Dear Weekend Jolter,
Every six months or so, we seem to pass through another phase of revelations that underscore the extent to which officials misled the public about the evidence concerning Covid-19’s origins and the protocols established to mitigate the virus’s spread.
While the political world has been fixated on Donald Trump’s legal battles these past several weeks (we’re no exception), some of the most damning pandemic-policy revelations yet have emerged. These, on the origins not just of Covid but of the guidance that upended society — kids’ education, people’s livelihoods, families and our relationships with each other.
The prior round of honest Covid reflection yielded a mea culpa of sorts from former NIH head Francis Collins, who last year acknowledged that public-health officials took a “narrow view” in decision-making, attaching “infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life” and “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.” That mindset, he said, was “unfortunate” and a “mistake.” At the time, Rich Lowry called it a “welcome, if belated, confession.”
The information emerging since might feel cathartic to those who faced scorn and ridicule for questioning Covid protocols or the “wet market” narrative. But really, it’s just maddening.
Jim Geraghty sums up the most recent developments:
There was no science behind the six-feet rule for social distancing, there was no science justifying the masking of children, and the notion of the pandemic stemming from a lab leak wasn’t implausible or a conspiracy theory.
The corresponding testimony comes from transcripts of closed-door House committee sessions from earlier this year. James Lynch reported last month that Collins said he did not recall seeing evidence supporting the six-foot-distance guideline (which came from the CDC) and he believes it’s not yet clear whether Covid-19 leaked from a lab in China or came from animals elsewhere. James reported last week that Anthony Fauci, too, testified that the social-distancing guidelines “sort of just appeared” and that he didn’t specifically recall seeing studies or data supporting masking for children. Further, Fauci acknowledged that no cost-benefit analysis was done to explore unintended consequences versus benefits of child-masking. (The World Health Organization, by contrast, did not generally recommend masking young kids.) Separately, as Jim notes, the New York Times just published an op-ed explaining, “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points.”
How the times — and Times — have changed.
This past week, Fauci returned to Capitol Hill for public testimony, during which he clarified that the six-foot guidance came from the CDC but that there wasn’t a “controlled trial” to compare different distances — though he maintained that the CDC likely based its recommendation on past transmission studies.
Those making high-stakes decisions based on limited information in 2020 deserved the tolerance and charity of the American public, who can recall the urgency the virus’s rapid spread and high death toll created. But it is the intolerance and lack of charity — the sheer imperiousness — shown by officials and allied Covid maximalists toward any dissent or challenge, especially when vaccines became available and a greater understanding of the virus was being attained, that in turn have exhausted the public’s reserves of those virtues toward the government response.
In the spring of 2021, despite the rapidly evolving epidemiological situation, Fauci rejected the notion that public guidance should evolve too. . . . In the fall of 2021, with 72 percent of the adult population at least partly vaccinated, Fauci continued to call for masking and social distancing in “an indoor setting” — the growing evidence that most of the country no longer hung on his advice notwithstanding.
Wesley J. Smith recalls the efforts to discredit the authors of the fall 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which challenged the policy of mass lockdowns:
There was nothing wrong with Collins and Fauci disagreeing with the GBD. But rather than engage with its contents in good faith, both sought instead to discredit the GBD’s authors as “fringe,” a patent falsehood given that its authors were medical professors in elite medical schools with hundreds of published papers among them. Because of Fauci’s and Collins’ behind-the-scenes efforts, the GBD’s authors — Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, and Martin Kulldorff, then of Harvard (he was subsequently fired for refusing to be vaccinated) — soon found themselves subjected to media scorn, accused of being indifferent to Covid deaths, their reputations tarnished in the most public ways.
Francis Collins talks today about the importance of weighing trade-offs. Good. Monomaniacal focus rarely makes for sound policy. Had Collins made those remarks under an alias not long ago, he would have been labeled a death cultist. So it goes. For the record, anyone awaiting a moment of collective expiation for lockdown and mandate overkill can expect to keep waiting. The heavy hand has no memory, and no remorse. One can only hope that, next time, the public-health complex will carry forward a newfound appreciation for balancing competing needs — and if not, that elected officials remember that’s what they were hired to do.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On the latest border-security ruse: Biden Is Blowing Smoke on the Border
Our D-Day anniversary editorial: They Came ‘to Liberate, Not to Conquer’
Meanwhile, in the real world: Republicans Don’t Want to Ban Contraception
ARTICLES
Stanley Kurtz: K–12 Student Walkouts: A Legislative Remedy
Andrew McCarthy: Hunter Biden Is Playing the Long Game
Jeffrey Blehar: Is Judge Merchan Crazy Enough to Give Trump Jail Time?
James Lynch: Prosecution Introduces Hunter Biden’s Infamous Laptop at Trial, Uses Data as Evidence of Crack Addiction
Angelique Talmor: Harvard Is Giving Up on Jews. Jews Are Beginning to Return the Favor
Mike Pence: Ronald Reagan’s Enduring Legacy
Craig Shirley: Remembering the Boys of Pointe du Hoc
Thérèse Shaheen: Xi Jinping’s Thoughts — and Delusions
Abigail Anthony: Body Positivity versus Transgenderism
Rich Lowry: Don’t Hate Caitlin Clark
Jim Talent: The Biden Administration’s Coddling of Iran Helps No One Except the Mullahs
Dan McLaughlin: Flying the Transgender Flag in the Federal Courts
Dominic Pino: What to Make of India’s Election Results
Jimmy Quinn: Hillary Clinton Meets Chinese ‘Friendship’ Group Flagged by U.S. Intelligence
Christian Schneider: Trump’s Felonies Aren’t the Reason He’s Unfit for Office
Caroline Downey: Harvard Faculty End Mandatory DEI Statements in Hiring
Zach Kessel: Anti-Israel Protesters Arrested at Stanford after Breaking into President’s Office, Injuring Officer
And ICYMI . . . Introducing NR’s New ‘Alito Flags’
CAPITAL MATTERS
Judge Glock, on why the taxpayer bailouts were not the end of this story: Freddie (and Fannie) and the Coming Nightmare on Main Street
Andrew Stuttaford, on what’s going on with California’s minimum-wage market backlash: The Costs of California’s Higher Fast-Food Minimum Wage
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen picks up his series on New York art outside the big city. Extra points if you can pronounce “Canajoharie,” whose collection he spotlights here: Looking for Art in Upstate New York? There’s No Place Like Canajoharie
You’ll want to read Armond White’s explication of De Niro’s hyperpartisan turn: De Niro’s Downfall (and Ours)
OUR EXCERPTS: ALWAYS FRESH, NEVER FROZEN
Our own James Lynch has been on the ground in Delaware all week covering the Hunter Biden trial. You can catch up on the coverage here. On Tuesday, he marked an important, full-circle moment, when DOJ prosecutors introduced the first son’s laptop as evidence — you know, the laptop that was supposedly Russian disinformation:
A highly anticipated moment in Hunter Biden’s criminal trial took place Tuesday afternoon when the prosecution introduced Hunter Biden’s laptop as evidence during the direct examination of an FBI agent.
Federal prosecutor Derek Hines questioned FBI special agent Erica Jensen on the laptop and federal investigators’ process of verifying its data to prove the device and its contents are authentic before introducing exhibits from the laptop as evidence at trial.
Jensen detailed how law enforcement obtained the laptop’s hard drive in fall 2019 after receiving a tip from a computer store. Hines presented the physical laptop to Jensen, and she held it up for the entire courtroom to see, causing murmurs among the reporters seated in the gallery.
The FBI used forensic tools to extract data from the laptop after obtaining a search warrant, Jensen said as she went into how the device was verified.
Federal investigators verified the laptop data by cross-referencing Biden’s iCloud storage accounts with the computer’s serial number, Jensen testified. She was brought into the Biden investigation in fall 2023 and got up to speed with all of the materials ahead of the trial. Last year, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley gave similar testimony before Congress on how the laptop was verified.
When the New York Post first reported on emails from the laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election, social-media platforms censored the outlet, and 51 former intelligence officials signed a discredited letter claiming that the laptop was likely part of a Russian disinformation campaign. When President Trump raised the evidence of foreign influence peddling found on the laptop during a 2020 campaign debate, then-candidate Biden cited the letter in arguing that the laptop was the product of Russian disinformation.
There were some big anniversaries this week, pertaining both to D-Day and to Reagan. Mike Pence penned this tribute to Reagan to mark 20 years since his death:
I began my political life in the Democrat Party. But when I heard the voice, the vision, and the optimism of Ronald Reagan, I knew the Republican Party was where I belonged.
I came to revere our 40th president. When I first ran for Congress in 1988, I was invited to Washington to meet with President Reagan. I thanked him for all he did to inspire my generation to believe in our country again.
And that is exactly what Reagan did. The economic, political, and cultural turmoil of the 1970s caused many to lose faith in our country and in our founding principles. Some even believed that the Soviet Union and communism would outlive the American experiment. But President Reagan knew it was always darkest before the dawn, and he knew that it would soon be morning in America once again.
When Reagan took office, inflation rates were double-digit, unemployment was sky-high, and communism was spreading like wildfire. By the time he left office, he had helped create the most powerful economy in recorded history, Soviet communism was on its last legs, and the Cold War would soon end in American victory. He accomplished it all not by compromising conservative principles, but by standing firm on what he knew was right.
Some Republicans today view Reagan as a figure best confined to history books: revered, but no longer relevant to our current challenges. I respectfully disagree. While the specific issues we face may differ, the foundational principles of our nation remain unchanged. The principles Reagan championed — limited government, traditional values, the right to life, and a strong national defense — will endure forever as a light to the feet of future generations charting the path of our nation in the years to come.
Stanley Kurtz has authored model legislation that aims to do something about the student walkouts and disorder that have gripped schools across the country. He explains:
America’s K–16 students have been swept up in successive waves of disorder and lawlessness for about a decade now. In late 2015 and early 2016, set off by claims of racism at the University of Missouri, campus protests punctuated by shout-downs and meeting takeovers spread across the country. Then, in 2017, triggered by the election of President Donald Trump, a wave of shout-downs drove conservative speakers off America’s college campuses, a situation unremedied to this day. Less noticed, but of real importance, in the months following President Trump’s 2016 election victory and well into the next year, anti-Trump high-school walkouts spread across more than half the states. While schools and colleges were largely shut down by the response to Covid during the George Floyd incident of 2020, that year saw America’s youth swept up in riotous demonstrations, statue desecrations, and attempts to intimidate conservatives. And this year, pro-Hamas demonstrators set up illegal encampments at colleges nationwide, took over buildings, and intimidated Jewish students, in some cases driving them off campus. Meanwhile, high schools in blue cities and suburbs have seen a rash of anti-Israel K–12 walkouts, many in coordination with college encampments.
Missing in all this has been any trace of accountability. Speaker shout-downs, college encampments, and high-school walkouts violate school policies and in many cases the law. Yet discipline is rare. On the contrary, campus shout-downs and quad takeovers are sometimes encouraged by faculty and administrators. More disturbing, K–12 student walkouts are often praised and in many cases directly authorized by schools as a form of “civic engagement.” Few Americans are aware of the extent to which civic education has been co-opted and converted into a pretext for political activism under names like “civic engagement” or “action civics.”
Sometimes K–12 “action civics” entails protesting or lobbying after school for course credit. At other times, however, it means walking out of school to protest. Those political walkouts may not count for course credit, but they do generally go undisciplined. Instead of discouraging walkouts by treating them as the unexcused absences they are, schools often exempt them from punishment. And increasingly, blue states and school districts are devising permission systems meant to allow and even encourage mass student walkouts for political purposes.
Protests at the college and K–12 levels are now mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, university activists set a standard for radicalism that can only be imitated by high-school students. At the same time, high-school activists cut their teeth on walkouts and enter college primed for something more radical. In the wake of the anti-Trump walkouts of 2017 and nationwide walkouts for gun control in 2018, college-admissions essays telling stories of political activism surged. Colleges responded by encouraging the trend and announcing that students disciplined for walking out of high school would not be penalized when applying for admission.
Since then, prestige universities have glamorized their legacies of student disruption from the 1960s, positively encouraging the leaders of school walkouts to apply. Not only can you now break the rules and get off scot-free, you’re likely to draw praise from your teachers and secure admission to a prestigious university to boot. That is the message being sent to high schoolers nowadays by everyone from civics teachers to college-admissions officers.
Forcing colleges to discipline students who shout down speakers and take over campus quads is difficult, although not impossible (see here). But making sure that high-school walkouts are treated as unexcused absences, disciplined accordingly, and not glamorized in the K–12 curriculum can be handled as a straightforward matter of state law.
That is why I have authored the Politics Out of Schools Act (POSA), model legislation co-sponsored by the National Association of Scholars and by my think tank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Removing rewards for politicized truancy at the K–12 level is the easiest and most effective way to break the cycle of disorder and lawlessness now entrenched in America’s K–16 education system.
The Politics Out of Schools Act does three things. First, it forbids schools in a given state from issuing excused absences for political protest and lobbying. Second, it prohibits school standards, curricula, regulations, or teacher-training materials from promoting or permitting student walkouts for purposes of political protest or lobbying. Third, it ensures that unexcused absences for purposes of political protest or lobbying are treated no differently from other instances of truancy. However schools treat a day of truancy — be it with detention, a brief suspension, or a mark on a student’s record — that is how political walkouts would be dealt with. This law might not end all school walkouts, but it would surely make them less frequent and extensive.
Honorable Mention
In the category of “one good turn deserves another,” my old colleague and boss Ken LaCorte gave a very nice and humbling shout-out to NR the other day in his newsletter. I subscribe to his Substack, and so should you. Ken covers the waterfront with his dispatches, which are crisp, researched, and not-infrequently contrarian, whether he’s writing about the media, homeownership, college culture wars, or any of the other stuff that makes us crazy.
Shout-Outs
Alina Chan, at the New York Times: Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points
Tim Carney, at the Washington Examiner: In defense of protest votes
Annie Linskey & Siobhan Hughes, at the Wall Street Journal: Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping
CODA
Okay, one last blurb riffing off the Apple 100 Best Albums list that fractured modern society into a million pieces, which those of us who survived are only now beginning to pick up.
I just noticed Björk’s Homogenic made the list. For that, I say: What’s Icelandic for huzzah? The album is timeless — engrossing from start to finish. And its start, “Hunter,” still startles and rewards, but maybe that’s just “Scandinavian of me.”
Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading.