The neo-Nazi lovers of the Hate-Industrial Complex

The latest chapter in the ongoing Southern Poverty Law Center saga reads less like a civil rights success story and more like a screenplay rejected by Hollywood for being too implausible.According to aNew York Post reportbased on a federal superseding indictment, Heidi Beirich, who served as director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, allegedly directed approximately $1.2 million in donor funds to a confidential source deeply embedded within the neo-Nazi National Alliance organization.The twist? Prosecutors allege that the neo-Nazi informant was also her lover, with the two sharing a home and joint bank accounts. Roughly $140,000 of SPLC money allegedly flowed into those accounts and was used for their personal expenses.  Ergo: this woman paid a neo-Nazi informant, who was also her boyfriend, and then pocketed the money for her own expenses.  That would be called theft or money laundering. The question remains: Was SPLC aware of the fraud?Did you read that right? Yes, you did.  A senior official at SPLC had (has) a “neo-Nazi” boyfriend- who was/is a neo-Nazi and was embedded in a neo-Nazi hate group.  She paid him money, which was deposited into a joint bank account, and then helped spend it…The indictment alleges that the neo-Nazi source remained active within the organization while receiving payments and that the arrangementcontinued for years.The broader federal case is even more remarkable. The Department of Justice has accused the SPLC of paying millions of dollars to informants inside various extremist organizations while simultaneously using those same organizations as fundraising targets. Prosecutors allege that more than $4 million ultimately flowed to members and leaders of white supremacist and Klan-affiliated groups.The irony is almost too perfect. Imagine donating money to fight neo-Nazis only to discover your contribution may have helped pay the mortgage of one.And according to the indictment, it wasn't always some low-level skinhead handing out flyers at a county fair. One of the alleged recipients, identified as F-3, was reportedly an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America. That is roughly equivalent to discovering that your anti-smoking charity had secretly put the Marlboro Man on retainer.Donors likely assumed their checks were funding investigations, research, and exposés. They probably did not envision helping a Klan leader make his truck payment. If these allegations prove true, the SPLC may have stumbled upon the most innovative diversity and inclusion program in nonprofit history: bringing extremists and anti-extremists together through the healing power of shared financial interests. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?Could the SPLC lose its nonprofit status? Yes. Will it happen automatically because of an indictment? No. The real question is whether prosecutors can prove that what the SPLC calls "intelligence gathering" was actually donor fraud, private benefit, or something inconsistent with a charitable mission. If the government's indictment holds up, the IRS may eventually have to answer a rather awkward question: how much money can a nonprofit funnel to Klan leaders, neo-Nazis, and extremist insiders before it stops looking like a charity and starts looking like a very confusing venture capital fund for extremist organizations?For decades, the SPLC has built its reputation as America’s premier watchdog of hate groups. The government’s case now raises an uncomfortable question: At what point does infiltrating an organization become subsidizing it? Cause it sure seems like SPLC crossed that line a long time ago.The story also highlights a problem that extends beyond the SPLC. Entire industries can emerge around identifying threats, monitoring threats, fundraising against threats, and publicizing threats. The temptation is obvious. If your business model depends on finding monsters under the bed, there is always an incentive to make sure the monsters never completely disappear or to even create monsters that you can then expose. Another self-licking ice cream cone.One thing is already clear: if this were a conservative organization accused of funneling donor money through a romantic relationship to a neo-Nazi operative, the media would be running twenty-four-hour special coverage.We may have witnessed the emergence of a curious new institution: a privately funded domestic intelligence operation with no badge, no warrant authority, no public oversight, and a marketing department.At a minimum, Americans should be asking why a nonprofit organization was conducting activities that seem increasingly difficult to distinguish from those of a government informant network. If the SPLC wishes to function as an intelligence service, then perhaps it should be prepared to accept the scrutiny that comes with that role.The upcoming federal trial is not simply about informants, donor funds, or accounting practices. It is about accountability. According to prosecutors, donor money from a tax-exempt nonprofit may have flowed to Klan leaders, neo-Nazi organizers, and other extremists through a network of paid sources.Regardless of the outcome, the discovery process is likely to be full of twists, turns, and revelations that even Netflix might reject as unrealistic. And Americans may finally get answers to questions that have gone unasked for decades: How does the SPLC operate? Who does it work with? Who does it answer to? And how much power should any private organization have to monitor, label, and influence the political lives of others?The bigger question remains: if SPLC-funded individuals were involved in criminal activity, does the organization's responsibility end when the check clears? Informants are one thing. Financially supporting people who commit crimes is another. Somewhere between intelligence gathering and underwriting bad behavior lies a line, and this case may force a jury to decide where that line is.For years, the SPLC acted as investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury.Because somewhere along the way, “monitoring extremism” appears to have evolved into running a small spy agency.Then there is the case of Heidi Beirich, who did not just creep under a rock after SPLCAfter leaving the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2020, Heidi Beirich co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), an organization that has effectively continued much of the same anti-extremism work under a new banner. A left-wing extremist group that is collecting large donations to expose “right-wing” extremism.According to the organization’s most recent IRS filings, annual revenue for fiscal year 2025 was approximately $965,000, almost entirely derived from grants and charitable contributions. The organization reported roughly $1.07 million in net assets.What is notable is not the size of the organization, but who funds it. Public records indicate support from a collection of well-known philanthropic foundations, including Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Democracy Fund, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and others. The usual round-up of well-funded, liberal foundations, nonprofits, advocacy groups, and grant-makers that often support similar causes, attend the same conferences, and cite one another's work, and move money through many of the same institutional channels.In other words, GPAHE is not primarily supported by thousands of small-dollar donors. It appears to operate largely on foundation money.That may become relevant as the federal case involving the SPLC unfolds.One of the more interesting questions is whether any of the facts developed during discovery will spill over into public scrutiny of organizations that grew out of the SPLC ecosystem. Discovery has a funny way of doing that. Lawyers start asking questions. Documents get produced. Emails surface. Depositions are taken. People who have spent years asking questions of others suddenly find themselves answering questions instead.To be clear, GPAHE has not been charged with any crime, nor has Heidi Beirich been charged in connection with the federal case. But given her prominent role in both organizations, it is difficult to imagine that journalists, donors, and investigators will not be paying close attention. And that the DoJ isn’t investigating her as well.The discovery process alone may prove fascinating. After all, when the people who built careers investigating everyone else suddenly become the subject of investigation themselves, surprises are almost guaranteed.And as taxpayers have learned repeatedly over the years, intelligence operations have a tendency to grow, expand, and justify their own existence. Apparently, that principle may apply to nonprofits as well.Yet, much of the liberal press seems oddly uninterested.Apparently, some hate groups are more special than others.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.Share

Summary: SPLC: Can it get any weirder?


Get Big or Get Out

Executive SummaryAmerica’s chronic disease crisis did not emerge by accident. It was, in part, the predictable consequence of a food system shaped by government policy.Beginning in the 1970s, federal agricultural programs encouraged the large-scale production of a small number of subsidized commodity crops, particularly corn and soybeans. Those subsidies helped make refined carbohydrates, corn sweeteners, industrial seed oils, and highly processed foods some of the cheapest calories in human history. For fifty years, Americans have been told this was a triumph of efficiency.This essay argues that the apparent cheapness of modern food is, to a significant extent, an accounting illusion.Some of the low cost reflect genuine advances in productivity. But much of it reflects costs that have been shifted elsewhere: onto taxpayers through subsidies, onto future generations through the depletion of soil and water resources, and onto society as a whole through the rising burden of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses.The result is a system that often appears efficient only because it excludes some of its highest costs from the price tag.Drawing on Austrian-school economics, this essay argues that the problem is not simply industrial agriculture itself, nor is the solution a new form of centralized planning. The problem is a food economy built on distorted price signals. When prices are manipulated, producers respond rationally, consumers respond rationally, and the resulting outcomes can still be profoundly unhealthy.The alternative is not a government mandate for local food, regenerative farming, or any other preferred model. The alternative is to restore honest price signals by removing subsidies, enforcing liability for environmental damage, reducing regulatory barriers that favor scale, and expanding transparency so consumers can make informed choices.The central question is straightforward: if food prices reflected their true costs, including the costs now shifted onto public health, the environment, and taxpayers, would Americans eat the way they do today?The essay below suggests the answer is no.Get Big or Get OutIn 1971, Earl Butz left the board of Ralston Purina to become Secretary of Agriculture, and within a few years, he had rewritten the operating logic of American farming. His advice to farmers was to plant “fencerow to fencerow,” and his counsel to those who could not expand was blunter still: “get big or get out” (1).The phrase was folksy. The policy behind it was not.The New Deal programs that had once paid farmers to restrain production were redirected toward maximizing it, and the federal government committed itself to backstopping the price of a short list of storable commodities, corn and soybeans foremost among them. Every operator in the country received the same signal: grow as much of these crops as the land will bear, expand or be absorbed, and the Treasury will cover the difference. Butz, in the end, did not so much replace the New Deal as redirect it toward a different objective.This was central planning, though it never used the word. It did not nationalize a single acre or impose a Soviet-style output quota. It did something quieter and, judged by the standards of the Austrian school of economic analysis, more corrosive. It reached into the price system and bent it.The consequences of that distortion reach far beyond the farm gate, and they are the real subject of this essay. The policy did not merely favor large producers over small ones. It helped determine what Americans would eat. By artificially cheapening a narrow band of storable commodities above all else, it cheapened refined carbohydrates, corn-derived sweeteners, and the industrial seed oils and feedlot protein made from the surplus. In doing so, it made the engineered, calorie-dense, nutrient-poor product the rational commercial default for everyone who processes and sells food.Half a century later, we treat the result as the natural condition of food, a baseline against which any alternative appears expensive and quaint. It is nothing of the kind. It is the downstream effect of specific decisions made by specific people in the 1970s, and the bill for those decisions is now arriving in a form few could predict or bothered to tally at the time: an epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and the cardiovascular disease that follows. The resulting burden is helping to bankrupt public accounts while sustaining a pharmaceutical and medical complex whose business model is the lifelong management, rather than the cure, of conditions the food system helps create.To question the food is therefore to question the policy. To question the policy is to reopen assumptions that two generations have been taught to accept without examination. That is the purpose of what follows.A Central Plan That Did Not Call Itself OneThe coalition that produced the Butz settlement was not a free-market coalition, whatever its later defenders have claimed. It joined a mid-century progressive conviction, inherited from the New Deal and amplified by Cold War ambition, that an imperial American state bore a duty to feed the world, with a set of financial and industrial interests that stood to profit from consolidation. Grain traders preferred volume. The implement manufacturers preferred the large operator, who would finance a new combine every few seasons, over the smallholder, who would not.The banks preferred the collateral of a thousand contiguous acres to the diffuse credit of a hundred mixed farms. The moral language of abundance and the material language of margin pointed in the same direction, toward scale, and the policy followed.Austrian-school economics holds that economic order emerges from the voluntary decisions of individuals operating through free markets, and that government intervention in prices, money, and production disrupts the price signals that coordinate economic activity.An Austrian-school economist has no quarrel with bigness as such. Scale that emerges from voluntary exchange and survives the test of profit and loss is simply efficiency made visible, and there is nothing to object to in it. The objection is narrower and more serious: not bigness, but bigness manufactured by subsidy and sustained by distorted prices. In that environment, neither managers, investors, nor policymakers can reliably distinguish genuine productivity from political favoritism, because the market's measuring stick has been bent.What Austrian-School Economics ClaimsLudwig von Mises established the point a century ago, in his demonstration that, by definition and structure, a socialist commonwealth (including European or Bernie-style “democratic socialism”) cannot calculate true costs (2).Without market prices for the means of production, for the land, labor and machinery that go into making things, the planner has no way to know whether any given use of resources creates wealth or destroys it. Prices are not arbitrary tags. They are the distilled, dispersed knowledge of everyone who has ever bid for or offered a thing, and they are the only instrument by which a society discovers what its scarce resources are actually worth in their competing uses.The Butz system did not abolish prices. It corrupted a subset of them, which was and is enough to do real damage. When the state alters the effective price of corn through deficiency payments, target prices, and subsidized crop insurance, it does not merely transfer income to corn growers. It falsifies the signal on which every downstream decision depends: the decision of what to plant, where, by what method, for whom. A nation that pours fertilizer onto sixty million acres of one grain does so because the price says to, and the price says to because the state has disconnected that price from the underlying realities of supply, demand, and scarcity.Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on markets and knowledge, deepened the argument by locating the relevant knowledge where it actually lives (3). The knowledge that matters in agriculture is overwhelmingly local and tacit: the drainage of a particular field, the frost pocket at the bottom of a particular slope, the rotation that suits a particular soil.No central authority (or government bureaucracy) can possess this knowledge, and the great virtue of a functioning price system is that it does not need to. It lets those on the ground act on what only they know. Industrial monocropping inverts this. It applies a uniform recipe of purchased inputs across radically heterogeneous land, precisely because the subsidized commodity price has overwhelmed the local signal that would have counseled otherwise.And beneath both arguments sits the deepest Austrian-school commitment of all, the one most relevant to the healthy-food agenda: consumer sovereignty (4).In an unhampered market, the consumer is the final authority. Production is not an end in itself; it is the servant of consumption, and the entrepreneur who misjudges what consumers want is corrected by loss.The Butz model severed this link. It set production as the goal and the consumer as an afterthought, to be supplied with whatever abundance the subsidy produced, and then to be sold, through a second industry of marketing (and its cousin, government propaganda), the appetite to consume it.Where Bigness Genuinely WonThe industrial model achieved real and substantial gains. The division of labor, mechanization, plant breeding, and specialization raised yields to levels that would have astonished a farmer of 1940. The real price of calories fell. The fraction of the American household budget spent on food dropped to one of the lowest levels in human history, and the lowest on earth. Famine, the recurring companion of every prior agricultural civilization, vanished from the developed world. These are not small things, and the romantic localist who waves them away forfeits all credibility.Productivity and policy are not the same thing, and they should not be confused. Some of the low prices consumers see at the grocery store are the result of genuine improvements in efficiency driven by specialization, technology, and capital investment. Some are the result of government subsidies that reduce market prices without reducing the underlying costs of production. Still others reflect costs that have been shifted elsewhere, onto taxpayers, future generations, rural communities, public health, or the environment.The key question is how much of the system’s apparent success comes from real wealth creation and how much comes from transfers and deferred liabilities. Genuine efficiency creates wealth. Subsidies redistribute wealth. Unpaid costs represent the consumption of capital that does not appear on a balance sheet. Distinguishing between these categories is essential to understanding the true economics of modern agriculture.The Unaccounted LedgerThe standard term for this third category is “externality,” but the concept deserves careful treatment. The conventional approach, rooted in the Pigovian tradition, assumes that experts can measure the social cost of an activity, calculate the appropriate corrective tax, and impose it from above.The Austrian school has long challenged this assumption. As Hayek argued, no individual or institution possesses the knowledge necessary to calculate and manage the countless interactions that make up a modern economy. No one can accurately determine the total cost of the industrial food system to society and then engineer the perfect correction through regulation or taxation. The belief that this can be done is itself a form of central planning (5).The Austrian perspective, particularly as developed by Rothbard, approaches the problem differently (6). These are not market failures that require an all-knowing regulator. They are often failures to define and enforce property rights. When a producer contaminates an aquifer with nitrates, pumps groundwater faster than it can be replenished, or allows agricultural chemicals to enter a neighbor’s well without bearing responsibility for the damage, the cost has not disappeared. It has simply been shifted to someone else who did not consent to bear it.Under those circumstances, food appears cheaper than it really is. The market price reflects only part of the cost of production, while the remaining costs are imposed on nearby landowners, local communities, taxpayers, or future generations.From this perspective, the solution is not to empower planners to calculate and impose the “correct” price. The solution is to restore clear property rights and meaningful liability, so that those who cause harm bear the cost of that harm. When costs remain with the party that generates them, prices become more accurate signals of economic reality.This distinction is important for any serious discussion of food, agriculture, and health. The objective is not to determine what prices should be. It is to remove the distortions, both subsidies and uncompensated harms, so that prices can emerge from voluntary exchange and reflect the true costs of production.Austrian capital theory helps explain a cost that is often overlooked in discussions of modern agriculture. The industrial farming model frequently treats soil fertility and groundwater reserves as current income when they are actually forms of capital.Continuous monocropping can reduce organic matter, disrupt soil biology, and deplete mineral reserves over time, replacing natural fertility with purchased fertilizers and other inputs. Likewise, large-scale irrigation in many regions draws groundwater from aquifers faster than natural recharge can replace it. These practices can support high yields and strong financial returns in the short term, but they do so by drawing down productive assets that took decades, centuries, or even millennia to accumulate.Ludwig von Mises, one of the founders of the Austrian school of economics, described this process ascapital consumptionand argued that it is one of the most dangerous economic illusions because it creates the appearance of prosperity while the underlying productive assets are being depleted (7). A business can appear profitable while consuming the assets that enable future production. The same principle applies to agriculture. A food system may appear highly productive and efficient while steadily reducing the soil fertility and water resources on which that productivity depends.The resulting food may be inexpensive at the checkout counter, but the price does not reflect the full cost of replacing depleted groundwater, rebuilding degraded soils, or adapting to the loss of these resources. Those costs remain largely absent from market transactions today, even though they will eventually have to be borne by someone.Any serious accounting of the economics of food must therefore consider not only annual production and profits, but also whether the underlying stock of natural capital is being maintained, enhanced, or consumed.The Cost Paid in BodiesThe largest item on the ledger, however, is written neither in soil nor in water. It is written in the health of the people the system feeds. The commodity programs did not make all food cheaper. They made a particular kind of food cheaper: refined carbohydrates, corn-derived sweeteners, industrial seed oils pressed largely from soybeans, and the inexpensive feedlot protein that commodity surpluses helped support. These ingredients became the foundation of the modern processed-food industry.They also became some of the least expensive calories available. Food manufacturers responded accordingly, building products around the cheapest and most abundant inputs. Over the same half-century, rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other chronic diseases rose dramatically (8). While many factors contributed to these trends, no serious analysis can ignore the role of a food system that consistently made highly processed, calorie-dense foods abundant and inexpensive. The structure of that food system did not emerge by accident. It was shaped by policy.This is where the Austrian distinction between internal and external costs becomes important. Part of the cost is borne by the individual consumer, and a free society must preserve individuals' right to make their own choices, including poor ones. But several factors complicate that simple picture.First, the price signals consumers receive have been influenced by decades of subsidies that favored certain commodities and the products made from them. Second, many of the long-term health consequences of diet are difficult for consumers to evaluate in real time. The effects often emerge only after years or decades. Third, and most important economically, the costs of chronic disease are not borne solely by the individual. Through Medicare, Medicaid, public programs, employer-sponsored insurance, and pooled risk, a substantial portion of those costs is distributed across society.As a result, the apparent affordability of many foods reflects only the price paid at the checkout counter. The downstream costs appear elsewhere in the economy, particularly in the healthcare system.The distortion extends beyond agriculture. Price signals influence where capital, research, and entrepreneurial effort are directed. Over the past several decades, a vast medical and pharmaceutical infrastructure has emerged to manage chronic diseases associated with obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and related metabolic disorders. The incentives of that system naturally favor the ongoing treatment of disease, because treatment generates continuing demand for products and services.This is not a conspiracy. It is how markets respond to the incentives they face. Public policy helped make calorie-dense, highly processed foods inexpensive and abundant. Public health programs then assumed much of the cost of treating the resulting disease burden. Taxpayers support both ends of the system: first through agricultural programs and again through healthcare spending. The result is a large-scale misallocation of resources that becomes visible only when the entire chain of costs is considered together.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareThe Myth of Cheap FoodSo much for the indictment. The harder question, and the one the healthy-food movement must answer if it hopes to be more than a critique, is whether a more decentralized, local, and diversified food system can actually work at scale, and at what cost. The case is stronger in some areas than others, but it is strongest where the hidden costs of the current system are greatest.The advantages are several. First, for perishable, high-value foods such as produce, dairy, meat, and eggs, shorter supply chains reduce spoilage, handling, refrigeration, and transportation costs. A tomato grown forty miles away generally requires fewer resources than one shipped across the continent.Second, diversified farms can often substitute management and biological processes for purchased inputs. Crop rotation, cover crops, integrated livestock, and other regenerative practices can rebuild soil fertility while reducing dependence on fertilizers, pesticides, and other petrochemical inputs.Third, local producers can apply local knowledge. As Hayek observed, knowledge is dispersed. Farmers who understand their own soils, climate, water resources, and markets can often make decisions that no centralized system can replicate efficiently.Finally, diversified local agriculture tends to produce the nutrient-dense foods that support health rather than the commodity surpluses that become sweeteners, industrial seed oils, and highly processed foods. The distinction matters because the health costs associated with those products are among the largest hidden costs in the current system.One common argument for local food should be rejected because it rests on the same error this essay has criticized throughout. The claim that local food is inherently superior because it travels fewer miles elevates a single measurable variable into a proxy for total cost. Transportation is only a small portion of the resources embodied in most foods, roughly a tenth by conventional accounting.9 That fact is often used to dismiss local food, but it points to a broader lesson. Transportation miles, carbon footprints, and energy audits each measure only a fraction of the picture. None captures the full cost of production.The larger costs are often the hardest to measure: depleted soil, contaminated water, lost biodiversity, and the long-term health consequences of poor nutrition. No single metric can accurately account for all of them. The true cost of food is not something planners calculate in advance. It emerges only when prices are allowed to reflect the real costs of production rather than subsidies and cost-shifting.The strongest objection to decentralization is that it often costs more, particularly for storable commodity crops. Large operations benefit from real economies of scale in equipment, processing, transportation, and regulatory compliance. A combine, grain elevator, slaughterhouse, or pasteurization facility becomes more efficient as output increases.Those efficiencies are real. The question is whether the prices they produce reflect the full cost of production. Throughout this essay, the argument has been that they often do not. Some costs are shifted to the land through soil depletion and groundwater extraction. Others are shifted to watersheds through runoff and contamination. Still others are shifted to the healthcare system through diet-related chronic disease.When those costs are excluded, industrial food appears inexpensive. When they are included, the calculation changes substantially. The apparent advantage of many commodity-derived foods depends in part on costs that are paid elsewhere and later.This leads to a more realistic view of the alternative. The goal is not to replace every large farm with a farmers’ market or to produce every calorie locally. Staple grains will continue to be grown, processed, and stored at scale. The question is whether the current corn-and-soy commodity system deserves the privileged position it occupies today.That system’s apparent advantage rests heavily on subsidies, cost shifting, and a pricing structure that does not fully reflect its environmental and health consequences. By contrast, decentralized and diversified agriculture is particularly well suited to producing the nutrient-dense foods that form the foundation of a healthy diet. Its potential market is therefore as large as the share of the national diet that consumers choose to move away from highly processed, commodity-derived foods.The central question is whether that alternative can compete when the comparison is made honestly and the policy distortions are removed. There is good reason to believe it can. The next question is how such a transition might occur.Demand, Not DecreeThe healthy-food movement could make a serious mistake by responding to one centralized system with another. Replacing the Butz model with a new set of mandates, subsidies, and politically favored industries would not solve the underlying problem. It would simply substitute one distortion for another.The flaw in the current system is not that the wrong people are making the decisions. The flaw is that decisions are being driven by political incentives rather than consumer demand and market signals. Subsidies for favored forms of agriculture distort prices just as surely as subsidies for commodity crops. They invite lobbying, regulatory capture, and the diversion of resources toward whatever qualifies for government support rather than what consumers actually want.The alternative is to restore the forces that the current system suppresses: consumer choice and entrepreneurial competition.The economist Israel Kirzner described markets as discovery processes. Entrepreneurs identify opportunities that planners cannot anticipate, test them in the marketplace, and succeed or fail according to whether consumers value what they provide. That process is already visible in regenerative agriculture, direct-to-consumer food sales, community-supported agriculture, and the growth of regional processing. None of these developments emerged from a national plan. They emerged because consumers increasingly want food that is healthier, more transparent, and more trustworthy.The role of policy should therefore be limited and structural. The objective is not to direct outcomes but to remove distortions that prevent consumers and producers from responding to one another.Four reforms stand out.First, stop subsidizing the products policymakers claim they want less of.Commodity programs that favor monocropped corn and soy sit at the center of the current system. Removing those subsidies does not require new mandates or new bureaucracies. It simply allows relative prices to reflect actual demand rather than government preference.Second, restore regulatory parity. Much of the apparent inefficiency of small-scale agriculture is the product of regulatory structures that impose high fixed compliance costs regardless of scale. Requirements that are manageable for a multinational processor can be prohibitive for a local producer. The result is an artificial advantage for large firms. Reforms such as the PRIME Act, which would allow states greater authority over local meat processing for local markets, are not subsidies or special favors. They remove barriers that disproportionately burden smaller operations.11Third, restore liability. Producers who contaminate groundwater, degrade neighboring property, or impose measurable environmental harm should bear the cost of those actions. This is not a new principle. It is one of the oldest functions of property law. While legislative reform is often slow and politically constrained, courts already possess the tools to adjudicate claims involving nuisance, trespass, and demonstrable harm. When damages are assigned to those responsible, costs that are currently shifted onto others begin to reappear where they belong: in the price of production.Fourth, improve transparency through private certification, labeling, and reputation. Food is a classic example of a product whose most important qualities are difficult for consumers to verify directly. Consumers cannot easily determine how food was produced or what its long-term health consequences may be. The answer is not a government definition of what constitutes “healthy” food. The answer is a competitive marketplace of certification systems, trusted brands, independent testing, and transparent labeling that allows consumers to make informed choices.Taken together, these reforms share a common characteristic. None requires Washington to design the food system it prefers. None requires new national mandates. None depends on government planners determining the correct diet, the correct farming method, or the correct price.They simply remove distortions and allow consumers, producers, and entrepreneurs to discover the answers for themselves.ConclusionWhat is at stake is not a preference for farmers’ markets or a nostalgic vision of rural life. It is the burden of chronic disease and the enormous public expense that follows from it. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and related metabolic disorders have become defining features of modern American health. No healthcare system can solve those problems if the foods most associated with them remain among the cheapest and most heavily promoted options available. The question of whether a different food economy can sustain itself is therefore also the question of whether the nation can stop paying for the consequences of the current one.A more decentralized food system is economically viable, but its ultimate scope should be determined by honest prices rather than government policy. Commodity agriculture may continue to play an important role, particularly for certain grains and storage crops. What is far less clear is how much of the current system would survive in its present form if subsidies were removed, environmental costs were borne by those who create them, and the health consequences of commodity-derived foods were fully accounted for. Under those conditions, decentralized and diversified agriculture would compete on a far more level field than it does today.Whether that opportunity can be fully realized depends on correcting distortions that result from policy rather than from market competition. Remove commodity subsidies, and industrial products lose an artificial advantage. Restore liability for damage to soil and water, and costs that are currently shifted to others return to the producer responsible for them. Achieve regulatory parity, and smaller producers can compete on their merits rather than on their ability to absorb compliance costs. Expand transparency and consumers gain the information needed to make informed choices.Under those conditions, decentralized agriculture requires no special protection, no new subsidy, and no central plan. It will expand only to the extent that consumers value what it produces and are willing to pay for it. That is exactly how a market is supposed to work.This is where Austrian-school economics and the healthy-food movement either align or diverge. The goal cannot be to achieve a government-defined percentage of local food production or to replace one agricultural plan with another. The goal is simpler and more durable: prices should reflect actual costs, and consumers should be free to choose among competing alternatives.If food prices reflected the full costs of production, including the costs now shifted to taxpayers, ecosystems, and future healthcare spending, the American food economy would look very different. The resulting system would not be healthier because policymakers designed it to be. It would be healthier because consumers, responding to honest prices and accurate information, chose it for themselves.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.ReferencesEarl L. Butz served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976. His exhortations to plant “fencerow to fencerow” and to “get big or get out” are widely associated with his tenure and with the production-maximizing policy turn it represented.Ludwig von Mises, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920); the argument is developed at length in Human Action (1949).Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945).On consumer sovereignty as the organizing principle of the market, see Mises, Human Action, on the market as a process directed by consumers through profit and loss.Friedrich A. Hayek, “The Pretence of Knowledge,” Nobel Memorial Prize lecture (1974); see also The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988).Murray N. Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” Cato Journal 2, no. 1 (1982).Mises, Human Action, on capital consumption: the liquidation of capital mistaken for income, which resembles prosperity for as long as the stock lasts.The sustained rise in American adult and childhood obesity and in type 2 diabetes prevalence dates from the late 1970s onward, the period following the commodity-policy shift and the rapid substitution of corn-derived sweeteners and refined, ultra-processed foods into the American diet. The relative causal weight of diet remains debated in particulars, but the association between the cheapened commodity diet and metabolic disease is extensively documented. Confirm specific prevalence and cost figures against current CDC and USDA sources before publication.Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews, “Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States,” Environmental Science & Technology 42, no. 10 (2008). The study attributes roughly 11 percent of household food greenhouse-gas emissions to transportation and about 4 percent to final delivery, with the method of production dominating the remainder. Verify the exact figures against the source before publication.Israel M. Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship (University of Chicago Press, 1973).The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (2011); on local meat processing, the proposed PRIME Act (Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption Act).“Homesteading for Health” is available for pre-order, and this includes the audio version!

Summary: An Austrian-school reckoning with the true cost of centralized food, and whether the decentralized alternative can actually pay for itself


Telegram Founder Pavel Durov and the Loss of Personal Freedom, Which is Destroying Western Civilization

The 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum was held in Oslo fromJune 1–3, 2026. It was organized by the Human Rights Foundation and carried the theme“Dismantling Dictatorship.”There, on June 2, 2026, Telegram Founder Pavel Durov spoke about how the loss of personal freedom is destroying Western Civilization.Please listen or watch:The title of Pavel Durov’s 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum talk was:“Communication Technology and the Struggle for Freedom”.It was delivered at the Oslo Freedom Forum on June 1–3, 2026, and focused on digital freedom, censorship, surveillance, and the increasing pressure that governments in both authoritarian and democratic countries are placing on online communications platforms. The Titanic analogy and his warnings about Europe’s gradual loss of civil liberties came from this address.Telegram founder Pavel Durovdrew a striking comparison between the passengers aboard the Titanic and modern Europeans watching their freedoms disappear in slow motion“The Titanic did not sink all at once, ” Durov observed. “Most passengers remained calm because they did not yet understand what was happening. Today, we find ourselves in a similar situation. Our ship has already hit the iceberg. We have already begun to sink, and many people have not even realized it. I am talking about the ship of our personal freedoms.”Durov went on to recount his own experiences dealing with government pressure, fraud, and political corruption across Russia, the European Union, and France. His broader point was that censorship and state control rarely arrive as a dramatic event. They advance incrementally, justified as necessary, reasonable, or temporary, until citizens wake up to discover that rights once taken for granted have quietly disappeared.He pointed in particular to the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, where authorities have dramatically expanded enforcement actions tied to online speech.Thousands of people are now investigated or arrested each year in Britain over social media posts. Across parts of Europe, expressing an unpopular political opinion online can result in fines, police visits, prosecution, or even imprisonment. In Germany, for example, citizens have faced legal penalties for speech that government officials deem politically unacceptable.The warning Durov is offering is not really about social media. It is about the tendency of free societies to assume that freedom is permanent. History suggests otherwise. Rights are rarely abolished in a single act. More often, they are eroded one exception, one emergency, and one “reasonable restriction” at a time, until the iceberg is visible to everyone, and by then it is too late to change course.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.Share

Summary: The 2026 Oslo Freedom Forum was held in Oslo from June 1–3, 2026. It was organized by the Human Rights Foundation and carried the theme “Dismantling Dictatorship.”


Alpha-Gal Syndrome: Beyond the Tick

The accepted story of alpha-gal syndrome (AGS) is simple.A tick bites a person. During feeding, the tick introduces alpha-gal, a carbohydrate found in most mammals but not humans, along with a complex mixture of salivary proteins that alter the immune response. The immune system becomes sensitized. Months or years later, the patient develops allergic reactions to beef, pork, lamb, dairy products, gelatin, medications, or other mammalian-derived substances.The story is elegant. It is also incomplete and best treated as one of many alternative hypotheses for the cause of the clinical syndrome known as alpha-gal syndrome.The first question is obvious.If ticks cause alpha-gal syndrome, why did the disease only appear or be recognized in the late 2000s?The lone star tick did not suddenly appear in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, or the southeastern United States. It has occupied those regions for centuries. Millions of Americans were bitten by lone star ticks long before anyone had heard the term “alpha-gal syndrome.”If the disease truly emerged only recently, then people assume that something changed - that this is anewdisease.But what if the disease did not emerge recently at all?What if medicine simply learned how to recognize it?Science and medicine have a long history of sampling and detection bias.  When new testing capabilities are developed and used to detect something new, this often leads to a pattern of drawing cause-and-effect conclusions based on correlation.Before alpha-gal testing became available, patients presenting with delayed allergic reactions were frequently diagnosed with chronic hives, idiopathic anaphylaxis, food allergies of unknown origin, irritable bowel syndrome, mast cell disorders, or anxiety. Unlike classic food allergies, alpha-gal reactions often occur three to eight hours after exposure. A patient who eats a steak at dinner and awakens covered in hives at two in the morning is unlikely to connect the two events. Neither is their physician.How many of those patients would meet today’s diagnostic criteria?No one knows.That uncertainty alone should make us cautious about interpreting every increase in reported cases as evidence of a rapidly growing epidemic. Increased testing and increased awareness have a remarkable ability to create the appearance of one.The Lack of Quality ResearchPerhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the entire alpha-gal story is how little effort has been devoted to answering that question.The NIH and CDC have invested considerable effort into documenting current cases, mapping tick distributions, and characterizing the syndrome. Yet there has been remarkably little focus on retrospective investigation. Where are the large studies examining archived blood samples collected in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s? Where are the efforts to determine whether alpha-gal antibodies were already common decades before the syndrome was formally recognized?Those studies are technically feasible. Blood repositories exist. Military serum banks exist. Academic biobanks exist. A systematic retrospective analysis could help answer one of the most important questions in the field: Are we witnessing the emergence of a new disease, or the recognition of an old one?The distinction matters. If alpha-gal sensitization was already widespread forty years ago, then much of the apparent epidemic may reflect improved recognition and testing. If historical samples reveal substantially lower rates, then researchers must explain what changed. Either outcome would significantly advance our understanding. The fact that this question remains largely unanswered is itself noteworthy.Yet despite its importance, the question remains surprisingly unexplored.Why?A positive alpha-gal blood test is not the same thing as alpha-gal syndrome.Studies from parts of the southeastern United States have found surprisingly high rates of alpha-gal antibodies in the general population. Yet only a fraction of those individuals develop clinically significant disease (1).This raises an uncomfortable question.If tick bites are the entire explanation, why do so many individuals carry antibodies without symptoms?The answer may be that the tick is only the beginning of the story.Even the question of where alpha-gal in the tick originates remains less settled than many assume. The prevailing theory is that ticks acquire alpha-gal during previous blood meals from mammals such as deer and then transfer it to humans during subsequent feeding. The hypothesis that a tick must first feed on another mammal, detach, and then bite a human in order to transfer mammalian α-gal has become increasingly difficult to support.Current evidence suggests that this sequence isnot required, and there is little peer-reviewed behavioral literature demonstrating that interrupted host-switching is common enough to explain AGS.  More recently, researchers have identified alpha-gal-containing structures in tick saliva under circumstances that are not fully explained by prior mammalian feeding alone. Some investigators have proposed that ticks may modify, concentrate, or even synthesize alpha-gal-containing molecules themselves. Others have suggested a role for the tick microbiome. The science is far from settled.  But what is settled is that ticks, including the notorious Lone Star tick, have been biting humans for as long as both have cohabitated the same environments.That uncertainty matters because it shifts the discussion from a simple chain of events to a much larger biological question. We know current evidence indicates that ticks appear to be involved. We know alpha-gal is involved. There may be other sources of human alpha-gal exposure, including injected pharmaceuticals. What remains surprisingly unclear is exactly how the tick may acquire, process, and deliver the molecule that initiates the immune response.Modern medicine has a habit of first discovering a signal, then hypothesizing a mechanism, and then treating that mechanism as the complete explanation. Alpha-gal syndrome may be another example.Another factor that receives surprisingly little attention is deer ecology.The lone star tick did not expand its range in a vacuum. Over the last century, white-tailed deer populations have exploded across much of the United States. Reforestation of former farmland, suburban development, reduced predator pressure, and changing hunting patterns have created ideal conditions for both deer and ticks.Adult lone star ticks depend heavily on deer as hosts. More deer means more ticks. More ticks mean more opportunities for human exposure.One does not need a bioweapon, a laboratory accident, or a novel environmental toxin to explain much of the observed increase in alpha-gal syndrome. Basic ecology may explain a substantial portion of the phenomenon.Yet even here, the story is more complicated than commonly presented. While the lone star tick remains the primary tick associated with alpha-gal syndrome in the United States, alpha-gal sensitization has also been linked to other tick species in Europe, Australia, Asia, and elsewhere, including Ixodes ricinus and Ixodes holocyclus (2). The emerging picture suggests that alpha-gal syndrome may not be a disease of a single tick species, but rather a broader biological phenomenon involving multiple tick species that can induce similar immune responses.One alternative explanation that has received surprisingly little attention is the role of mammalian-derived pharmaceuticals and injectable products.  The lack of investigation and analysis of this alternative hypothesis may reflect cognitive or incentive/funding biases.Within the National Institutes of Health, responsibility for research on alpha-gal syndrome spans multiple programs at theNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). TheDivision of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation (DAIT)supports studies of IgE-mediated allergy, immune tolerance, mast cell biology, and the mechanisms underlying allergic sensitization, making it the principal home for research on the immunopathogenesis of alpha-gal syndrome.Complementing this effort, theDivision of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID)and itsVector Biology Programsupport investigations into tick physiology, salivary gland biology, host-seeking and feeding behavior, vector-host interactions, and tick-borne diseases, including research that could elucidate the origin and transmission of alpha-gal-containing molecules.NIAID's intramuralRocky Mountain Laboratoriesfurther contribute internationally recognized expertise in tick biology and vector-host interactions. Collectively, these programs encompass the full scientific spectrum required to investigate alpha-gal syndrome, from the molecular and immunologic mechanisms of IgE sensitization to the behavioral ecology, glycobiology, and salivary biology of ticks that may initiate the disease.If there is a sincere desire to get to the true cause and effect (and hopefully, effective treatment) of this syndrome, these federal agencies and programs (intramural and extramural) are in the strongest position to promote more rigorous scientific and medical research.BiologicsAlpha-gal is not encountered only through food. It appears in biologic drugs, gelatin-containing products, certain vaccines, surgical implants, porcine-derived medications, heart valves, plasma products, and numerous medical materials (3).Ironically, alpha-gal syndrome was not discovered because people reacted to steak.It was discovered because cancer patients in the southeastern United States experienced severe reactions to cetuximab, a monoclonal antibody. Investigation of those reactions ultimately led researchers to alpha-gal and then to the lone star tick (4).An injectable product helped reveal the syndrome in the first place, because such products also contain Alpha-gal.Yet the possibility that such drugs or repeated pharmaceutical exposures may influence disease severity, persistence, or progression receives relatively little discussion.The route of exposure matters.An antigen introduced through the bloodstream may not be processed by the immune system in the same way as an antigen encountered through the digestive tract.The same question applies to intestinal permeability.Alpha-gal is repeatedly encountered through food. For symptoms to occur, alpha-gal-containing molecules must cross the intestinal barrier and enter circulation. Yet remarkably little attention has been paid to whether gut barrier integrity influences disease expression.Could increased intestinal permeability contribute to symptom severity?Could dysbiosis, chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, metabolic disease, alcohol consumption, medications, or ultra-processed diets alter the threshold at which sensitization becomes clinical disease?The possibility is biologically plausible.The gut may prove to be as or more important as the tick.And there is another issue that receives little discussion.The attribution problem: diagnostic false positives.A positive alpha-gal test can create a powerful explanatory framework. Once a diagnosis exists, every episode of fatigue, bloating, abdominal discomfort, headache, rash, or gastrointestinal upset risks being attributed to alpha-gal.Some of those symptoms undoubtedly are.Others may not be.Histamine intolerance, mast cell disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, medication reactions, foodborne illness, metabolic dysfunction, and countless other conditions can produce overlapping symptoms.The distinction matters because attribution is not diagnosis.There is also the problem of expectation.Media coverage of alpha-gal syndrome has expanded dramatically. Patients learn that a tick bite may leave them allergic to red meat for life. They discover that severe reactions are possible. They test positive for antibodies.At that point, every hamburger becomes a potential threat.The nocebo effect is well established throughout medicine. Expectations can amplify symptoms, alter symptom perception, and influence behavior. This does not mean symptoms are imaginary, although sometimes they are. It means that biology and psychology are often more intertwined than simplistic narratives allow.The existence of alpha-gal syndrome is not in question.The interpretation of every symptom attributed to alpha-gal remains open to debate.One final claim deserves mention because it occasionally surfaces in alternative media.Some have suggested that alpha-gal syndrome was deliberately released or engineered as a bioweapon.The evidence supporting that claim is exceedingly weak.More importantly, it is unnecessary.The historical presence of ticks, expanding deer populations, increased human exposure, improved diagnostic testing, and greater physician awareness provide entirely adequate explanations for the observed increase in diagnosed cases.The more plausible mystery is not why alpha-gal suddenly appeared.The more plausible mystery is whether it was present all along.The strongest evidence supports a role for ticks in alpha-gal syndrome.But acknowledging that fact should not end the scientific discussion.Why do some sensitized individuals remain asymptomatic?Why do others become severely ill?What role do pharmaceuticals, biologics, gut permeability, microbiome composition, repeated tick bites, genetics, and environmental exposures play?How much of the apparent increase reflects a true rise in disease, and how much reflects increased recognition?The tick may be necessary.Whether it is sufficient remains very much an open question.Science advances by asking better questions, not by declaring difficult questions settled.In Part II, I will move from causes to solutions. We will examine what is currently known about treatment, whether desensitization strategies may be possible, emerging therapeutic approaches under development, and practical methods for reducing tick exposure. That discussion will include both personal protective measures and land-management strategies that can dramatically reduce tick populations around homes, farms, and rural properties.Understanding the disease is only half the challenge. The other half is learning how to live with it, prevent it, and eventually overcome it.JGM/RWMThe tick may not be the whole story. If you believe important scientific questions deserve more scrutiny and less certainty, please share this essay with others.ShareMost outlets report the conclusion. We spend our time examining the assumptions behind it. If you value independent analysis that goes beyond press releases and talking points, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting our work.References(1) Wilson JM, Schuyler AJ, Workman L, et al. Population studies of alpha-gal sensitization and clinical disease.(2) Commins SP. Alpha-gal syndrome across continents: tick species and sensitization patterns.(3) Platts-Mills TAE, Commins SP. Emerging antigens involved in allergic responses.Current Opinion in Immunology. 2021.(4) Chung CH, Mirakhur B, Chan E, et al. Cetuximab-induced anaphylaxis and IgE specific for galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose.New England Journal of Medicine. 2008;358:1109-1117.Kennedy JL, Stallings AP, Platts-Mills TAE, et al. Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose and delayed allergic reactions to mammalian meat.Current Allergy and Asthma Reports. 2013.Wilson JM, Schuyler AJ, Workman L, et al. Investigation into the alpha-gal syndrome and associated cofactors.Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2019.


Manufactured Consensus

On her way out the door, Tulsi Gabbard declassified the record of how Anthony Fauci helped build the very intelligence that cleared him. The comprehensive read.Executive summaryThe controversy can be summarized in a single line: Fauci funded the Wuhan research, then helped steer the intelligence that absolved it. What the declassified documents add is the mechanism. They show a man who occupied multiple positions of authority simultaneously, who placed trusted associates inside the intelligence review process, and who then helped present the resulting conclusions to the public as independent scientific judgment.  They show sworn testimony that contradicts the record, in fact documenting that Fauci lied under oath. And they show what was done to the analysts who refused to go along.This is not a new intelligence assessment. It is something more useful, which is the raw material. In her final days as Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard declassified the correspondence, the briefing readouts, and the whistleblower complaints that the cover-up was built to keep buried (1). She did it at the close of the week, on her way out of office, knowing that the man arriving to replace her has been asked to shrink the agency rather than to keep opening its files (2).The central issue is no longer whether credible analysts raised concerns about a laboratory origin. They did. What these documents address is something different. They raise serious questions about whether the intelligence process itself was influenced by officials with a direct stake and a conflict of interest in the conclusions being reached.One fact stands out from these documents, and it has received remarkably little attention. Five weeks before this release, a CIA whistleblower testified before Congress under oath that a cover-up had occurred and described how it operated. The documents released by Gabbard are consistent with that testimony and provide independent support for his account.A Friday, on the way out the doorTiming matters. Washington has long used Friday afternoons to release information it hopes will disappear into the weekend news cycle. Gabbard used the same timing for the opposite purpose. In the final days of her tenure, she released documents that powerful people had spent years trying to keep out of public view.She is leaving office at the end of the month, and her successor arrives with instructions to shrink the agency rather than continue opening its files. That makes the timing more significant, not less. A declassification effort of this scale does not simply drift to completion. Someone has to push it through.The COVID documents were not a one-off release. They were the culmination of a year-long effort to declassify records across the intelligence community. Only days earlier, Gabbard’s office released information concerning more than one hundred federally funded laboratories operating overseas, including facilities working with dangerous pathogens.Taken together, the releases point to the same underlying problem: a vast biological research enterprise funded with American tax dollars, shielded by American institutions, and largely hidden from the public that pays for it. Some of these disclosures were required by law. The difference is that Gabbard appears to have treated those requirements as a starting point rather than a limit.The entanglementThe core issue is the conflict of interest.Before and during the pandemic, Anthony Fauci directed NIAID. NIAID funding reached the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance to support coronavirus research involving bats. When SARS-CoV-2 emerged, and the intelligence community began examining the virus’s origins, Fauci was not a bystander. He was one of the government’s most influential scientific advisers. At the same time, he was the public face of the COVID response, repeatedly dismissing the lab-leak hypothesis as implausible and characterizing many of its proponents as conspiracy theorists.Those roles should never have been combined.The official whose agency helped fund the research was also advising the government as it examined whether that research might have contributed to the pandemic. Simultaneously, he was reassuring the public that there was little reason to suspect a laboratory accident.That is not a question of motive. It is a question of structure. Systems designed to manage conflicts of interest are built on a simple principle: no individual should be placed in a position to influence the investigation of matters in which they have a direct professional, institutional, or reputational stake. Yet that is precisely what happened here. The conflict was not avoided. It was embedded in the process from the beginning.How the consensus was manufacturedFauci did not need to dictate the outcome. He only needed direct influence and control over who advised the investigators and which evidence they were allowed to see and consider most persuasive.The documents show Fauci providing the intelligence community with names of scientists to consult, many of whom had received funding through NIAID. They also show intelligence officials accepting those recommendations. One senior official explained the reasoning in straightforward terms, describing Fauci as the person who “knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are” (3).The consequence is obvious. Fauci’s experts helped inform the assessment. That assessment was then presented to the public as the independent judgment of the intelligence community and cited as evidence against a laboratory origin.Gabbard’s office describes this as a self-serving circular reporting loop. The description fits. The same network of experts helped shape the analysis, and the resulting analysis was then invoked as independent confirmation of the experts’ conclusions.The same pattern appears in the scientific literature. In February 2020, Fauci participated in the now-famous teleconference with a group of virologists who, weeks later, published “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” in Nature Medicine (4). The paper became the most influential scientific argument for a natural origin and was repeatedly cited by government officials, journalists, and social media companies as authoritative evidence against a laboratory accident. To this day, despite multiple scientists and biosafety advocates calling for its retraction, arguing that private communications released after publication reveal doubts and concerns that were absent from the paper's confident dismissal of a laboratory origin,Nature Medicinehas declined those requests.Yet private communications obtained through public-records requests and congressional investigations tell a more nefarious story. Several of the authors expressed concerns to one another and to Fauci that aspects of the virus “(potentially) look engineered,” even as they worked toward a public statement dismissing that possibility (5).The paper went on to play a central role in the origins debate. Fauci promoted it as authoritative. Intelligence officials cited it. Journalists relied on it. Years later, it remains part of the documentary record released as part of this declassification.One detail from the newly released files is particularly revealing. During a June 2021 briefing with intelligence analysts, Fauci did not simply answer questions. He argued for evidence that he believed supported a natural origin while also pressing analysts about why Chinese authorities had been permitted to sanitize the Wuhan market before investigators could properly examine it. He was not merely receiving information. He was participating in the discussion about which evidence should carry the most weight.The misrepresentation, under oathThere is another problem for Fauci.During his 2024 testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci was asked whether he had spoken with the FBI, CIA, DIA, or other intelligence agencies regarding viral research and COVID origins. After several exchanges, he answered, “not to my knowledge about COVID (1).”The documents released by Gabbard include records of those interactions. They are dated. One of them describes a June 2021 briefing with Fauci concerning the origins of SARS-CoV-2. So his testimony was untrue.The issue is not what Fauci may have intended by the phrase “not to my knowledge.” The issue is that the declassified record documents conversations that he appeared to deny having had. The briefing records exist. The conversations happened. The dates are established. The meetings took place.The cost of dissentThe most troubling material in the release may be about what happened to the analysts who reached conclusions that conflicted with the preferred narrative.According to whistleblower testimony that Gabbard has referred to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, a contractor was terminated within days of raising concerns.Analysts who supported a laboratory-origin assessment were reminded that promotions and career advancement ultimately depend on leadership. In some cases, the anonymity normally afforded to whistleblowers was reportedly compromised when managers and attorneys were included in meetings that were supposed to remain confidential (1).The significance of these allegations becomes clearer when viewed alongside the intelligence assessments themselves. The intelligence community never reached a consensus. When the findings were eventually released, four agencies and the National Intelligence Council favored a natural-origin hypothesis with low confidence, while another intelligence element assessed a laboratory-associated incident with moderate confidence (6). By 2023, both the FBI and the Department of Energy had concluded that a laboratory origin was the most likely explanation (7). By early 2025, the CIA had reached the same judgment (8), as had a congressional investigation that spent two years reviewing the evidence.This is what makes the whistleblower allegations so consequential. The analysts whose views were reportedly marginalized were not advancing a fringe theory. They advanced a conclusion that was ultimately adopted by multiple intelligence agencies and Congress, and supported by a growing body of evidence. The dispute was never between serious analysis and conspiracy theory. It was between competing assessments, one of which became increasingly difficult to dismiss, even as it was suppressed by the likes of Fauci and his team.The witness who got there firstTulsi Gabbard’s ONDI release did not emerge in a vacuum.Five weeks earlier, on May 13, 2026, James Erdman III, a decorated CIA officer who led ODNI’s investigation into COVID-19 origins, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee under subpoena and against the wishes of his own agency (9). He described a process in which Fauci helped shape which scientific experts intelligence analysts were permitted to consult, and alleged that analysts favoring a laboratory-origin assessment faced institutional resistance.The significance of Erdman’s testimony is that the newly declassified documents describe many of the same events.Erdman pointed to a June 4, 2021, interagency meeting in which Fauci provided guidance regarding scientific outreach. He described an internal exchange in which a senior DNI official questioned whether Fauci should be involved in steering the inquiry, only to be overruled by the officer leading the ninety-day review, who treated Fauci as a subject-matter expert (10). He also testified that analysts who supported a laboratory-origin assessment had their conclusions sidelined and that a contractor was terminated shortly after cooperating with investigators (11).The documents released by Gabbard contain records of those same events. The June 2021 meeting appears in the files. So does the correspondence concerning Fauci’s role. The contractor allegations are reflected in whistleblower complaints included in the release.The importance of this is straightforward. Erdman described these events under oath weeks before the documents became public. The documentary record now supports key elements of his account.The CIA did not welcome his testimony. Agency officials criticized the hearing and argued that Erdman had been compelled to appear without adequate notice (11). Yet the agency now assesses a laboratory-associated origin as the most likely explanation for the pandemic, a position much closer to Erdman’s conclusions than to the views that dominated the early years of the debate.One part of Erdman’s testimony remains separate from the Gabbard release. He alleged that CIA officials obstructed declassification efforts, withheld records, retaliated against cooperating personnel, and monitored communications involving investigators and whistleblowers. Those allegations are serious, but they are not addressed by the documents released this week. For now, they rest on Erdman’s sworn testimony alone.That distinction matters. The declassified record corroborates important parts of Erdman’s account. It does not yet establish all of it. But if future evidence supports those additional allegations, the story becomes much larger than Fauci or the origins debate. It becomes a question of whether elements of the intelligence apparatus obstructed an investigation into one of the most consequential events of the modern era.ConclusionThe files establish how the origins investigation was conducted. They show that officials with a direct institutional and personal stake in the outcome were involved in shaping the process, influencing the experts consulted, and participating in the evaluation of the evidence. They also document allegations that analysts and whistleblowers who challenged the preferred narrative faced professional consequences.That is the significance of this release. The issue is no longer simply whether the virus emerged from a laboratory or through natural spillover. The issue is whether the institutions charged with finding the answer allowed conflicts of interest to influence the search for it.The documents also lend substantial support to the testimony of James Erdman III, who described many of these events under oath weeks before the records became public. The testimony came first. The documents followed.This essay is the second half of our two-part coverage and accompanies thepress release published earlier today(12). The primary source material is provided below.Read it for yourself. After years of speculation, accusation, and denial, the public can finally examine a significant portion of the record directly.RWM / JGMThe original documents do not read themselves. If you want more deep dives into the records behind the stories shaping public policy, science, and government, please support our work by subscribing.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareReferences1. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID: New Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress.” News Release No. 11-26, June 18, 2026.odni.gov.2. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “COVID-19 Release” (DNI Tulsi Gabbard, June 18, 2026):Document Index,Part 1,Part 2,Part 3, andPart 4.3. Email chain, “RE: Covid origins - Dr. Fauci recommendations,” July 13-14, 2021, in ODNI COVID-19 Release,Part 1.4. Andersen, Kristian G., Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry. “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”Nature Medicine26, no. 4 (2020): 450–452.doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9.5. U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward. Final report, December 2024.oversight.house.gov. (Authors’ private “Proximal Origin” communications were released through this investigation and prior public-records requests.)6. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Intelligence Council. “Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins.” October 29, 2021.dni.gov.7. “US Intelligence Agency Releases Declassified Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 Lab Leak Assessments.” CIDRAP, University of Minnesota, June 26, 2023.cidrap.umn.edu.8. “CIA Says COVID More Likely to Have Leaked from Lab.” Agence France-Presse, January 26, 2025.via Malay Mail.9. U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Hearing on the Multi-Agency Cover-Up of COVID-19 and Gain-of-Function Research (testimony of James Erdman III), May 13, 2026.hsgac.senate.gov.10. “CIA Whistleblower Alleges COVID Lab-Leak Findings Were Suppressed.” U.S. Right to Know, 2026.usrtk.org.11. Britschgi, Christian. “Whistleblower Tells Congress the CIA Illegally Spied on White House Officials Investigating COVID Origins.” Reason, May 13, 2026.reason.com.12. Malone, Robert W. “DNI Press Release: Never-Before-Seen Communications and Documents Exposing How Dr. Fauci and the Deep State Lied.” Malone News, June 19, 2026.malone.news.A note on scope.This assessment rests on a direct reading of Part 1 of the release and the full document index, with Parts 2 through 4 reviewed at the index level, and on the prior public products referenced above. Claude was used to extract information out of the ODNI primary documents. Characterizations attributed to the Director’s office are hers, and allegations drawn from Mr. Erdman’s testimony are his; the underlying documents are linked so that readers can weigh them for themselves.

Summary: Part II: An Analysis of the New Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress


Friday Funnies: All Bob's Money

When this edition of the Polish magazine "wSieci" came out in 2016, it was called out as 'dangerous speech by the Far Right.' 10 years later, this is literally the status quo in western nations across the globe.The only difference between a conspiracy theory and a cold hard fact is time.-Sandra LoftisOK- The best REMY video of all time:Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareGet TicketsJoin the ConversationTrue national security extends far beyond military strength or foreign threats; it demands safeguarding the foundational pillars of a free society.Inviting everyday Americans into a conversation with thought-leaders about how to minimize internal threats to our country and protect our freedom for another 250 years and beyond.Feds For Freedom is pleased to invite YOU to our upcoming one-day summit,National Security Beyond the Headlines. At this summit we will discuss chronically overlooked national security concerns.True national security extends far beyond military strength or foreign threats; it demands safeguarding the foundational pillars of a free society.Health freedomis a national security risk because compromised immune systems—whether from questionable vaccines or widespread exposure to toxins like glyphosate in our food supply—undermine the physical vitality of soldiers, workers, and future generations, turning everyday health into a vulnerability that weakens national readiness and productivity.Chemical-dependentfood and farming practicesthat sacrifice soil health and nutrient density erode America’s agricultural independence, inviting food shortages, chronic disease epidemics, and vulnerability to foreign economic blackmail and domestic sabotage.A corruptededucational systemthat has strayed from moral principles, produces citizens ill-equipped for critical thinking or civic responsibility, and creates a population susceptible to manipulation and unable to sustain democratic institutions.Censorship and an expansive surveillance statestifle open discourse, erode trust in governing institutions, and concentrate power in ways that prevent the self-correction essential to any enduring republic.Finally, the profoundlack of accountabilityin federal institutions breeds corruption and repeat policy failures that in the end harm the American citizenry and erode public trust.Addressing these interconnected issues is pivotal to America’s longevity because they represent internal threats that, left unchecked, will erode the human capital, economic sovereignty, cultural cohesion, and constitutional order required for the nation to thrive for the next 250 years.National Security Beyond the Headlinesis a solution-oriented summit that will bring together experts to discuss these concerns in panel-format.Confirmed speakers include:Joe Kent,former Director of the National Counterterrorism CenterMike Benz,Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom OnlineDennis Kucinich,American Politician & MAHA AdvocateSteve Baker,Investigative JournalistJeffrey Tucker,Author & President of the Brownstone InstituteMeryl Nass,Physician Researcher & AuthorShane Stevens,former Associate Director of Health Care and Insurance at Office of Personnel ManagementDr. Robert Malone,Physician, Scientist, Author, BioethicistIvan Raiklin,Constitutional Attorney & Retired Green BeretJennifer Stevens,Educational Advocate & Leader in Educational ReformSteve Jarvis,Farmer & Regenerative Farm AdvocateChris Martenson, Economic Researcher & Founder of Peak ProsperityAdditional speakers/panelists will be announced as they are confirmed.Join the ConversationWe will be asking questions throughout the summit such as:Is glyphosate the answer to national security, or is it the actual risk?Are vaccines protecting our soldiers and citizens...or harming them?Does heightened government surveillance protect Americans...or does it pose the ultimate risk?Is the lack of accountability in the US government in fact the greatest threat to America itself?At the conclusion of the event, Feds For Freedom will identify the most promising solutions and present them to senior U.S. leaders.Date and Time:1 July 2026, 8am-5pmGet TicketsLocation:The Willard Hotel, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.Cost:$50/person. Lunch is included.No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please contactevents@fedsforfreedom.org.For those who understand the urgent need to curb government overreach and would like to substantially donate to Feds For Freedom, please contact Stephanie Weidle,stephanie@fedsforfreedom.org.

Summary: I will give to you


DNI: Press Release: Never-before-seen Communications and Documents Exposing How Dr. Fauci and the Deep State Lied

“Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I’m releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, worked with politicized elements within the Intelligence Community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus’ lab-leak origins, and lied to Congress while under oath in 2024. It’s time you know the truth.”Here is her video, release on her last day as Director of DNI. This is followed by the DNI press release and then links to the documents.ODNI PRESS RELEASE:Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVIDNew Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to CongressWASHINGTON D.C.— Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.You can view the communications and documentsHERE.“The COVID-19 pandemic caused tremendous hardship and pain for millions of our fellow Americans and for countless people around the world. After years of lies, censorship, and cover ups, the American people deserve transparency, truth, and accountability,” DNI Gabbard said. “The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected President by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe. It’s time the American people learn the real story.”The materials released today are a result of DNI Gabbard’s yearlong declassification review in support of President Trump’s maximum transparency mandate. During this process, ODNI officials gathered testimony from multiple IC whistleblowers who reported retaliation for challenging the IC’s manipulation of intelligence on the virus’ origins. This unveiled a clear pattern of suppressing dissent, silencing critics, and burying evidence that undermined IC integrity and disserved the American people.Fauci’s close IC relationships enabled him to assume three key roles during the pandemic that shielded him from scrutiny as he wielded outsized influence.Fauci funded risky coronavirus research linked to big pharma and the pursuit of “universal vaccines” worth trillions of dollars.Fauci was the behind-the-scenes advisor who, with his hand-picked experts, pushed the IC to endorse a natural, animal origin to hide his dangerous research.Fauci became the nation’s pandemic “pundit” and publicly pushed lies, disinformation, and censorship.Fauci’s Relationship With The Intelligence Community Drove Intelligence & Public NarrativesThroughout the pandemic, Fauci and politicized leaders within the IC created a self-serving circular reporting loop. He provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists to advise the IC. This input shaped official intelligence assessments, which were then publicly cited as scientific consensus to refute the lab-leak theory.According to hundreds of reviewed emails, the IC almost always incorporated his recommendations. Fauci promoted a fraudulent paper, whose publication he helped prompt, as legitimate information for Intelligence Community consideration. Senior analysts praised Fauci not as a “policymaker,” but as an unbiased guide to “the real coronavirus experts”—while ignoring experts who might dissent from Fauci’s narratives.Fauci Lied to CongressThe correspondence released today directly contradicts Fauci’s 2024 testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In that hearing, while under oath, Fauci was repeatedly asked whether he spoke to “FBI, CIA, DIA or any U.S. intelligence agency concerning viral research” before, during, or after the pandemic. Fauci repeatedly dodged the questions, before falsely stating, “not to my knowledge about COVID.”Retaliation Against Truth-SeekersTestimony from multiple whistleblowers reveals intelligence analysts who challenged Fauci’s COVID-origin conclusions faced threat of retaliation, were marginalized, and often suffered career setbacks. This silenced dissent and fostered a culture where truth was sacrificed to conformity and credible evidence was buried.The following are examples from whistleblower accounts that Director Gabbard has referred to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General.A contractor was terminated just days after coming forward to ODNI as a whistleblower.Managers reminded analysts who advocated for the lab-leak hypothesis that leadership would determine which analysts would be promoted.The message was clear: disagreement with the manipulated finding would derail careers.Senior leaders allegedly set up roadblocks for whistleblowers, removing anonymity from the complaint process by insisting managers or attorneys be present at ODNI meetings, creating an atmosphere of intimidation.Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.The materials released today are a result of DNI Gabbard’s yearlong declassification review in support of President Trump’s maximum transparency mandate.COVID-19 Release IndexCOVID-19 Release Part 1COVID-19 Release Part 2COVID-19 Release Part 3COVID-19 Release Part 4<JGM>: A more comprehensive analysis of these documents will follow.In the meantime, Friday Funnies will be published shortly!Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.Share

Summary: Fauci Funded the Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID and the cover-up


Sunday Strip: Merlin and the Golden Boot

The high school science Fair - what could go wrong?I tried my hardest to find World Cup Series memes.Honestly, the ones I found were completely unintelligible or truly… not funny. But Crypto always seems to be involved… I did come to the conclusion that Crypto must be advertising big time -maybe it explains why there aren’t any funny memes about the series?This is the best I could do…BTW- for those of you, like me, living under a sock when it comes to Football…errr… Soccer.  Here is some critical information so that you don’t look totally stuupid at the water cooler during coffee break:The FIFA World Cup is being played in North America right now (June–July 2026), and the United States is one of the three host nations alongside Canada and Mexico. It is the first World Cup ever hosted by three countries and the first expanded tournament with 48 teams.The tournament runs from June 11 through July 19, 2026. Most matches are being played in the United States, with games hosted in cities including Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle.The U.S. men’s team has already won its first two group-stage matches and advanced to the knockout round.OK - I did find one meme that was almost funny. It turns out that Turkiye got knocked out first.  Without making a single goal.And Turkish fans are not amused.  But someone is…The World Cup has turned America into a discovery channel for the rest of the world.And they are not handling it well.In the best possible way.Here is what they are discovering:Free public restrooms. Europeans pay every time.Free water at every restaurant. Just appears.Free refills. Coffee. Sodas. Iced tea. Unlimited.Free chips and salsa before you even order.Free warm bread with dinner.Ice in drinks like civilized people.Air conditioning everywhere. Not a moral debate. A fact.Parking lots attached to the actual place you are going.Drive throughs where the food comes to the car while you sit in it.Ranch dressing by the gallon.Tex-Mex that cannot be explained only experienced.Dental care that actually works.Buccee’s. There are no words for Buccee’s.Then they found the grocery stores.Five of them within one mile.Each one the size of an aircraft hangar.Burgers. Steaks. Brisket. Ribs. Pulled pork. Lamb. Veal. Every cut of every animal ever domesticated by human civilization available in one refrigerated aisle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday.The Germans stood in the meat section for forty five minutes.In silence.Processing.They finally understand why we do not have trains.We have roads wide enough for the cars we actually drive.Parking lots the size of small European countries.Airports in every city worth visiting.Why would we need trains?The Germans are taking ranch home by the bottle.The Dutch found queso and briefly lost the ability to speak.The Japanese are photographing HEB like it is the Louvre.The Czechs are weeping in West, Texas.Welcome to America!The greatest country on earth.-Emanuel QuiñonesThen came Merlin - and I had to figure this out, cause I just didn’t “get” the memes…It turns out that a domesticated and very loved duck named Merlin somehow accomplished what entire marketing departments, FIFA sponsors, and government tourism boards, who spent millions and yet never achieved, Merlin became the face and the joy of the 2026 World Cup in the Americas.Videos of a little duck named Merlin waddling through Mexico City’s celebrations in a tiny Mexican national team jersey and duck-sized socks went viral almost overnight. Fans embraced him as Mexico’s unofficial World Cup mascot, proving once again that the fastest way to win the internet is to make it all about a cute little animal.It works for me, could care less about soccer, but a sweet, little duck? That’s a different story!Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareJGM

Summary: Football comes to the N. America (just don't call it that)...