Think More: Friday, August 21, 2026
A Fauci adviser's guilty plea, a $9.25M verdict against the Times, barfare against a DHS lawyer, and the states keeping disparate impact alive.
Lead · The Reckoning Ledger
Fauci’s Right Hand Pleads Guilty, and the Trail Points to Daszak
Steven Richards | Just the News
David Morens spent 16 years at Anthony Fauci’s side. He has now pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal federal records about the NIH grant that funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, moving official business to Gmail to defeat FOIA. The agreement identifies Peter Daszak, whose EcoHealth Alliance channeled the money, as Co-Conspirator 1, and it reads as a prosecutor’s roadmap to the next indictment.
The Reckoning Ledger
A Jury Bills the Times $9.25 Million for One Anonymous Source
Kevin Killough | Just the News
A federal jury in Alabama ordered the New York Times to pay $9.25 million to Kai Spears, the freshman walk-on its sportswriter placed at the scene of a fatal shooting on the word of a single anonymous source. His father’s denial ran in the original story; the correction waited until Spears sued. The paper calls it “an honest mistake.”
Judicial Watch Moves to Unseal the Grand Jury’s Paper on Powell
Judicial Watch | judicialwatch.org
Judicial Watch asked a federal court to force release of two grand jury subpoenas served on the Federal Reserve in the criminal probe of Jerome Powell’s Senate testimony about the headquarters renovation, a project that swelled from $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion. The Fed claims privileged deliberation; Judicial Watch answers that compulsory process is nobody’s internal memo.
The Fed’s renovation, from budget line to grand jury
$1.9B
original estimate
$2.5B
the price today
2
grand jury subpoenas
Judging the Judges
Judicial Supremacy Is Younger Than It Pretends
Michael M. Uhlmann | Claremont Review of Books
From the Claremont archive, the late Michael Uhlmann traces judicial supremacy to Cooper v. Aaron in 1958, not to Marbury, and indicts the legal realism that treats the Constitution as infinitely plastic. His demolition of Justice Breyer’s “active liberty,” modesty in theory and discretion in practice, reads as freshly as anything written this week.
Barfare Comes for the DHS Lawyer Who Graded the Judges
More than 100 former judges joined the Democracy Defenders Fund in a Florida Bar complaint against DHS general counsel James Percival over his “Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition” posts naming four sitting judges. Percival calls the posts fact-based critique. The complaint asks a state bar to police what a government lawyer may say about the bench.
The Senate GOP Chose Gridlock on Purpose
James Wallner solves the mystery of the empty calendar: Senate Republicans left 117 civilian nominations pending, then scheduled pro forma sessions that block the recess appointments President Trump wants. Under Noel Canning and Rule XXXI, gridlock preserves nominations and floor time. The majority holds the tool it claims to want and prefers not to use it.
Merit and Its Enemies
Disparate Impact Dies in Washington, Survives in Annapolis
The Education Department rescinded its disparate-impact discipline rules on July 23 and warned schools on August 18 to judge conduct, not demographics. Maryland keeps counting by race anyway: a 2014 law flagged 79 schools in one cycle, and Howard County set a target of cutting Black student suspension rates from 5.9% to 1.4% by 2029, whatever the classrooms require.
The Meritocracy Machine Runs on Administrative Fuel
Russ Greene | The American Mind
Russ Greene argues that standardized meritocracy and affirmative action are twin children of the 1964 compliance state. James Conant and Clark Kerr swapped classical formation for aptitude scores, the HR industry more than doubled in the 1970s, and “objective” merit now underwrites rule by experts. His alternative: judgment, character, and citizenship over credential.
The AI Front
Composition’s Flagship Sinks Just as the Machines Arrive
Jason Godfrey & Anne Ruggles Gere | Inside Higher Ed
The National Council of Teachers of English de-chartered the 77-year-old Conference on College Composition and Communication on July 24, just as generative AI broke the field’s assessment model. Some 2.4 to 2.8 million students take composition annually, and 74% of faculty report AI-written papers. The discipline that teaches America to write dissolved its flagship at the worst hour.
Data Center Panic Is a Gift to Beijing
Scott Pinsker charges Republicans, Wisconsin’s Tom Tiffany among them, with echoing socialist talking points against data centers. The numbers cut against the panic: 71% of Americans oppose local construction, yet data centers draw 0.14% of U.S. water. Meanwhile, Pinsker writes, China is pouring $295 billion into its own build-out while bankrolling opposition to ours.
Not the Lead Role
Pacific Palisades, Twenty Months Later
Chris Bray | Tell Me How This Ends
Twenty months after the January 2025 fire destroyed 6,837 structures, Chris Bray surveys what has and has not risen in Pacific Palisades. The permit record frames the walk: through last winter the neighborhood remained mired in demolition and grading while county-permitted Altadena, burned the same week, moved deep into actual construction. Governance is the variable.
Virginia Helped a Killer Get His Passport
Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda stabbed his roommate Mohammed Hemmatian to death in Vienna, Virginia, in 2019 and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Fairfax prosecutors helped him obtain a passport in 2024; a judge refused his release this June; his hospital kept issuing 48-hour passes. On July 6 he boarded a flight at Dulles and reached Tajikistan.
Sixty-Five Percent Demote Government from the Lead Role
Napolitan News Service | napolitannews.org
Sixty-five percent of registered voters tell Scott Rasmussen’s Napolitan News survey that government has an important role in society but not the lead one, with positive change beginning outside politics. The verdict holds across party, 71% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats, and even 54% of government employees agree. The country decided before Washington asked.
