Rep. Lesko’s Congressional Committee To Question Anthony Fauci For First Time Ever

Rep. Lesko’s Congressional Committee To Question Anthony Fauci For First Time Ever

By Corinne Murdock |

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) announced on Friday that her congressional committee will be questioning Anthony Fauci for the first time ever next month.

The hearing is scheduled to take place before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for 14 hours over the course of two days: Jan. 8 and 9, 2024. Each day will consist of seven hours of uninterrupted, transcribed testimony. Additionally, Fauci will be made to appear at another public hearing before the subcommittee at a later date yet to be announced. 

“Dr. Fauci will finally be answering the American people,” said Lesko. 

In their announcement of Fauci’s hearing, the subcommittee issued an X thread highlighting some of Fauci’s “most egregious pandemic-era failures.” The subcommittee cited Fauci’s attempt to push the “Proximal Origin” theory published through mainstream media to disprove the Wuhan, China lab leak theory; Fauci’s awareness of the dangers of the gain-of-function research that resulted in COVID-19 prior to the pandemic, and his inaction to stop it; Fauci’s recent admission that COVID-19 vaccine mandates were a coercion tactic; and Fauci’s quick reversal on mask efficacy early on in the pandemic. 

“[Fauci’s] upcoming testimonies will aid [our] ongoing effort to hold American public health officials accountable for pandemic-era failures,” stated the subcommittee. 

The subcommittee, formed in 2020 under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, consists of Lesko along with Republican Reps. Brad Wenstrup, chairman (OH-02), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Michael Cloud (TX-27), John Joyce (PA-13), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Ronny Jackson (TX-13), and Rich McCormick (GA-06); and Democratic Reps. Raul Ruiz (D-CA-25), Debbie Dingell (MI-06), Kweisi Mfume (MD-07), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Ami Bera (CA-06), and Jill Tokuda (HI-02).

One of the key focuses of the committee has concerned pinpointing the origins of COVID-19. Committee hearings and evidence point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research as the source of the virus, bolstered by proof of government health leaders’ relationship to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit research organization that funded the research. 

In July, the select subcommittee held a hearing to discuss the Proximal Origin theory, a zoonotic proposal that the virus jumped from animals to humans in the nearby wet markets. The subcommittee found that Fauci and former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins were behind drafting, publishing, and promoting the Proximal Origin theory, and that the theory lacked outside proof or verification.

The University of Arizona (UArizona) has continued to defend the Proximal Origin theory. Michael Worobey, head of the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department, maintains that COVID-19 originated in the Huanan Seafood Market, though his research acknowledged that a significant percentage of the first COVID-19 patients neither worked or shopped there, and that the researchers never tested market animals purportedly linked to the initial outbreak.

The Wuhan lab is less than nine miles from the wet market.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.

Shamp Reminds Arizonans About Right To Reject Masks

Shamp Reminds Arizonans About Right To Reject Masks

By Daniel Stefanski |  

A freshman Arizona Senator is alerting her constituents of the laws protecting their freedoms in the event that another round of politicized COVID-19 cases sweeps the nation.  

Senator Janae Shamp sent out a press release on Thursday, “reminding Arizonans of the safeguards put in place by Republicans at the Legislature to protect against future outrageous overreach and scientifically baseless restrictions.”

Shamp’s motivation was seeing “fear over mask mandates and the politicization of COVID-19 from the Left once again become a focal point heading into the upcoming 2024 election cycle.”  

The Republican Senator issued the following statement: “With election season upon us, we’re once again witnessing COVID-19 fearmongering from the Left as liberal entities in Georgia, New York and California are now once again overstepping their authority in dictating mask mandates. As a registered nurse who has been detrimentally impacted by government infringement not based on scientific evidence, I want you to rest assured that I will fight tooth and nail to make sure you’re protected from this gross overreach. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. If you don’t want to wear a mask, don’t wear one. This is a personal choice that our citizens are allowed to make. If a business wants to force you to wear a mask and you don’t wish to, you have the right to take your business elsewhere. I will work to provide more guidance for you and your family as needed, and I vow to craft more legislation next session that further protects your God-given freedoms.”  

Senator Shamp shared four laws:

  • In 2021, A.R.S. 44-7951 was enacted to protect businesses in Arizona from being required to enforce a mask mandate established by state, city, county and town governments, or any other jurisdiction within Arizona.
  • In 2022, A.R.S. 1-611 was enacted to protect students under the age of 18 at public district or charter schools from being required to wear a mask without the express consent of the child’s parent or guardian.
  • Additionally in 2022, A.R.S 36-681 was enacted to protect the public from forced masking at any government building or premises, except where long-standing workplace safety and infection control measures that are unrelated to COVID-19 may be required.
  • Furthermore, should the Governor implement a state of emergency for “public health” reasons, last year’s enacted A.R.S 26-303 would require the Governor to first get permission from the Legislature in order to extend the emergency past 120 days.

Reports have surged about an increase in COVID-19 cases with the spread of the EG.5 (“Eris”), FL.1.5.1 (“Fornax”), and BA.2.86 (“Pirola”). These developments have led to the return of some masking requirements around the nation. In Atlanta, Morris Brown College sent an email to its faculty, staff, and students, announcing the reinstatement of its COVID-19 mask mandate because of “reports of positive cases among students in the Atlanta University Center.” The college also reimposed physical distancing and gathering restrictions on campus.  

The movie studio Lionsgate in Los Angeles also brought back its mask mandate for the office, as did Kaiser Permanente for its Santa Rosa (California) hospital and medical offices.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned, “This week’s national ensemble predicts that the number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions will increase, with 1,100 to 7,500 daily COVID-19 hospital admissions likely reported on September 18.”  

Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.

Politicized Science Can Be Dangerous To Your Health

Politicized Science Can Be Dangerous To Your Health

By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

The Lancet was once a leading British medical journal. It was sober and medically exacting. It was so respected that it was often cited to settle controversial issues in the field of medicine.

Today, it is a shell of its former self, shot through with leftist political ideology. A recent editorial called out the UK Home Secretary for her “appalling and shocking” comments.

Was it about a drop in research funding or disputed medical opinions or something else of direct relevance to medicine? No, the Secretary opined that new migrants to the UK possessed “values which are at odds with our country” and brought “heightened levels of criminality.”

Some might dispute such statements and some not, but how is this discussion pertinent for a medical journal? Richard Horton, the editor, went on to call for “war” on the other side of the ideological divide.

Horton and The Lancet are hardly alone in degrading medicine by politicizing it. Science and scientists are in reputational decline because, well, they deserve to be.

Physicians were once respected for their integrity. They could be stodgy and paternalistic sometimes, but they couldn’t be influenced or bought.

Now, the medical doctors have morphed from being dedicated stewards of their patients’ health to “medical providers,” as government payers describe them. Most owe their professional loyalty to a hospital-based system that operates pretty much like any other business, with the bottom line always in view.

Meanwhile, on issues ranging from COVID to climate science to transgenderism, we are urged to follow “the “Science” as if Science were the collective pronouncements of the big shots rather than a process for rolling back the limits of knowledge. “The Science” is often determined by hacks who are especially successful at scoring research grants because they supply the answers our grant making elites want to hear.

Politicized science can lead to some bizarre and harmful conclusions. There is now a movement against randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because they didn’t produce the approved answer to the question of whether face masks prevent infection.

Scientific American stated “decades of engineering and occupational science” show they worked. So there. No silly trials needed to confirm what everyone knows anyway.

But RCTs are the only way to determine whether a premise is factual. They are the basis of the scientific method, which lifted us out of millennia of ignorance and produced the marvels of modern medicine. Exposing well regarded but ineffective practices are precisely why they are needed.

While real scientists encourage debate and discovery, pseudoscientists silence those who dissent from the status quo. For example, scientific journals demanded the retraction of research producing evidence that transgenderism can be a social contagion.

Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” after her research revealed that although sufferers from the malady are customarily entered into transitioning protocols including hormones and surgery, they often present for treatment in clusters of young women who together discovered their supposedly mistaken gender identity. Dr. Littman’s research was retracted by Brown soon after it was published, due to the outrage of the medical mob.

Yet other researchers like Abigail Shrier and institutions like the UK’s Tavistock Center noted the same phenomenon. Springer Nature, a journal noted for its scientific soundness, was set to publish a review of 1,655 possible cases of rapid onset gender dysphoria but reversed course, deciding to retract it due to the suspiciously flimsy objection that “written informed consent” was possibly lacking in the study. Intellectual tyranny defeated open debate again.

We need a respected, honest scientific community more than ever. We need them to make more scientific advances, to train future scientists and to protect us from the befouling influence of politics on science. The antics of Dr. Fauci and others, bending the truth to seek political favor, did lasting damage to the reputation of the scientific community.

Climate science too has been hopelessly compromised by politics and the biased grant-making process. One of the results is an epidemic of existential depression among young Americans who believe their lives will end in devastation because of excessive carbon emissions (still wrong, no matter how many times it’s been predicted). It’s a shame.

Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.

Francis Suarez Tried To Stop Ron DeSantis. Now He Wants Credit For Florida’s Success

Francis Suarez Tried To Stop Ron DeSantis. Now He Wants Credit For Florida’s Success

By Brian Anderson |

A third Florida man has his eyes on the White House.

On Wednesday, after weeks of teasing an announcement, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez officially became the latest entry into the crowded Republican primary for president.

His speech at the Reagan Foundation the following day hit all the right notes—citing Miami’s “economic explosion” and “disciplined approach to spending” amid budget bloat in Washington—and there is little doubt that the mayor of Florida’s second-largest city will tout his role in the state’s booming economy.

Florida continues to stand out as a national model for conservative governance, with a low unemployment rate and record influx of new residents to prove it. But, before Suarez takes too much credit, voters would be wise to familiarize themselves with the mayor’s record, including how vehemently he fought against the very policies that have made Florida ‘Florida.’

After all, there would be no ‘Governor’ Ron DeSantis today if Suarez had had his way, only a ‘former Congressman.’ The mayor’s choice in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race was Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, the progressive up-and-comer endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and backed by Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer.

Gillum’s radical campaign platform called for ‘Medicare for All,’ a 40 percent increase in the state’s corporate income tax, and other progressive priorities that would have slammed the brakes on the Sunshine State’s forward momentum. Yet Suarez campaigned for him ahead of Election Day and ultimately cast his ballot the same. (Two months later, he attended a special inaugural ball celebrating the victory of Agriculture Commissioner-elect Nikki Fried, the Democrat who would run for the state’s highest office in 2022.)

Thankfully, DeSantis ended up in the Governor’s Mansion, while Gillum’s 15 minutes of fame ended on the floor of a hotel room under less-than-ideal circumstances. Floridians rejected Suarez’s advice and have been better off for doing so ever since.

Case in point: COVID-19.

Perhaps no issue has defined DeSantis’ reputation more than his handling of the pandemic. The governor remained unwavering in his commitment to freedom and personal responsibility, even as opponents smeared him as “Ron DeathSantis,” as lockdown lobbyists in Grim Reaper costumes stalked families at his re-opened beaches, and as media properties like “60 Minutes” devolved into baseless fever dreams aimed at undermining his vision.

Miami’s mayor was not on the side you might think.

In April 2020, Suarez opposed the governor’s plan to “soon” resume in-person learning, insisting that “it would be particularly dangerous” to re-open schools considering the “incredible amount of children who could be at risk.”

He criticized DeSantis in September 2020 for his “acceleration” toward re-opening Florida’s economy “a lot faster … than what we had planned.”

Suarez also complained in January 2021 that “we’ve been restricted from being able to put in mitigation measures,” such as public mask mandates, by the governor, despite having “tried to reach him on multiple occasions” to lobby for the power to do so. The mayor called for a national mask mandate as well, strictly enforced with “the threat of fines” and “even arrest.”

This is not the record of a small-government conservative.

His recent hasty characterization minimizing DeSantis’ subsidy fight with Disney as a “personal vendetta”—all while lobbing personal insults at the governor (he “struggle[s] with relationships” and won’t “look at people in the eye”)—makes one wonder if Suarez doesn’t have a vendetta himself, with a campaign to dilute Florida’s primary vote as its main vehicle.

In short, the 2024 presidential race’s newest candidate may sing the right tune on the campaign trail, but the Sunshine State is the beacon of freedom it is today not because of Miami’s mayor, but despite him.

Suarez told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan last month, “I’m someone who needs to be better known by this country,” and I agree, particularly by Republican primary voters—lest his happenstance proximity to Florida’s achievements be confused for actual contributions to them.

Brian Anderson is the president of the Saguaro Group, an Arizona-based research firm.