Think More: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Fauci pleads the Fifth, the gain-of-function ban, Kennedy's forgotten war on subversion, Islamist entryism, and more.
Lead · The Reckoning Arrives
Fauci Pleads the Fifth, and the Autopen Pardon Becomes the Question
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform | oversight.house.gov
Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment at a Senate hearing Wednesday, and Chairman James Comer answered that a man holding a valid pardon would have no such right. The Oversight Committee has argued the Biden White House abused the autopen, leaving the pardon’s validity unsettled. Comer says Fauci’s newly released diary, withheld last Congress by then-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, will now be measured against his prior testimony.
The Reckoning Arrives
State and HHS End Gain-of-Function Research, in the United States and Abroad
The State and Health and Human Services departments announced Tuesday a formal prohibition on gain-of-function research, extending an executive order signed last year that cut federal funding for such work abroad. The policy also restricts support for research in countries lacking adequate safety standards. Undersecretary of State Tom DiNanno and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya drafted it.
Subversion, Named
Trump Revives a Countersubversion Campaign Kennedy Waged and Washington Forgot
J. Michael Waller | The American Mind
J. Michael Waller argues the administration’s designation of Antifa and certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations, paired with visa revocations for foreign subversives, has no presidential precedent. He traces the lineage to John F. Kennedy, who warned from his first Senate speeches to his undelivered Dallas remarks that formal alliances cannot stop internal subversion.
France Investigated Islamist Entryism. Congress Has Not.
Aaron Shuster | Tablet Magazine
Aaron Shuster reports that France’s Interior Ministry mapped the Muslim Brotherhood’s penetration of schools, charities, municipalities, and parties, and that the French Senate passed a bill against Islamist entryism in May by 208 to 124. He finds comparable structures in American Muslim electoral organizing and calls for a bipartisan congressional commission rather than collective blame.
Two French Novels Diagnose the West’s Habit of Looking Abroad for Salvation
Nathan J. Pinkoski reads Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints alongside Michel Houellebecq’s Submission and finds two routes to the same surrender. Raspail’s West destroys itself from guilt; Houellebecq’s hands itself over from boredom, its characters seduced by René Guénon’s claim that only the East retains spiritual vitality.
The Arsenal and the Supply Line
Five Months Against Iran Drained the Stockpiles Meant to Deter China
Aaron MacLean | The Free Press
Aaron MacLean writes that THAAD and Patriot interceptors, Tomahawks, and Army ballistic missiles are running short after five months of intermittent war against Iran. The shortfall, he argues, shows the United States was unready to deter Beijing before the war began: either the China plans assumed a short war, or the resources never matched the strategy.
Chinese Analysts Have Spent Years Studying America’s Kill Chains
A CNA study finds analysts tied to China’s military and national security apparatus have tracked the American shift from kill chains to kill webs and meshes, the sensor-to-shooter pathways that decide how fast a target dies. The 2025 Department of War report on Chinese military power flags the threat; U.S. scholars have barely read the Chinese literature.
China Owns 99% of Gallium Production, and Substitutes Are Years Away
U.S. Government Accountability Office | gao.gov
The Government Accountability Office reports that China accounts for 99% of world gallium production, the mineral behind the microchips that run the economy, and has manipulated mineral prices before. Battery recycling could cut import reliance within two or three years. For semiconductors, substitution and recycling remain immature, because nothing else performs as well.
The Ledger at Home
Mamdani’s 30% Discount Turns a Grocery Store Into a Subsidized Food Bank
Jonathan Turley | New York Post
Jonathan Turley examines Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s five city-run groceries, built with $70 million and pledged to hold a core basket at 30% below retail. Turley calls the result “a discount food bank dressed up as a grocery,” financed by a city that writes off the rent, upkeep, and fees every bodega must pay.
Cornell Pursued H-1B Hires Paying Into the Hundreds of Thousands as It Cut Staff
Campus Reform | campusreform.org
Campus Reform reviewed public labor data and reports that Cornell University sought H-1B workers at salaries reaching into the hundreds of thousands over the past two years. Cornell has spent the same stretch in austerity, running targeted workforce reductions and a voluntary retirement program capped at 175 staff as federal research funding contracted.
Voters Still Call America the Land of Opportunity by Two to One
Napolitan News Service | napolitannews.org
A Napolitan News Service survey of 1,000 registered voters finds 57% say America remains the land of opportunity against 28% who disagree, including 87% of Republicans. The consensus stops there. Forty-seven percent now call the country generally unfair and discriminatory, up from 33% in 2024, and voters split evenly on liberty and justice for all.
The American promise, measured: Napolitan News Service, 1,000 registered voters, July 20-21
57%
Still the land of opportunity
47%
Call it unfair and discriminatory
45%
Say liberty and justice for all
