#matt gaetz controversy

[herinfluencerdeer]

REPUBLICANS TO HUDDLE BEHIND CLOSED DOORS TO ELECT MCCONNELL'S SUCCESSOR WEDNESDAY

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[latestnews-now]

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, ending a controversial nomination process that rocked Washington. Discover the details behind his decision, the Senate’s reaction, and what it means for Trump’s administration. Don’t miss out – subscribe for more breaking news!

[critical-skeptic]

Distract. Divide. Desensitize.

For those just finding out about the destruction of the Georgia Guidestones in 2022: this is exactly how they keep you blind. The monument—designed to endure and provoke thought about humanity’s future—was quietly erased, just like countless other significant events that vanish beneath layers of noise. Why? Because you're meant to miss the real moves while they orchestrate chaos to keep you fixated on distractions.

Take the recent CEO assassination—a so-called act of “vigilantism” being spun to desensitize the public to oligarchs calling anyone who isn’t with them an enemy. Or Trump’s absurd strawman nomination of Matt Gaetz for AG, a spectacle that was never serious but designed to feed the outrage machine. These aren’t random—they’re calculated distractions, conditioning the masses to accept heightened division, alarmist rhetoric, and creeping authoritarian control.

The destruction of the Guidestones wasn’t just about wiping out a controversial monument; it’s part of the playbook. They erase history while feeding the public "heroes" and manufactured conflicts to keep you too distracted to notice the chessboard being reconfigured. So while everyone’s eyes are glued to the spectacle, the powerful move in silence, building the structures they’ll use to lock you out of the game entirely.

Wake up. If you’re only now learning about the Guidestones, ask yourself what you missed today while being fed your latest dose of chaos. This is how they operate: distraction, division, and silence over what truly matters. By the time the dust settles, it’ll be too late to stop what’s been quietly built around you.

[keep-both-eyes-on-trump]

Trump Watch #8

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name for consideration for attorney general after allegations of sex trafficking and drug use threatened to impede his confirmation by the Senate. He posted on X that “it is clear [his] confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.” 

Trump has picked Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (overseeing Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance, and the ACA).

Oz was a prominent cardiothoracic surgeon who became a celebrity doctor with his own daytime series, “The Dr. Oz Show.”

He has a history of endorsing “dubious” and “controversial" products and treatments on his show. 

He promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19; a treatment theory that was debunked. 

He has, in the past, supported the idea of universal healthcare, but has since revised his stance saying uninsured individuals do not have a right to health. 

Trump has nominated Sean Duffy as transportation secretary. 

Duffy is a former member of the House, former district attorney in Wisconsin,and recent co-host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business.

He is also a former reality TV star and staunch defender of Trump on cable news.

He has little to no experience in the transportation field.

Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker to serve as ambassador to NATO. 

Whitaker is a former attorney who also served briefly as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term.

He is likely to share Trump’s opinion that the US is carrying an oversized share of defense spending compared to European allies.

He has little to no experience in foreign or military affairs.

Trump announced Pete Hoekstra to be the US ambassador to Canada. 

Hoekstra is a former congressman

He served as ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump’s first administration.

The Watcher

[schraubd]

Will Matt Gaetz Finally Cause the Senate GOP To Stand Up To Trump? My Money's On No!

I really thought I'd laid the bar on the floor, but somehow Donald Trump has already burrowed under it by announcing (former*) Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general. I had the pleasure of sharing this news with several of my law school colleagues, where it literally provoked a laugh-out-loud howl of incredulity. It wasn't just my people though. Senate Republicans also seem rather blindsided by the pick: The selection of Mr. Gaetz blindsided many of Mr. Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill. The announcement was met with immediate and unvarnished skepticism by Republicans in the Senate who will vote on his nomination. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the pick — and predicted a difficult confirmation process. [....] Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, when asked about Mr. Gaetz’s selection, said, “I don’t know the man other than his public persona.” Mr. Cornyn said he could not comment on the chances that Mr. Gaetz, or Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, would be confirmed: “I don’t know — we’ll find out.” “He’s got his work cut out for him,” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said as other senators dodged questions from reporters. Representative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, told reporters that many members of the G.O.P. conference were shocked at the choice of Mr. Gaetz for attorney general, but mostly thrilled at the prospect that he might no longer be a member of the chamber. The House, Mr. Miller added, would be a more functional place without Mr. Gaetz. He predicted a bruising confirmation fight, adding that if the process revealed evidence to corroborate the allegations of sex trafficking against Mr. Gaetz, he would not be surprised if the House moved to expel him, as it did with Representative George Santos. Mr. Santos lost his seat after the Ethics Committee documented violations of the chamber’s rules and evidence of extensive campaign fraud.   But things aren't all bad. You'll never guessed who raced ahead of the pack to greet Trump's failson pick with open arms: One of the few lawmakers to offer a positive assessment was a staunch Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called Mr. Gaetz “smart” and “clever” but predicted tough confirmation hearings. So, how long will it take for the Senate GOP caucus to fall in line? I'm guessing it'll happen before the first confirmation hearing. (That is, if we have confirmation hearings). Oh, and speaking of organizations that have put their dignity in a lockbox, we did finally learn what bridge is too far for the ADL, which blistered the Gaetz selection because of his "long history of trafficking in antisemitism," including "defending the Great Replacement Theory." How he's distinguished from the ADL's glowingly-praised Elise Stefanik, who also promoted Great Replacement Theory, was left unsaid. * Gaetz hastily resigned his seat following the announcement, also getting ahead of a planned House Ethics Committee report that was set to issue findings on Gaetz's myriad, er, "controversies" -- including allegations of sex trafficking minors. Score one for QAnon! via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/WqtsjKg

[onlytiktoks]

Breaking news

[lokiinmediasideblog]

FISA 702 HAS PASSED THE HOUSED. WE MUST STOP IT!

Fax your legislators! TELL THEM YOU WON'T VOTE FOR THEM IF THEY VOTE YES ON FISA (Fy-zah) 702!

You can also fax your legislators for FREE at:

From Edward Snowden's Twitter:

If you were mad about your House rep voting to let the government spy on you without a warrant ("FISA 702" - fy-za seven-oh-two), we may have one last shot. CALL YOUR REP @ (202) 224-3121 and say "𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟳𝟬𝟮, 𝗜 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂."

From the article link:

House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans. The controversial law allows for far-reaching monitoring of foreign communications, but has also led to the collection of US citizens’ messages and phone calls.

Lawmakers voted 273–147 to approve the law, which the Biden administration has for years backed as an important counterterrorism tool. An amendment that would have required authorities seek a warrant failed, in a tied 212-212 vote across party lines.

Donald Trump opposed the reauthorization of the bill, posting to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

The law, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights. House Republicans were split in the lead-up to vote over whether to reauthorize section 702, the most contentious aspect of the bill, with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, struggling to unify them around a revised version of the pre-existing law.

Republicans shot down a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have allowed Johnson to put the bill to a floor vote, in a further blow to the speaker’s ability to find compromise within his party. Following the defeat, the bill was changed from a five-year extension to a two-year extension of section 702 – an effort to appease far-right Republicans who believe Trump will be president by the time it expires.

Section 702 allows for government agencies such as the National Security Administration to collect data and monitor the communications of foreign citizens outside of US territory without the need for a warrant, with authorities touting it as a key tool in targeting cybercrime, international drug trafficking and terrorist plots. Since the collection of foreign data can also gather communications between people abroad and those in the US, however, the result of section 702 is that federal law enforcement can also monitor American citizens’ communications.

Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.

Trump’s all-caps post further weakened Johnson’s position. Trump’s online remarks appeared to refer to an FBI investigation into a former campaign adviser of his, which was unrelated to section 702. Other far-right Republicans such as Matt Gaetz similarly vowed to derail the legislation, putting its passage in peril.

Meanwhile, the Ohio congressman Mike Turner, Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told lawmakers on Friday that failing to reauthorize the bill would be a gift to China’s government spying programs, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We will be blind as they try to recruit people for terrorist attacks in the United States,” Turner said on Friday on the House floor.

The California Democratic representative and former speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave a statement in support of passing section 702 with its warrantless surveillance abilities intact, urging lawmakers to vote against an amendment that would weaken its reach.

“I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants,” Pelosi said.

Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups. One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly. Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Section 702 dates back to the George W Bush administration, which secretly ran warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. In 2008, Congress passed section 702 as part of the Fisa Amendments Act and put foreign surveillance under more formal government oversight. Lawmakers have renewed the law twice since, including in 2018 when they rejected an amendment that would have required authorities to get warrants for US citizens’ data.

Last year Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them to reauthorize section 702. They claimed that intelligence gained from it resulted in numerous plots against the US being foiled, and that it was partly responsible for facilitating the drone strike that killed the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lee Moran at HuffPost:

Geraldo Rivera on Thursday shared his visceral response to President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of the now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as attorney general. “When I heard that Matt Gaetz was picked to be attorney general, I threw up in my mouth,” Rivera said on NewsNation in his role as the channel’s correspondent-at-large. “I think it is a horrible, creepy choice. I have no idea why he did it,” added the former Fox News personality, who despite being a longtime friend of Trump ended up endorsing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Trump’s other picks are “controversial” but can be defended, Rivera continued, before pointing out that Gaetz would as attorney general have “access to the files” of the investigations into himself. Gaetz “is the epitome of everything that is rotten in Washington” and is “privileged, entitled, backstabbing,” Rivera said later in video shared online by Mediaite.

NewsNation contributor Geraldo Rivera appeared on Thursday night’s edition of On Balance With Leland Vittert to discuss Donald Trump’s appointment of pedophile Matt Gaetz to AG. During his On Balance appearance, Rivera said that the pick of Gaetz made him throw up in his mouth.

From the 11.14.2024 edition of NewsNation's On Balance With Leland Vittert:

From the 11.14.2024 edition of NewsNation's Cuomo:

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 15, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 16, 2024

Three years ago today, President Joe Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more popularly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. That law called for approximately $1.2 trillion in spending, about $550 billion newly authorized spending on top of regular expenditures. As Biden noted today, it was “the largest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in a generation.” 

In the past three years, the Biden administration launched more than 66,000 projects across the country, repairing 196,000 miles of roads and 11,400 bridges, as well as replacing 367,000 lead pipes and modernizing ports and airports. Today the administration announced an additional $1.5 billion in funding for railroads along the Northeast Corridor, which carries five times more passengers a day than all the flights between Washington, D.C., and New York City. 

In his first term, Trump had promised a bill to address the country’s long-neglected infrastructure, but his inability to get that done made “infrastructure week” a joke. Biden got a major bill passed, but while the administration nicknamed the law the “Big Deal,” Biden got very little credit for it politically. Republicans who had voted against the measure took credit for the projects it funded, and voters seemed not to factor in the jobs and improvements it brought when they went to the polls last week. 

This lack of credit has implications beyond the Biden administration. As economist Mark Zandi told Joel Rose of NPR, “We need better infrastructure. We should continue to invest. But that's going to be hard to do politically because lawmakers are seeing what's happening here and they’re not getting credit for it.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has been rapidly naming people he intends to nominate for his cabinet, and it is not going well. As Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on Bluesky: “The same people who’ve spent the last several years decrying ‘unqualified DEI hires’ are now shoehorning through Cabinet nominations who can’t even pass a basic background test.”

Cohen was not joking; Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, and Kristen Holmes of CNN reported today that Trump’s transition team is skipping background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claiming that they are slow and intrusive.

But that lack of background checks has already mired Trump’s picks in controversy. 

Trump has said he would nominate Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and co-host on the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, to become the secretary of defense. Since that announcement, news has broken that a fellow service member who was the unit’s security guard and on an anti-terrorism team flagged Hegseth to their unit’s leadership because one of his tattoos is used by white supremacists. Extremist tattoos are prohibited by army regulations.

News broke today that a woman accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her after a Republican conference in Monterey, California, in 2017. According to Michael Kranish, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell, Dan Lamothe, and John Hudson of the Washington Post, the woman who made the allegation said the alleged victim had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth. 

Now the transition team fears more revelations. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” a member of the transition team told the Washington Post reporters. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

Causing even more headaches today for the transition team was Trump’s appointment of former Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. Immediately after Trump said he would nominate Gaetz, the representative resigned his congressional seat, forestalling the release of a House Ethics Committee report concerning allegations of drug use and that Gaetz had taken a minor across state lines for sex.

It is reported that the victim, who was a seventeen-year-old high-schooler at the time, testified before the committee. 

After spending an evening with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that publishing the report would be “terrible” and that he would “strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that’s not the way we do things in the House.” 

This, despite the fact that, as historian Kevin Kruse noted, “[f]or years now, the right has been accusing Democrats of running a shadowy conspiracy to protect politicians who are sex predators.” And, in fact, the House Ethics Committee did release a report on Representative William Boner (D-TN) in 1987 for allegations of corruption after he had already resigned the office to become mayor of Nashville.  

And then there is Trump’s tapping of former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard’s ties to America’s adversaries, including Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, have raised serious questions about her loyalty. Making her the country’s DNI would almost certainly collapse ongoing U.S. participation in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance in which the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have shared intelligence since World War II. 

As former Illinois representative Joe Walsh wrote: “Donald Trump just picked someone to oversee our intelligence who, herself, couldn’t pass a security clearance check. She couldn’t get security clearance. She couldn’t get a job in our intelligence community. Because she’s too compromised by Russia. Yet Trump picked her to run the whole thing.”

Trump appears eager to demonstrate his control of Republicans in the Senate by ramming through appointments that will collapse the rule of law at home (Gaetz) and the international rules-based order globally (Hegseth and Gabbard). When Texas senator John Cornyn said he would like to see the Gaetz report, Trump loyalist Steve Bannon said: “You either get with the program, brother, or you're going to finish third in your primary.” A member of Trump’s transition team said that Trump wants to bend Republican senators to his will “until they snap in half.”

Despite the fact the Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate when Trump takes office, Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that Trump and his team knew they would not get confirmed. So they demanded that Republicans in the Senate give up their constitutional power of advising the president on high-level appointments and consenting to his picks: the “advice and consent” requirement of the Constitution. 

Trump demanded that the Senate recess in order for him to push through his choices as recess appointments. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against this scheme, calling it “anti-constitutional” and noting that it would “eliminate one of the basic checks on power that the Founders built into the American system of government.”

Now, in order to bring senators to heel, the Trump team is threatening to start its own super PAC to undermine the existing Senate Leadership Fund, whose leaders they insist are not loyal enough to Trump. A person close to Trump said that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” “It doesn’t make sense,” one Republican operative told��Politico’s Natalie Allison, Ally Mutnick, and Adam Wren. “Trump just had this massive win and now they are bringing in this Never Trumper.” 

But for all the spin, the political calculation for Republican senators is not as clear as the Trump team is trying to project. At 78, Trump is not exactly the face of the party’s future. Nor did he deliver a “massive win.” He won less than 50% of the popular vote with many voters apparently unaware of his policies, and while the Republicans did retake the Senate majority, they did so with very little help—financial or otherwise—from him. Republicans will have as bad a map in the 2026 midterm elections as the Democrats had in 2024, and Trump’s voters tend to be loyal to him and no one else, generally not turning out in midterms.

It is also possible that, aside from political calculations, enough Senate Republicans take seriously their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as the Senate’s role in the constitutional system of checks and balances that they will judge Trump’s antics with that in mind. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[speedygal]

[darkmaga-returns]

There seems to be some confusion about how Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump's other controversial picks can be put into their roles.

JD Rucker

Nov 19, 2024

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz is facing strong headwinds as Donald Trump's pick for Attorney General. It's not just the usual suspects like Democrats and legacy media. He's being hit hard by some in both conservative media and Republican lawmakers in Washington, DC.

Personally, I wholeheartedly support him for the role, and perhaps if it becomes necessary I'll make the case for why I believe he's ideal to take on the UniParty Swamp as the top law enforcement leader in the nation. But for now I just want to add clarity to the conversation because there seems to be a lot of confusion about what happens from here.

I discussed it in detail in a segment of my show (apologies for the backup YouTube link but I don't have it posted on my Rumble channel yet):

For those who prefer to read rather than watch, here are the four paths for Gaetz to become Attorney General. I've put them in order from least to most ideal.

"Forced" Recess

There has been a lot of buzz about Speaker of the House Mike Johnson "forcing" the Senate into recess if upcoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune is unwilling or unable to adjourn for the required 10 days so Trump can make recess appointments.

What Johnson was referring to was a resolution calling for both chambers to adjourn. If the Senate does not want to adjourn, they can send back their edits to the resolution. If Johnson then denies the edits, the chambers are in a "state of disagreement" over adjourning. If that happens, then President Trump would decide when they adjourn and for how long.

If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. This has never happened in Congress for a reason. All Thune has to do is... nothing. If he does not reply to Johnson's resolution, it goes into limbo. Nothing happens other than Johnson being able to say he gave it his best shot.

[cosmiccannibalcamille]

Taurus Full Moon Horoscopes

What: Taurus Full Moon

When: Nov. 15, 2024

Who’s Impacted: EVERYONE, but esp. Taurus and the other fixed signs. 

Takeaway: An electrifying conclusion, shocking disruption, or groundbreaking culmination of the things you’ve been building since May 7, 2024.

     Friday’s full moon might just change everything. That’s right, the 11th full moon of 2024—this one in the fertile, stable, security-loving earth sign Taurus—is a big, loud, potentially disruptive full moon that wants you, me, and everyone else to wake up and do things differently. Yes, Taurus is the sign of exaltation for the Moon (meaning the Moon really loves being in the fixed sign), but you shouldn’t expect this full moon to be nice and easy. 

     Why? Well, the 2024 Taurus full moon is conjoining rabble-rouser Uranus (also in Taurus), which is just about to perfect its headline-making opposition to the Sun in Scorpio. Tbh, I feel like we’ve been seeing the effects of this full moon / Uranus-Sun opposition play out in politics, with the recent Trump cabinet nomination of Matt Gaetz (a Taurus) for Attorney General. That nomination has been deemed “controversial,” “shocking,” and poetically likened to a “thunderclap”—all of which are astro-SEO keywords for Uranus. (Btw, Uranus is the planet of shock, awe, controversy, and unexpected news.) 

     But there’s another shocking element to this full moon that has nothing to do with politics: it is the LAST TIME we will see Uranus conjoining a full moon in Taurus in our lifetimes. Why? Because next year, Uranus moves into Gemini. It moves back into Taurus in Nov. 2025, and stays there until April 2026, but we won’t see a Uranus in Taurus conjoining a Taurus full moon again in 84 years!  Ditto for the dreamy sextile from Neptune in Pisces and the loose trine being made to the full moon from Pluto in Capricorn. 

     Pluto enters Aquarius FOR GOOD on Nov. 19, thus marking the official 20-year foray into robo-land and AI rulership. (Just kidding. I hope.) While in March of 2025, Neptune moves into Aries, a sign it hasn’t been in since the Civil War era. Btw, if you want to know the MAJOR significance of Uranus in Gemini—and all the other MAJOR astrological shifts of 2025—and what they all mean for YOU, check out my 2025 astrology workshop, 2025 guide, & 2025 birth chart reading. Anyway! 

Get the Full Scoop on the Taurus Full Moon (including horoscopes for the moon + Venus-square Nodes) on The Cosmic Almanac:

[47burlm]

you gotta be "f*&$King kidding me

President-elect Trump stunned Washington with two controversial picks to lead important law enforcement and intelligence roles in his administration, tapping Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to serve as attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic representative, to serve in the nation’s top intelligence job.

[fillejondrette]

💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

[keep-both-eyes-on-trump]

Trump Watch #5

Welp, it happened. Trump has announced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s a controversial pick, joining Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard as nominees who may have a hard time being confirmed even in the Republican controlled Senate. Unlike Gaetz and Gabbard, Kennedy unfortunately has rather enthusiastic support from some of Trump’s most loyal senators. 

His vision of public health has historically been at odds with mainstream health and science. He has called for the federal government to remove fluoride from public water supplies and has a long history of baseless claims including: 

WiFi causes cancer

School shootings are caused by antidepressants 

Chemicals in water can make children transgender

AIDS might not be caused by HIV 

Vaccines cause autism (an all time fave conspiracy)

His appointment to lead the Department of Health and Human Services puts him in charge of an agency that oversees drug, vaccine, and food safety, medical research, and Medicare and Medicaid. Health experts, Senate Democrats, and the random-ass democrat typing this have expressed horror at the appointment. 

In lesser news, Trump also named Doug Collins to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Collins is a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command and former congressman from Georgia. 

He helped defend Trump during his first impeachment process.

The Watcher

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)

A long read about a consistently quoted covid minimizer who may en up in charge of the NIH. The pro-infection rhetoric that has recently been strenghtening antivax sentiment in general society is mostly his fault.

By Walker Bragman

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that a top contender for Donald Trump’s new National Institutes of Health director was Stanford professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist known for his pro-infection advocacy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If confirmed, the controversial professor will oversee the largest funder of biomedical and behavioral research on the planet.

As the new Trump administration takes shape, each appointment has been seemingly more fraught than the last. For example, on Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who had previously been caught up in a Department of Justice sex trafficking investigation, was announced as the choice for Attorney General. The next day, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. was announced for Health and Human Services Secretary. Kennedy, who has mused that COVID-19 was genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews, suggested that chemicals in water are turning children gay or transgender, and falsely claimed vaccines cause autism, is an ally of Bhattacharya.

The Stanford professor is likely among the most extreme of the lot. While, as The Post noted, Bhattacharya has never held a position managing any position overseeing a large bureaucratic organization, he has been a central figure in an organized, well-funded campaign by the political right to undermine public health in America that has been raging since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bhattacharya has spent years arguing in favor of “natural,” or infection-acquired, immunity and casting doubt on vaccines and government efforts to control the worst public health crisis in a century, bolstering the position of GOP politicians and right-wing dark money groups. He has even spread conspiracy theories about the very agency he is on the verge of leading, alleging that a small number of top bureaucrats have been using funding to stifle dissent.

Should he be confirmed, Bhattacharya will surely inject unscientific right-wing ideology into the very heart of the agency responsible for leading the fight against infectious diseases.

Infection Advocate Bhattacahrya first taste of the national spotlight came in the spring of 2020. In March that year, he co-authored a Wall Street Journal editorial arguing against lockdowns and making the case that COVID was less dangerous than public health authorities were predicting.

“If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified,” it read. “But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”

That article preceded the release of pre-print study Bhattacharya co-authored purporting to show that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was far more infectious—and less deadly—than the global scientific community was warning. The study’s flaws, from methodological issues to undisclosed funding from the founder of JetBlue, a vocal critic of COVID lockdowns, were quickly revealed. Nevertheless, the paper was hugely influential on the political right and its findings not only impacted policy in the U.S. but abroad as well in countries like the UK.

Several months later, Bhattacharya co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely rebuked, discredited document calling on governments and scientists to reject large-scale COVID mitigation policies in favor of “focused protection” for the elderly. The idea was that by allowing widespread infection of the rest of the population, herd immunity could be achieved quickly and with minimal disruption to the economy. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the plan “unethical” and 14 major public health organizations published an open letter denouncing it.

The document itself was written and signed at a conference hosted by a libertarian think tank called the American Institute for Economic Research, a month ahead of the 2020 election. It added a scientific veneer to the public health approach preferred by the Trump administration and right-wing groups like The Heritage Foundation, which saw lockdowns as a greater threat than the virus itself. Planning for the event had taken place over the summer and involved the Trump administration directly through health policy adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who, like Bhattacharya, was affiliated with the Hoover Institution. Atlas helped secure passage to the U.S. for UK-based declaration co-author Dr. Sunetra Gupta under the pretext of a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

While the declaration did little to help Trump’s 2020 prospects, it did propel Bhattacharya to right-wing stardom. He has used his megaphone to continue to evangelize the benefits of mass infection and the harms of government efforts to curb the spread of a deadly virus.

Despite the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would go on to kill more than 1.2 million Americans and leave millions more suffering long COVID, Bhattacharya never changed his position on lockdowns and mitigations. His false and misleading statements about government efforts to curb the spread of the virus are too numerous to list here, though Bhattacharya has blamed “lockdowns” for all manner of ills, including possibly even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has also asserted that masks do not work and harm child development without an expertise on the matter and was an early advocate to reopen schools with no mitigation measures in place.

Conspiracy Theories While the Great Barrington Declaration was not itself explicitly anti-vaccine, its central premise—that reopening could safely occur without them—has made Bhattacharya a natural ally of the anti-vax movement. Over time, the professor has moved steadily in their direction. He has repeatedly claimed, for example, that the small risks associated with COVID vaccines outweigh their benefits for young people. In a particularly ill-timed op-ed, he called universal vaccination in India “unethical” on the grounds that a majority of Indians had natural immunity, writing that “for recovered Covid patients…the vaccines provide no benefit and some harm.” Incredibly, several months later, in a piece making the same case for the U.S., he argued that mandating vaccines here would deny doses to countries in need of them, including India.

In September 2022, Bhattacharya misleadingly claimed that the new bivalent boosters were insufficiently tested and alleged that the CDC and FDA were “flying blind.”

The professor has also spoken at events with anti-vaxxers like millionaire Steve Kirsch, who asserts that the shots are responsible for millions of deaths. In March, Bhattacharya spoke at the vice presidential announcement event for Robert Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign.

Important Context readers will also recall that Bhattacharya was the organizer of a recent health policy symposium at Stanford seemingly aimed at rewriting pandemic history to vindicate fringe positions adopted by the political right. The event was stacked with conspiracy mongers and anti-vaccine voices like Alex Berenson.

Beyond his promotion of anti-vaccine narratives, Bhattacharya has also pushed the unsupported claim that COVID emerged from a lab leak and claimed that Dr. Fauci was involved in a cover-up. The professor recently joined the board of directors of BioSafety Now, a controversial scientist group pushing the lab leak origin story for COVID despite evidence consistently pointing to zoonosis.

Bhattacharya has long held that the mainstream rejection of his ideas is not a reflection of their scientific merit, but rather the result of “censorship” by key public health officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who communicated privately over email about rebutting the Great Barrington Declaration. He has baselessly claimed that academics self-censor to get NIH funding for their research, suggesting that top bureaucrats like Collins used their positions to enforce their personal beliefs.

Political Operative Bhattacharya’s contrarian views and pro-infection advocacy may have alienated him from the mainstream of public health, but they have earned him powerful allies, including, as The Post noted, billionaires Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who has supported his censorship claims.

Bhattacharya has also been a favorite in the world of right-wing dark money, having written for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank with ties to billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, been cited by the Heritage Foundation, and spoken before the secretive, influential Christian Right group Council for National Policy, which connects activists with big money.

The professor holds titles at organizations like the Hoover Institution, where he is a senior fellow (courtesy). He occupies various roles at Collateral Global, a UK-based charity focused on opposing lockdowns, including editor-in-chief and scientific adviser. He is a contributing author to the Australia-based Australians for Science and Freedom.

In the past, Bhattacharya was a senior scholar at the Brownstone Institute when it was formed in 2021. He was part of the institute’s Norfolk Group, which put together a roadmap for a congressional COVID inquiry that mirrored a similar document produced by Heritage weeks earlier. This month, he was a speaker at Brownstone’s recent annual conference. When the Trump-allied Hillsdale College launched its Academy for Science and Freedom, Bhattacharya was one of the first scholars named. The professor was also on the scientific advisory board of the international pandemic denial group PANDA.

Bhattacharya has been awarded with various honors for his work by dark money groups. In April, for example, he won the $250,000 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of right-wing causes. Last month, a new group called the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, which is tied to a larger organization working to establish conservative beachheads on college campuses, gave him an intellectual freedom medal.

Republican politicians have unsurprisingly gravitated to Bhattacharya. The professor personally advised Trump in the summer of 2020 and has been a close adviser and ally of Ron DeSantis. Despite his advocacy for “focused protection,” Bhattacharya stood with the Florida governor as he defended a policy of excluding elderly incarcerated from vaccine prioritization, claiming that vaccinating the population would be pointless given that the virus had already spread through the prisons.

“If someone who is older has already had an infection, I don’t think the vaccine would help them,” Bhattacharya said.

The professor has been an expert witness for Republican lawmakers in Congress as well. When the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held its first hearing in February 2023, he was one of the first expert witnesses called.

He has also leant his expertise to GOP-led states in cases over their lack of COVID protections, particularly in schools. In those cases, Bhattacharya’s testimony served as a counter to the parents of medically vulnerable children, who argued the lack of safety measures put their kids’ lives at risk.

Notably, several judges have questioned the reliability of Bhattacharya’s expert testimony. In his decision temporarily blocking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw observed that Bhattacharya “offered opinions regarding the pediatric effects of masks on children, a discipline on which he admitted he was not qualified to speak,” adding that “his demeanor and tone while testifying suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda.”

“At this stage of the proceedings, the Court is simply unwilling to trust Dr. Bhattacharya,” Crenshaw wrote.

Pursuing Grudges Fueled by his support on the right, Bhattacharya has built up a massive online audience. He has over 544,000 followers on X alone as of the writing of this writing. Seemingly emboldened by this support, he has fired back at his critics, including scientists and journalists, asserting that they have misrepresented his positions.

For example, Bhattacharya has denied that the Great Barrington Declaration was a herd immunity strategy even though the words “herd immunity” appear five times in the document, including in the sentence,“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”

After Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler published an article documenting his misleading statements about the bivalent boosters, he went after her on X, encouraging his supporters by liking posts suggesting she had ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

With pro bono representation from New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a dark money lawfare group that has received funding from Koch to wage a war on the administrative state, Bhattacharya and several other private plaintiffs joined a lawsuit against key officials and agencies within the Biden administration for allegedly coercing social media companies into suppressing their content. The case, Missouri v. Biden—later renamed Murthy v. Missouri—made its way up to the Supreme Court where it was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing, having failed to prove they had been harmed by the government.

NCLA is currently trying to revive the lawsuit.

“What Could Go Wrong?” Public health professionals expressed grave concerns about the possible appointment of Bhattacharya. In response to The Post story, for example, Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves skeeted, “This is all just getting worse.”

Mallory Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, earned her PhD in biology from Stanford in 2024, had a similar take. “His scientific judgment is questionable at best,” she told Important Context. “As an expert witness in multiple Covid court cases he consistently misconstrued scientific evidence—even going so far as to knowingly cite a retracted study.”

Harris, who led a student group at Stanford to combat science misinformation, has long had Bhattacharya on her radar.

“He has been spreading conspiracy theories about this particular agency for years,” Harris said. “This [likely appointment] is a tremendous blow to independent, rigorous, publicly funded scientific research.”

Frank Han, an adult congenital and pediatric cardiologist, told Important Context that “while hearing a conservative viewpoint is not inherently dangerous to scientific institutions, Bhattacharya has shown through his actions, that he is entirely unsuited for any job at the NIH.”

“Science even at the highest levels of government, places a high value on humility and realizing when you should change course,” he explained, noting that Bhatttacharya never acknowledged the hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths he said would justice mitigation measures in his March 2020 Wall Street Journal op-ed. Han accused Bhattacharya of trying instead to “cover his tracks.”

“Bhattacharya has never honestly engaged with his prior self, rather now consistently holding the viewpoint that COVID restrictions should have ended sooner and schools should have opened sooner,” Han said.

Robert Morris, MD, PhD, an epidemiologist who has taught at Tufts University and the Medical College of Wisconsin, noted that Bhattacharya would be “the first director in the history of the NIH with no clinical experience and minimal biomedical research experience.”

“He is a health economist who would run an agency with no budget line for health economics,” Morris said, adding that the professor “has repeatedly shown disdain for serious biomedical scientists.”

“What could go wrong?” Morris said.