Fauci dismisses ‘preposterous’ allegations that he led covid coverup

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( [Abbreviated Pundit Roundup]( is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. - [Fauci dismisses ‘preposterous’ allegations that he led covid coverup]( The prominent infectious-disease expert, who served as a senior leader at the National Institutes of Health for four decades before leaving government at the end of 2022, said Republicans have distorted emails between himself and other scientists as they discussed whether a laboratory leak of the coronavirus was possible. [...] The hearing with Fauci, widely viewed as the face of the United States’ coronavirus response, drew a circus-style environment to a covid panel that has often struggled for attention as the public has moved on from the pandemic. A line of would-be spectators snaked around the Rayburn House Office Building, seeking a seat in the standing-room-only hearing; a person sitting in the front row wore a T-shirt emblazoned with “JAIL FAUCI.” Lawmakers also packed the roster, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the covid panel who skipped seven of its last 10 hearings. Greene also briefly brought the hearing to a halt by accusing Fauci of wrongdoing with lab experiments on beagles and other matters, saying he should be in prison and refusing to address him as a doctor. Democrats protested Greene’s accusations, and Wenstrup rebuked her for violating decorum. Fauci expressed puzzlement over why Greene was invoking beagles at a hearing dedicated to the covid response. - [Nazi cavorting anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. sued Daily Kos for protecting our community. The legal fees have piled up. Help us keep fighting with a $5 monthly donation]( - [Jordan urges GOP to use spending bills to hamper Trump cases]( The Ohio Republican pitched a series of policy riders for fiscal 2025 appropriations bills in a letter to the House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole. One proposed policy rider goes after special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith’s office, which has brought criminal charges against Trump in Florida and the District of Columbia. The rider would prohibit funding for an “office of a Special Counsel, who has not been confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as a U.S. Attorney,” from being used “to bring a criminal prosecution of a former or current President or Vice President.” Another rider would prohibit funds from being used to consult, advise or direct state prosecutors and state attorneys general “in the civil action or criminal prosecution of a former or current President or Vice President brought against them in state court.” [...] The policy riders are the latest example of congressional Republicans stepping to Trump’s defense after a New York state jury found the former president guilty of 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. - [The reich stuff – what does Trump really have in common with Hitler?]( The Hitler-Trump analogy is controversial. “Some of Trump’s critics – including Biden’s campaign – argue that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and authoritarian behavior justify the comparison,” the Politico website observedrecently. “Meanwhile, Trump’s defenders – and even some of his more historically-minded critics – argue that the comparison is ahistorical; that he’s not a true fascist.” The former camp now includes Henk de Berg, a professor of German at the University of Sheffield in Britain. The Dutchman, whose previous books include Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies, has just published Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying. [...] Above all, De Berg argues, Hitler and Trump were and are political performance artists who speak only vaguely about policies – Make Germany/America great again – but know how to draw attention using jokes, insults and extreme language. In this they differ from Joseph Stalin, the Soviet autocrat who was a poor public speaker and preferred to work behind the scenes. - [What’s with the rise of “fact-based journalism”?]( Here’s a term you may be hearing with increasing frequency: “Fact-based journalism.” The Associated Press uses it in fund-raising appeals, as does ProPublica, and our local NPR affiliate. The National Association of Broadcasters and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting both describe themselves as purveyors of “fact-based journalism” in their public relations materials. [...] When and why did this term rise to prominence? We did a keyword search of “fact-based journalism” in NewsBank, a news repository of over 12,000 sources, for the years 1990 through 2023. As the graph below indicates, usage of the term ballooned starting in 2016 and saw a big spike in 2021. And as the graph also indicates, the term “fact-based journalism” was rarely used prior to the early 2000s The increasing usage of the term corresponds with the beginning of Trump’s presidency. Given this timing, we next conducted a parallel search of the term “fake news.” Our suspicion was that the term “fact-based journalism” arose in response to the rise of the notion of “fake news” that so dominated the discourse around journalism and politics during the Trump presidency. The results support our hypothesis. - [Research Finds Significant Racial Disparities in Medicaid Re-enrollment]( The findings from researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University, Harvard Medical School and Northwestern University are some of the first comprehensive data on race gathered after a pandemic-era policy that allowed Medicaid recipients to keep their coverage without regular eligibility checks ended last year. More than 22 million low-income people have lost health care coverage at some point since April 2023, when the policy allowing continuous enrollment lapsed. The process of ending that policy — what federal and state officials have called “unwinding” — was one of the most drastic ruptures in the health safety net in a generation. “Medicaid eligibility is complex, and then applying and keeping Medicaid coverage is a huge logistical barrier,” said Dr. Jane M. Zhu, an associate professor of medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University and one of the study’s authors. “What this analysis is showing is that these barriers have downstream spillover effects on particular communities.” - [Abortion is Healthcare! Make sure everyone knows with this t-shirt]( - [Should Biden Downplay His Own Success?]( ...our economic growth has been the envy of other wealthy nations. Stocks are way up since President Biden took office. Inflation has declined sharply and unemployment is still below 4 percent. The latest numbers seem to support the view that the apparent acceleration of prices earlier this year was a statistical blip, and that disinflation is still on track. Yet there’s still a lingering conventional wisdom that says Biden shouldn’t trumpet his economic record. The Washington Post’s editorial board just wrote that “Telling Americans the economy is good won’t work.” The Financial Times’s editorial board wrote that “The president’s state of the nation address in March was littered with superlatives about the economy” but that his messaging “risks negating the experience of voters on the ground” — basically saying that Biden shouldn’t talk about his economic achievements, even implying that he should try to relate to voters by acknowledging that the economic picture out there is bad, which it isn’t. [...] That said, telling voters to buck up and realize how good they have it would also be a bad move. But has anyone in the Biden administration said anything like that? It would be pretty obtuse if they had. But I’m not aware of any examples. As far as I can tell, administration officials, including Biden himself, talk about low unemployment, falling inflation and rising real wages — and do so very carefully, studiously avoiding the bombast and excessive boasting so common in the previous administration. But even mentioning good economic news is supposedly an affront to everyday Americans because it amounts to denying their lived experience. Want to write your own stories? [Log in]( or [sign up]( to post articles and comments on Daily Kos, the nation's largest progressive community. Follow Daily Kos on [Facebook](, [Threads](, and [Instagram](. Thanks for all you do, The Daily Kos team We're not asking for much Over the past 12 months, the average donation to Daily Kos has been just $9.44. These donations may seem small, but they're a big deal to us. In fact, they are our largest source of income. We literally couldn't do the work we do without them. 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