We are being led by the worst of us

Today, at 10:31 a.m. Eastern Time in Washington, D.C., the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing had already been underway for more than two hours when a relatively unknown Republican senator from Ohio, Bernie Moreno, erupted at the microphone.

“Who the fuck do you think you were for doing that? It is a total disgrace, what you did to this country,” he shouted after recounting the story of a mother who had been arrested nearly six years earlier after refusing to comply with a local mask requirement while attending a middle-school football game during the global pandemic. His uncontrolled outburst should have been directed at the woman who knowingly broke the law. Instead, it was aimed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease physician who helped guide America through the deadliest public health crisis in more than a century while serving under President Donald J. Trump.

And for his part, the 85-year-old Dr. Fauci never lost his composure, even as one of the ugliest spectacles in American politics was forced upon him. He calmly endured the blame, ridicule, and humiliation for following the best available scientific evidence during a rapidly evolving public health emergency, helping to save the lives of millions of Americans.

Moreno called him a “megalomaniac who was more interested in meeting a Kardashian than in the suffering of the American people.” He said Fauci’s 50-plus-year legacy of public service “ends in total and complete disgrace.” He called Fauci’s attorney “the biggest dirtbag attorney on the planet.” And then he demanded an apology from Fauci, asking if he had the “dignity to just say you’re sorry,” knowing full well that Fauci could not give him an answer without falling into the trap the entire hearing had been built on. Fauci gave the same steady reply he had given over one hundred times that morning: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.” Dr. Fauci saw their game, and he refused to play it.

He had made that clear from the very beginning when he delivered the only statement he would make all day. He told the committee that given Senator Rand Paul’s “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently, his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion 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, ‘behind bars.’” He added, “Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion.” And then, despite having testified before Congress more than 250 times over nearly four decades, serving under seven presidents, for the first time, Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment.

He knew that this hearing had nothing to do with his part in the COVID-19 response and everything to do with manufacturing a perjury charge. Former President Biden had already pardoned Fauci right before he left office because he knew what Trump and his enablers were capable of, and that they might do just this one day.

Biden’s pardon protects him from any federal offenses committed between January 2014 and January 2025, but it does not cover a single word he says going forward. Any new statements or answers could be twisted or taken out of context, creating new criminal exposure that the pardon would not cover. So Fauci did the only thing he could do: he stayed silent. His silence also denied Fox News and the rest of the far-right-wing networks and pundits the one thing they were hoping for: a clip of Dr. Fauci saying something they could distort and weaponize against him.

The nearly three-hour Republican performance can only be described as a desperate attempt at distraction and deeply un-American. Rand Paul warned Fauci there would be “repercussions” and announced a contempt vote for August fifth. Ron Johnson told Fauci it would be “almost impossible for you to answer the questions truthfully without really demonstrating what you did.” Josh Hawley embarrassed himself when he said, “Well, nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth, huh, doc?” And when Fauci’s attorney, David Schertler, tried to speak on his client’s behalf, Rand Paul had him physically removed from the room.

The audience, which included Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, applauded. Senator Maggie Hassan, watching this unfold, told Fauci directly, “It is unfortunate that you have been put in the position that you are in today, and it must be enormously frustrating to know that this hearing is designed to entrap you.” And Senator Gary Peters, the ranking Democrat, said exactly what it was: “a culmination of months of biased and selected efforts by the majority under the guise of a committee investigation to basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.” Peters pointed out that Rand Paul has used Fauci’s name and likeness on his own website to fundraise money and on the cover of his 2023 book.

I watched the whole thing. What happened today was a whole new low for the United States. A sitting United States senator screamed profanity at an 85-year-old scientist. Dr. Anthony Fauci has saved more lives than everyone in that room combined. He directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years and advised seven presidents throughout his career, both Democrats and Republicans. He stood by his commitment to non-partisan health departments.

During the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when Americans were dying and the government was looking the other way, Fauci stepped forward and helped. The activists who once protested him on the steps of NIH eventually came to regard him as one of their most important allies, because he listened to what they said and changed based on what he learned. He was the architect of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has saved an estimated 25 million lives across more than 50 countries. George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his dedication and work to save lives. He guided the country through anthrax, Ebola, and Zika. And when COVID emerged, his institute partnered with Moderna on the development of the vaccine that was delivered in under a year. Trump took credit for that vaccine, and he gave Fauci a Presidential Commendation for his role in it on January 19, 2021. And then Trump spent the next five years supporting the very people who want to put Dr. Fauci in prison.

He could have left government work at any point in those four decades to earn considerably more money in the private sector. He didn’t. And the cost of staying was death threats against his wife and his three daughters, horrific phone calls threatening his children “We know where you live, we know where you work.” He has had and continues to receive threats to his life. Including the arrest of a 25-year-old man in Iowa who had an AR-15 and multiple magazines of ammunition when he was on his way to Washington, D.C., to assassinate him. That is what happened to the man Moreno called a disgrace.

The day before the hearing, more than 155 scientists, AIDS activists, and public health advocates signed an open letter calling Dr. Fauci “a national hero.” They said the allegations against him were “baseless” and that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges.” And they called on Congress to stop what they described as “witch-hunts” against American researchers, noting that the conspiracy theories have driven “a five-year period of harassment and threats of violence directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.” Watching this all unfold today, all I could think about was that I have no idea how so many Americans got so brainwashed by propaganda that they cannot see this for what it is. It is physically painful to see this happening to our population and country.

They can’t even keep their propaganda straight. They say COVID was a hoax, but that Trump should be praised for Operation Warp Speed. Trump’s health department wants us to not trust vaccines, but at the same time Trump gets the credit for delivering one in less than a year. We were told it was just the flu and that it would be gone by Easter, and here we are six years later starting to see another rise in cases. We were told ivermectin was the best treatment even after the science proved it wasn’t. They said the virus was nothing to be afraid of, but it was also a bioweapon that Fauci personally funded. More than a million Americans died, and the one man who spent every day of it telling us to take it seriously somehow belongs behind bars.

This administration continues to try to turn heroes into villains and villains into heroes. And they are doing it on purpose, because they want us looking backward while they destroy everything happening now and in the near future.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the person who spent decades making money from vaccine injury lawsuits while convincing Americans that lifesaving vaccines were dangerous, now runs the very agency responsible for protecting our nation’s health. These are the same vaccines that wiped out diseases that once killed and disabled countless children.

Since taking over, Kennedy has gutted the department. 20,000 employees, a quarter of all workers, have been fired, including 3,500 from the FDA and 2,400 from the CDC, the very people responsible for tracking outbreaks and responding when dangerous diseases begin to spread. The CDC has gone nearly all of President Trump’s second term without a permanent director. Kennedy also fired all 17 members of the independent panel that has guided America’s vaccine recommendations since 1964 and replaced them with handpicked members, including vaccine skeptics and conspiracy theorists, after promising senators during his confirmation hearing that he wouldn’t touch the committee.

Last week, the CDC reported 2,318 confirmed measles cases this year alone, the highest number in 35 years and the second record-breaking year in a row. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States 26 years ago, back in the year 2000. Now it has come roaring back. More cases have been reported in the past 18 months than in the previous 25 years combined. Most of the people getting sick are children and teenagers, and vaccination rates have fallen below the level needed to keep communities protected in 45 states.

And it isn’t just measles. Nearly 18,000 Americans have been infected with a parasite that causes days, and sometimes weeks, of severe, explosive diarrhea, six times more cases than the country usually sees in an entire year.

At the same time, more parents are refusing the vitamin K shot for their newborn babies. Despite the name, it isn’t even a vaccine. It’s a simple vitamin that prevents babies from bleeding to death. Since 2017, refusals have increased by 77%. At one Idaho hospital system, one in five parents declined it last year. At least two babies died as a result. Babies who don’t receive the shot are 80 times more likely to suffer life-threatening bleeding. Parents are turning it down because years of misinformation have convinced them that even the safest, most routine medical care can’t be trusted.

That is what the Fauci hearing was trying to make us forget. Because if we are angry at Dr. Fauci, we are not asking why measles is back or why more babies are bleeding to death. We are not asking why 18,000 people are sick from a parasite that the hollowed-out FDA is still struggling to trace weeks later. And we are distracted from questions that we really need to be asking: when the next pandemic comes knocking on our door, who do we want in charge? Doctors who spend years preparing for it, or a conspiracy theorist who spent 40 years profiting from people’s fears?

I keep thinking about what they could have done today at that meeting instead of embarrassing our country by attacking Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci is 85 years old. He has more knowledge about pandemic responses than perhaps anyone alive. Instead of this sham hearing, what if they had brought him in and asked him real questions? Like what he learned from this last one? What did we do right? What could we have done better? How do we improve the response for next time? What kind of preparedness should we be building right now? That is what really matters in this moment. But instead, they spent the past six years building a fake criminal case against the man that could help them most. Science is ever-evolving and never finished. Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist; he knows better than the act he gave today. Which makes us ask, is he exploiting the public’s misunderstanding of how science works to sell books, get donations on his website, while auditioning for a 2028 presidential run?

Because that is what it looks like Rand Paul is actually doing. He is not fact-finding to do better during the next pandemic. He is only thinking of himself. Paul even had a “Fire Dr. Fauci” banner on his website with a donate button right next to it. After a 2022 hearing, his campaign sent out a fundraising email with the subject line “Fauci is hysterical” to raise more money for his upcoming election. He wrote a 2023 book called “Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up” with Fauci’s name and likeness on the cover. Fauci caught him and called it out from the witness table, holding up printouts of Paul’s own site and telling him, “You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain.”

What we watched today went even deeper than that. It was McCarthyism, just like in the 1950s, when Joseph McCarthy brought scientists, artists, and government officials before congressional committees to perform loyalty tests. Regardless of any guilt or validity to the accusations, people were still punished with hearings. Careers were destroyed when people’s names were dragged through the mud on the public record. And McCarthy, like Rand Paul, used the Fifth Amendment against those who declared it, treating silence as a confession of guilt even though it is a constitutional right that exists precisely to protect people from this kind of abuse.

When Hawley looked at Fauci and said, “Nothing says honesty like taking the Fifth,” he was delivering the 2026 version of “Are you now, or have you ever been.” This administration continues to take the worst moments in history to create their current authoritarian takeover with only the targets changed. The only silver lining is that McCarthy eventually faced consequences. Edward R. Murrow called him out, and the Senate censured him. His own colleagues turned on him, and the system corrected, eventually.

Today, not a single Republican in that room said this has gone too far. This is how fascism moves, and it is un-American. Donald Trump has filled our government with the worst of the worst, because the people he has placed in positions of power do not care about our health, safety, or our children. They care about control and wealth, and about holding on to both for as long as they can.

We have the worst of us leading this country. Their legacy will not be good no matter how they try to spin their moves or actions. Their legacy will be that they stood before the world and treated a hero like a criminal, while the country they were sworn to protect got sicker, poorer, and less free. Dr. Fauci’s legacy is already written. It was written over the past 50 years of service to his country and to humanity. Nothing that happened in that hearing room today could or did change it. He will be remembered as a man who saved millions of lives, and who sat in that hearing today without losing his dignity. They will be remembered as the people who made him sit there.

The most common question I am asked these days is what can the average person do in this moment? And the answer is don’t give up. We are not at the end of this story. We are just getting started. We can still use our voices without being jailed. We are getting very close to our next elections. Don’t believe anyone who says this is over or that your voice doesn’t count. It does. Right now, keep talking about everything that is happening. Share it with friends online and in person. Protect yourself from the propaganda that is being spread. And if your primaries are already over, get behind the candidates who are not Trump loyalists. We are not looking for a life partner in our politicians. Right now, we just need people who can lead us out of the MAGA takeover. If you have extra money in your budget, support your local candidates. If that is not an option, consider donating your time instead. The surest way to a better country is to get involved right now. We absolutely must take back Congress, and that needs to be our number one priority in the months ahead.

I had Fauci’s hearing on my phone today while I sat in a hospital waiting room while my daughter was having surgery. It was nearly impossible to reconcile how one doctor could be attacking another like that on live television about the pandemic that is still causing those in the medical field nightmares. To many of them, Fauci was the face of evidence-based advice who helped them save people from more pain and suffering, and death. To hear Rand Paul disrespect the million-plus people who have died from COVID by stating that Fauci did too much to slow it down was almost too much to carry in my heart.

But I also saw something that reminded me of what it means to be an American and, really, just a human being. As I was sitting in the lobby, there was a family that spoke with heavy accents just a few steps from me. A line had started to form behind them, and a man who had been waiting a while saw them going through their purses and wallets to pay their surgery co-pay. It looked like they had been surprised by the amount. The man jumped into action, opened his wallet, and started taking out money. “I’m sorry, I overheard,” he said. “Let me help you.” Without a second of hesitation, he was ready to pay whatever they needed so a stranger could have their operation that day.

They didn’t end up needing the help, but it was a beautiful moment that happened very quickly. That is what community is. That is what Americans do.

We are 97 days from the midterms. And that is the America we are going to bring back. The people who have turned our government against us, who have turned heroes into villains and villains into heroes, they are the loud minority. They are the evil amongst us. And their lasting legacy will not be the one they think they are building. It will be the one history writes for them based on the side of history they stood on in these dark times. The American people will show them in November that they have had enough, and they will send them back into the shadows where they belong. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Pictures of the day: View from the waiting room. My daughter had her surgery at the same hospital she was born at 24 years ago, by the same surgeon who saved my husband's life when he had a medical emergency while I was pregnant with her. My heart broke a little more tonight for all of the medical professionals now thinking their sacrifice and trauma from the pandemic somehow isn't real or worthy of respect because of what was said to Dr. Fauci today. I dream of the day we stop this assault on science and medicine, and I hope it comes before another catastrophic event.

Sources:

Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly invokes the Fifth in dramatic Senate hearing about Covid pandemic - CNN

Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment in Rand Paul Senate hearing - NPR

Fauci invokes 5th Amendment during Senate testimony - ABC News

Rand Paul threatens to hold Fauci in contempt - Washington Post

Moreno drops f-bomb on Fauci, recalls COVID arrest at football game - The Hill

Fauci hearing goes off the rails after he stonewalls senators - Rolling Stone

Why Anthony Fauci took the Fifth in Senate hearing - PolitiFact

Dr. Anthony Fauci invokes 5th in COVID hearing - CBS News

Scientists rally to defend Fauci at Senate hearing - Science / AAAS

US measles cases reach 35-year high, for second record-breaking year in a row - CNN

Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies on the COVID-19 pandemic - C-SPAN full video