The department announced yesterday that it would designate more than $870 million in federal incentives under the Chips and Science Act in exchange for minor equity stakes in those companies. This practice has drawn criticism from lawmakers, including some Republicans like Senator Todd Young, who has said that the CHIPS Act was never intended to let the federal government take major stakes in private companies.SCARBOROUGH: Richard Haass, this is socialism. This is pre-Thatcher style socialism. And the great irony. Here you have Republicans, small government Republicans running up the biggest deficits, the biggest debt ever, crippling this country. Not future generations. They're going to cripple this generation with the biggest budgets ever, the biggest spending ever, the biggest socialized schemes ever. And now you have these same Republicans – “Trump socialism schemes spread as Republicans seize control of seven more private companies,” I wrote yesterday. “This is a policy that poisoned pre-Thatcher Britain. That Republicans keep spreading socialism across the tech sector businesses is deeply disturbing. So too are the record deficits and debt.”  Richard, They point at a radical fringe group in the Democratic Party and claim, ‘oh, this is what Democrats are doing to socialists.’ And yet you actually have Republicans practicing socialism. First, they practice socialism with Intel, then they practice socialism by forcing other companies to do business with the federal government, or else they're going to get cut out.And now the same thing here. Oh yeah, you can be involved in the CHIPS Act, but you've got to engage in a little act of socialism with us and let us take over stakes in your company. This is outrageous. I - every Republican, every Democrat, every small government conservative should be against this.RICHARD HAASS: Yeah. What it does show more than anything is it just underscores that today's Republican Party has ceased to be a conservative party. Everything it is doing is antithetical to the principles of Thatcher, of Reagan, Hayek, you name it. Milton Friedman. This is not a conservative party anymore. The whole idea of government was to be minimal, to simply set the context for which the private sector would, would do its thing. And instead, the government is essentially making the private sector a quasi-public sector. And history suggests it's expensive, it's inefficient, it's bad for the economy. It's bad for democracy. It leads to corruption. It leads to inefficiency. And yet we're doing it, and there's no pushback. So, again, we don't have a conservative party. We have a populist party. We have a personalist party, and this is an extension of it.(...)6:08:35 AM EasternSCARBOROUGH: What have conservatives like myself said forever about this? The government should not pick winners and losers. The government should allow everybody an equal opportunity for their small business, for their startup, for their company to succeed. But Republicans, in the most socialist of ways, are picking winners and losers now.(...)

Charlotte Howard and Huma Abedin Morning Joe 7-31-26 Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski turned to her Know Your Value franchise Friday to examine the ostensible problem of what The Economist called “the stubborn scarcity of female breadwinners.” The magazine found that among dual-income heterosexual couples, just 30% of wives earn more than their husbands — even though women now make up three-fifths of American university graduates.The premise was explicit: this pattern is a problem. “So why has the male breadwinner model proved so difficult to break?” Mika asked.The Economist's Charlotte Howard pointed to a gap between stated preferences and reality. Americans claim comfort with women earning more, she said, yet the 30% figure persists. “Gender roles are just very, very sticky,” Howard explained. Howard said that mentorship programs and higher college attendance rates are not enough. The problem, supposedly, is that couples still look to the model their parents had, as Boomers hand down their more traditional arrangements to younger generations. And even women who earn more, she noted, continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of household responsibilities.MS NOW contributor Huma Abedin agreed and offered a personal example. “When I was the primary breadwinner in my household, if I didn’t have a male partner at home taking on the majority of the household and childcare work, I couldn’t have done it.” Left unmentioned: Abedin’s current husband. After divorcing Anthony Weiner, in June 2025 she married Alex Soros. He chairs the Open Society Foundations, the $25 billion empire built by his father, the mega left-wing donor George. The woman who mentioned [bragged] about having been the primary earner has since chosen a life of extraordinary wealth in which her role as primary breadwinner is neither possible nor, apparently, desired.  MS NOW’s Know Your Value Segment Treats Male Breadwinner Norm as a Bug, Not a Feature pic.twitter.com/VfLXPs6V1u— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) August 1, 2026 A second irony: Brzezinski’s own résumé shows years of solid but mid-level work — local reporting and anchoring in Hartford, overnight and desk roles at CBS, short stints at MSNBC — before Joe Scarborough selected her as co-host of Morning Joe. That selection, not an independent climb past structural barriers, turned her into a national figure and the platform for “Know Your Value.”The research, Abedin said, shows that even primary-earning women still handle most of the work at home. The question, she asked, is what it will take for women’s economic power to match “expectations at home.” [Huma has presumably been relieved of much of the mopping and dusting duties at their digs.]Howard suggested policies that ease home support, and a cultural shift in which men treat pride in their wives’ higher earnings as “macho rather than undermine their masculinity.” She gave “all credit to Travis Kelce” for saying [in a clip that opened the segment] that his wife Taylor Swift’s drive and success motivate him.What received zero acknowledgment was any role for biology or genetics. Only women ["our neighbors with a uterus," in case James Talarico is reading] become pregnant, give birth, and are biologically equipped to nurse. Those realities produce discontinuous career paths and different trade-offs between career investment and childcare/related duties.Complementary roles — men more oriented toward provision and physical protection, women toward childcare — are not a Boomer invention. They appear across cultures and deep into human history for practical reasons. The panel treated the entire pattern as a purely cultural defect waiting to be fixed.The segment noted one cost of reversing the pattern. When wives become the primary earners, men are roughly 1.5 times as likely to report serious psychological distress — and that distress increases when the wife earns 70% or more of household income. [Abedin, for whom math is apparently not a key skill set, appeared to confuse “one and a half times” with “one and a half percent.”] More importantly, no one asked the obvious question: since the data show that their desired arrangement is seriously distressing to men, why are these women so intent on forcing the change?Brzezinski closed by calling the march toward making more women the primary breadwinners “a long struggle.” The struggle is less against "sticky norms" than against the persistent refusal to acknowledge the obvious.Here's the transcript.MS NOWMorning Joe7/31/268:17 am EDTPAT MCAFEE [from show of 3/10]: Can we talk about Taylor for a second?TRAVIS KELCE: Of course, always.MCAFEE: You watching her do her thing, and continue to move and move and move and work. Has that certainly helped you think through this process of like, do I still wanna go? I'm getting older, body doing that. Do you think that is kind of—KELCE: Without a doubt. She has, we share the same love for what we do, and we've had this, you know, fortunately, we've had this desire since we were kids in our, in our selective professions. And it's just, it's amazing to see her keep going to the table, keep finding new things to write about, keep finding, you know, new melodies and things like that. And on top of that, still seeing her have that love and joy in what she does. And, yeah, of course that's motivating, that's motivating for anybody to see that.MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That was NFL star Travis Kelce earlier this year, talking about his now wife Taylor Swift and how her drive and success motivate him. Swift is also a rare example of a woman who out-earns her husband, one reason the couple is featured in the new analysis in The Economist, which examines why female breadwinners remain the exception. The Economist found that among dual-income heterosexual couples, just thirty percent of wives earn more than their husbands. It also found that when women become the primary breadwinners, men are one-and-a-half times more likely to report serious psychological distress. So why has the male breadwinner model proved so difficult to break? Here to answer is executive editor and New York bureau chief for The Economist, Charlotte Howard. Also here for the conversation, MS NOW contributor Huma Abedin, who is vice chair of the Forbes and Know Your Value 30/50 Summit. So, Charlotte of The Economist, let's dive into this new research. Women now make up three-fifths of American university graduates. So why are seventy percent of wives still earning less than their husbands?CHARLOTTE HOWARD: Well, there's a lot of things I found about this article that were very interesting. But one of the things that I found most fascinating is that the stated preference of Americans is that, Americans are, are very comfortable with women earning more than their husbands. And Americans now, women are more likely to have a college degree. They make up a majority of people in the workforce with a university education.And yet that figure remains, that you have just thirty percent of women out earning their husband. And so I think what that represents is this gap between America's stated preference, women's acquired skills, and the reality of how women exist at home and in the workplace.HUMA ABEDIN: You know, one of the things, aside from the statistic that Mika just mentioned, that men whose wives or female partners earn one-and-a-half percent, are more of the primary breadwinners are one-and-a-half percent, reporting that they have serious psychological distress, that actually goes up, that when women earn seventy percent or more of the household income, they're even more stressed.And that the findings haven't changed, that from 2001 to 2011, and then 2013 to 2023, it's about the same. So why do you think this is still happening? HOWARD: I think there are a number of hypotheses I can put forward, but the main thing, and I'd love to know your view of this, is that gender roles are just very, very sticky. You know, people can go to college at a higher rate, we can have all these mentorship programs to keep women in the workplace. But some of these norms are generational. You know, people look at the model that their parents had, and it's a big shift to go from, you know, if you think about a millennial now in the workplace, how their baby boomer parents existed in the home. It's very, very different to see a totally different gender dynamic play out.And you have this self-reinforcing dynamic, I think. When you have a woman who is earning less, they will take on more household responsibilities. You know, even women who earn more, they have a disproportionate share of household responsibilities, and then that has this effect of perpetuating the idea that women are consistently earning less because they're taking on more responsibility at home. They can't invest the time that they would if they didn't have those responsibilities at home. So it's just a very, very sticky cycle.ABEDIN: You know, you mentioned mentorship, you mentioned the generational shifts, which I completely agree with. I mean, I take myself as an example. That when I was the primary breadwinner in my household, if I didn't have a male partner at home taking on the majority of the household and childcare work, I couldn't have done it. And what this research is showing is exactly what you're underscoring, which is that, even when women are the primary breadwinners, they're responsible for the majority of work at home. What do you think it's gonna take? Like, what is the, what was found in this research that it will take for it to become more acceptable for women's economic power to match the new expectations at home?HOWARD: I think it's, you know, a combination of things, both wonky and cultural. You know, on the wonky side, you could list a whole number of policies that would make it easier for people to have more support at home and exist in the way they want to in the workplace as well. I also think, candidly, that having men talk about the pride that they take in their women's work, and having that be something that is macho rather than undermine their masculinity is really powerful. And so, you know, all credit to Travis Kelce for saying that it's motivating to him. I think that there are more role models that you probably need to see across different sectors, that don't just have to do with your wife being a pop star, where men take real, you know, active pride in their wives' work and are willing to do more at home too.MIKA: This has been a long struggle. You can read more about this phenomenon at theeconomist.com. Executive editor and New York bureau chief at The Economist, Charlotte Howard. Thank you so much for sharing this with us this morning, and Huma Abedin, as always, thank you as well.

MS NOW’s The Weekend co-host Eugene Daniels recently traveled to Chicago for the DSA convention and upon returning claimed on Saturday that the group of radicals is actually trying to moderate in order to be taken seriously.After playing part of his interview with co-hair Ashik Siddique, Daniels recalled, “So, guys, I think—what I thought was really interesting and what I left with was that they're also understanding that this is a moment that they haven't had before, and that they actually have to appear more serious.” Eugene Daniels tries to claim the DSA is moderating. After going to their Chicago convention, he claimed "What I left with was that they're also understanding that this is a moment that they haven't had before, and that they actually have to appear more serious...so when you talk… pic.twitter.com/hwI67zk7Lq— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) August 1, 2026 Seeing the upside in that, Daniels continued, “You know, when I was talking to the co-chair at the beginning there, one of the other parts of the conversation was that, you know, they know that people see them as like, silly little kids that are playing politics or — where in fact, they could, you know, take all of the anger that's happening in this country and transition into something real.”Daniels’s idea of moderation was extremely generous:And so when you talk about, you know, that little pamphlet I had was something that they were giving out to everyone. And what was not in there was the stuff that has gotten the most attention from their platform. That's on two pages. We have this in element one. There are a lot of things on there, but what wasn't in that in that paper was there was no abolish the U.S. Senate, which has gotten them pilloried. There was no abolish the Defense Department. There was no there was nothing about defunding the police. That that was not in there. And what he said to me was this document that I was holding in my hand, has — was put together in the last month. So to me that signals that there may be some changes coming to the platform.”The problem for Daniels is that the other co-chair, Megan Romer, was on Fox News Sunday not even a week ago and affirmed the DSA’s desire to abolish the Senate, presidency, the Supreme Court as we know it, ICE, the border, prisons, defund the Pentagon, and have the government seize larger corporations.The fact that the DSA’s pamphlet Daniels mentioned didn’t talk about the nutty things Romer talked about does not mean that the DSA no longer believes them. It just means the DSA knows it has to do a better job of not saying the quiet part out loud. Unfortunately for them, Romer’s interview and their candidates’ social media histories exist. It is up to journalists to press these candidates on the sincerity of their campaign conversions and not just blindly accept them.Here is a transcript for the August 1 show:MS NOW The Weekend8/1/20269:41 AM ETEUGENE DANIELS: So, guys, I think—what I thought was really interesting and what I left with was that they're also understanding that this is a moment that they haven't had before, and that they actually have to appear more serious. You know, when I was talking to the co-chair at the beginning there, one of the other parts of the conversation was that, you know, they know that people see them as like, silly little kids that are playing politics or — where in fact, they could, you know, take all of the anger that's happening in this country and transition into something real. And so when you talk about, you know, that little pamphlet I had was something that they were giving out to everyone. And what was not in there was the stuff that has gotten the most attention from their platform. That's on two pages. We have this in element one. There are a lot of things on there, but what wasn't in that in that paper was there was no abolish the U.S. Senate, which has gotten them pilloried. There was no abolish the Defense Department. There was no there was nothing about defunding the police. That that was not in there. And what he said to me was this document that I was holding in my hand, has — was put together in the last month. So to me that signals that there may be some changes coming to the platform.