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Kash Patel Claims ‘Breakthrough’ in Fauci COVID Origins Probe
FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview this week that his agency made a “breakthrough” as it continues to investigate former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key player in the U.S.’s early response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, Patel cautioned Fauci’s critics from expecting too much.
“We just had a great breakthrough this week on Fauci,” Patel told podcaster Joe Rogan in an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” released Friday, explaining the FBI had recovered phones used by Fauci early in the pandemic. “They had always been looking for phones and devices he used while he was back in Trump one [the first Trump administration] during COVID, and nobody had found it until two days ago.”
“Everybody listening to us shouldn’t jump to the conclusion [that] everything’s in there,” he added. “Maybe it’s deleted, maybe it’s not, but at least we found it, and at least now we can tell people that we have been looking because it is of public importance.”
President Trump and his allies have long accused Fauci of misleading the government on its handling of the pandemic and hiding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Former President Biden granted Fauci a preemptive presidential pardon before Trump took office in January to shield the retired doctor from prosecution. Trump blasted the move at the time.
RFK Jr. removes all members of CDC panel advising U.S. on vaccines
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he is retiring all 17 members of a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors.
“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
Kennedy is removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HHS more broadly. The group reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations that determine who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should cover them, among other efforts.
It’s the latest move by Kennedy — a prominent vaccine skeptic — to change and potentially undermine vaccinations in the U.S. since he took the helm at HHS.
Jim O’Neill Confirmed as HHS Deputy Secretary
The Senate on Thursday confirmed Jim O’Neill, co-founder of the Thiel Fellowship, as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a 52-43 vote. In November, Politico reported the selection of O’Neill by then-President-elect Donald Trump for the deputy secretary role at HHS.
O’Neill co-founded the Thiel Fellowship in 2010 and served as CEO of SENS Research Foundation. According to his LinkedIn profile, he sits on the board of Advantage Therapeutics and is an adviser at FounderPool.
The Yale University graduate was managing director at Mithril Capital Management and Clarium Capital Management. O’Neill also held leadership roles at HHS during President George W. Bush’s administration, including principal associate deputy secretary, member of the steering committee for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and associate deputy secretary.
ACIP Members Receive Termination Notices as Fears Mount Over RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Machinations
The loss of special government employee status for four members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) follows the resignation of ACIP co-lead Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, who left in protest of a controversial change in COVID-19 recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women.
Four months ago, prior to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. winning his current job as Health and Human Services Secretary, analysts expressed concern that he could “restack” the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Now, it appears that could be happening. Sunday, STAT News reported that four members of the ACIP have had their status as special government employees terminated.
The reason for these terminations is unclear, according to STAT, which suggested that they could either be the result of “political machinations” or a bureaucratic error stemming from cuts to staff in the offices that handle the issuance of special government employee contracts.
“Everyone is hoping that this was inadvertent, but concerned it may have been deliberate,” one person associated with the ACIP, who requested not to be named for fear of reprisal, told the publication.
NIH Scientists Call on Director to Protect Biomedical Research
Hundreds of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a call for action they dubbed the Bethesda Declaration on Monday to push back against cutbacks and changes at the biomedical research agency.
Organizers say more than 340 staffers on the NIH’s sprawling campus in Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., sent the document to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya appealing to him to protect the agency. They say the Trump administration is putting politics ahead of academic freedom. Before taking over at the NIH, Bhattacharya was known for helping write the controversial Great Barrington Declaration, which questioned lockdowns and other public health measures early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Bethesda Declaration, the scientists say the Trump administration has “forced NIH, under [Bhattacharya’s] watch” to “politicize” research, “stigmatize” studies about health disparities, and cut research into COVID-19, long COVID, the health impacts of climate change, and medical issues related to gender and intersex people among other important areas.
Former HHS, FDA Officials Say FDA Deviated From Standard Practices in Approving Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine
Center For Science In The Public Interest reported:
Former political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and career staff at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association today, say the FDA broke from its own long-standing practices when considering approval of the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine.
Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine has been in wide use since 2022, when it was granted an emergency use authorization for those 12 and over in the midst of the pandemic. Novavax then decided to seek full FDA approval. Before an April 1, 2025, deadline, career staff at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, recommended full approval of Novavax’s Biological License Application for the vaccine.
But the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner paused the decision, prompting HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to say that the delay reflected shifting the department’s “priorities to multiple-antigen vaccines.”
That statement itself was a departure from FDA’s practice of considering all incoming product applications regardless of HHS “priorities,” according to the former officials. The FDA deviated still further from its historical practices when it finally approved the application on May 16.
