Opinion
By Jeff Childers
8/11/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! I hope you had a terrific weekend. In today’s great roundup: covid vixen tries to tie CDC shooting to RFK but fails wildly while retconning her own pandemic war crimes; New York Times telegraphs something big might be coming for vaccines, while also being forced to make gigantic concessions about how bad things really are; border wall building surges as stacks of materials though lost come roaring back; and Trump orders homeless vagrants out of DC, assigns unlucky FBI agents to foot patrol, and threatens federal LEO takeover of the nation’s capital—news conference at 10am.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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It was the latest and most egregious example of pandemic white-coats trying to reassimilate into polite society like 1950s Nazis trying to blend into Rio de Janeiro. This morning, the New York Times featured a “guest essay” titled, “Vaccine Misinformation Is a Symptom of a Dangerous Breakdown.” Oh, how they wish they could flush the pandemic problems away.
Here’s the short version: one of the pandemic’s least-known worst offenders tried to use the recent CDC tragedy to whitewash her bloodstained record. We’re not biting, doc.
Dr. Céline Gounder is an infectious-disease specialist and NYU clinical assistant professor. She sat on President Neurodeficiency’s ‘COVID-19 Advisory Board’ during the initial 2020–21 transition. She personally helped craft the policies that shuttered down businesses, declared citizens “non-essential,” imposed mask mandates, and pushed mass vaccination like she was setting hotdogs at a football game.
In countless interviews and op-eds, Céline scolded Americans to “follow the science” and warned that “refusing vaccination endangers others,” treating all disagreement as a direct threat to public-health rather than any legitimate debate. For a time, she was the Administration’s ugly face of approved pandemic-era messaging, once declaring in The Atlantic that “refusing vaccination endangers others,” framing vaccine reluctance not as a personal choice but a societal threat.
You may recall that, in late 2022, her husband, high-profile sports journalist Grant Wahl, 49, died suddenly and unexpectedly at the World Cup from what she claimed was an unrelated ruptured aortic aneurysm — definitely not from the mRNA shots she championed. Grant’s death is obviously (understandably) a sore subject for Céline, and she wasted a paragraph re-litigating it this morning.
She started her op-ed this morning darkly warning about the implications (as she sees them) of the CDC shooting last week. She was light on details, so I’ll fill you in.
💉 Last Friday afternoon, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White riddled the CDC’s Atlanta campus with more than 40 bullet holes, killing DeKalb County police officer David Rose — a 33-year-old former Marine and expectant father — before being found dead in a nearby CVS. Moments earlier, CDC security had refused him entry. Investigators say White had taken the covid shots and later became fixated on the belief they caused his depression and suicidal thoughts — concerns his father had flagged to authorities beforehand.
Media instantly branded him an “anti-vaxxer” —even in headlines— despite the fact that he literally got vaccinated. That’s not anti-vaxx; that’s I followed-the-science-and-regretted-it. And, in a move Baghdad Bob would have admired, reporters then tried to pin the violence on HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy. NBC quoted laid-off CDC staff blaming Kennedy for officer Rose’s death, and calling for the Secretary’s resignation.
💉 Céline went further than NBC, essentially blaming everyone skeptical of ‘science’ for the CDC tragedy. That gave her the chance to start retconning her pandemic positions. During the pandemic, she now claims, “I explained that recommendations might change as new evidence emerged.” I could find no evidence of her ‘explanation’ before 2024, unless she meant defending inconsistent government messaging after people complained.
But then she made a teeny admission: “But I could have been clearer that prioritizing saving lives could mean sacrificing other social and economic goods.”
No kidding.
Anyway, and most guffaw-inducing, taking the exact opposite position she’d had during the pandemic, Celine generously allowed —now!— that, “Science is a method for formulating and testing hypotheses, not a fixed set of facts.” You can’t ‘follow’ a method of testing hypotheses. After diligently dismissing half of Americans as non-essential persons during the pandemic, Céline now argues science “must be protected from political or commercial capture.”
Her targets were boringly predictable. Without a shred of irony or self-awareness for her own participation in non-essentializing American citizens, she aimed at President Trump, arguing the “Trump administration rhetoric has dehumanized C.D.C. workers.” But most of Céline’s shrill vitriol was reserved for Secretary Kennedy, whom she said is “waging war on mRNA vaccines and the field of infectious diseases.”
Céline hasn’t changed her political gameswomanship, only her jersey. In 2020, she told the public to “follow the science”— because her team controlled it. The “science” meant whatever Biden’s public health machine said it meant. Now, with Republicans running federal public health, she’s flipped the switch: suddenly, science is “just a method,” easily “captured” by politics, and you shouldn’t take it at face value.
Dr. Gounder has not experienced intellectual growth. She’s shown political loyalty. Whether she’s urging people to kneel at the altar of Science™ or to distrust it entirely depends not on the scientific method, but on who holds the keys to the CDC.
Most ironically, and most dangerously, Céline’s op-ed starts by invoking the image of CDC buildings riddled with bullet holes and a cop dead in the street — all meant to evoke sympathy for “brave public-health scientists under siege.” But then, instead of shoring up trust in the CDC, she spends most of her piece arguing that the agency is now politically compromised, its scientific process under attack, and its leadership untrustworthy under Trump and RFK Jr.
In other words: The CDC is under fire… and you can’t trust them anymore. Céline’s position is like a firefighter giving a press conference about an arson attack on the firehouse— and then warning the public not to call the fire department anymore because she doesn’t trust the new fire chief.
So-called ’scientists’ like Céline Gounder think they’re going to oil out by suddenly rediscovering that science is not truth— but only a process. We aren’t going to let them oil out. Not this time.
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The clouds are gathering around big pharma’s most profitable products, and a big move may be in the works. Yesterday, the NYT telegraphed what may be coming in a story featuring this encouraging headline: “Kennedy’s Next Target: the Federal Vaccine Court.” In a sign of just how badly they are losing the narrative war, the sub-headline began by admitting, “The system for compensating people injured by vaccines needs significant reform.”
So what are we arguing about?
The article’s only “news” was that, last month, Secretary Kennedy tweeted criticisms of the vaccine court and pledged to fix it. He also suggested he was considering letting covid-shot-injured folks access the vaccine court. That’s it. Yesterday’s entire story from there was wild speculation and ‘experts’ grousing. But check out what they did admit. Here are direct quotes from the story:
- “Even the staunchest defenders of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program agree it needs reform.”
- “It is slow, understaffed and can feel adversarial to families legitimately in need.”
- “The program also needs more staff to review medical records, and an online system for families to track the status of their claims.”
- “The compensation fund has a $4 billion surplus, some of which could be applied to remedy these problems.”
- Altom Maglio, vaccine court attorney: “Fighting tooth and nail is just not appropriate, and doesn’t meet the goals” — referring to government lawyers battling families even over injuries with established causal links.
- “Of more than 14,000 injury claims filed regarding Covid vaccines, only 69 have been paid out. More than 9,400 are pending, and about 4,800 have been dismissed.”
Despite all those strunning admissions that the vaccine court is failing injured Americans, according to the Times and its stable of pet experts, letting Kennedy fix the vaccine court could trigger a biomedical apocalypse. Open the injury tables and suddenly “tens of thousands” of “dubious claims” will pour in, hobbling the system, bankrupting it in “huge expenditures,” and even, heaven forfend, causing Americans to “lose access to some vaccines.”
Worse, if Kennedy does add covid-shot cases, it’ll be like “trying to wash your bike” in an already clogged sink. At best, he might “burn the vaccine court down” (Ed. note: hopefully); at worst, he secretly wants the “total collapse of the program,” leaving vaccine makers fleeing the market and public health laying in ruins.
All because Kennedy thinks families injured by mandated shots should get paid without spending half a decade in procedural purgatory.
The story is schizophrenic. First, it informs readers that the vaccine court is a leaky, mildew-stained shack —“slow, understaffed, adversarial”— but simultaneously argues that, if Kennedy so much as jiggles the doorknob, the whole public-health edifice will collapse into dust. It’s like calling the fire department to put out a kitchen blaze, then shrieking that water might get the floor wet. It’s a bad situation, but we HAVE to keep it.
The story can’t decide whether the program is a national embarrassment begging for reform, or a delicate crystal vase that mustn’t be touched. In trying to have it both ways, it left readers unsure whether the real problem is the program’s structure or the former Democrat now running HHS.
I’m calling it progress. Even the Times is being forced by topical transparency and salutary sunlight to cough up the charade that everything is just fine. Now we can argue about how drastic the fix needs to be. First round: Kennedy.
I’ve no evidence, but this non-story story suggests the Times knows something is coming and they want to pre-frame the narrative. Something good.
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Next, let us welcome our new robotic overlords. This weekend, CNBC ran a quiet financial-news story headlined, “Tesla Robotaxi scores permit to run ride-hailing service in Texas.” Honestly, this technological revolution, which is barreling toward us 10 mph over the speed limit, offers the greatest chance to improve our day-to-day lives— but also poses the greatest risk of stripping Americans’ freedom.
The news was that Tesla just completed a pilot robotaxi program in Austin and got its full driverless rideshare permit in Texas. Although during the pilot, human operators sat passively in the driver’s seat just in case, the new authorization doesn’t require Tesla to keep any human safety driver or valet on board. Just you and the AI.
Tesla owners report growing levels of user satisfaction with the “supervised” self-driving feature. As far as I can tell, drivers report using it about 95% of the time. Even though it requires at least one hand on the wheel at all times, and the cabin’s internal camera watches them like a robo-hawk for any sign of distraction, owners report loving not having to focus on morning traffic minutiae. When they are allowed to stop paying attention, they can start scrolling, answering emails, and watching cat videos, and the driving game will change forever.
Tesla is far from the only company stampeding like a stainless steel herd toward computer-controlled transportation. Waymo, Uber, Google, and more are all racing toward the finish lines. You’d better believe it is coming fast. And a whole lot of money is riding on it.
🤖 Let’s first talk about the promise. How about for frail elderly folks? Driverless vehicles mean that, even if their licenses are taken away, helpless seniors need no longer wait for the short bus. Relatives won’t have to take grandpa to his six weekly dialysis appointments and pick him up (at least, not every time). DUIs and related risks should plunge. Women won’t fear sketchy Uber drivers. Influencers can make their TikToks right from the road (probably not OnlyFans producers though, but I won’t say they won’t try.)
It is true that self-driving vehicles aren’t perfect and never will be. They crash sometimes. Sometimes they drive into a lake. But overall, they are still safer than many other people on the road. They don’t explode into road rage if they are cut off in traffic. They don’t get distracted by stinging insects or harmless spiders dropping into their laps from the sun visor. They aren’t impatient, unskilled, or slow-responding.
It will be a lot harder to get a ticket in a driverless car. (Send it to Tesla, please.)
But most of all, self-driving cars offer the tantalizing possibility of more freedom. Think about what it could mean for commuting. If people can work or sleep while they are being driven to the job site, they can live a lot further away. The idea of moving out of the city and living the farm life becomes realistic when you (mostly) delete the commute. Your options for living where you want will explode.
🤖 That all sounds great, especially for all the folks who stand the benefit the most, but there’s a darker peril lingering right below the undercarriage. Inevitably, as the technology improves and the proportion of driverless vehicles increases past some invisible threshold, the “public safety” drumbeats will begin.
At some point, human-driven cars will become a risk to the well-oiled driverless fleet. Pro-robot people will point out that humans cause the most wrecks and nearly all the traffic jams. (The robots, for example, will never slow down to gawk at accidents.) Inevitably, the robot cars will be required to coordinate with each other for greatest efficiency and lowest emissions, and the human drivers will mess up all the elegant, computerized traffic mitigation measures.
They have a thousand ways to get us. Stop thinking you can just defy them. For just one example, they can slowly increase insurance rates for driver-driven cars and lower them for driverless cars. We who adhere to the classic American ideal of freedom of movement are the frogs in this slow-boiling scenario.
I used to think I’d be safely retired —sedentary and unadventurous— by the time this technology reached the point of regulating people instead of computers. But that Orwellian day is rocketing toward us faster than anyone could have predicted.
So here’s the point: there’s no stopping the robot revolution. But we can hold the pro-human line for as long as possible. We will need to advocate for protecting driver’s rights. That’s why I keep reporting these stories. We might want to start soon.
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Here’s some heartwarming news. Remember when Biden sold off Trump 1.0’s border wall construction materials for pennies on the dollar? Yesterday, Fox ran a terrific story headlined, “Trump border wall materials sold by Biden may soon find their way back to the feds, auctioneer claims.”
One of Biden’s most excruciating executive orders, signed days after he infested the office, was the order shutting down border wall construction and ordering all the expensive materials to be sold for scrap. It turns out that, thanks to various lawsuits and bureaucratic inertia, most of that stuff has not yet been auctioned. Now, it’s coming back.
On Friday, an auction clearinghouse for public-sector and government surplus called GovPlanet, which has the border wall building material, announced it had reached a deal with the U.S. government to sell it all back for cost. “A third-party firm that has been contracted for construction of the border wall will take receipt of the materials over the next 90 days,” GovPlanet said.
“We value our longstanding partnership with the U.S. government,” GovPlanet added, “and look forward to continuing to support America’s federal agencies.”
It made me cry a little. It’s like everything bad is coming untrue.
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This morning, USA Today ran a widely-reported story below the headline, “Trump says homeless people in DC ‘have to move out IMMEDIATELY.’” He said a lot more than that over the weekend. Here, for instance, is his latest entertaining Truth Social post, uploaded yesterday afternoon:
The USA Today story began, as did all the corporate media stories, with the moronic claim that violent crime is at a 30-year low. To a reporter, they all ignored the recent stories about DC police hiding violent crime statistics — a claim made by whistleblowers and the police union itself.
Earlier yesterday, Trump focused on all the hobos. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” Trump posted yesterday. “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”
Last year, the Supreme Court green-lighted relocating people who live outside away from city streets. So, Trump can legally do it, without landing in a sticky tar baby of injunctions and legal activism.
The President announced a press conference for 10am this morning. It is titled “Cleanliness and the General Physical Renovation and Condition of our once beautiful and well-maintained Capital.” One suspects an executive order will also be attached, probably under the same name.
Over the weekend, Trump ordered a massive surge of federal law enforcement assets into DC. One story hilariously reported that some FBI agents will be detailed to nighttime foot patrols. Hahahaha! I bet those lucky guys and gals worked on the J6 teams at some point. I’m just guessing, though.
The massive media ‘controversy’ over something Trump hasn’t even done yet arises from a week-old post where the President said, “Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control. If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City.”
All the pearl clutching over Trump’s threat to re-federalize DC is more media nonsense.
Legally speaking, Trump can’t just wave away D.C.’s mayor and council without Congress— the 1973 Home Rule Act still stands. So he can’t actually re-federalize DC. But he doesn’t need new laws to make the city feel federal again. As president, he can flood D.C. with federal law enforcement, deploy the National Guard, and override local discretion in security matters. Those levers, if applied aggressively, can sideline local officials and put the capital under de facto federal control without a single vote on the Hill.
Absent Congressional action to repeal the 1973 Act, local DC officials would still be able to paint crosswalks with rainbow colors, erect BLM memorials, collect property taxes, and so on. So don’t expect Trump to “take over” DC. But he can, and it looks like he will, take over the law enforcement function.
We’ll find out shortly, and I’ll brief you on it tomorrow.
Have a magnificent Monday! Find out everything that happens next tomorrow morning as we race through the fast-breaking essential news and requisite commentary.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
