Friday, July 31, 2026
Opinion | The Fauci Interrogation, and the Diary - The New York Times
The Fauci Interrogation, and the Diary
" To the Editor:
Re “Volatile Hearing as Fauci Invokes 5th Amendment” (front page, July 30):
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped save countless lives during both the AIDS epidemic and the Covid-19 pandemic, should be spending his later years being honored, celebrated and thanked for a lifetime of public service. Instead, he was treated with contempt and publicly berated by members of Congress on Wednesday at a Senate committee hearing on the origins of Covid.
This was a disgrace — not only to that institution, but also to the millions of Americans whose lives were touched by his work.
Reasonable people can debate policies and decisions made during times of crisis. That is the essence of democracy. But there is a profound difference between conducting legitimate oversight and publicly humiliating a man who dedicated decades of his life to protecting the health of the American people.
The interrogation of Dr. Fauci was, in my view, a blight on Congress and beneath the dignity of the office its members hold. America has always aspired to be better than this.
I refuse to believe that the behavior we witnessed Wednesday reflects the values of most Americans. If it does not, then we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to change it. November is our opportunity to begin building a Congress worthy of the American people. Our votes are our voice.
Robert Kunikoff
New York
To the Editor:
What a sad day in U.S. history when a renowned scientist and public servant for decades — one who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush, a Republican, for his work on H.I.V. and AIDS and provided the nation with the best science available to us during the Covid-19 pandemic — felt compelled to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times at a Senate hearing, based on the recommendation of his attorney.
Sadly, too, I feel that Dr. Anthony Fauci was right to do what he did. Like so many Americans, I am grateful for his service to our nation. Apparently, vilifying Dr. Fauci is more important to some senators than focusing on the rising number of measles cases, widespread episodes of food contamination and the loss of health insurance for many Americans over the past year — one more reason to be sad.
Bill Lillis
Jersey City, N.J.
To the Editor:
Re “Diary Tracks Rise From Disease Expert to Toast of the Town” (news article, July 30):
The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s personal diaries may depict a human being privately astounded and pleased by his new fame, but what matters is that his steady advice kept me, my parents (who are in their 90s) and everyone else I know who listened to him alive.
As a former violinist with the Houston Symphony, I also saw the benefits of Dr. Fauci’s work firsthand, when the symphony successfully ran a season during the first year of the pandemic with virtually no illnesses using his guidance.
I never felt forced to adopt Covid-safe practices. I embraced them. In fact, they allowed me to travel eight times in the first year of the pandemic without illness. I was more social than ever on Zoom, expanding my circle to long-lost friends and countless club meetings.
To this day, I gladly put up with 20 minutes of masking in the grocery store. It sure beats getting sick.
Deborah Moran
Houston
To the Editor:
The truth about Covid-19 isn’t in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary. It is that we had a president who preferred to politicize the pandemic rather than unify the nation. President Trump exploited the virus to divide us, and we allowed it.
At a time when we needed a strong leader willing to put partisan politics aside, we had, instead, a scheming con man who seized the opportunity to further his personal power. He sowed distrust in science to pit us against one another. He chose to stoke the fires of anger and fear over the communal good. We are complicit.
Today we live in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s Covid-era manipulation. Parents now refuse vaccines that have kept children safe for generations. We have all but stopped funding scientific research to cure and prevent disease. More Americans view education with a collective anti-intellectual skepticism.
Whatever may be in Dr. Fauci’s private papers is less terrifying than the current willingness of Americans to be pawns in Mr. Trump’s political games.
Stephanie DiMartino
Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Why is it so hard for so many to understand that a virus deadly enough to kill millions of people required government action to limit its spread and that such actions would be imperfect by their very nature?
No one could possibly know exactly how and if school closures would help or hurt the society. I believe that the hyperpoliticization of Covid-19 policy during and after the fact caused much more harm than the actions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did. Our politicians were not searching for the truth; they were searching for the half-truths and messaging approaches that would be most valuable to their political careers.
Certainly Dr. Anthony Fauci has been proved to have the best interests of our society in mind.
Ford Goodman
Reno, Nev.
To the Editor:
“Polymarket and Kalshi Bets in Billions for World Cup Final” (Business, July 20) suggests that the World Cup may have been “the largest gambling event in history.”
May I suggest that this may be true only until the 2026 midterms or the presidential election in 2028? Could we perhaps be watching in real time the transformation of elections into gambling events?
Based on odds provided by the prediction markets, millions of voters/bettors could be incentivized to place their bets and cast their votes in a way that maximizes their individual financial interests with little regard to civic responsibility.
If so, how would this differ in principle from disbursing bribes from cash in a sack? Perhaps it should be viewed as a high-tech version of the same thing.
There seems to have been too little public debate about the implications of this transformation.
Joey Freeman
Athens, Ga.
To the Editor:
I really enjoyed “Picking Trash Out of Muck, and Loving It” (front page, July 18). It was refreshing to read such an uplifting story about a group of women who spend their time wading through ponds and lakes pulling underwater garbage from the muck.
You quote Lisa Weiss, a 65-year-old retired high school math teacher, as saying, “You’re exhausted, you’re maybe a little sunburned, you’re filthy, and it’s the best feeling.”
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the effort was started by a psychologist. The article beautifully illustrated what decades of psychological research have shown: Lasting happiness comes from connection, accomplishment, purpose and, perhaps most important, contributing to others.
At a time when so much of the news focuses on conflict and discouragement, this story was a welcome reminder that working together to improve our communities can bring deep joy.
The turtles and the fish are surely grateful for the women’s efforts, and they’re not the only ones applauding. I’m clapping for them, too.
Thank you for highlighting these women and the power of doing good.
Caren Baruch-Feldman
Scarsdale, N.Y.
The writer is a psychologist."
Defying Trump, Cornyn Uses His Lame-Duck Power
Defying Trump, Cornyn Uses His Lame-Duck Power
“Senator John Cornyn, facing the end of his Senate career after losing to a Trump-backed challenger, is using his leverage to influence the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Cornyn, along with Senator Thom Tillis, is blocking Blanche’s nomination unless the Justice Department modifies an immunity settlement Trump reached with the IRS. This move, while modest, marks a shift for Cornyn, who has been a reliable Trump supporter, and highlights growing Republican frustration with the president.
In standing in the way of Todd Blanche, President Trump’s choice for attorney general, a liberated Senator John Cornyn is wielding his leverage.
Not long after Senator John Cornyn lost his re-election bid to a right-wing challenger backed by President Trump, the Texas Republican predicted that the remainder of his Senate tenure might be a “pretty bumpy ride” for the president. He warned that he and other lame-duck senators had “some cards to play” and would not hesitate to use them.
This week, depending on the metaphor you prefer, Mr. Cornyn either made himself a giant senatorial pothole or laid his hand on the table.
By wielding his vote on the Judiciary Committee as leverage, a newly liberated Mr. Cornyn threw Mr. Trump’s choice for attorney general, Todd Blanche, into limbo as the Senate left town for the weekend on Thursday night.
Both he and Senator Thom Tillis — the North Carolina Republican who chose not to seek re-election after Mr. Trump threatened to unseat him — said that they would not advance Mr. Blanche’s nomination unless the Justice Department agreed to narrow an immunity settlement that Mr. Trump reached with the I.R.S. to protect himself and his family.
The red line that Mr. Cornyn has drawn is fairly thin. He and Mr. Tillis are not seeking to kill the deal that Mr. Blanche negotiated with Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, which gave the president, his family and his businesses broad immunity, potentially saving them at least $100 million in penalties and drawing accusations from Democrats of self-dealing. They are merely demanding modifications — in writing.
Still, his willingness to dig in his heels against a demand by Mr. Trump at a moment when the president’s popularity is sagging and senators are increasingly frustrated with him is notable.
Though Mr. Tillis has been more openly critical of Mr. Trump for months, Mr. Cornyn, a onetime contender for Senate majority leader, had long been a reliable Republican vote who rarely said a critical word about the president.
The senator, whose political future was cut short by Mr. Trump, has seemed to delight in the shift in power. Asked this week if the impending end of his political career had imbued him with a sense of independence, the senator flashed reporters crowded around him a playful smile.
“Have you noticed?” he said.
Yet as he finds himself emboldened, Mr. Cornyn has fashioned himself not as a scorned outcast seeking retribution but rather as a shield for other Republicans who share his concerns about the president’s settlement but fear the political consequences of airing them. In doing so, he has confirmed a truism of the Trump era: Republicans in Congress routinely swallow their distaste for and even outrage about the president’s actions, usually daring to act on them only once they are on their way out the door.
Mr. Cornyn made it explicit on Thursday morning, right after Mr. Trump suggested he might postpone Mr. Blanche’s nomination until the next Congress to get around the two G.O.P. objectors.
The president “is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Mr. Cornyn wrote on social media.
Some of his Republican colleagues backed him up — but none of those who are currently seeking re-election. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that she “was actually hopeful” about Mr. Cornyn’s negotiations with Mr. Blanche because she had raised the same issues with him in a private meeting.
“I made it very clear where my concerns were,” Ms. Murkowski said. She said she had asked the nominee both about narrowing the I.R.S. settlement agreement and ensuring that a plan by the Justice Department to establish a $1.8 billion fund for people claiming to have been unfairly prosecuted by the government was “truly dead,” another concern Mr. Cornyn had raised.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also lost his Republican primary to a Trump-backed challenger, said that he shared Mr. Cornyn’s desire to see limits on the I.R.S. settlement.
Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, met with Mr. Blanche on Wednesday and told The Deseret News, a Utah-based newspaper, that he supported Mr. Cornyn’s efforts.
Mr. Cornyn’s request is fairly modest. He wants the Justice Department to guarantee what Mr. Blanche said under oath at his confirmation hearing: that the I.R.S. immunity would apply only to Mr. Trump, two of his sons and the Trump Organization, and that it would be limited only to audits of past tax returns.
“All we’re doing is asking them to put that in writing,” Mr. Cornyn said.
That is a break from a now established pattern in which congressional Republicans critical of Mr. Trump’s policies offer broad and unspecific objections, only to back down after receiving equally broad assurances.
It was a strategy he had already deployed successfully. Earlier this month, Mr. Cornyn threatened to block two of Mr. Trump’s ambassadorial nominees if the administration continued withholding millions of dollars that Congress appropriated for H.I.V. prevention.
Mr. Cornyn’s clear parameters seemed to help him keep his colleagues’ measured support rather than drawing their scorn for sinking one of the president’s priorities.
“I certainly respect my colleague’s right to ask questions and to get items that were within his testimony clarified,” said Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota.
And, he added, if Mr. Blanche “can’t get them clarified, then that suggests that maybe there’s a misunderstanding as to what he was testifying for in the first place.”
Carl Hulse and Olivia Diaz contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.“
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Elon Musk Plans at Least $100 Million in Midterm Spending to Help Republicans - The New York Times
Musk Plans to Spend at Least $100 Million to Help Republicans in the Midterms
Elon Musk, a year after a huge blowup with President Trump and the Republican Party, is said to be planning to spend in at least eight states to help them in November.
"Elon Musk plans to spend $100-120 million through his super PAC, America PAC, to support Republican candidates in the midterm elections. The super PAC will target Senate races in at least five states and House races in several others, coordinating with other conservative groups. This significant financial commitment adds to the Republicans’ funding advantage over Democrats.
Elon Musk, a year after voicing deep frustration with the Republican Party and threatening to start a third party, appears to be back in the fold and prepared to spend big in the midterms to help G.O.P. candidates.
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, has authorized his super PAC to spend $100 million to $120 million on a new field program in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to two people briefed on the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
The planned injection of cash from Mr. Musk, the biggest donor in the 2024 presidential election, would only add to Republicans’ yawning advantage over Democrats in funding from super PACs and party groups. While Democratic candidates in key Senate races are raising more than their Republican rivals, many in the Democratic Party have begun to worry about being badly outspent overall in the midterms.
Officials from Mr. Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, have communicated their nine-figure budget to other Republicans in recent weeks as part of an aggressive spending plan that is set to begin next month, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The precise amounts could change, but Mr. Musk’s financial commitment is seen as secure enough that officials at his super PAC have relayed its budget to groups like MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC — which also has yet to reveal its midterm spending plan.
Mr. Musk’s group plans to initially target Senate races in at least five states — Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio — and is having conversations about the contests in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas, according to two people with knowledge of the super PAC’s plans.
The super PAC is also planning to spend in House races in states including California, Wisconsin and Washington, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.
America PAC said that it would be active in battleground Senate and House races. The group declined to comment on its budget and targeted states. Some of its high-level plans were earlier reported by Axios.
Mr. Musk’s super PAC is closely coordinating with an ecosystem of outside groups that are preparing field campaigns, including Americans for Prosperity, which is part of the billionaire Koch brothers’ political network, and the Sentinel Action Fund, another conservative organization. Republican outside groups are planning to pool their field operations more than ever after a Supreme Court ruling in late June made it cheaper for party committees to work directly with candidates.
To help its efforts, America PAC is lining up firms that focus on knocking on voters’ doors, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Chris Young, who is Mr. Musk’s top political adviser and oversaw the group’s huge spending in the 2024 election, is in charge again.
Mr. Musk spent close to $300 million on the 2024 campaign, hosting town halls that drew on his celebrity to try to help Mr. Trump. But Mr. Musk is not currently expected to play as front-facing a role as he did during the 2024 presidential race or during a major court election in April 2025 in Wisconsin, where his candidate lost.
After the defeat in Wisconsin, Mr. Musk appeared aware that his public presence in the race had backfired, The New York Times reported last year.
“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he told Bloomberg News in May 2025. “I think I’ve done enough.”
A few months later, Mr. Musk had a spectacular falling out with Mr. Trump. He left his role overseeing the president’s government-gutting initiative, known as DOGE, and immediately began bashing Mr. Trump’s major domestic policy bill and the Republican Party in general.
That summer, Mr. Musk threatened to start a third party, which made some of his advisers who are aligned with the Republican Party skittish. But he made no moves to start what he said would be called the America Party. By last fall, he had largely made up with Mr. Trump, and advisers began sketching out plans to help Republicans again.
Then again, Mr. Musk’s interest in, and commentary about, politics can seem erratic. In an interview with The Economist published last week, he said of his involvement in Mr. Trump’s administration: “I think I got a little too involved in politics. I got carried away, frankly.”
Theodore Schleifer is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the world.
Trump and Musk’s Relationship Melts Down in Spectacular Fashion
The speed of the fallout was breathtaking, with President Trump celebrating Elon Musk during an Oval Office farewell just last Friday.
The moment had finally come, and it was every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be.
“One thing’s for sure,” Elon Musk posted on X midway through his relentless hourslong attack on Donald Trump, “it ain’t boring!”
The clash of the titans was upon us, and the gloves were off.
The speed of the fallout was breathtaking. Up until about 14 seconds ago, Mr. Musk was flying on Mr. Trump’s planes, staying at his homes, socializing with his children. On Friday, Mr. Trump celebrated him with an Oval Office farewell address and gave him a novelty, oversize key to the White House.
But all was not well. Mr. Musk had been stewing about the sweeping domestic policy bill that the White House was pushing through Congress. By Thursday afternoon, he started spitting venom.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” Mr. Musk wrote on X. “Such ingratitude.”
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is!
Usually, when Mr. Trump has a big, messy falling-out in public, it is with someone who needs him, a lesser being who lives in fear of a primary challenge or somehow being ruined. But now he was beefing with the rare person who has leverage over him — political and financial leverage and perhaps even some emotional leverage. When Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he was “very disappointed in Elon,” he sounded as if he meant it.
But Mr. Trump, being the president of the United States, had some leverage of his own.
He mused on Truth Social that the “easiest way to save money in our Budget” would be to wipe out Mr. Musk’s government subsidies and contracts. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Mr. Trump added, causing Mr. Musk to erupt further.
There was a screwball element to their back-and-forth: Because Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are each the masters of their own social media platform, neither one was directly replying to the other. Anyone following along at home (which is to say, everyone) had to toggle between platforms to keep up with these keyboard cowboys as they aimed shots at each other.
“THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING” was a top trending topic on Mr. Musk’s platform Thursday. There was a schoolyard aspect to their scrap as many on the playground rushed to jump in. “SPICY,” Laura Loomer posted. “hey @realDonaldTrump lmk if u need any breakup advice,” posted Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Mr. Musk’s children. Mr. Musk began to hit the “unfollow” button on accounts belonging to close Trump allies such as Charlie Kirk and Stephen Miller.
Four hours into the shootout, a peacekeeper emerged in the form of Kanye West. “Broooos please noooooo,” he posted on X with an emoji of two people hugging. “We love you both so much.”
But they seemed far beyond the point of hugging it out. A line had been crossed that probably could never be uncrossed. “Time to drop the really big bomb,” Mr. Musk wrote shortly after 3 p.m., “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” The implication that Mr. Trump is somehow connected to Mr. Epstein’s crimes was an especially explosive one to make, given that large swaths of Mr. Trump’s base remain so animated by the sordid details of that particular case.
“Some food for thought,” Mr. Musk wrote in another especially cutting post. “Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
Questions swirled above the fray: Just how hard might Mr. Trump, who has been shown to have no qualms about weaponizing government, actually go after Mr. Musk? Are Tesla and SpaceX about to get DOGE’d?
What would happen to that red Tesla that Mr. Musk parked at the White House, the one that Mr. Trump’s young aides love to drive around and post pictures from?
And would Mr. Musk have to send back his key to the White House?
Shawn McCreesh is a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration."
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Fauci Invokes the Fifth Amendment, Refusing to Answer Senate Committee Questions
Fauci Invokes the Fifth Amendment, Refusing to Answer Senate Committee Questions
“Dr. Anthony Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify before a Senate committee investigating the origins of Covid-19. The committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul, is investigating whether the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci led, funded research in China that led to the pandemic. Fauci, who received a pre-emptive pardon from President Biden, denies the accusations and claims Paul’s inquiry is politically motivated.
The panel’s chairman, Rand Paul, has long accused Dr. Fauci of funding research that triggered the Covid pandemic and lying about it to Congress — charges Dr. Fauci denies.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci refused on Wednesday to answer questions from a Senate committee investigating the origins of Covid-19, accusing the panel’s chairman of having an “unhinged obsession with me” before invoking his constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate himself.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Dr. Fauci said repeatedly, as Republican members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee questioned him.
Senator Rand Paul, the panel’s chairman, pointedly warned the scientist that there would “be repercussions” for his refusal to answer questions. When a lawyer for Dr. Fauci, David Schertler, piped up to defend him, Mr. Paul ordered security to escort Mr. Schertler from the room. “He was not invited to testify,” the senator later said.
The decision not to testify marked the latest turn in the long-running battle between Dr. Fauci, who spent nearly four decades as the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Senator Paul, who accuses Dr. Fauci of funding research in China that sparked the pandemic, and then lying about it to Congress — accusations Dr. Fauci vehemently denies.
“Frankly the American people deserve an apology,” Mr. Paul said in his opening statement. “I hope today Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China.” He accused Dr. Fauci of saying “one thing in public, and another in private” — an apparent reference to diary entries written by Dr. Fauci and released by Mr. Paul over the weekend.
In a brief opening statement, Dr. Fauci noted that he had testified before Congress more than 200 times during the 38 years he ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including during the Covid pandemic.
“Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight,” he said.
“However,” Dr. Fauci added, “given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”
Dr. Fauci received a pre-emptive pardon from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but the pardon protects him only from federal prosecution for actions he took through the date it was issued, Jan. 19, 2025. He told the panel that it pained him not to answer questions, but that he was doing so on the advice of his lawyers.
At the center of Mr. Paul’s inquiry is whether the coronavirus originated naturally, as Dr. Fauci believes, or in a laboratory. Mr. Paul insists that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci ran from 1984 until his retirement at the end of 2022, funded dangerous research in China that spun out of control and essentially created the virus that led to the pandemic. Dr. Fauci says that is not true.
That research, called “gain-of-function,” involves tinkering with the genetic makeup of viruses so that scientists can better understand how they evolve and use that information to prevent future pandemics. On Tuesday, President Trump announced fresh restrictions on such work.
While Dr. Fauci’s institute did fund research at the Wuhan laboratory in China, the National Institutes of Health has repeatedly said the viruses being studied with American tax dollars were distinct from the one that caused Covid-19. But Mr. Paul asserted that Dr. Fauci had stuck to a narrow definition of gain-of-function research that did not capture the risks of work his institute had funded in Wuhan.
“The American people weren’t asking for a semantics debate over what is gain of function,” the senator said. “They were asking for common sense over whether this research was dangerous in Wuhan.”
The top Democrat on the panel, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, accused Mr. Paul of waging a politically-motivated inquiry to “basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.”
Dr. Fauci and Mr. Paul have been tangling for years. In 2021, when the senator accused Dr. Fauci of lying while testifying before the Senate, Dr. Fauci replied, “If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”
Mr. Schertler, Mr. Fauci’s lawyer, said in a statement that he believes that exchange “triggered” the senator’s crusade against his client. But he did not deliver the statement, because Mr. Paul refused to let him speak. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, read parts of the statement into the record.
“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful,” the statement said, “and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten diary without saying how he got them. On Tuesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he gave the documents to Mr. Paul and another Republican, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, “so they could see the light of day.”
The diary does not add much to the scientific debate around the so-called lab leak theory. Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientific understanding of the virus evolved.
But the entries included personal observations in which Dr. Fauci marveled at his fame and his relationships with a rapidly growing list of celebrities, further inflaming a partisan political battle.
Mr. Paul has been taunting Dr. Fauci on Twitter all week, and Dr. Fauci’s conservative critics have been ridiculing him over diary entries that focus on his own fame and his relationships with celebrities.
Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist and close friend of Dr. Fauci’s, said he kept the diary to help write a memoir, which he was already drafting when the pandemic hit. It was published in 2024. Mr. Staley said the personal observations reflect Dr. Fauci being “astonished at what was happening in his life.”
On Tuesday, a group of more than 155 physicians, scientists and public health advocates, organized by AIDS activists who worked closely with Dr. Fauci in the 1990s, issued a public letter defending him and condemning what they considered the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on science and scientists.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a correspondent based in Washington for The Times, covering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump’s health agenda.“
Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.
Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.
An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.
By Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton
Paul Sonne reported from Unrek, Karaganda and Astana in Kazakhstan, and Eric Lipton from Washington.
When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St. Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.
During the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other critical goods.
Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.
It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.
Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.
Within weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project.
Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.
The Kazakh deal was ultimately signed on Nov. 6, six days after the investment involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed at the time.
The arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.
All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, The Times found. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.
See all the mining companies with ties to C Cantor Fitzgerald
or the T Trump family
The 14 companies working on critical mining deals with the U.S. government that have ties to Cantor Fitzgerald or the Trump family.
USA Rare Earth
Approved to receive up to $1.3 billion in Commerce loans and $277 million in direct federal funding to accelerate neodymium-iron-boron magnet production and potentially another $565 million for rare earths mine in Brazil now held by a company it is acquiring.
Ties: Cantor Fitzgerald as lead agent on capital raise
Kaz Resources
Pursuing $900 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank and up to $700 million from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to support plan to build tungsten mine in Kazakstan
Ties: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. are investors in firms involved in the deal; Dominari, another firm the Trump sons own in part, has financial ties to the deal. Cantor Fitzgerald helped one partner in the deal raise capital
Perpetua Resources
Approved for a $2.9 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank for a central Idaho gold and antimony project
Ties: Cantor Fitzgerald as underwriter
This emboldened mixing of federal policymaking and personal business began shortly after Mr. Trump returned to office last year, when the Trump and Lutnick sons played a role in billions of dollars of cryptocurrency deals as the fathers helped set policies that supercharged the crypto industry.
Now, the families’ ethically tangled pursuit of profits is extending to the new arms race for critical minerals.
These kinds of deals are a warning sign, said Representative Maxine Dexter of Oregon, the top Democrat on the House panel that investigates accusations of wrongdoing in the mining industry.
“Congress needs to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being used in the public’s interest and not to benefit family members or those closely tied with the Trump administration,” Ms. Dexter said in an interview.
The White House and the Commerce Department, in separate statements, rejected any suggestion that the Trump administration was improperly mixing government actions with family business.
“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to The Times. “Securing and reshoring America’s critical supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary Lutnick along with the rest of the administration continue to take historic action to safeguard America’s national and economic security.”
Simon Ducroquet/The New York Times
At the center of the Kazakhstan deal is an Australia-born rabbi named Pini Althaus, who moved to the United States years ago and set his sights on critical minerals.
Mr. Althaus is the executive chairman of Kaz Resources and the related company that will mine the Kazakh tungsten deposit, and he remains a shareholder in another critical minerals firm he founded that secured up to $1.6 billion in Commerce Department financing this month.
He has proved to be a savvy player, soliciting — and receiving — direct support from top-level federal officials, including Mr. Lutnick, in his efforts to secure deals.
In a series of interviews, he said his discussions with the U.S. government about the tungsten deal started during the Biden administration and did not benefit from any political favors.
Mr. Althaus said that in the weeks after the St. Regis meeting, he was approached by new investors, but that he had never met Mr. Trump’s sons and did not know they were involved. He later came to learn about the Trump family’s participation and understood how that might generate questions, he said.
“I can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,” Mr. Althaus said. “But that’s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond any one president, let alone any family.”
Central Asia’s Promise
Past the herds of free-roaming horses, the abandoned skeleton of a Soviet worker village and the rolling hills of a verdant Kazakh steppe are the giant water-filled craters at the center of the U.S. deal.
Here, outside the village of Unrek, population 407, the little lakes mark the places where the Soviet Union dug holes to prospect for tungsten.
With its exceptional hardness, density and high melting point, tungsten became known as the “war metal,” with key uses in munitions, aviation and weapons.
The Soviet Union’s collapse interrupted its plans for new mines in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. Tungsten mining in the United States also petered out, with the last operating U.S. mine, in Utah, ceasing production about a decade ago.
China came to dominate the global tungsten trade. But as Mr. Trump was returning to the White House, Beijing began restricting tungsten and other critical mineral exports, sending the benchmark price for the metal outside China surging sixfold in the past year.
Mr. Trump and his aides responded by pushing through, with the help of Congress, a giant wave of federal funding to bankroll a new generation of U.S. mining firms.
Since Mr. Trump returned to office, the federal government has given conditional or final approval to 60 critical minerals projects worldwide backed by $18.6 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees or other financing, according to a count in May by BMO Capital Markets, a leading bank in the sector. That is the largest amount in U.S. history, a bank executive said.
The Pentagon and the Export-Import Bank, where Mr. Lutnick sits on the board, are among the federal agencies bankrolling the push. The moves have created a modern-day gold rush in the critical minerals industry, as start-ups seek to get a chunk of the federal largess.
For example, Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at another investment firm that last summer took a stake in a tiny start-up mining company called Vulcan Elements. Months later, the company signed a nearly $700 million deal with the federal government to help finance the expansion of its production in North Carolina.
“The level of activity compared to, say, 2023 is like night and day,” said Max Yerrill, a BMO vice president. “It has been one of the hottest sectors.”
For Kazakh officials, such deals offer their landlocked nation a new calling card in foreign affairs and an entree with Mr. Trump.
The country can produce and process 25 of the 60 commodities on the U.S. critical minerals list, according to Olzhas Alibekov, a top official at Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Construction.
“Kazakhstan is positioning itself as an important player in the global rare and rare earth metals market,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, the chief executive of the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund, which owns the state mining company that is partnering with Kaz Resources on the tungsten project.
That project will require a huge investment, which Mr. Althaus estimates will total about $650 million initially and $1.1 billion over the life of the project. According to his firm’s own calculations, the tungsten there might be worth as much as $80 billion.
His company could not make the project happen by itself. He needed the U.S. government to cut a deal with Kazakhstan at the highest levels, and to pledge financing to make the math work. In return, the United States could get access to an estimated 12,000 metric tons of tungsten a year, about as much as is now imported annually.
A New York Deal
At the St. Regis Hotel that day in September 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan was in the middle of a speed-dating-like procession of meetings with executives from corporate giants like Citigroup, Amazon and Chevron.
Among Mr. Tokayev’s corporate guests was Mr. Althaus, who was there to push Kazakhstan to approve the mining project. Mr. Lutnick had his own audience with the Kazakh president at the hotel that day.
“You have great critical minerals that we can invest in together,” the commerce secretary told Mr. Tokayev, according to a recording of parts of the meeting that the Kazakh leader posted on social media.
Mr. Lutnick had made a number of moves over several months to help push along the deal.
He sent a letter last year to Mr. Tokayev urging the country to give the contract to Mr. Althaus and his financial backers, telling them that the Trump administration “fully supports” the company (then known as Cove Kaz) in its efforts.
The Export-Import Bank and a second federal agency where Mr. Lutnick is also on the board, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, each issued letters of interest last summer to provide Mr. Althaus’s firm with tentative financing for the project. Those loans together could be worth as much as $1.6 billion.
By the time of the St. Regis meeting, Mr. Lutnick was closing in on securing Mr. Tokayev’s agreement for the deal. That is when Mr. Trump called in.
“President Trump, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Rubio all personally got involved,” said Mr. Althaus, who did not attend the closed-door meeting. “President Trump did the final negotiation with President Tokayev for this deal.”
Chinese bidders were also looking to get access to the Kazakh tungsten site, which is one reason Mr. Althaus needed help from the U.S. government.
The final signing took place on Nov. 6, during a high-profile summit in Washington, where Mr. Trump welcomed the five leaders of Central Asia and highlighted his interest in their critical minerals.
Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Althaus’s firm now owns 70 percent of the venture, and the Kazakh state mining company will own 30 percent.
Investors involved in the Kazakh deal have several different business plans slated to benefit from Trump administration support — and that also do business with Cantor Fitzgerald.
This month, for example, the Trump administration committed to provide up to $1.6 billion in financial support to USA Rare Earth, the other mining company Mr. Althaus founded and in which he remains a shareholder.
That deal gives the Commerce Department 16 million shares of the company’s stock. Cantor Fitzgerald separately earned millions of dollars in fees by helping USA Rare Earth in a series of deals since last year that ultimately raised $1.5 billion for the company.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which Mr. Lutnick ran before he became commerce secretary, has long had a division that helps mining companies raise capital. But it has seen a surge in its business helping to launch or finance mining companies, especially those benefiting from Trump administration support.
Democrats in Congress have called for an investigation into the proposed Commerce Department stake in USA Rare Earth. They told Mr. Lutnick in a letter that it was “the latest example of how official Commerce Department business has intersected with Cantor Fitzgerald’s financial interests during your tenure.”
Even some Trump administration officials directly involved in the effort — who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter — said they were disappointed to see the links between the Lutnick and Trump families and the projects the government has proposed to help finance.
A Cantor spokesman, in a statement to The Times, said the company’s executives were not involved in discussions related to government funding on behalf of their mining industry clients.
“Cantor is a natural partner for companies raising capital to meet the growing demand for critical minerals,” said the spokesman, Stan Neve.
In a statement, the Commerce Department said that neither Mr. Lutnick nor anyone at the department had “interacted with or had any discussions whatsoever with Cantor Fitzgerald regarding the rare earth minerals industry.” It noted that Mr. Lutnick had sold his ownership stake in Cantor.
A Trump Stake
The Trump brothers’ ties to the Kazakhstan deal started at their father’s tower on Fifth Avenue in New York.
That is where Dominari Securities, a small financial services firm, had set up its offices after Mr. Trump’s first stint in the White House ended.
Such proximity to the Trump Organization’s headquarters afforded Dominari executives the chance to form friendships — and then business relationships — with Mr. Trump’s sons.
“That’s how the relationship started and developed,” Allan Evans, one of Dominari’s business partners, said in an interview.
After Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Dominari hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid advisers, giving them stock now worth about $7 million, representing about 10 percent of the company’s total shares. The firm launched an explicit effort to invest in companies aligned with the president’s agenda, ranging from military drones to critical minerals.
To carry out the Kazakh tungsten investment, Dominari relied on the sort of complex corporate maneuvering that is a hallmark of its deals.
First, Dominari partnered with Paul E. Mann, a British investor and entrepreneur who more recently has also been looking to get into the critical minerals sector.
Using a subsidiary of Mr. Mann’s nuclear energy company, ASP Isotopes, the group of investors last summer bought a controlling amount of shares in a failing road construction firm called Skyline Builders. That might seem like an odd move, but they did so for a reason — Skyline is listed on the Nasdaq exchange. So the ASP subsidiary now controlled a publicly traded company.
Dominari and the Trump sons joined this effort through what is known as a Special Purpose Vehicle, which took a stake in Skyline, as was first reported by The Financial Times. The Trump sons have a second small interest in the deal, through an investment they made directly in the ASP subsidiary late last year, according to Mr. Mann.
In late September, the Trump administration secured the verbal agreement from the Kazakh government for the tungsten rights.
That set their move into play.
In October, Cantor Fitzgerald helped raise $210 million for ASP Isotopes.
By Oct. 31, Skyline, now controlled by ASP, took a 20 percent stake in Mr. Althaus’s Kazakhstan-focused corporate entity, for $20 million. The former road building company was suddenly in the mining business.
Six days later, the final deal with the Kazakh government was signed in Washington by Mr. Lutnick.
Mr. Mann, in an interview, insisted the money that Cantor raised for ASP Isotopes was not used in the mining deal. Nevertheless, Cantor — the investment firm overseen by Mr. Lutnick’s sons — was fund-raising for Mr. Mann’s company at the same time that its subsidiary was preparing to invest in a deal that Mr. Lutnick was negotiating as commerce secretary.
In December, Mr. Mann approached Mr. Althaus with a proposal for a maneuver known as a “reverse merger,” which would replace Skyline Builders on the Nasdaq exchange with a new entity known as Kaz Resources, Mr. Althaus said. The merger, which will essentially take the mining operation public, was announced in April.
The listing will allow investors to profit on the Kazakhstan project by trading its stock before any tungsten comes out of the ground. U.S. government backing of such projects often pushes up the stock price, making money for early-stage investors who exit at the right time.
As part of the merger, Skyline agreed to make about $50 million available for the Kazakh project beyond the original $20 million investment, Mr. Althaus said.
Mr. Althaus said he needed the money from the merger to begin work on the Kazakhstan project. The merger still requires U.S. regulatory approval to close.
Dominari did not respond to requests to comment.
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. said in separate statements that they were not involved in the specifics of the deal, with Eric Trump writing that he “has always been a passive investor with absolutely no management role.”
Mr. Mann confirmed that Mr. Trump’s sons have a financial interest in the deal. But he said he had not spoken to them, or anyone in the Trump family, about it.
“When you look at it, take a step back here, there’s no conflict of interest here,” Mr. Mann said. “And it’s certainly in the United States government’s best interest to want to do this deal.”
He also said he did not pick Cantor to raise money for his company because Mr. Lutnick is commerce secretary.
“Of course not,” he said, adding, “Should Cantor exclude themselves from all deals in the mining sector? That’s unfair on Cantor.”
Moving Toward Production
So far, none of the $1.6 billion in U.S. government financial support for the Kazakh mining project has come through, as it is subject to additional approvals, a Trump administration official said. Mr. Althaus’s firm is undertaking a final feasibility study that will be reviewed.
That does not mean that no one has made money.
Federal filings suggest that both Cantor Fitzgerald (run by the Lutnicks) and Dominari Securities (partly owned by the Trumps) have earned fees for their work. They were both paid for their services helping executives involved in the series of transactions to raise new capital.
Mr. Althaus said he was now focused on moving the project toward production, which he hopes will begin by 2030, though there is pressure to speed up the timeline.
“If we had a door to knock on, so to speak, we would have,” he said. “We did this the hard way through advocacy.”
Kitty Bennett, Oleg Matsnev and Alina Lobzina contributed research.
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
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