Hello, and welcome to Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026 — the first day of a new month, and somehow that means mustard, mahjong, and sandcastles all get their own holiday.
My calendar says it's Girlfriends Day, Play Outside Day, Sunflower Day, Respect For Parents Day, Raspberry Cream Pie Day, Mustard Day, Sandcastle Day, Mead Day, Jamaican Patty Day, Disc Golf Day, Watermelon Day, and Mahjong Day. Call your girlfriends, respect your parents, and build a sandcastle while eating a patty and washing it down with mead. Nobody said this calendar thingie had to make sense.
Today in History:
1774: English scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen, though he insists on calling it "dephlogisticated air" for years afterward.
1798: Admiral Horatio Nelson's fleet crushes Napoleon's navy at the Battle of the Nile, cementing British naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
1834: Britain's Slavery Abolition Act takes effect across most of its colonies, freeing enslaved people throughout the empire.
1876: Colorado becomes the 38th state, earning its nickname the Centennial State for joining the Union a century after independence.
1893: The Navy commissions its first armored cruiser, the USS New York.
1907: The Army Signal Corps establishes an aeronautical division, the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force.
1914: Germany declares war on Russia, and France orders general mobilization, dragging Europe further into World War I.
1936: The Summer Olympics open in Berlin under a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler, who reluctantly drops his objection to Jewish and black athletes competing after facing a boycott threat.
1944: The Polish underground launches the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation as Soviet forces approach the city.
1946: President Truman establishes the Atomic Energy Commission.
1957: The U.S. and Canada announce the creation of NORAD, the joint air defense command.
1961: Six Flags Over Texas, the first park in the Six Flags chain, holds its soft opening.
1973: George Lucas's coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti opens in theaters.
1981: MTV signs on the air for the first time.
Birthdays Today include: Herman Melville, novelist (Moby-Dick); Yves Saint Laurent, fashion designer; Jerry Garcia, guitarist (Grateful Dead); Jason Momoa, actor (Aquaman, Game of Thrones); Coolio, rapper ("Gangsta's Paradise"); Adam Duritz, singer (Counting Crows); Sam Mendes, director (American Beauty); Tempestt Bledsoe, actor (The Cosby Show); and Edgerrin James, NFL running back.
Happy day to you, if it’s also your special day.
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Like a lot of you, I've spent the past few days chewing on the issues of Mr. "I am science" himself, Anthony Fauci, especially since his Senate appearance turned into a masterclass in saying nothing under oath. An excellent imitation of Bart Simpson's "I didn't do it. No one saw me do it. You can't prove anything."
Here's my conclusion at the moment: A lot of misdirection is happening here, and it's blurring the actual issue.
Most of the arguments I see on social media and the opinion shows understandably circle around what Fauci did after the virus escaped that Wuhan lab — masks, distancing, boosters, all of it. Fine, argue about that if you want. I have expressed myself in a few of these daily columns on those points, too, so I can hardly judge you for doing the same. I gladly admit that a lot of those reactions have been hip shots. After all, that's what I do here. I consider hot takes to be my job.
But I have come to the conclusion that focusing there, while it makes for a tasty discussion, lets the real question slide right past.
Let's knock out the legal dodge first, because Fauci and his defenders lean on it constantly. No U.S. law flatly banned gain-of-function research in 2019. Sure, the Obama administration slapped a funding moratorium on gain-of-function work involving flu and certain coronaviruses back in 2014 — and then quietly lifted it in December 2017, handing funding decisions to a review panel buried inside HHS instead.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology used NIH funds for coronavirus research, and American biosafety experts personally trained its staff. So if gain-of-function work happened there with American tax dollars, it happened under a policy that permitted it, not one that banned it. That's exactly why Congress is still fighting over the Dangerous Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act (S3012) right now, in 2026—because no blanket federal ban exists today, let alone existed in 2019.
Sens. Rand Paul, M.D. (R-Ky.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) co-sponsor that bill. Remember those names. They're the ones actually trying to close the loophole Fauci's people have been hiding behind for six years. And yeah, the bill has languished in committee since 2021.
Most of the shouting match between Paul and Fauci boils down to one phrase — "gain-of-function" — and what it technically means. Any normal person looking at what happened in Wuhan calls it gain-of-function research without blinking. Fauci built his entire defense on a legal technicality so narrow it barely qualifies as a defense.
Even scientists who sided against Paul's framing can't keep the story straight. As an example, Admiral Brett Giroir admitted flat-out that researchers "created 'Frankenstein viruses' to see if they could infect human cells" — and even while insisting that might not be "technically 'gain-of-function research,'" he accused Fauci of "muddying the definition to his own advantage."
Here's the dodge in full: NIH defines gain-of-function research narrowly as studies with the potential to boost the pathogenicity or transmissibility of "potential pandemic pathogens," specifically. The Wuhan research plan NIH signed off on doesn't meet that bar, because the bat coronaviruses in question hadn't infected humans before the experiments started. A Georgetown virologist defending Fauci summed up the loophole: Proving increased transmissibility and pathogenicity requires actual humans, and "you can't determine either of those things in a cell line." That's the fig leaf, plain and simple. Keep the work confined to cell lines and humanized mice, and NIH's own paperwork lets you claim it doesn't count — never mind what the research actually produced.
And let’s be clear: NIAID, under Fauci's direction, funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a subgrant to EcoHealth Alliance. This is all documented fact. That research included creating chimeric viruses with enhanced ability to infect human airway cells — real, documented, funded with U.S. tax dollars, and defended after the fact through a definitional dodge that even Fauci's own allies call thin.
Let’s also recall that Fauci was the government's central figure overseeing "dual use research of concern" (DURC) — research explicitly defined as work that could be legitimately beneficial or misapplied toward bioweapons development. He testified to Congress directly on this in 2012, walking through NIAID's own inventory process for identifying which of its projects fell into that category. He wasn't developing weapons; he was the top U.S. official responsible for deciding which virus-enhancement research was safe enough to fund and publish, despite that research sitting on the same technical continuum as weapons-relevant work. Gain-of-function studies on H5N1 in his portfolio triggered exactly this controversy in 2011-2012, when two papers showing how to make bird flu transmissible between mammals via air nearly got blocked from publication over fears the methodology itself was bioweapons-adjacent information. It’s becoming clear that was a mistake of the first order.
He could quite easily say with some legitimacy that he was not developing bioweapons. But does it make sense for him to have trusted any portion of his research to our biggest rival in the world, which has been looking for any advantage of weaponry that could be had over us since 1949? As a result of all of this, China has in its possession a bioweapon powerful enough to make the results of the lab leak look like a Sunday school picnic. Real smart, guys.
Related: What's Next for Fauci?
Yeah, it’s true that, as far as the published record and genomic analysis show, the specific funded experiments didn't produce SARS-CoV-2. They produced different, documented chimeras that remain in the scientific literature and aren't the pandemic virus.
But let’s recall, please, that the lab studied and collected large numbers of bat coronaviruses beyond just the published, funded experiments — including undisclosed sample collection work that China has never fully opened to outside investigators. So, what happened to the broader collection of viruses being handled at that facility, published and unpublished, is a question that's never been answered, because China blocked the access that would answer it. That's a real, substantial gap and not manufactured skepticism; it's an actual unresolved investigative failure.
We can, as I say, argue all day about what Fauci did after the virus got loose — the six-foot rules, the masks, the so-called vaccines. (See also: horse, barn door.) Fine, have that fight if you want; there's room for real disagreement in the details. But everyone keeps missing the actual point, and it's not subtle.
Which is: Documented or not, it was Fauci's own program, funded with American taxpayer dollars, that effectively created the COVID-19 virus, and then tried to cover up its origins, as Fauci’s own writings indicate. There are legal dodges that can be applied, and Fauci’s lawyers are doing exactly that, as we saw the other day. But ya know, I’ll bet Fauci is thinking the diary, particularly on a government server, was not such a great idea.
I’ll leave to the TMZ crowd the judgments about his reveling in the fame and fortune celebrations in his repugnant diary entries. But here it is, and I cannot stress this enough:
Not one bit of any of this catastrophe would have happened without the creation of the virus.
So for the love of life and all that’s holy, let's please stop pretending this is a legal argument, because it isn't, and it never was, really. It's a moral one. And from where I sit, the moral argument does not play nicely with Fauci.
To that I’ll add that it takes a special kind of audacity to install the guy who ostensibly caused the disaster as the guy running the cleanup. And finally, it’s no shock that the left is going all-out today to defend what I consider indefensible.
Thought for the day: Taking the Fifth Amendment when you already have a pardon — isn’t that kinda like wearing a mask to protect you from a virus when you’ve already been given a “vaccine?” Ummm… Oh, wait…
VIP members, let's hear your thoughts. Your voice matters.
Take care today, gang. I'll see you here tomorrow.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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