Republicans are still trying to jail Dr. Fauci in 2026 [HhpfP6UNyBv]

Republicans and Dr. Fauci still disagree on covid origins. The world was just awakening to the novel coronavirus, and a full-fledged pandemic was still in the future, when Dr. Anthony S. Fauci jotted a note in his diary on Jan. 26, 2020, musing about whether the virus might have originated in an open-air “wet market,” where live animals were sold, in Wuhan, China. “Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Dr. Fauci, then the government’s top infectious disease expert, wrote. “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.” Those private reflections became public this past weekend when Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten daily notes as part of his investigation into whether the virus might have leaked from a laboratory and whether, as Mr. Paul claims, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about it. The diary does not provide the smoking gun the senator is seeking. Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientists’ views evolved. But it further inflames a polarizing political battle over the origins of the virus and how history should treat Dr. Fauci. Caption from article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times.