They Had No Data. Fauci Told Pregnant Women It Was Safe Anyway.
Plus: a 22-point Wisconsin poll that lost by 1,200 votes, and Massachusetts erases its last limit on abortion.
Hey, it’s Wednesday!
My sleep score this morning was 62, so I feel like dog poo.
Btw, Marco is a fan of Pop-Tarts. I need to know which one is his favorite. I am a frosted strawberry fan.
Let’s get into the news.
In today’s Read:
A DSA socialist led every Wisconsin poll by up to 22 points. She lost by four-tenths of one point. The real casualty is the polling business.
Newly released texts off Fauci’s government phone show he privately raised a first-trimester miscarriage concern in January 2021. Then the machine recommended the shot for pregnant women anyway. Nobody asked them.
Massachusetts signed away its abortion time limit. Elective, through nine months, on one doctor’s say-so.
Quick Rundown: employer money starts flowing into Trump Accounts, Klobuchar and Peggy Flanagan win in Minnesota, the Graham seat heads to a runoff, Todd Blanche gets confirmed, and Ukraine hits inside Russia.
They Had No Data. Fauci Told Pregnant Women It Was Safe Anyway.
The Story.
Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul released the first pages pulled off Anthony Fauci’s government iPhone, which HHS finally produced on August 5. The January 2021 thread starts with future Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asking Fauci and incoming CDC Director Rochelle Walensky a simple question: did the agencies have any data on vaccine safety at the different stages of pregnancy? Walensky’s answer: “my understanding is that this is all a data free.” No data. Then Fauci first said there was no reason to worry, and about two hours later circled back: “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.” Murthy called it “a really good point.” Seven months later, on August 11, 2021, the CDC formally recommended the vaccine for pregnant women. Johnson’s office says it’s still combing 34,000 texts and 522 voicemails, and that his staff “can’t guarantee that everything was preserved.”
The right’s read. He knew, he worried, he pushed it anyway. RedState and the Daily Caller ran it straight: Fauci flagged a first-trimester concern in private, said nothing publicly, and the machine told pregnant women to line up.
The left’s read. A nothingburger with a footnote. CNN filed it under Republicans releasing texts of Fauci “discussing safety,” heavy on the word “theoretically,” heavy on the reminder that later studies found no link. CBS went with Fauci “discussed potential risks and benefits.”
What both sides skip. Both trim the same document. The right skips that “theoretically” was real scientific hedging and that the later million-woman studies did not find an elevated risk. The left skips the actual news: the top public-health official named a first-trimester miscarriage concern in January 2021, admitted the talk was “data free,” and the messaging that followed carried no such caveat, all the way through a formal recommendation for pregnant women. Whether the worry panned out and whether anyone disclosed it are two different questions. Only one side wants you asking the second one.
Start with the women. Millions of them were pregnant during the rollout, frightened, and told flat out there was nothing to worry about. Safe and effective. No asterisk.
Here’s what the document shows and what it doesn’t. In January 2021, the incoming director of the CDC put it in writing that they had no safety data on pregnant women at all. Data-free. In the same thread, Fauci named a specific first-trimester miscarriage concern. Whether that concern ever panned out is a separate question from whether anyone told you it existed. They didn’t. What you got instead was certainty.
And where did the certainty come from? A lot of it traced back to one preliminary study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Shimabukuro paper, waved around in 2021 as proof the shot was safe in pregnancy. Two researchers, Aleisha Brock and Simon Thornley, took it apart and caught something. The study’s reassuring miscarriage rate leaned on 827 completed pregnancies, but 700 of those women were vaccinated in the third trimester, already past the window where a first-trimester miscarriage was even possible. Recalculating for only the early-exposed women, they got a spontaneous-abortion rate seven to eight times higher, the 82% figure that went nuclear online.
Now the honest other half, because it’s what I do. That 82% is also wrong, and Brock and Thornley withdrew their own paper, conceding the number “is not justified.” It counted early losses against a denominator stripped of every pregnancy still ongoing, the healthy ones that simply hadn’t finished yet. Count them all, and the rate lands around 10%, which is ordinary. So set the numbers aside. The CDC’s reassuring one and its critics’ scary one were both built on broken math. The point was never 82% or 10%. It’s that in early 2021, when the machine was telling pregnant women to roll up their sleeves, nobody had the data to promise it was safe. They did not know. Walensky said exactly that, in writing: data-free. And the only substance anyone added to that thread was Fauci’s, and it wasn’t an all-clear. It was a warning: a possible first-trimester miscarriage risk. No data works both directions. It didn’t mean the shot was unsafe. It meant no one could confirm it was safe. They told pregnant women it was safe anyway.
Then there’s the passive data. For three decades, VAERS logged a few hundred miscarriage reports a year. In 2021 it logged around 3,350, with spontaneous abortion the single most-reported adverse pregnancy outcome. Reported deaths across all causes jumped from the low hundreds to about 22,000 the same year. Now, full disclosure, VAERS is a passive, anyone-can-file system, and 2021 is not a clean comparison. Far more people were vaccinated than in any prior year, and providers were required to report events under the emergency authorization. So the height of that spike is not a rate, and a single report could be a timing coincidence, not a proven cause. Correlation is not causation. But a jump from a few hundred to several thousand is a signal, and a signal is what you investigate, not censor. In 2021, the doctors asking these questions out loud got throttled and called grifters.
Now stack the consent problem on top. The CDC’s own advisory committee hadn’t initially recommended the shot for pregnant women. Didn’t stop the mandates. Congressional testimony documented pregnant women and women trying to conceive being denied exemptions, and healthcare workers fired for refusing. So a pregnant nurse could be told: take a shot your own health agency hasn’t cleared for you, or lose your job. That’s not a choice. That’s coercion with better branding.
This was the process: no data, then certainty, then the silencing of doctors who asked questions, then coerced consent for pregnant women, and now “we can’t guarantee the records were preserved.” You don’t get to tell everyone to calm down after that. You forfeited the benefit of the doubt. You spent it, and no single dataset buys it back.
Worth flagging. Watch whether HHS can actually produce an intact set of the v-safe pregnancy monitoring records, or whether “we can’t guarantee it was preserved” becomes the whole story. Watch which outlets cover the next batch of texts and which suddenly lose interest. And watch whether one official, anywhere, who signed off on denying a pregnant woman an exemption ever has to answer a single question about it under oath.
ICYMI
Tucker Carlson: Order Over Liberty - Part 1
On August 1st, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a photo to X: a rustic dining table inside a Maine cabin — Tucker Carlson’s cabin, part of what I can only assume is a multimillion-dollar compound, all of it currently thanks to our system of capitalism. At the head of the table, with wild eyes and a thinly lined smile, sat Carlson. Around him were Thomas Ma…
A 20-Point Lead, a 1,200-Vote Loss, and the Poll That Should Embarrass an Industry
The Story.
David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, won Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor Tuesday by about 1,200 votes. The count sat near 40% for Crowley to 39.6% for state Rep. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Hong led every public poll of the race, some by a lot. A State Navigate survey five days out had her up 22, at 44% to Crowley’s low twenties. Marquette Law School had Crowley stuck at 7% to 11% for most of the spring, running third or worse. He dropped out in July, jumped back in days later, inherited the anti-Hong lane when Mandela Barnes quit, and got Gov. Tony Evers barnstorming for him in the final week. He faces Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in November.
The right’s read. Socialist loses. Fox ran “Dem pulls establishment upset against socialist Francesca Hong,” leaning on her DSA card and treating the result as the far-left insurgency finally hitting a wall in a swing state.
The left’s read. The establishment strikes back. CNN framed the night as Crowley “boosting the Democratic establishment,” the party “coalescing at the last minute behind the last moderate standing.” A rescue, dressed as a comeback.
What both sides skip. The number. Both headlines are about ideology, and neither one is about the 22-point polling that was way off base. They also both skip the margin. Crowley won by four-tenths of a point after the whole party jumped in front of him, which means nobody in this fight is winning going away, in either direction.
A candidate who polled up 22 points lost by four-tenths of one. What is the point of primary polling if you are going to be this far off? The narrative is that the DSA hit a wall in Wisconsin. I am not sure how big a four-tenths-of-one loss is, but the bigger issue Tuesday night was the polling business, which sold you a 22-point Hong lead a week before she lost in a photo finish. Think about how the media covered Hong because of this polling. The left thought she was a done deal and the right, frankly, were giddy at the prospect of running against someone so radical, convincing themselves they could flip the Wisconsin Governor’s race.
Also, this alleged wall. Crowley won by only 1,200 votes after the sitting governor, the donor class, and every establishment lever in the state threw themselves in front of him at the last possible second. Against a woman who has demonstrated to be one of the most extreme of the DSA, with her past comments about her “proximity to whiteness” because of her biracial son, hating on Thanksgiving, and abolishing the police and prisons. Yet, the only thing that kept her away from the governorship was 1,200 votes. This wasn’t the only DSA squeaker in the Midwest: Abdul El-Sayed took his Michigan race by a single point.
So the moderate-versus-socialist war inside the party isn’t over. It isn’t close to over. It’s just that this week, the moderate squeaked ahead, and he needed the whole party to carry him.
Worth flagging. Watch whether a single pollster publishes an honest autopsy of how they missed by 20-plus, or whether they quietly memory-hole the toplines. Watch where the DNC’s money moves next, toward Crowley’s lane or away from it. And watch Tiffany, because a four-tenths-of-a-point nominee walks into November with a party that spent the summer at war with itself.
Massachusetts Governor Signs Elective Abortion Through Nine Months
The Story.
Gov. Maura Healey signed a bill this week with the focus-grouped name “An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care.” It strips out Massachusetts’ restrictions on abortion after 24 weeks and permits it based on “the judgment of the physician,” which in plain English opens elective abortion through all nine months. The House passed it July 22, the Senate on July 31. That puts Massachusetts among roughly ten states with no gestational limit on the books.
The right’s read. Abortion up to birth. Fox went with “abortions up to birth,” and the state’s Catholic bishops called eliminating “any legal restraint” on late-term abortion gravely immoral.
The left’s read. Mercy and access. WBUR led with Healey citing “stories of anguish and heartache,” casting the law as protecting doctors and patients from politics. The words “late-term” and “third trimester” never appear. The frame is “access to care,” which happens to be the bill’s own title, so the coverage and the marketing are running the same script.
What both sides skip. The word viable. At nine months, the baby can be delivered, so the choice a no-limit law creates isn't abortion or nothing; it's abortion or delivery, and the "access to care" coverage is built to keep you from picturing that. Even the "but the hard cases" defense skips it. A fatal diagnosis, a mother's life at risk late in a pregnancy: the answer there is to deliver the baby, not to end one that could be saved. When delivery is on the table, there's no reason for a late-term abortion. None.
I love when a bill title gets the PR treatment, “An Act Prioritizing Patient Access to Care.” Just enough to make the argument that a full-term abortion is rewritten as a routine doctor’s visit.
This read is going to be pretty short because it’s pretty simple. Murdering a baby after 24 weeks, when it is viable, is evil. If it’s about saving the mother's life, the baby can be delivered. That simple threat to the mother is solved. Choosing to end the child instead isn’t “access to care.”
The one justification supporters offer is a fatal or genetic diagnosis of the baby. The baby is “incompatible with life,” so ending it counts as mercy. Call that what it is. Deciding a baby isn’t worth delivering because of its genes or its diagnosis is eugenics in gentler words. It says a life is disposable if it’s the wrong kind of life. It’s crazy to wrap eugenics and murder into “access to care.”
Then look at the coverage. A law erasing every gestational limit gets written up as compassion, and the words “third trimester” and “viable” never appear, because then they would have to face the horror of the truth.
Worth flagging. Watch how many national outlets cover a law removing every gestational limit without once printing the words “third trimester” or “viability.” Watch whether any Massachusetts Democrat who voted yes will say, on camera, at what week they think the line should be. The bill’s answer is: there isn’t one.
Employer money starts flowing into Trump Accounts, and the business page yawns. Treasury and the IRS rolled out proposed rules letting employers put up to $2,500 a year, tax-free, into “Trump Accounts” for workers’ kids, with employees able to add pre-tax dollars up to a $5,000 cap. Treasury says more than 50 companies have already committed. Coverage mostly ran as dry tax news with a Mercer poll stapled on top noting only about 4% of employers plan to participate so far.
Klobuchar and Flanagan run the table in Minnesota. Sen. Amy Klobuchar won the DFL primary for governor and will face Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth in November. In the open Senate race, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan took the DFL nomination and draws Republican Michele Tafoya, the former NFL sideline reporter, in the fall.
South Carolina can’t settle the Graham seat in one night. The GOP special primary to fill the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat is headed to an August 25 runoff between Sen. Darline Graham, his sister, whom Gov. McMaster appointed and Trump endorsed, and Rep. Ralph Norman. Neither cleared 50%.
Blanche gets the top job. Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney and most recently deputy attorney general, was confirmed as Attorney General. The man who defended the president in court now runs the department that once prosecuted him.
Ukraine hits inside Russia. A Ukrainian drone strike killed at least 13 people in Russia this week, days ahead of a possible Trump-Putin summit reported for August 15. The battlefield and the negotiating table are moving at once.
That’s The Read.
See you Friday.
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