What We Saw in Cuba Shocked Us

May 11, 2026

By Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan L. Jackson

Ms. Jayapal, of Washington’s Seventh Congressional District, and Mr. Jackson, of Illinois’s First Congressional District, are Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Alejandro, a premature baby born in Havana’s Eusebio Hernández Pérez maternity hospital, weighed only two pounds when we met him in April. We watched him as he lay in an incubator, one of the few in the building whose delicate electronic components hadn’t been damaged by the high-voltage electricity surges that follow nationwide blackouts. Far-reaching U.S. sanctions make importing replacement parts for the other, broken incubators nearly impossible.

Touring the hospital, we saw women in the final days of their pregnancies trudging up flights of stairs, the elevators inoperable without power. The hospital staff members struggle to get to work without fuel for their cars. During blackouts, doctors sometimes have to manually pump ventilators to keep babies alive. They say the hospital has managed to avoid an increase in infant mortality over the past several months, but other facilities around the country have not been so lucky. From 2018 to 2025, as U.S. sanctions grew more punitive, Cuba’s once-impressive infant mortality rate skyrocketed by 148 percent.

As members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, we spent five days in Cuba in April to better understand the humanitarian impacts of America’s monthslong energy blockade of the island. We came away shocked by the inhumane effects of the policy, whose goal appears to be strangling the economy until the Cuban people are brought to ruin and the country is available, as President Trump put it, for the “taking.”

With the exception of one Russian oil tanker carrying 10 to 14 days’ worth of oil, fuel deliveries to Cuba have been blocked for more than four months, as other countries have feared having their tankers seized in open waters by U.S. military vessels. The resulting daily indignities have rippled across Cuban society. We returned from our trip certain that if the American people knew the full extent of what is happening on the ground in Cuba, they would demand an end to the blockade immediately.

The U.S. blockade of fuel to Cuba, on top of the longest embargo in modern U.S. history, defies the norms of international law that provide for state sovereignty, nonintervention in domestic affairs and the right of nations to trade freely. It amounts to an economic assault on the basic infrastructure of Cuba, designed to inflict collective punishment on the civilian population by manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in which health care, running water, agriculture and transportation are no longer available.

During our visit, we spoke with a wide range of Cuban citizens — political dissidents, religious leaders, entrepreneurs and members of civil society organizations and humanitarian aid groups. We also met with the families of Cuba’s political prisoners. Everywhere, there was agreement: America’s blockade must end, and a U.S. invasion must not take place.

We saw for ourselves how Americans could benefit from normalized relations with Cuba in a few key ways. Under different circumstances, Cuba would be a natural U.S. trade partner. Several agricultural secretaries of both red and blue states have visited the island to explore opportunities to export U.S. agricultural products to Cuba, hampered only by the United States’ own financial restrictions under the embargo.

The Cuban health care system, for decades a global model of public health, has produced important advances that could extend to Americans, including promising treatments for Alzheimer’s and lung cancer. And both Cuba and the United States could benefit from a boost in tourism. When President Barack Obama moved to normalize relations with Cuba, hotels, restaurants and shops flourished around the island and fueled the liberalization of the Cuban economy and an emerging independent civil society.

The Cuban government can and must do more internally to improve political and civic rights, including ending arbitrary detention and mistreatment of political prisoners, which we conveyed in our meeting with President Miguel Díaz-Canel. But it has taken some important steps, including announcing the release of 2,010 prisoners in what the country’s state-run newspaper called a “humanitarian and sovereign” gesture. Cuba’s move to authorize an F.B.I. investigation of a recent deadly maritime shootout involving Cuban Americans was another important show of transparency and good will.

Many of the economic changes the Trump administration has claimed it wanted throughout the blockade are already underway. The government recently allowed Cuban American entrepreneurs to invest in private businesses. Small and medium-size businesses now account for large parts of the economy and work force.

But liberalizing reforms cannot counteract a deliberate U.S. campaign to destroy the Cuban economy. Over the past few weeks Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sweeping new sanctions targeting Cuba’s economy under the pretext that the island poses a threat to U.S. national security.

These measures reiterated that the biggest obstacle to improving the daily lives of Cubans continues to be the United States’ outdated, Cold War-era policy of economic coercion and military pressure, whose only upshot has been isolation and suffering for the Cuban people. Further destruction in Cuba, including military action, would lead only to greater economic collapse and more Cubans fleeing the island.

The United States and Cuba can turn the page and enter real negotiations if they are based on mutual respect and aim to benefit the people of both countries. This is what we believe to be in reach — a real chance for children like Alejandro and the next generation of Cubans who deserve to know the generosity of the American people and to live with hope for the future.

Ralph Baric, aged 72, was placed on leave from his job at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in recent days (placed on leave by the university for the second time). As of May 7 he faced debarment from funding by HHS for at least 3 years. This had happened earlier to his associate Peter Daszak.

Today Science magazine published a story that said Baric was planning to fight his debarment, with help from the university—but then suddenly his retirement was announced by UNC, and so the story became more complex. Baric still says he wants to fight the debarment—but if he is retired, he would not be able to apply for grants anyway, so the issue would be moot.

The announcement of his retirement was not made by Professor Baric, but by the dean of the school of public health, Nancy Messonier, who was head of respiratory diseases and vaccines at CDC until CDC Director Rochelle Walensky fired her, and also announced by the head of the epidemiology department. How did Messonier end up at UNC after her fall from grace? How did it come about that Baric was unceremoniously, forcibly retired today?

https://www.science.org/content/article/virologist-accused-starting-covid-19-will-fight-u-s-ban-funding

One of the issues, of course, is what role Ralph Baric played in the development of SARS-CoV-2.

It is likely his role was considerable. Has UNC finally decided that the huge grants Baric reliably brought in are now finished, and it is not worth the university’s while to keep paying lawyers and withholding Baric-related documents, given the extensive FOIA requests, in addition to ongoing state and federal government attempts to get to the bottom of Baric’s role.

Excerpted from the Science article:

Virologist Robert Redfield, who was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during Trump’s first term and the start of the pandemic, has gone further still with regard to Baric. “I think there is a real possibility that the virus’ birthplace was Chapel Hill,” Redfield said on a podcast in 2024….

In April 2025, not long after Trump returned to office and named Bhattacharya NIH director, the agency froze Baric’s ability to receive pay from his multiple grants to conduct a “compliance review.” The next month, it asked for clarifications about the 2015 Nature Medicine paper reporting the 2014 work, the Wellcome Trust grant, and potential conflicts of interest with companies that collaborate with his lab. UNC put him on administrative leave that May [2025], barring him from campus for many months, before reinstating him in January.

In February, NIH notified UNC it had “additional concerns” because of the school’s unsatisfying responses to earlier requests. “NIH continues to seek clarity related to all communications that Dr. Baric had with UNC officials between January 1, 2014 and January 1, 2025, along with communications with NIH staff in the same timeframe,” the letter states. After receipt of the suspension letter last week, UNC once again put Baric on administrative leave.

Baric was a money spigot for UNC, even though coronaviruses were a tiny niche area in microbiology

Baric spent his entire career on coronaviruses, though they had a different name (mouse hepatitis viruses) when he entered the field as a graduate student. He has been exceeding well-funded, garnering over $200 million in grants during his career. This is surprising for a virus that was only known to cause a cold in humans, until the onset of SARS-1 in 2002. Baric appears to have been one of the very top grantees of NIAID, despite that fact that Fauci claimed to barely know of him. He also got money from Jeremy Farrar at the Wellcome Trust.

Baric’s wife Toni worked in his lab as a grants specialist, adding yet more income to the family coffers.

Baric was (oddly) involved in developing remdesivir as a coronavirus treatment

https://sph.unc.edu/adv_profile/ralph-s-baric-phd/

Baric’s writeup on the UNC website indicates he was studying remdesivir since 2017 (paid for by Fauci) for the treatment of deadly coronaviruses. The only deadly coronavirus at that time was the cause of SARS-1, which appeared in China in 2002 and affected 8,000 people worldwide, including fewer than 30 Americans, and then the virus disappeared all by itself.

When remdesivir had been trialed for Ebola in Africa, over 60% of the infected subjects receiving remdesivir died, causing the drug to be quickly dropped from the multidrug Ebola trial. One wonders why NIAID chose it as their top drug for coronaviruses even before COVID appeared.

https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/remdesivir-developed-at-unc-chapel-hill-proves-effective-against-covid-19-in-niaid-human-clinical-trials/

“This is a game changer for the treatment of patients with COVID-19,” Baric said upon hearing the results of the clinical trial. “Remdesivir provides an effective treatment strategy for the many infected individuals around the globe.”

He ought to have said the drug would result in “game over” for many COVID patients who might otherwise have lived, had they not received this very toxic drug, which led to numerous cases of fatal kidney failure. However, there does exist considerable literature that claims the drug helped COVID patients and did not cause statistically significant kidney injuries. The jury is still out on this question. The COVID science was ‘stacked,’ and we may never know the truth about this drug.

There is a separate concern that remdesivir was approved for COVID by skirting normal regulation.

We do know that the goal posts (“end points”) in the pivotal clinical trial that established remdesivir’s use for COVID were changed—twice—in order to make the drug look successful. Changing the primary metric for success during the conduct of a clinical trial under normal circumstances is absolutely prohibited. But it was given a green light by Dr. Fauci.

https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug

Baric had a unique secret role to play in the COVID origin coverup

It is extremely important to note that Ralph Baric was a hidden listener on the February 1, 2020 call that was arranged by Jeremy Farrar, and included Fauci, Francis Collins, and 11 scientists. This call initiated the “Proximal Origins” paper that was intended to permanently debunk the possibility of a COVID lab leak. Understand: even the conspirators on this call, plotting the COVID coverup, were unaware that Baric was on the line, carefully observing what was said, engaged in an additional conspiracy with Fauci. He and Fauci knew something the others (possibly excepting Farrar and Collins) did not. Did he and Fauci know that Baric had created COVID?

Baric bragged to an Italian interviewer that he could insert changes into the nucleic acid structure of coronaviruses that would be undetectable. He called his seamless method “no see ‘um.” Baric is often thought to be the world’s preeminent coronavirus scientist, able to create viruses de novo in the lab that others could not duplicate.

Furthermore, it was Ralph Baric’s leaked grant proposal that included adding a furin cleavage site to a coronavirus—and COVID just happens to be the only beta coronavirus that contains a furin cleavage site. DARPA would not fund the proposal, but Fauci did. It’s notable that many virologists and others knew about this grant, but kept knowledge of it hidden —until it was anonymously leaked in late 2021 by Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy, who had been working at DARPA and seen the proposal.

Putting it all together

• Ralph Baric had the knowledge and technical ability to create SARS-CoV-2

• Ralph Baric had developed the humanized mice that almost certainly were used in the development of SARS-CoV-2, although he had shared these mice with others, including with the Wuhan Institute of Virology

• Ralph Baric, despite working on coronaviruses which, pre-COVID, posed almost no threat to Americans, had been funded to an extraordinary degree by Fauci’s NIAID over 4 decades

• Despite protests by Fauci that he was unfamiliar with Baric, Fauci conspired with Baric on the coverup of COVID’s origins, even hiding Baric from his other trusted conspirators—evidence of a very special relationship

• Baric was involved with developing remdesivir for coronaviruses, despite the benefits and risks of remdesivir being very questionable

• The University of North Carolina may also be a COVID conspirator, providing a comfortable landing for Nancy Messonier and refusing to supply documents despite legal FOIA requests. Did the university finally fire Baric today in hopes of putting a lid on the Pandora’s box known as the Baric lab?

• Unless we get the documents that have been withheld, we may never know the actual role of Dr. Baric and his team, and the NIAID, in the creation of COVID and its coverup. What I can say with certainty is that COVID was created by humans. I feel fairly sure that at least parts of its genome originated in Baric’s lab. What I don’t know is whether Baric or someone else strung all the pieces together to create the viral bioweapon.

• We also must ascertain who created the genetic design for the spike protein vaccine, which appears to have done even more damage than the disease itself.

• Then we must have accountability, or genetically engineered epidemics will occur again.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/publichealth/121217

A total of 18 passengers from the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak arrived at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha for quarantine, but a couple was transported to Emory University in Atlanta after one partner developed symptoms, officials said.

Another passenger had previously tested PCR-positive for the virus, and while remaining asymptomatic, was moved to UNMC’s biocontainment unit for monitoring.

The other 15 passengers are in UNMC’s quarantine unit, where they all remain asymptomatic, officials said during a UNMC press briefing on Monday morning. They will continue to be assessed before any decisions are made about their next steps.

Previous reports indicated there were 17 American passengers; an additional passenger who has dual U.S. and U.K. citizenship opted to be repatriated into the U.S., officials said.

Also, of the two people who were transported to Emory, only one was symptomatic; the other was their partner, a UNMC spokesperson told MedPage Today. Brendan Jackson, MD, MPH, the CDC’s acting director of the division of high-consequence pathogens and pathology, said the decision was made to preserve space in Nebraska’s biocontainment unit for others who might need it.

Passengers range in age from their late 20s to late 70s or early 80s, UNMC officials said.

A French national also became symptomatic and tested positive for hantavirus as she was flying from Tenerife, Spain, to Paris after leaving the ship. She was in intensive care in stable condition at a Paris hospital on Monday. French passengers who returned with her on Sunday have tested negative but remain in isolation at the same hospital.

UNMC has the only official national quarantine unit in the U.S., according to John Knox, the principal deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response (ASPR). It has “extensive expertise in handling special pathogens” and has participated in responses including the 2014 Ebola outbreak and the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The quarantine unit is “much more like a hotel than a patient care space,” set up like a living space with exercise equipment, television, and other comforts, said Angela Hewlett, MD, an infectious disease physician and medical director of the UNMC biocontainment unit.

The passengers will remain there “at least a few days while we do assessments” and then coordinate their next steps, Jackson said. For those who remain asymptomatic, the decision about where to quarantine will rest with them, Jackson said, noting they “have the option to stay here for the entire 42-day period if that’s the safest and most effective option for them.”

Jackson noted that 42 days is “the maximum incubation seen with Andes virus“ and “most people who end up infected with this virus will develop symptoms much sooner than that, so it’s a conservative timeframe.”

Assessments for whether people can safely quarantine at home include questions about whether passengers can contact their state public health department for testing if needed, and that they have access to appropriate levels of care near their home. If they do return home, they will be escorted under appropriate circumstances from start point to endpoint, officials said.

Hewlett noted that being able to access critical care is essential with hantavirus disease, which can involve rapid decompensation.

“We do think that being able to provide aggressive measures to people can change outcomes, and that’s the importance of being close to this type of care ... should they need it,” she said.

Michael Wadman, MD, an emergency physician and medical director of Nebraska’s quarantine unit, echoed that it offers vast benefits to passengers who opt for it: “the best teams, the best policies and procedures, the best training, and the experience we’ve had over the years to provide this care in a safe manner -- that track record is one of the things that sets us apart.”

“If I was exposed to this and I had the option to stay in a quarantine unit proximate to that care, I would definitely take that, because you’re putting yourself in a position, if you were to turn positive, to take advantage of all those things that will give you the best chance of survival,” he said.

Both UNMC and Emory University are among the country’s 13 Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centers (RESPTCs), which ASPR established “over the years to prepare for high-consequence infectious disease outbreaks, with trained personnel ready to safely manage situations like this,” Knox said.

Jackson added that the seven American passengers who previously disembarked the ship on St. Helena, a remote island off the western coast of Africa, on April 24 -- as first reported by MedPage Today -- have all been contacted and state health departments are monitoring them on a daily basis, conducting symptom and temperature checks. They live in Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia.

In the early morning hours on Saturday, the CDC issued a Health Alert Network health advisory to healthcare professionals about being aware of the potential for imported cases of hantavirus disease in connection with the outbreak.

When asked whether he can guarantee that no Americans will catch the virus from passengers who have returned to the U.S., Jackson said, “There are no guarantees in life.”

“We are putting as many measures in place as possible to ensure that people are safe and healthy, and that we keep the community safe and healthy as well,” he said.

Here is some info on prophylaxis and treatment. Itr seems prophylaxis is reasonably well developed, and all those exposed on the ship should be offered prophylactic drugs. Effective treatment may be a different kettle of fish—but the concept regarding treatment is just to keep the patient alive (with whatever it takes: ventilator or oxygen, ECMO, etc.) until the immune system fights off the virus, when full recovery is possible.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6669544/pdf/viruses-11-00610.pdf

This is a 2019 summary on Hantavirus therapeutics from Fort Detrick, paid for by NIH:

Here are the vaccines and drugs that have been studied:

Conclusions

The number of hantavirus disease cases each year warrants the development of medical countermeasures to combat infection from these viruses. However, the number of cases each year do not necessitate a widespread vaccination strategy outside of endemic areas except in the case of military conducting operations in these areas. Therefore, it is imperative to work towards the goal of a vaccine and an antiviral that could be used individually or in combination. An antiviral, such as a polyclonal antibody therapy, would provide instant immunity while vaccination could provide long-lasting immunity. Vaccination would also prevent the spread of ANDV, the only hantavirus with demonstrated person-to-person transmission. Antiviral treatment and vaccination is a strategy currently used for rabies virus infection that could be applied to hantavirus infections. The timing of treatment intervention presents a challenge for hantavirus disease, especially cases of HPS. Animal models have repeatedly shown that antivirals are not effective if administered after the onset of viremia. The prodrome phase can be difficult to differentiate from other febrile illnesses, hampering early intervention efforts. Continued work is required to determine if there are early host responses that can be used to support a hantavirus diagnosis. Additionally, the lack of an HFRS disease model that faithfully recapitulates the salient features of human HFRS disease is hampering medical countermeasure development efforts. Current infection models have utility for testing vaccines and antivirals in which sterile immunity can be used as an output. The unavailability of a model that can be used to evaluate antivirals targeting specific aspects of pathogenesis, postexposure prophylactics, or therapeutics is a major shortcoming of the field. The advancement of several vaccines into clinical trials is promising for the future use of these vaccines as licensed products or in emergency use. There are several path-to-licensure issues that must be overcome, reviewed in [95]. These include limited site for Phase III efficacy trials, lack of significant government and industry investments, and current limitations to the use of “animal rule.” Continued research efforts are necessary to propel more antiviral products towards clinical trials. Viruses 2019, 11, 610 9 of 14 The need for these medical countermeasures perpetuates as outbreaks around the world continue to occur.

Funding: This review is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01AI32313. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are ours and are not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

Below is a 2007 summary of antibody therapy experiments in animals, with good results. There is a strange coincidence. Gene hackman’s wife, pianist Betsy Arakawa, is said to have died from an untreated hantavirus infection. One of the authors of a study on antibody treatment for hantavirus was named Arikawa.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2810485/

Finally, regarding whether hantaviruses are considered potential biowarfare agents, the answer is YES. Here is an article about them coauthored by Marion Koopmans, who was one of the participants in the Feb. 1, 2020 Fauci and Farrar phone call to concoct a cover story for COVID.

And apparently hantaviruses have, at times, been included in the Select Agent list, even though they are not currently listed. And Fort Detrick has been working on them for decades.

You might also ask her to participate in the PRIME Bill pilot program, allowing 5 custom slaughterhouses in each state to sell direct to consumer without USDA rigmarole. This passed the US House last week and is expected to pass the Senate soon.

USDA inspections have failed to prevent contaminated or adulterated meat from entering our food chain. Local meat, butchered and sold locally, has historically been the best guarantee of safety, and allows for better animal treatment—avoiding long trips in crowded cattle cars and sometimes waits of days before the animals are butchered. Not to mention the lack of local facilities for USDA-inspections and processing.

This is a first step to breaking loose from the USDA stranglehold over all meat sold in the US.

Download chart image

In 2024, U.S. farm establishments received 11.8 cents per dollar spent on domestically produced food sold at places such as grocery stores and restaurants. This farm share and all data in the chart, including the 2023 share of 12.1 cents, are the result of a comprehensively revised Food Dollar model. In 2024, the remaining 88.2 cents per food dollar is the marketing share, which covers post-farm costs, such as transporting, processing, and selling food to consumers. One of the factors behind the long-term downward trend in the farm share is an increasing proportion of food-away-from-home spending (e.g., food from restaurants), which has a higher marketing share because of the added costs of preparing and serving meals. USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) updated the Food Dollar in 2026, which included changes to the methodology and source data. More information on the revisions to the Food Dollar can be found in the ERS report, A More Detailed Food Dollar: Enhanced Accounting of U.S. Food Costs. The data for this chart can be found in the ERS Food Dollar data product, updated March 10, 2026.

10 minute video. Consider letting your Senators know how you feel.

The Architecture Built While You Weren’t Looking

In three years, the WHO has assembled a four-layer pandemic governance system. Polaris II was the dress rehearsal.

Dr. Robert W. Malone

May 06, 2026

While the political class spent the last three years arguing about whether the World Health Organization was secretly trying to take over the world, the WHO did something far more interesting and far more consequential: it built, in plain sight, a complete architecture for managing the next pandemic. And then it ran a dress rehearsal.

The dress rehearsal had a name: Exercise Polaris II. It took place on April 22 and 23, 2026. Twenty-six countries participated, along with 600 health emergency experts and over 25 partner organizations. The scenario was a fictional novel bacterium that had spread across 27 countries and been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.¹ Countries activated their emergency coordination structures, mobilized workforces, aligned policies across borders, and (this is worth pausing on) explored AI-enabled tools for workforce planning.²

If you only read the press release, this looks like a tabletop exercise. A drill. A useful one, even, given that the last pandemic killed millions and exposed real coordination failures. Who could object to practice?

But Polaris II is not a standalone event. It is the visible surface of something much larger that has been assembled, piece by piece, since 2023. And once you see the structure, the structure is hard to unsee.

Four Layers, Three Years

What has actually been built is a tightly interlocking, four-layer system that has matured at remarkable speed:

Layer 1: The Treaty Layer. On May 20, 2025, the 78th World Health Assembly adopted the WHO Pandemic Agreement by a vote of 124 in favor, zero against, and 11 abstentions.³ It is only the second legally binding treaty ever negotiated under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution.⁴ The first was the 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and most people have never heard of it because tobacco is unpopular and the treaty was uncontroversial. This one is different. The Pandemic Agreement establishes a Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing system, a Global Supply Chain and Logistics Network, and a new financial mechanism.⁵ It enters into force 30 days after 60 ratifications, pending completion of the PABS annex now being negotiated through 2026.⁶

Sitting alongside the treaty are the 2024 amendments to the International Health Regulations, which came into force in September 2025. Among other changes, they introduced a new “pandemic emergency” alert level, a tier above the existing Public Health Emergency of International Concern designation.⁷ The IHR has been binding on member states since 2005. The amendments expand its operational reach.

Layer 2: The Framework Layer. The Global Health Emergency Corps was launched at the May 2023 World Health Assembly.⁸ Its own framework document describes it as “more than a workforce framework; it is a commitment to global solidarity, prioritizing sovereignty and equity.”⁹ In practice, it is a standing global network of national emergency workforces with mechanisms for surge deployment across borders. It was first activated in October 2024 in response to the mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.¹⁰

In October 2025, the WHO published the National Health Emergency Alert and Response Framework.¹¹ This document tells countries how to structure their domestic emergency response: detection, notification, risk assessment, activation, intervention, review. It embeds the 7-1-7 performance benchmark: seven days to detect an outbreak, one day to notify authorities, seven days to complete early response actions.¹² It integrates more than 300 recommendations drawn from COVID-19 reviews into a single national doctrine.¹³

Layer 3: The Program Layer. HorizonX is the umbrella program that turns simulation exercises from one-off events into a permanent, recurring test regime. It was launched in October 2024 as a multi-year initiative for “multi-sectoral emergency zoonotic disease preparedness.”¹⁴ Polaris is just one strand. The WHO ran approximately 50 simulation exercises in 2025 alone.¹⁵ The phrase used in WHO’s own materials is telling: preparedness is meant to become “a continuous investment” rather than “a periodic effort.”¹⁶

Layer 4: The Exercise Layer. Polaris I in April 2025, with 15+ countries.¹⁷ Polaris II in April 2026, with 26.¹ Future iterations planned indefinitely under HorizonX. Each exercise stress-tests the layers above it and generates an after-action report that feeds back into framework refinement.¹⁸

This is not an accident of bureaucracy. It is a designed system. Each layer reinforces the next. The treaty provides legal authority. The frameworks provide operational doctrine. The program institutionalizes practice. The exercises generate the empirical justification for further build-out.

What the WHO Says About It

The WHO is not secretive about any of this. The Director-General said it plainly after Polaris II concluded: “Exercise Polaris II showed what is possible when we act together. It demonstrated that global cooperation is not optional; it is essential.”¹⁹

Read that sentence again. Not optional.

That is not the language of voluntary international coordination among sovereign equals. It is the language of moral obligation backed by institutional architecture. The Director-General is saying (correctly, from his perspective) that the WHO has spent three years building a system in which non-cooperation is no longer a serious option for any country that wants to remain inside the global health order.

A peer-reviewed article in the National Library of Medicine database makes the connection between layers explicit. The Pandemic Agreement, it notes, “reinforces the importance of the GHEC by emphasising that each country should ‘develop, strengthen, and protect a skilled and adequate workforce to prevent, prepare for, and respond to health emergencies, including during pandemics.’” The article continues: “GHEC, with its mandate for rapid response and global health expertise, serves as an operational arm of the Accord. It translates the high-level commitments of the Accord into action.”²⁰

There is no ambiguity here. The framework is the operational arm of the treaty. The exercise tests the framework. The program makes the testing permanent. The treaty makes the whole thing legally durable.

The Sovereignty Question, Honestly Stated

The standard establishment response to concerns about this architecture is to point at specific clauses and say: see, the treaty preserves sovereignty. The text explicitly states it does not authorize the WHO to direct, order, or alter national laws. UK ministers have stated that under no circumstances will the WHO have power to mandate lockdowns.²¹ WHO spokespeople dismiss the sovereignty concern as misinformation.

These statements are technically accurate. They are also somewhat beside the point.

Sovereignty in the modern administrative state is rarely surrendered by a single dramatic act. It erodes through the accumulation of soft commitments, technical standards, performance benchmarks, peer pressure, funding conditions, and informational dependencies. A country that has signed the Pandemic Agreement, restructured its national emergency workforce per GHEC guidance, adopted the National Alert and Response Framework’s 7-1-7 timelines, integrated its surveillance with the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, and committed to participate in HorizonX exercises has not formally surrendered any sovereignty. It has merely made dozens of practical choices that, in aggregate, mean its pandemic response will be functionally indistinguishable from what the WHO would have prescribed.

This is not a conspiracy. It is the normal mechanism by which international technocratic systems operate. The European Union works this way. The IMF works this way. The OECD works this way. What is novel is the speed and scope of the WHO version, and the fact that it is being built specifically around emergency powers, a domain where domestic publics historically grant enormous deference to whoever is identified as the legitimate authority.

When the next pathogen emerges, the question will not be whether national governments retain the legal right to chart their own course. They will. The question will be whether any government, in the heat of an emergency, with its own institutions plugged into WHO frameworks, with its workforce trained on WHO doctrine, with its data flowing through WHO networks, will find it politically possible to deviate. The architecture is being built precisely so the answer is no.

The Funding Question

There is one detail in the WHO’s own Polaris II materials that deserves more attention than it has received. Buried in the WHO Western Pacific feature story on the exercise is a sentence acknowledging that work under the GHEC Initiative is funded by the Gates Foundation and the Institute of Philanthropy.²² This is not a minor footnote. The GHEC is the operational backbone of the entire pandemic response architecture: the standing workforce framework that Polaris exercises, that the Pandemic Agreement reinforces, and that gets activated in real outbreaks. A significant portion of that architecture’s design and implementation has been underwritten by a single private foundation.

Now, you can have two reactions to this. The first reaction, which much of the establishment press takes, is that private philanthropic funding for global health is a longstanding practice, that the Gates Foundation has done genuine good in vaccination and disease eradication, and that pointing this out is the first move in a conspiracy theory. The second reaction is that a global emergency response architecture, with treaty-level legal backing, that operates according to doctrines partly funded and shaped by a single private foundation, raises legitimate questions about democratic accountability that have nothing to do with conspiracy theories.

Both reactions can be true at once. The Gates Foundation’s contributions to global health are real. So is the fact that no electorate anywhere voted for Bill Gates to be a co-architect of the institutional response to the next pandemic. In a constitutional system that takes accountability seriously, “this private actor has good intentions and useful resources” is not a sufficient answer to “who is this person and by what authority does he co-design this.”

What Polaris II Actually Tested

Look closely at the operational details and the implications come into focus.

In Brunei, the Incident Management Team within the national CDC tested airport-linked surveillance and rapid response procedures, then reviewed cross-border traveler monitoring with neighboring countries.²³ In Malaysia, the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre tested activation of the national Incident Management System and coordinated with ASEAN partners.²⁴ Across the exercise, partner organizations contributed to a “global partner mapping survey used in real time during the exercise to simulate the matching of country surge needs with available partner capacity.”²⁵

What is being practiced here is not just medical response. It is integrated, cross-border surveillance of human movement; real-time matching of national needs to international partner capacity; standardized incident management activation across radically different political systems; and the use of AI tools to allocate emergency workforce. These are governance capabilities. They have applications well beyond bacterial outbreaks.

The exercise was framed as a fictional bacterium. The capabilities being rehearsed are agnostic to scenario.

The Honest Defense, and Why It Falls Short

The honest defense of all this goes roughly as follows: COVID-19 killed millions of people and exposed catastrophic failures in international coordination. Surveillance was fragmented, vaccines were hoarded, information flowed unevenly, poor countries got the worst of it, and nobody was in charge. The current architecture is an attempt to fix exactly those failures. Practice exercises are standard. Treaties are how international cooperation works. The 7-1-7 metrics are reasonable performance benchmarks. The whole thing is overdue.

There is real force to this argument, and a serious conservative or libertarian critic should acknowledge it. The COVID response was a disaster. International coordination was bad. The instinct to fix it is not malign.

But the conservative and libertarian objection is not that nothing should be done. It is twofold.

First, the lessons of COVID-19 are contested, and the architecture being built reflects only one set of conclusions. Many serious analysts concluded that the COVID response failed because of too much centralized authority acting on incomplete information, not too little. Lockdowns of unprecedented severity, school closures, vaccine mandates, the suppression of dissent on lab-leak hypotheses, the discrediting of natural immunity, the politicization of early treatment debates; these were failures of centralized authority, not of decentralization. A genuine after-action would weigh both directions of failure. The WHO architecture is being built almost exclusively around the “more coordination” lesson and almost not at all around the “less overreach” lesson.

Second, the speed and scope of the buildout outpace any normal democratic process for evaluating it. Three years from launch of GHEC to a binding treaty, an aligned national framework, an institutionalized exercise program, and two global drills. No national legislature seriously debated the implications. No election anywhere turned on this. The Pandemic Agreement was adopted by consensus at the World Health Assembly with 11 abstentions and no objections, which sounds like overwhelming consensus until you remember that most member state populations have no idea any of this happened.

What to Watch

The PABS annex is being negotiated through 2026 and goes to the 79th World Health Assembly.²⁶ Once adopted, the Pandemic Agreement opens for signature and ratification. After 60 ratifications, it enters into force.⁶

National parliaments will have a constitutional moment when ratification arrives at their door. In most countries this will receive minimal media attention, and ratification will be treated as a technical formality. In others (and the United States is the most important of these), ratification will be politically contested and may not happen at all. The U.S. position under the current administration on WHO matters generally, and on the Pandemic Agreement specifically, will be one of the more consequential variables in whether this architecture becomes the universal default or a regime that some major countries opt out of.

For now, the structure is built. Polaris II proved it works. HorizonX guarantees it will keep being practiced and refined. The treaty layer is awaiting its final ratifications.

The honest summary is this: between 2023 and 2026, in front of everyone, with full press releases at every stage, the WHO and its partners assembled a four-layer global pandemic governance system more comprehensive and more operationally integrated than anything that has existed before. Whether you think this is overdue progress or quiet overreach depends on what you believe about centralized authority, technocratic governance, and the lessons of the last pandemic.

But the architecture is real. It is not a conspiracy. It is a project. And the project is largely complete.

* * *

If you want to verify any of the facts above, every one of them is sourced from official WHO press releases, the published framework documents, the World Health Assembly resolution, and peer-reviewed analyses. None of it is hidden. That, in a way, is the most striking part.

Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Bibliography

1. World Health Organization Western Pacific. “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities through a WHO-led multi-country simulation.” April 2026. https://www.who.int/westernpacific/newsroom/feature-stories/item/countries-showcase-global-health-emergency-response-and-coordination-capacities-through-a-who-led-multi-country-simulation

2. World Health Organization. “Practicing today for tomorrow’s emergencies – WHO convenes countries and partners to simulate response to major disease outbreak.” 27 April 2026. https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2026-practicing-today-for-tomorrow-s-emergencies-who-convenes-countries-and-partners-to-simulate-response-to-major-disease-outbreak

3. UN News. “Nations adopt historic pledge to guard against future pandemics.” 21 May 2025. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/05/1163451

4. Global Biodefense. “What the WHO Pandemic Agreement and IHR Reforms Mean for the Future of Pandemic Preparedness.” 23 July 2025. https://globalbiodefense.com/2025/07/23/what-the-who-pandemic-agreement-and-ihr-reforms-mean-for-the-future-of-pandemic-preparedness/

5. UN News, “Nations adopt historic pledge to guard against future pandemics,” 21 May 2025.

6. World Health Organization. “WHO Pandemic Agreement.” https://www.who.int/health-topics/who-pandemic-agreement

7. World Health Organization. “Stronger together — milestones that mattered in 2025.” 23 December 2025. https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/stronger-together-milestones-that-mattered-in-2025

8. World Health Organization. “Global Health Emergency Corps Framework.” Publication B/78043. https://www.who.int/publications/b/78043

9. International Association of National Public Health Institutes. “WHO Global Health Emergency Corps Framework” (PDF). https://ianphi.org/_includes/documents/sections/tools-resources/ghec-highlights/who-ghec-framework.pdf

10. World Health Organization. “WHO and partners activate Global Health Emergency Corps for the first time in response to mpox outbreak.” 29 October 2024. https://www.who.int/news/item/29-10-2024-who-and-partners-activate-global-health-emergency-corps-for-the-first-time-in-response-to-mpox-outbreak

11. World Health Organization. “National Health Emergency Alert and Response Framework.” Publication 9789240113893. 23 October 2025. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240113893

12. World Health Organization. “WHO launches new country guidance for health emergency coordination.” 23 October 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/23-10-2025-who-launches-new-country-guidance-for-health-emergency-coordination

13. WHO, “WHO launches new country guidance for health emergency coordination,” 23 October 2025.

14. World Health Organization. “WHO launches new Horizon X Programme for One Health emergency preparedness.” 13 October 2024. https://www.who.int/news/item/13-10-2024-who-launches-new-horizon-x-programme-for-one-health-emergency-preparedness

15. WHO, “Stronger together — milestones that mattered in 2025,” 23 December 2025.

16. WHO, “Practicing today for tomorrow’s emergencies,” 27 April 2026.

17. World Health Organization. “WHO brings countries together to test collective pandemic response.” 4 April 2025. https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2025-who-brings-countries-together-to-test-collective-pandemic-response

18. WHO Western Pacific, “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities,” April 2026.

19. WHO, “Practicing today for tomorrow’s emergencies,” 27 April 2026.

20. “Sovereignty, equity, solidarity: progress on the Global Health Emergency Corps.” National Library of Medicine, PMC12374631. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12374631/

21. UK House of Commons Library. “What is the proposed WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty?” Research Briefing CBP-9550. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9550/

22. WHO Western Pacific, “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities,” April 2026.

23. WHO Western Pacific, “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities,” April 2026.

24. WHO Western Pacific, “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities,” April 2026.

25. WHO Western Pacific, “Countries showcase global health emergency response and coordination capacities,” April 2026.

The Hantavirus media blitz is interesting. It seems every 2 years we get a new viral scare from the media, as the very expensive and intrusive Biosecurity Agenda gets built out.

• 2020: COVID

• 2022: Monkeypox

• 2024: Bird Flu

• 2026: Hantavirus

Could it be a planned op? Well, of course. COVID (while no walk in the park for many people, including me) was made out to be much more serious than it was, to justify the extraordinarily punitive and expensive (and tremendously harmful) response. Not to mention the transfer of trillions of dollars from working Americans to the very rich.

Monkeypox was also misrepresented as much more dangerous and unpleasant than it was, and sure enough, there was a vaccine for that, too. And the 2022 monkeypox behaved differently than prior outbreaks where, in the US, there had never been a definite case of person-to-person transmission. After several people started making jokes about monkeypox, monkeys, or moneypock$, WHO changed the name to MPOX.

H5N1 Bird flu, which was first identified in humans who managed chickens (in China) in 1997, had been prepared as another scaridemic by the Biosecurity mafia since 2003, but despite Herculean efforts to find human cases, there have been very few. And it never spread through eggs, meat, or milk, even after the virus suddenly favored the mammary glands of cows. And there is still no proof of human-to-human spread.

According to the CDC, there have been 71 human cases in the US and 2 deaths. And only ONE American was diagnosed with bird flu since President Trump took office. Just goes to show how shifting priorities affect case counts.

Hantaviruses have been found around the world, in rodents and their urine, feces and saliva. It is thought that Americans are most likely to be infected if they live in or visit areas where rodents, especially mice, have lived indoors. Humans become infected from inhaling the virus, which can remain active for up to a week outside of an animal.

In the US over the past 30 years, 890 human cases [30 per year] of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome have been diagnosed. 94% occurred west of the Mississippi. These would have been severe cases. There are undoubtedly more going undiagnosed. 35% of these cases resulted in death, even in young people. There has been NO identified person-to-person spread in the US.

The Andes strain of hantavirus is supposedly the only kind that is known to spread between people. it does not occur naturally outside South America, as far as anyone knows. And it does not spread rapidly between humans, just intermittently.

I’ve discussed the Select Agent list before. It is a list of 63 toxins and microorganisms that are considered to “have the potential to pose a severe threat to both human and animal health, to plant health, or to animal and plant products” i.e., be usable as biological warfare agents. Transfers of these agents must be approved, and accidents with them must be reported.

Interestingly, the SARS coronaviruses, monkeypox virus and avian influenza (bird flu) viruses are all on the list. This means the US government thinks they could be used (and even developed for added virulence) as biowarfare agents. Agents against animals were used in WW1, and the US developed agents against humans, animals and plants during WW2. So did some other countries.

Surprisingly, hantaviruses are not on the Select Agent list. I don’t know why that is. Google’s free AI says the army has been experimenting with hantaviruses for 40 years, and has even studied the Andes strain:

What is the bottom line?

The Andes hantavirus in its natural form will not cause a large outbreak, since it never has before. Its largest outbreaks involved only several dozen people. Only 300 cases of human-to-human transmission have ever been recorded. This is only 1/10th of all human cases. Like I said, it is not highly contagious. Here is Google’s free AI again:

So breathe easily.

However, if the virus has been mucked around with, to make it more transmissible and/or more virulent, then the effects are unpredictable. I believe the COVID virus was engineered. Monkeypox and bird flu may have been. Will those who give the orders to our ‘leaders’ actually try something like that again, so soon, using this obscure virus? I don’t think so, because it is too obvious, and people are already very angry about what was done to them with COVID. But you never know.

1. a very large set of data

2. a way of using that data that has been programmed by humans and invariably has innate biases

3. It might also include deliberate biases, installed for economic or political reasons or simply because someone in charge thought it was a good idea. Can these ‘good ideas’ ever all be identified and rooted out?

The large datasets used by AI are rife with errors, omissions and their own biases. So although AI can instantaneously rifle through those datasets, and look at what it has already come up with, and give us lots of amazing answers—we are invariably:

1. unable to asses the quality of the data it uses

2. ignorant of the baseline algorithms it uses to parse the data

3. ignorant of any installed biases

As time goes on, people with power are likely to keep installing their own biases in the system, and the quality of the AI results is likely to become less and less reliable and satisfying.

Some have termed the process of our society’s drift into less and less user-friendly online or business interfaces, and less and less satisfying products (especially food) as “enshittification.”

The race is always to make things faster, to make things cheaper and to increase profitability. Given that—it is practically a law of nature, after all—enshittification seems to be baked into our milieu, affecting virtually everything.

But the crazy billionaires who think that we can change our gender like changing our hat, upload our minds to the cloud and live forever, and want to corral us into 15 minute cities, seem to have ignored this basic fact. Unless they think they can avoid enshittification in their island bunkers.

Meanwhile, they have been busy, using the multilateral, non-democratic institutions they purchased (which our taxes also contribute to) to provide the institutional underpinning for their grand notions.

Yes, these crazy people really do think they have the right to rule the world. But that would take work. So they want their AI to do the heavy lifting. It seems crazy, but humanity produces a lot of control freaks. And historically, a lot of people have thought it would be a good idea to rule the world.

And now AI, surveillance and the mushrooming data centers have made it theoretically possible to do so.

I hope you will be as shocked as I was by the extent to which our tax dollars have funded UN agencies to build out AI governance of the planet. Hat tip to EscapeKey, who uncovered the following list.

And AI is already inserting itself into our lives, shitty or not, and it is expanding to fill the available space. For example":

7,675 different, new medical devices went on the market in Korea last year. How many bugs do you think their software contains?

AI is in its implementation phase, the would-be world rulers don’t care about the bugs and the biases, and we have to say NO whenever it is being used to control some aspect of our life. And we have to stop the data centers, digital IDs and digital, programmable money, which the rulers can turn on and off at will.

If we don’t stop it, we will be seeing 24/7 surveillance with cameras everywhere, drone warfare and robot soldiers right here in our back yards if we try to resist. Very soon. The prototypes are already in Ukraine, the Persian Gulf and Gaza. We have to stop this before it gets to that point.

“Lawmakers caved to anti-science MAHA activists instead of standing with those who grow our ​food,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Bayer-backed Modern Ag Alliance, in a statement.

USAT: “By taking this vote, Congress has turned their backs on U.S. farmers in an increasingly competitive global landscape by allowing blatant misinformation to undermine support for this critical provision,” the company said.

Bayer, the only domestic producer of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides in the United States, previously threatened to stop producing Roundup in the country unless it obtained court protection against lawsuits blaming the pesticide for causing cancer.

Bayer continues to try and make people think that it is farmers who want to save Bayer’s bacon. Bayer created the Modern Ag Alliance for this purpose.

“This amendment is not extreme,” Pingree said Wednesday. “It would not ban pesticides or require any additional regulatory burden on the manufacturers. Quite literally it would preserve the status quo and allow the Supreme Court to examine this issue separately and the complicated legal issues at its core.”

From the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition:

Yet, for the countless farmers struggling to make ends meet, the House bill offers only scattered policy improvements, many without the resources to fuel them. Slashes to popular conservation funding, the absence of guaranteed investments in domestic markets for farmers, and a status quo farm safety net are shortcomings that – unless corrected by the Senate – will have a pronounced impact, particularly for small and midsized operations, and beginning, young, and other underserved farmers and ranchers.

OTOH, the Dems said that practically everything they wanted had not found its way into the bill and they were not consulted.

A huge number of amendments were offered, at least 50, and many were adopted. This included an “en bloc” vote favoring 24 different amendments that got approved all together in one vote. I don’t know what they were.

Other amendments were approved by voice vote or by recorded vote. Notable was the amendment of Anna Paulina Luna to get rid of 3 sections that provided the pesticide immunity shield. First it got a voice vote, and the voices that wanted to repeal these sections were much louder than the voices who wanted to retain them. Yet an initial claim was made that the amendment failed. Luna then asked for a recorded vote, and it was 280 to repeal them versus 142 to retain them. This seemed like theater—did Bayer pay someone to get the statement that a voice vote failed? Did Bayer hope no one would notice and ask for a recorded vote?

In the end, the roll call vote for the amended farm bill overall was 224 in favor, 200 opposed. One independent, 14 Democrats and 209 Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Three Republicans and 197 Democrats voted against.

Everyone knows this will not be the bill offered in the Senate, which requires 60 votes to pass. Probably the only reason this controversial bill actually got a floor vote was pressure placed on the members due to the dire situation farmers are finding themselves in, and the farmers needed to know what the gov’t was going to be giving them and taking away. It has been 3 years since the farm bill should have been completed in 2023—instead Congress kicked this can down the road yearly for 3 years. And it is not clear whether the Senate will be able to pass a bill that the House can agree with.

Sen. Boozeman, head of the Senate Ag committee, says he will release a Senate version of the Farm Bill in weeks.

One issue that held things up was allowing E15, a corn “gasahol“ mix, to be sold year round, instead of only during certain months. Corn states want it passed and oil states want it squashed. It was stripped out and is to be considered the week of May 11.

An amendment to stop requiring certain emissions scrubbers on farm equipment passed narrowly by 2 votes.

The EAT-Save our Bacon Act passed. This is bad. California’s Proposition 12 went into effect a couple of years ago, and it gave small hog farmers a major leg up. It made it illegal for pork to be sold in California if pigs were maintained in tiny crates, in which they could not move or turn around. The end of pigs in crates made it less economical to raise pigs on industrial farms, and it helped the pigs by requiring a minimum area for them to live in. It really helped small farmers compete.

Well, Congress decided that states have no right to pass animal welfare laws that are stricter than federal laws. Another blow against federalism-states’ rights. Another blow against animal welfare.

Cuts to food stamps (SNAP) made in the OBBB were retained in this bill.

Adversarial nations (think China) will now be prohibited from buying US agricultural land.

An attempt to remove soda from the list of foods that can be purchased using food stamps failed. Food stamp recipients will also be allowed to buy prepared, hot rotisserie chicken with their benefits.

Door to Freedom does NOT support the requirement that cows crossing state lines must have electronic ear tags, as well as the old visible ear tags. This requirement, which went into effect in 2024 after decades of trying, makes small farmers purchase equipment they don’t need, and it gives federal authorities information about how many cows farmers have and what they do with them, which the feds don’t need to have. An attempt to repeal the electronic ear tag failed by a vote of 69 to 355. This is another example of how the members love to centralize more and more power in the federal government.

There were also bad provisions in the original farm bill that reduced the regulation of pesticides in other ways. I don’t know if these made it into the final version—I will let you know when I find out.

Now, some good news. Thomas Massie’s PRIME Act pilot program was included in the farm bill and it passed. This is a blow to the USDA stranglehold over meat sales in the US.

It would allow all states that want to do so, to allow 5 custom slaughterhouses (which do not have 24/7 USDA inspectors on site) in each state (which heretofore could process meat but not sell to consumers, only hand the meat back to the rancher to consume himself) to process and sell meat directly to the consumer, OR allow the rancher whose animal was processed to sell the meat to the consumer directly.

For states that choose not to participate, Ag Secretary Rollins can designate 10 custom slaughterhouses within those states (only 10 in the entire US) to sell directly to consumers or give the meat to the rancher to sell to consumers.

After two years, the number of custom slaughterhouses in the program can double.

After that, the hope is that the program can be widely expanded. Let’s see where this goes. USDA has now been put on notice that Congress does not want its stranglehold on meat to continue as it has been. This is a big boon to the New Hampshire bill that is making its way through the legislature, which would allow farmers to sell up to 3 cows, 5 pigs or 10 goats or sheep per month direct to consumers, with no USDA stamp of approval.

The high cost of meat has certainly played into this sea change. Fingers crossed this will be the start of more local control of food production and processing.

The win over the Farm Bill pesticide provisions should have sent a good message to the Court, which is expected to rule this summer. However, I fear that other provisions that remained in the Farm Bill eviscerated EPA regulation of pesticides by allowing exemptions to be made by the EPA administrator, and shifting some EPA responsibilities to the USDA Secretary. There is no final bill language on the Congressional site yet, so I can’t confirm this yet.

AllBetter

Confessions of a White House Public Health Priestess

It was 2017. We had hauled the CEOs of a bunch of pharmaceutical companies into the Oval Office so that President Trump could berate them about their drug prices. (Always a good time…

Read more

12 days ago · 234 likes · 97 comments · Katy Talento ND ScM

This is the part I wanted to clarify.

• The FDA approved the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine - a legal artifact because this product label wasn’t actually being used in the U.S..

• Simultaneously, the FDA extended the EUA on Pfizer partner BioNTech’s vaccine, which was the vaccine label being used widely…

The EUA on the product being used (including for kids aged 12-15 yr) remained protected by the PREP Act liability shield. And the identical product label not being used anywhere in the U.S. by anyone received FDA approval so that it could be mandated by the feds for all employers nationwide.

No news outlet reported what had happened.

But Bobby Kennedy, Mary Holland (editing) and I reported on it. And now I am thinking it was this type of reporting/whistleblowing that I was doing that probably put the target on my back. This was information that was intended to be deeply hidden, ideally forever.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/mainstream-media-fda-approval-pfizer-vaccine/

Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a biologics license application for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine.

The press reported that vaccine mandates are now legal for military, healthcare workers, college students and employees in many industries. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has now required the vaccine for all teachers and school staff. The Pentagon is proceeding with its mandate for all military service members.

But there are several bizarre aspects to the FDA approval that will prove confusing to those not familiar with the pervasiveness of the FDA’s regulatory capture, or the depths of the agency’s cynicism.

First, the FDA acknowledges that while Pfizer has “insufficient stocks” of the newly licensed Comirnaty vaccine available, there is “a significant amount” of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine — produced under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — still available for use.

The FDA decrees that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the EUA should remain unlicensed but can be used “interchangeably” (page 2, footnote 8) with the newly licensed Comirnaty product.

Second, the FDA pointed out that the licensed Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine and the existing, EUA Pfizer vaccine are “legally distinct,” but proclaims that their differences do not “impact safety or effectiveness.”

There is a huge real-world difference between products approved under EUA compared with those the FDA has fully licensed.

EUA products are experimental under U.S. law. Both the Nuremberg Code and federal regulations provide that no one can force a human being to participate in this experiment. Under 21 U.S. Code Sec.360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III), “authorization for medical products for use in emergencies,” it is unlawful to deny someone a job or an education because they refuse to be an experimental subject. Instead, potential recipients have an absolute right to refuse EUA vaccines.

U.S. laws, however, permit employers and schools to require students and workers to take licensed vaccines.

EUA-approved COVID vaccines have an extraordinary liability shield under the 2005 Public Readiness and Preparedness Act. Vaccine manufacturers, distributors, providers and government planners are immune from liability. The only way an injured party can sue is if he or she can prove willful misconduct, and if the U.S. government has also brought an enforcement action against the party for willful misconduct. No such lawsuit has ever succeeded.

The government has created an extremely stingy compensation program, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, to redress injuries from all EUA products. The program’s parsimonious administrators have compensated under 4% of petitioners to date — and not a single COVID vaccine injury — despite the fact that physicians, families and injured vaccine recipients have reported more than 600,000 COVID vaccine injuries.

At least for the moment, the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine has no liability shield. Vials of the branded product, which say “Comirnaty” on the label, are subject to the same product liability laws as other U.S. products.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices places a vaccine on the mandatory schedule, a childhood vaccine benefits from a generous retinue of liability protections.

But licensed adult vaccines, including the new Comirnaty, do not enjoy any liability shield. Just as with Ford’s exploding Pinto, or Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, people injured by the Comirnaty vaccine could potentially sue for damages.

And because adults injured by the vaccine will be able to show that the manufacturer knew of the problems with the product, jury awards could be astronomical.

Pfizer is therefore unlikely to allow any American to take a Comirnaty vaccine until it can somehow arrange immunity for this product.

Given this background, the FDA’s acknowledgement in its approval letter that there are insufficient stocks of the licensed Comirnaty, but an abundant supply of the EUA Pfizer BioNTech jab, exposes the “approval” as a cynical scheme to encourage businesses and schools to impose illegal jab mandates.

The FDA’s clear motivation is to enable Pfizer to quickly unload inventories of a vaccine that science and the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System have exposed as unreasonably dangerous, and that the Delta variant has rendered obsolete.

Americans, told that the Pfizer COVID vaccine is now licensed, will understandably assume COVID vaccine mandates are lawful. But only EUA-authorized vaccines, for which no one has any real liability, will be available during the next few weeks when many school mandate deadlines occur.

The FDA appears to be purposefully tricking American citizens into giving up their right to refuse an experimental product.

While the media has trumpeted that the FDA has approved COVID vaccines, the FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, nor any COVID vaccines for the 12- to 15-year age group, nor any booster doses for anyone.

And the FDA has not licensed any Moderna vaccine, nor any vaccine from Johnson & Johnson — so the vast majority, if not all, of vaccines available in the U.S. remain unlicensed EUA products.

Here’s what you need to know when somebody orders you to get the vaccine: Ask to see the vial. If it says “Comirnaty,” it’s a licensed product.

If it says “Pfizer-BioNTech,” it’s an experimental product, and under 21 U.S. Code 360bbb, you have the right to refuse.

If it comes from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson (marketed as Janssen), you have the right to refuse.

The FDA is playing bait and switch with the American public — but we don’t have to play along. If it doesn’t say Comirnaty, you have not been offered an approved vaccine.

Here is all of what she wrote. It’s very important. Go to her tweet above to see the 27 minute video of Congressmembers arguing for the opposite of what they voted for. See the uniparty at work. Weep.

This is remarkable and you should watch this entire video.

The House was going to pass a 45 day extension of FISA 702 (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), BY VOICE WITHOUT VOTING, and Thomas Massie courageously forced a debate and demanded a recorded vote.

Jim Jordan who has fought FOR warrants for FISA for years ironically led the debate AGAINST warrants and urged a YES vote for a clean extension WITHOUT warrants, which is what Trump is demanding even after FISA was used against him by the Democrats to spy on him and his campaign. Trump literally says give up your rights and just pass it and Jordan won’t go against Trump even though he wants warrant requirements.

Chip Roy, Warren Davidson, and Keith Self joined Thomas Massie and made strong cases as to why Congress must add warrant requirements to FISA 702 and why a Central Bank Digital Currency must be banned and how both are powerful tools of control and surveillance and violation of your privacy and liberties.

And Jamie Raskin (D) gave compelling arguments as to why bipartisanship is needed in the House to make reforms to FISA 702 yet after doing so he voted YES to a clean 45 day extension of FISA 702 without warrant requirements, which makes no sense. Why demand change and then literally vote for what you just argued against? However never forget under Biden and Democrats FISA 702 was used to spy on hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Also, the Republican controlled Senate and its leader John Thune will not vote for a ban on Central Bank Digital Currency, saying it’s dead on arrival in the Senate. And neither will the Democrats.

To sum it up, Americans are literally losing our precious privacy and freedoms right now under Trump and Republicans, yet Democrats are no better and have made no major policy changes that caused them to lose in 2024. They are only winning because Trump and Republicans have betrayed the most important campaign promises.

111 members of Congress voted NAY (NO) to the 45 day FISA 702 extension without warrant requirements for Americans so that your government can spy on you. Some voted NO in a partisan manner and because they hate Trump and some voted NO because they truly want change.

Either way, those who voted NO should be recognized.

Out of 111 ONLY 26 Republicans bravely voted NO. Here is the list of GOP NOs and pictured is the full list of both D’s and R’s who voted NO.

Republican NO votes:
Begich, Biggs (SC), Boebert, Brecheen, Burchett, Cammack, Cloud, Collins, Crane, Davidson, Downing, Fry, Fulcher, Gosar, Hageman, Harshbarger, Higgins (LA), Kennedy (UT), Luttrell, Massie, Miller (IL), Ogles, Perry, Roy, Self, and Tiffany.

But after all this, the House passed the clean 45 day extension of FISA 702. After years of Trump and Republicans campaigning and demanding on Fox News that warrant requirements must be added to FISA, nothing changed.

The promises they made to you are broken.

The only thing that matters is voting records, none of their words. Words are meaningless puffs of air.

If your Representative is not on this list, who voted NO, then you should tell them you are withdrawing your support and not voting for them. On both sides of the aisle.

It doesn’t matter anymore whether you vote Republican or Democrat.

Behind the veil, they are one and the same.

Lastly, KY-4 your Representative Thomas Massie is a giant among men in Congress and fights for you harder than the entire House and Senate combined.

Don’t be fools, vote for Thomas Massie!!!

https://www.beckerspayer.com/payer/medicaid/1st-state-enacts-medicaid-work-rules-under-hr-1-what-healthcare-leaders-need-to-know/

On May 1, Nebraska becomes the first state to launch Medicaid work requirements under HR 1, setting the stage as other states prepare to follow suit by 2027.

The community engagement requirements will apply to adults — with some exceptions — in states’ expanded Medicaid programs. Enrollees must work, engage in community service or attend school — or some combination of these — for at least 80 hours per month. This includes half-time students and seasonal workers whose average monthly income over the preceding six months matched the federal minimum wage.

In December, Nebraska Public Media reported that more than 70,000 Nebraskans were supposed to be notified of the work requirements. Of those, roughly 30,000 will need to take steps to comply, Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen said….

Last June, a news release from California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated the HR 1’s work requirements would lead to an estimated loss of up to a $22.3 billion in federal funding, as well as a decrease of 3 million California enrollees.

Now let me quote from my April 2025 investigation of the federal nutrition programs:

What does food aid cost the United States?

Very few people know that USDA spent over $200 Billion dollars in 2021 (during the pandemic) on food and nutrition assistance for Americans. After the pandemic ended, it spent $166.4 Billion in 2023 on a variety of programs.The 2023 level of spending is equivalent to $500 collected from every single American for just one year. Taxes (or borrowing) must cover this cost.

Here is what I found to be totally amazing: the USG has no idea how many people need food benefits. So how is the determinatin made that 13.5% of the US population is food-insecure?

18 million American households were designated as food insecure for some (any) period during 2023, or 13.5%. This number is extrapolated from self-reporting to US census-takers, who collected detailed information on diet from about 30,000 US households.[1]

[1] https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/109896/ERR-337.pdf?v=84831

Census takers asked 30,000 US households about what they ate and whether they had enough, and from this self-reported sample, extrapolated that 60 million Americans needed food benefits, on the order of $160 billion dollars a year. I do not know what, if any, measures were taken to demonstrate that the sample was valid, that the answers were accurate, and whether the people receiving benefits are the ones who actually need them.

However, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service,[1]

“About 58 percent of food-insecure households participated in one or more of the three largest Federal nutrition assistance programs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Lunch Program during the month before the 2023 survey.”

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED631898.pdf

If these numbers are correct, why did 42% of the food-insecure households receive no food benefits from the USDA’s 3 largest programs? Do problems of access need to be addressed?[2] Are millions of households that are not thought to be food-insecure receiving the benefits? How close is the match between needy families and beneficiaries? Can we do better?

[1] ibid

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10733882/

If the federal numbers are accurate, and 42% of the food-insecure households are not enrolled in any of the USDA’s 3 main programs, then who are the tens of millions of residents receiving the benefits intended for them? I favor a means test to determine who really needs the benefits and trying to get them to those who do.

And I wonder how many other federal programs are being scammed, now that widespread scandals about nonexistent day care centers, feeding programs and elder care and hospice have come into the light.

Will our political system actually clean up the messes, or just use this issue to score partisan points, leaving the system open to future abuse, so long as it helps one arm of the uniparty or the other?