Dear Weekend Jolter,
“Anthony Fauci’s diary” is not a phrase we had on our bingo card. But published entries from his personal, voluminous notes prompted yet more recriminations this week over the Covid era’s excesses and deceptions.
The famous immunologist, frustratingly but predictably, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions Wednesday when he appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee led by Rand Paul, who released the documents. The Covid czar cited the senator’s “unhinged obsession with me” and the possibility of being prosecuted for perjury. The senator accused the Covid czar of myriad contradictions and peppered him with questions on gain-of-function research and more, to no avail (Paul is planning a contempt vote in committee next week).
Indeed, there is plenty to get spun up about. As NR’s editorial summarizes, though Fauci insisted he was not responsible for strict lockdown policies at the state and local level, the notes say he convinced the mayor of New York City to “close the NYC schools” and pressed him to “close the bars and restaurants.” He “had a similar call” with a top California official. Fauci seemed to revel in his own rising fame and the media attention that came with it. At a time when the so-called lab-leak theory was often downplayed or dismissed, Fauci wrote early on that a Chinese wet market was “not the source, it was the amplifier.” As Jim Geraghty recalls, Fauci’s “public comments throughout 2020 emphasized the likelihood of a ‘natural origin’ and rejected the notion that the virus could have leaked from a lab.”
This follows a separate document dump of messages showing that scientists at the time were not nearly as confident in ruling out a lab leak as they seemed.
And yet, I’m afraid these developments will simply be absorbed into the cyclone of unresolved angst over the pandemic. I still think those awaiting a Covid reckoning will do so indefinitely, and not just because Fauci pleaded the Fifth.
Similar revelations have been delivered piecemeal for years, without making much impact. In 2023, former NIH head Francis Collins acknowledged that public health officials took a “narrow view” by placing all emphasis on stopping the disease and saving lives and “zero” on the disruption to lives, businesses, and students’ education, an approach he called a “mistake” in hindsight. In 2024, testimony emerged raising questions about the science behind social-distancing rules and child-masking. Around the same time, the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that the pandemic probably started in a lab. Numerous reports have documented the educational harm from remote learning, which persisted in some jurisdictions long after the risk associated with in-person class had been minimized; other Western nations had a much better record on reopening.
Amid this slow but steady release of information, “we have had no national reckoning with that traumatic event,” M. Anthony Mills wrote in NR magazine last year. We still haven’t.
A select subcommittee issued its final report on the pandemic in 2024. That the Fauci drama played out this week is a sign of how conclusive that process was seen to be. That Randi Weingarten hasn’t been driven out of public life by now is another. No aha moment is on the horizon, it seems, perhaps because people are too dug in, or too much time has passed, or the updates are too diffuse or too contested.
As Mills’s piece put it, it’s not just that science got politicized; “politics got scientized” in such a way that “suppressed the moral and political dimensions of pandemic decision-making,” as many lost faith in institutions.
Jim notes that Fauci’s image in the media may be suffering these days, and Noah Rothman observes “indifference” toward him on the left. But even now, coverage of his notes simply varies by tribe. (The Washington Post sent a push alert on Monday that highlighted Fauci’s thoughts on a “rambling” Trump.)
Rand Paul’s Musk-like conduct online hasn’t done his cause any favors either. While the senator has done important work in bringing these Covid documents to light, the rollout leading up to the hearing was, to put it mildly, unserious: His office presented Fauci’s notes below a page dressed up to look like a child’s diary. He trolled Fauci on social media with an image of him as a ’90s girl writing in a unicorn diary. He mocked his pitching. It’s hard to imagine anyone being persuaded by this.
So the warfare goes on over the pandemic that killed 1 million Americans and spawned untold schemes to stop it that soon calcified into articles of partisan faith whether they made sense or not. Resentment built into a crisis of distrust that persists today. “A thorough accounting of that period would be an elementary act of civic hygiene,” Noah writes. And Fauci, as NR’s editorial notes, “reinforced the public’s suspicions about the honesty of public health officials.” When the next pandemic hits, will health officials strike a better balance? If they do, would the public listen?
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Zelensky Goes to Washington: The Trump–Zelensky Relationship Improves
Maine Democrats choose the same politics, with less baggage (they hope): Troy Jackson Is Just as Radical as Graham Platner
ARTICLES
Andrew McCarthy: Why Trump Won’t Just Break the Blanche Impasse
John Fund: California Attorney General Sabotages Voter ID Proposal
Jim Talent: We Still Need More Ships
Becket Adams: Who Does Mamdani Think He Is?
John Gustavsson: The EU’s Stealth Censorship Playbook
Abigail Anthony: Starting the Day with a Transphobic Donut
Abigail Anthony: They Have No Idea What We Think
Marian L. Tupy: America’s Progress Paradox
Charles C. W. Cooke: The DSA Wants to Abolish America
Josh Blackman: Counting All of Justice Barrett’s Votes
Caroline Downey: Can We Admit Now That Caitlin Clark Isn’t Making This Up?
Joshua S. Treviño: We Discard the Lessons of WWII at Our Peril
Elliott Abrams: Nicaragua Officially Becomes a Family Dictatorship
Charles Hilu: Trump Lashes Out Against the Harsh Reality of Senate Math
Rainer Zitelmann: I Was Targeted by Germany’s Speech Police
Jeffrey Blehar: Ken Martin’s Woes Presage a Civil War in the Democratic Party
Kamden Mulder: ‘Just Found All the Classified Stuff’: Biden Acknowledges Secret Documents in New Ghostwriter Tapes
CAPITAL MATTERS
Daniel Pilla explains why the IRS will continue to struggle to accurately answer taxpayer questions: The IRS Is Still ‘Attempting the Impossible’
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White pans the latest Broadway-to-film conversion: Attack of the Theater Kids
A gift of 300 Old Master paintings and sculptures nourishes this Massachusetts museum and those who visit. Brian Allen has the story: New Faces at the Clark via a Splendid Gift
THE EXCERPTS HAVE LANDED
Elliott Abrams weighs in on the end of “elections” in Nicaragua:
Nicaragua is now a family dictatorship just like that of the Kims in North Korea — or the Somoza family that the Sandinistas displaced in 1979. Nicaragua today has two “co-presidents,” Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega is 80 and in poor health, so he and his wife changed the constitution last year to assure that Murillo takes sole power when he dies. And in the wings are their sons: Laureano, a “presidential adviser,” Rafael, who heads the national oil company, Maurice, and Daniel, all under U.S. sanctions for money laundering, each waiting for his turn. The only difference between the Ortega family tyranny and that of the Kims in North Korea or the Somozas is that they had phony elections and Ortega is dispensing with that formality. . . .
Venezuela and Cuba have gotten considerable attention from the Trump administration, but Nicaragua much less so despite the deepening dictatorship. These three countries represented the last leftist, anti-American regimes in this hemisphere. With Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in jail and his regime either kowtowing to Trump’s instructions or (one hopes) moving toward free elections, there are two to go.
Nicaragua should present an easier case than Cuba. Cuba has not had multiparty elections since 1952, while Violeta Chamorro beat the Sandinistas in a free election in Nicaragua in 1990. Nicaragua has not experienced a Cuban-style regime until the last decade, making it easier to restore both free elections and democratic institutions of government. The state and Communist Party bureaucracies built by Fidel and Raúl Castro since 1959 do not exist in Nicaragua. Banned in Nicaragua but possible to restore are the political parties and their leaders, plus journalists who worked in free newspapers and TV stations. And the hundreds of opposition political leaders expelled in the last decade can return home and take up their work again.
The moment for change may be approaching. Murillo (sanctioned by the United States in 2018 for human rights abuses and corruption) has been purging many of her husband’s closest advisers as well as former Sandinista militants and public officials, part of her preparation to rule alone. But that will leave her with a narrow base of support. When Daniel dies or becomes incapacitated, it remains to be seen if she can seize all the reins of power — becoming president and perhaps naming her sons as vice presidents — and whether the military will go along with a family dictatorship.
The attention being given to Venezuela and Cuba is warranted, but Nicaragua’s future deserves the Trump administration’s attention too — and merits a serious program to bring down the Ortega-Murillo regime and restore legitimate, competitive democracy.
Tim Hortons is facing a very silly backlash over a Harry Potter–themed donut promotion. Abigail Anthony deals with this appropriately:
What you thought was a sugary celebration of a globally popular franchise is actually a genocide, since J. K. Rowling thinks that men who put on a dress aren’t women.
One problem with the themed donuts is that they might make unstable people feel lousy, which of course is wholly unacceptable. Egale Canada, an organization that received more than $4 million from Canadian taxpayers in 2023 to fight for “2SLGBTQI people,” released a statement condemning Tim Hortons and its dangerous donuts: “As anti-2SLGBTQI hate continues to rise in Canada, especially for trans and gender diverse communities, campaigns that celebrate the Harry Potter brand can be deeply disappointing, infuriating, and saddening for those who are directly affected by that harm as well as their allies. Egale urges companies to consider the impact their partnerships and marketing decisions can have on communities — particularly communities that are already facing heightened levels of discrimination, violence, and hostility. Everyone deserves to feel seen, respected, and included, and marketing promotions such as this only further exclusion and harm.” . . .
Others have argued that the brand collaboration is bad because the Harry Potter series itself is replete with evil views; not only is Harry Potter deeply “transphobic” by virtue of its author’s views on gender, but the books themselves also espouse white supremacy. “Try the new Tim Hortons anti-miscegenation doughnut,” someone wrote on Bluesky. That person added that “we should talk more about how a quarter of [Harry Potter’s] branding is a symbol for in-universe race science” . . .
It’s all so tiresome. What’s annoying about the culture wars is that the battles are not confined to the trenches, and the most anodyne things — pistachio donuts, the Crab Museum, bunny sanctuaries, colorful yarn, and chewy candy, to name a handful — are somehow politically inflected. While progressive activists are usually entirely unsympathetic but fiercely intimidating, this particular episode reveals how they are so psychologically fragile.
If you perceive flashy new donuts as a direct attack on you, then you probably need professional help — ideally not from providers who will reflexively “affirm” your every delusion and feeling.
Former Senator Jim Talent updates a column from nine years ago calling for a shipbuilding surge:
Well, we did and do need more ships, and the government finally has a real plan, backed up by real money, to do something about it, in the only way it can be done: by undertaking the enormous but necessary task of rebuilding America’s maritime industrial base.
President Trump signaled his priorities in his first address to Congress in March 2025, when he announced that a shipbuilding office had already been established in the Executive Office of the President. The next month, he issued his “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” executive order, which called for the drafting of a Maritime Action Plan that would expand every vital aspect of the maritime sector, including commercial shipping, shipbuilding, ship maintenance and repair, the maritime workforce, and port infrastructure.
Crucially, those announcements were immediately backed up by money. Last year, Congress included funding for 82 new vessels in the defense appropriations bill and the One Big Beautiful Bill. The Navy got 35 new ships; the other 47 were for the Coast Guard.
This year, the administration asked for $65 billion for its shipbuilding accounts, which, if approved by Congress, will be an increase of more than $20 billion above last year’s budget and the biggest increase in appropriations for shipbuilding since the Korean War. The request contained money for 18 new battle force ships for the Navy but also 16 non-battle force vessels, including additional sealift and supply vessels, a tanker, a hospital ship, and five fire boats — to prevent another catastrophe like the incineration of the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego in July 2020.
That big a buy for the Navy was itself extraordinary, but the request also included funding for non-naval ships: Coast Guard cutters, an Arctic research vessel for the National Science Foundation, two maneuver support ships for the Army, and — believe it or not — a ferry for the U.S. Park Service. The objective was not just to get ships for every government agency that needed them, but to grow the industrial base by sending business to smaller shipyards that cannot build naval vessels.
Then in February of this year, the administration released its promised Maritime Action Plan.
The plan is the product of a year of solid work: a comprehensive yet detailed strategy to rebuild the shipyard industrial base, grow the skilled workforce necessary to sustain it and man both commercial and naval vessels, and strengthen the security and resilience of the maritime sector.
CODA
I couldn’t not mention that I caught a Dylan show last weekend, my first time seeing him; he’s 85, so it was probably my last if we’re being real. I went in with measured expectations, knowing his reputation for disregarding the audience and not playing the hits. It’s fine. Even though it took a few songs for his voice to clear up, even though we could hardly see his face, even though he played just one classic that I knew (“It Ain’t Me Babe”), it was a memorable and balmy evening, and a great show. My favorite was a haunting performance of “Black Rider,” off Rough and Rowdy Ways. The live versions are better than the studio take, says me.
Thanks for reading — do have a fine weekend.