on Wednesday invoked and decline to answer questions from senators .
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky to appear before a Senate committee. It’s part of Paul’s that the now-retired infectious disease expert had lied about the pandemic, something
Meanwhile, roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots , the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress. President Donald Trump while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time.
Here’s the latest:
Invoking the 5th offers protection for witnesses
The Fifth Amendment is a constitutional protection against self-incrimination during questioning by law enforcement authorities and Congress.
By invoking it, witnesses are not acknowledging any criminal liability at all, and many people who profess their absolute innocence choose to exercise their right to remain silent. Witnesses who do so are able to avoid testimony they think could be damning or that they fear could be used against them by zealous interrogators or prosecutors determined to use their own words against them.
In the case of Fauci, for instance, some Republicans have talked openly about their desire to see the doctor prosecuted, and in opting to invoke his rights, Fauci cited his concern that Republican Sen. Rand Paul would try to elicit testimony that “could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”
Crux of Fauci hearing is over pandemic origins and NIH-funded research in China
Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.
Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses, including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS, jumped into people.
Trump tells Fox News he’ll retaliate hard against Iran for overnight attacks
Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, who’s based in the Middle East, said in an on-air segment that he spoke with Trump on Wednesday and the president told him the United States will hit back hard in response to the attacks in Jordan from Iran.
Iran launched a at American forces in the region early Wednesday.
Senate committee’s top Democrat says Fauci hearing is a GOP stunt
Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the panel, says Paul’s hearing is a partisan exercise and that the chairman has denied the minority access to some of the evidentiary record he’s cited.
Paul called that “categorically false.”
Peters tried to pivot to the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal work force and the departure of career scientists from the government’s public health programs.
The senator said Trump’s policies have slowed the response to the ongoing cyclospora outbreak and added that “cuts to global health programs and international partnerships have greatly reduced our ability to contain dangerous diseases.”
That’s more important than “relitigating the past,” Peters said.
“We should be asking how to strengthen our bio defense efforts to deter our adversaries and prevent biological attacks against our country,” while assessing “how our government can better coordinate and communicate during public health emergencies,” Peters said.
Fauci isn’t answering questions after invoking the 5th
In his remarks at the top of the hearing, Fauci accused Sen. Paul of having an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”
“The only conclusion that I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”
He said he would refrain from answering questions upon advice from his attorneys.
Fauci pleading the Fifth, according to prepared remarks
A draft of the 85-year-old’s opening statement shows he won’t be getting into the details Sen. Paul wants to discuss.
Anyone under oath has the right to cite the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment that ensures no person can be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony.
Fauci’s decision diminishes the potential for fireworks between Fauci and the chairman. But it also could give Paul a relatively uninterrupted platform to frame his arguments on the pandemic, its origins and the federal response.
Sen. Paul opens hearing accusing Fauci of covering up COVID-19 origin
The senator is trying to build the case that Fauci and other officials helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up their complicity.
Fauci’s lawyers and his supporters vehemently deny those accusations.
Paul said Fauci should admit that “funding this research in China” was “a mistake” and that he made false statements during the pandemic — including to Congress — that the virus was not conceived in a laboratory.
“Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved funding for this dangerous research,” Paul said.
The senator called Fauci’s “categorical public denials indefensible” and said he has “destroyed trust.”
COVID-19 Senate hearing starts with Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has opened its hearing with Fauci.
The physician and immunologist who helped lead the U.S government response to the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to face aggressive questioning from Republican members, especially Chairman Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Paul has for years questioned the origins of the COVID virus and federal health officials’ accounts.
The senator already has released reams of Fauci’s diary entries during the pandemic and said that what scientist “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
Investigators in Comey seashells case omitted key facts and distorted others, defense lawyers allege
Federal officials involved in the misled judges, submitted false statements and withheld key facts during the course of the investigation, that seek the dismissal of a case charging the former FBI director with threatening President Trump on social media.
Lawyers for Comey made the allegations of misconduct in motions filed late Tuesday that also call the case a vindictive and selective prosecution, request access to transcripts of grand jury proceedings to expose what they say are “irregularities” in how the indictment was secured, and describe “unlawful” surveillance of Comey by the Secret Service.
Taken together, the new motions, that called Comey’s social media post protected speech and not a threat, represent a multiprong defense effort to dismantle a case defense lawyers say exemplifies a Trump administration retribution campaign .
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Trump’s attacks on mail balloting and concerns over delays turn midterms spotlight on Postal Service
Roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots , the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress.
President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time.
Democratic officials have raised concerns over the past week about how quickly the Postal Service will process ballots after tens of thousands of them in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived at local election offices too late to be counted in elections earlier this year. The top election offices in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast their ballots early to avoid the mail and instead drop them off in person.
The Postal Service replied to those concerns Tuesday by saying it remains “committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”
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Anthony Fauci again faces questions from Senate Republicans about pandemic origins
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. scientist who helped COVID-19 pandemic response, is set to face off — again — with a Republican senator probing the
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky subpoenaed Fauci to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday. It’s part of Paul’s that the now-retired infectious disease expert had lied about the pandemic, something
Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”
But they’re likely to further inflame a partisan divide that, years after the pandemic, still makes Fauci a from people who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.
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