Three Doctrines, One Objective

Dr. Robert W. MaloneThe effort to dismantle the administrative state is often described as a single project. It is not. It rests on three distinct legal doctrines, each operating in a different way. Together, they are reshaping the relationship between federal agencies, Congress, the courts, and the presidency.In the span of a year, three major federal actions illustrated the shift.The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it never possessed the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, despite exercising that power since 2009.¹The Supreme Court blocked a federal vaccine mandate that would have applied to much of the American workforce.¹¹A presidential order directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to reduce the childhood vaccine schedule.¹⁴Supporters of all three actions used similar language. Restore accountability. Rein in the administrative state. End government by unelected experts.The concern is legitimate. Over the last century, the federal government developed a vast administrative apparatus that the Constitution never explicitly describes and voters never directly approved. Agencies increasingly write rules, enforce those rules, and adjudicate disputes arising from them. In practice, many exercise powers that look legislative, executive, and judicial at the same time.For those influenced by the tradition of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, the criticism is straightforward. Bureaucracies cannot possess the knowledge they claim to command, and they operate without the feedback mechanisms that discipline markets, businesses, and elected officials.²³ ²⁵But the legal revolution now underway is more complicated than many of its supporters realize.The same doctrines being used to limit agency power can also strengthen presidential power. The same legal theories that constrain federal regulators can expand executive control over the bureaucracy. And one of the most important of these doctrines does not limit presidents at all. It empowers them.To understand what is happening, it is necessary to separate three very different ideas that are often treated as one.The Major Questions DoctrineThe major questions doctrine is the most frequently discussed of the three doctrines and, in many ways, the most consequential.Its core principle is simple. When a federal agency claims the authority to decide an issue of major economic or political significance, courts will not assume Congress intended to grant that power. The agency must point to clear statutory language showing that Congress actually authorized it. Broad mandates, vague language, and decades-old statutes are not enough. If the power is significant, the authorization must be explicit.⁶The Supreme Court’s formulation is memorable because it reflects common sense. Congress does not hide elephants in mouseholes. Lawmakers do not bury the authority to reshape entire industries, rewrite national policy, or regulate major sectors of the economy inside a few ambiguous words. If Congress intended to grant that authority, it should have said so clearly.The doctrine did not emerge overnight. Its foundation can be traced to FDA v. Brown & Williamson in 2000, when the Court held that the Food and Drug Administration could not suddenly claim authority to regulate cigarettes as drugs or medical devices. For decades, the FDA itself had denied possessing that power, while Congress repeatedly enacted tobacco legislation without granting it. The Court concluded that an agency cannot discover sweeping authority in a statute that neither Congress nor the agency had previously understood to confer it.³The doctrine became a central feature of administrative law in 2022 with West Virginia v. EPA. There, the Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency plan that would have used an obscure provision of the Clean Air Act to reshape electricity generation across the United States.⁴Its reach expanded further in 2024 when the Court decided Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and overturned Chevron deference, the forty-year rule requiring judges to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute.⁵ After Loper Bright, ambiguity no longer works in the agency’s favor. Agencies must persuade courts that Congress actually granted the authority they claim.The Court has never provided a precise definition of what qualifies as a “major question.” There is no formula, no dollar threshold, and no checklist.⁶ That uncertainty is not an oversight. It is the doctrine’s defining feature. The broader the claimed power and the greater its economic or political significance, the more likely a court is to demand clear authorization from Congress before allowing an agency to act.Three Doctrines, Not OneThe campaign against the administrative state draws on three separate legal ideas. They feel like allies because all three distrust unaccountable expert power. They are not the same, and they do not point the same way.The first isexecutive accountability, grounded in the unitary executive theory and reinforced by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the 1972 law governing federal advisory panels. The concern here is advisory bodies that have evolved into policymakers. The remedy is hierarchy. Committees advise. Agencies execute. Elected officials set policy. The President directs the executive branch and is accountable to voters for its actions. This is the framework behind the recent executive order on the childhood vaccine schedule and much of the current effort to reassert presidential control over federal agencies.²¹The second is themajor questions doctrine. Its target is an agency claiming authority to make decisions of enormous economic or political significance without a clear grant of power from Congress. The remedy is not greater presidential control. It is congressional responsibility. If a policy decision is important enough to affect the entire country, Congress must authorize it in plain language. In practice, the doctrine often operates as a deregulatory tool because it is easier to invalidate an agency action than to create a new one.⁸ More importantly, it limits presidents as much as bureaucrats. The authority it demands must come from Congress. Neither agencies nor presidents can supply it themselves.The third isstructural accountability, built on the Appointments Clause and the nondelegation doctrine. The Appointments Clause governs who may exercise federal power and how they must be appointed. The nondelegation doctrine asks whether Congress transferred too much of its legislative authority in the first place. The concern is not merely what a government body is doing, but whether it possesses constitutional authority to do it at all. This is the favored tool of the libertarian legal movement, the litigators at Cato, Pacific Legal Foundation, the Goldwater Institute, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.20All three doctrines challenge the growth of the administrative state. All three seek greater accountability. But they are not interchangeable.One strengthens presidential control over the executive branch.One strengthens Congress at the expense of both agencies and presidents.One asks whether the constitutional structure was violated from the beginning.Three doctrines. Three targets. Three different answers to the same question: who gets to govern?The differences become clear when we examine the three federal actions that opened this article. Each was driven by a different theory of accountability and emerged from a different understanding of where federal power should reside.The Sword: EPA Discovers It Never Had the PowerIn February 2026, the EPA rescinded the Obama administration's 2009 endangerment finding, the determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. That finding was personally championed by Obama, and had served as the legal foundation for federal greenhouse gas regulations on cars and trucks for nearly two decades. Once the finding was withdrawn, the agency repealed the vehicle emissions standards that were based on it.¹EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described the action as the largest deregulatory measure in American history, claiming that it would deliver more than $1.3 trillion in economic benefits.² Those figures come from the agency itself and should be understood as EPA’s estimate rather than an established fact.The more important story is actually the legal theory.EPA did not simply argue that the regulations were misguided or ineffective. Under EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s leadership, it argued that the agency never possessed the authority to impose them in the first place. The foundation for that argument was themajor questions doctrine.This is the doctrine operating as a sword rather than a shield.Traditionally, the major questions doctrine is invoked by challengers seeking to stop an agency from exercising power that Congress never clearly granted. Here, the agency itself invoked the doctrine to dismantle a regulatory regime that had existed for years by declaring that the underlying authority never existed.That is a remarkable reversal.In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency possessed authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.⁷ The EPA lost that case because it argued the opposite position. Nearly twenty years later, the same agency returned with the same statute and the same subject matter, but reached the opposite conclusion.The tension is not merely political. It is doctrinal.The major questions doctrine asks a straightforward question: did Congress clearly grant this power? If the answer is no, the agency cannot act. What the doctrine was never designed to answer is the reverse question: whether an agency is required to dismantle an existing regulatory framework after concluding that the original grant of authority was unclear.What EPA has done is turn the major questions doctrine around and point it in the opposite direction. The doctrine was created to stop agencies from discovering powers Congress never clearly granted. EPA is using it to justify dismantling a regulatory system that already exists.That may prove to be legally correct. But it is not the doctrine acting as a brake on administrative power. It is an administrative agency invoking the doctrine as authority for a major policy choice of its own. The outcome is less regulation. The mechanism is still executive action.Whatever one thinks of the outcome, this is not the “major questions doctrine” functioning as a shield against administrative power. It is the doctrine being wielded as a sword.The Shield: When the Doctrine Works as DesignedThe OSHA vaccine mandate shows the major questions doctrine operating in its traditional form.In January 2022, the Supreme Court blocked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s rule requiring vaccination or testing for employees at large businesses, a mandate that would have applied to roughly eighty million workers. The Court’s reasoning was straightforward. The policy carried enormous economic and political consequences, yet OSHA could point only to a broad and general statutory grant. Congress had never clearly authorized the agency to impose a public health mandate of that scale.¹¹This is the doctrine functioning as intended.An agency claimed authority to make a major national policy decision. The Court asked where Congress had clearly granted that authority. The agency could not provide an answer. The mandate fell.The same week revealed the limits of the doctrine as well.The Court allowed a different vaccine mandate to remain in effect, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requirement that workers at facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds be vaccinated. The distinction was not the subject matter. Both cases involved vaccines. The distinction was the statute. CMS possessed longstanding authority to establish conditions for participation in federal healthcare programs. OSHA relied on a general workplace safety statute that was being stretched to cover something new.¹²The doctrine treated the two cases differently because the statutes were different.That same pattern appeared in the CDC eviction moratorium case a year earlier. The agency relied on broad public health language to justify a sweeping intervention into the national housing market. The Court concluded that Congress had never clearly authorized such a measure.¹³ The policy may (or may not) have been desirable. The agency may have believed it necessary. Neither was enough.The major questions doctrine does not ask whether a policy is wise. It asks who has the authority to make it.Where the statutory grant is specific, agency action can survive.Where the statutory grant is broad, vague, or inferred, agency action is vulnerable.That is the doctrine operating as a shield. It does not transfer power to the President. It does not create new authority for agencies. It simply blocks major exercises of power that Congress did not clearly authorize.For that reason, a nationwide vaccine mandate imposed through agency action alone is now on exceptionally weak legal ground.The Wrong Key: Why the Major Questions Doctrine Does Not FitThe third action does not fit the pattern of the first two.In May 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titledRealigning United States Core Childhood Vaccine Recommendations With Best Practices from Peer, Developed Countries.The order directs CDC and ACIP to review a January HHS assessment and revise the childhood schedule “to the extent permitted by law.”¹⁴ That assessment recommended reducing the routine childhood schedule from seventeen vaccines to eleven.¹⁵ At the same time, the order sought to preserve the existing coverage framework so that vaccines remaining on the schedule would continue to be covered without cost-sharing.¹⁶Many observers immediately reached for the major questions doctrine.It is the wrong doctrine.Part of the confusion is understandable. The major questions doctrine has become the best-known legal weapon against the administrative state, so many commentators instinctively reach for it whenever a major federal policy is challenged.But that is not where the real fight is. The central legal battles over this order involve FACA, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Appointments Clause, and the nondelegation doctrine.The dispute is not whether CDC and ACIP possess authority to make vaccine recommendations. It is whether those institutions are structured and operating in a manner consistent with federal law and the Constitution.The major questions doctrine is designed to stop agencies from claiming powers Congress never clearly granted. It is a doctrine of restraint. It asks whether an agency has discovered (or appropriated) authority that was never actually given to it.That is not what is happening here.The CDC and ACIP have long possessed authority to make vaccine recommendations. The childhood schedule itself was assembled through that process over many years. No statute requires seventeen vaccines rather than eleven. If these bodies possess authority to recommend a vaccine, they necessarily possess authority to stop recommending it. The power is the same.Nor is an executive order itself the agency action a court reviews. The order simply directs executive branch officials. What a court ultimately reviews is whatever action CDC and ACIP take in response. And that action would involve those bodies exercising authority they have long exercised, not claiming some new and transformative power.The real legal vulnerabilities lie elsewhere.They lie in FACA, the Administrative Procedure Act, the Appointments Clause, and the nondelegation doctrine. In fact, the litigation has already begun. In March 2026, a federal judge halted an earlier schedule reduction and blocked the reconstituted ACIP, not because of the major questions doctrine, but because of alleged defects under FACA and the APA.¹⁷ The executive order’s careful phrase, “to the extent permitted by law,” reflects an awareness of exactly those challenges.²²The irony is that the same statute appears on both sides of the fight. Supporters of reform invoke FACA to argue that ACIP should function as an advisory body rather than an independent policymaker. Opponents invoke FACA to challenge how the committee was restructured. The same law supplies arguments for both camps.The deeper problem lies in the coverage system the order deliberately preserved.For decades, Congress and the executive branch built a recommendation-to-mandate pipeline around ACIP. An ACIP recommendation triggers no-cost insurance coverage, obligations under Medicaid and CHIP, eligibility under the Vaccines for Children program, and protections under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.¹⁸The administration’s policy depends on that machinery continuing to exist.But that machinery is also under constitutional attack. In Kennedy v. Braidwood, the Supreme Court upheld one advisory-body structure while leaving unresolved challenges to ACIP itself.¹⁹ Those challenges remain alive in the lower courts. If they ultimately succeed, they do not merely weaken mandates. They undermine the mechanism the administration needs to make its preferred vaccine schedule durable, funded, and enforceable.That is the collision point between the three doctrines.The executive order is defended in the language of executive accountability. Elected officials direct. Advisory committees advise. Agencies execute.The major questions doctrine points somewhere else. It asks whether major national policies should rest on agency discretion at all.And the structural-accountability doctrines go further still. They ask whether the institutions making these decisions were constitutionally constructed in the first place.The result is a paradox. The same legal movement that seeks to reduce the power of administrative agencies is now relying on executive authority to reshape one of the most important administrative programs in the country.An executive order can be reversed by the next president. It can be delayed by litigation. It can be narrowed by the courts.The major questions doctrine can stop a policy. It cannot make one permanent.For that, Congress still matters.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareThe Austrian QuestionThe Austrian school of economics has spent more than a century examining exactly this kind of problem.In his essayThe Use of Knowledge in Society, Friedrich Hayek argued that the information needed to manage a complex society is never concentrated in one place. It exists in countless fragments dispersed among millions of individuals. No central planner can fully assemble it, much less act on it effectively. The error is not merely technical. It is the belief that experts possess a level of knowledge they cannot actually obtain. Hayek later gave the mistake its enduring name: the pretense of knowledge.²³ ²⁴Ludwig von Mises identified a related problem. Bureaucracies do not operate under the discipline of profit and loss. They receive no market signal telling them when they have failed. A business that makes bad decisions eventually pays a price. An agency often does not. It expands, accumulates authority, and corrects course only when external forces compel it to do so.²⁵Regulatory capture completes the picture. Over time, agencies, professional societies, regulated industries, and advocacy groups can form a closed policy ecosystem. The public remains formally represented but increasingly loses influence over decisions made in its name. Whether the subject is vaccines, emissions, energy, finance, or healthcare, the pattern is familiar.By that measure, the impulse behind all three actions discussed in this article is understandable. Pulling decisions away from insulated expert networks and returning them to politically accountable institutions is a legitimate objective.But the Austrian tradition is not fundamentally a deregulatory project.It is a rule-of-law project.Those are not the same thing.Hayek did not argue for the absence of rules. He argued for the right kind of rules: general, predictable, stable, knowable in advance, and applied equally to citizens and governments alike. Such rules allow people to plan their lives because they can reasonably predict the legal environment in which they operate. The enemy is not regulation itself. The enemy is arbitrary power.²⁶Viewed through that lens, the major questions doctrine produces a mixed verdict.At its best, the doctrine strengthens the rule of law. It pushes major policy decisions back toward Congress and demands that lawmakers speak clearly when they authorize significant exercises of government power. Citizens can read the law. Legislators can be held accountable for it. That is a genuine improvement.At its worst, the doctrine risks replacing one form of discretion with another.A doctrine built around a term as undefined as “major” inevitably leaves substantial room for judicial judgment. If neither agencies nor citizens can predict when a court will deem a question sufficiently major to trigger heightened scrutiny, certainty is reduced rather than increased. Discretion has not disappeared. It has merely changed hands.The same concern applies to executive action.A regulatory regime created through one administration’s interpretation of an old statute and dismantled through the next administration’s reinterpretation of that same statute is not a system of stable law. Neither is a national vaccine policy established by executive order and destined to be reversed when political control changes. Such policies may be legal. They may even be wise. But they remain exercises of discretionary power rather than durable law.The Austrian question is therefore different from the partisan question.It is not: Which side benefits from this doctrine today?It is:Does this produce a system governed by stable, predictable rules, or by the changing preferences of whoever currently holds power?By that standard, the ultimate solution is neither regulation by agency nor deregulation by executive order.It is Congress writing clear law.That is the one outcome most consistent with the rule of law, the one outcome these doctrines increasingly demand, and the one outcome a deeply divided Congress appears least capable of delivering.The Paradox of an Empowered CongressThe three doctrines examined here all promise the same thing: less power for agencies and greater accountability.But power never disappears. It only moves.When authority leaves the administrative state, it goes somewhere else. Some of it goes to the courts, which now decide what counts as a major question, what an old statute means, and whether an agency has crossed a constitutional line. Some of it is supposed to return to Congress, which is expected to write the clear laws the courts increasingly demand.The courts will take their share.Congress is the real question.If there is one responsibility the Constitution assigns exclusively to Congress, it is the power of the purse. Article I gives spending authority to the legislature and to no one else. Before Congress regulates, investigates, or declares war, it must first decide what government will spend and what government will do.Even that basic responsibility now strains the institution.Since the modern budget process was adopted in the 1970s, Congress has completed all twelve annual appropriations bills on time only four times. The last was for fiscal year 1997.²⁷ In most years, Congress does not finish even one by the statutory deadline. Instead, it relies on continuing resolutions, temporary extensions that simply carry forward the previous year’s spending while lawmakers postpone difficult decisions. There have been more than two hundred continuing resolutions since 1977, and the federal government now spends much of its life operating under temporary funding measures rather than actual budgets.²⁸The current fiscal year is not an exception. It is the pattern.Fiscal year 2026 began with no completed appropriations bills and a government shutdown. Funding arrived through a series of temporary measures, partial appropriations, further delays, and additional stopgap extensions.²⁹ ³⁰ The year before was funded almost entirely through continuing resolutions.³¹This is the institution that the major questions doctrine increasingly relies upon.The doctrine assumes a Congress willing and able to write clear laws for major national questions. Yet Congress routinely struggles to perform the most fundamental legislative task it possesses. It cannot consistently decide what government will spend, much less provide detailed statutory guidance across the entire regulatory state.The administrative state did not grow by conquest.It grew by abdication.Congress delegated authority because legislating is difficult. It requires compromise. It requires accepting responsibility for outcomes. It requires casting votes that can be used in the next election. Agencies offered a way around those costs. Difficult decisions could be transferred to experts. Political accountability could be diluted. Members could take positions without bearing full responsibility for results.The continuing resolution is simply the same instinct turned inward. Rather than make a decision, Congress extends the last one. Rather than accept responsibility, it postpones it. Rather than legislate, it waits for deadlines, crises, shutdown threats, or last-minute omnibus bills to force action.The major questions doctrine closes one escape route. It tells agencies they may no longer decide issues that Congress itself refused to decide.What it cannot do is change the incentives that caused Congress to delegate those decisions in the first place.No court can force a legislature to want its authority back.The optimistic view is that removing power from agencies will force Congress to reclaim its constitutional role. Perhaps it will.The evidence points the other way.When authority is stripped from agencies, it does not automatically return to Congress. Instead, it accumulates in the institutions that remain capable of acting: the courts and the presidency. Judges decide what statutes mean. Presidents issue executive orders. One administration acts. The next reverses course. Litigation fills the gaps Congress leaves behind.The great paradox is that the legal movement seeking to restore legislative authority depends on a legislature that has spent half a century proving how little interest it has in exercising it.The doctrine is built on the idea that Congress should decide the nation’s most important questions. The difficulty is that Congress increasingly refuses to decide them.The Activism of RestraintPower does not disappear when it leaves the agencies.It lands in the courts.The legal movement that developed these doctrines did so in the name of judicial restraint. Originalism and textualism were designed to limit judicial discretion by tying judges to the words of a statute and the meaning those words carried when enacted. For decades, the movement’s central complaint was judicial activism: unelected judges imposing policy preferences under the guise of interpretation.The major questions doctrine creates a complication.Unlike a traditional rule of interpretation, it does not supply a clear boundary. Its central term, “major,” has no fixed definition. Courts decide case by case which questions are sufficiently significant to require an exceptionally clear statement from Congress. But significance is not a textual category. It is a judgment.With Chevron deference gone, judges no longer defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute. They supply their own. Combine that development with the major questions doctrine, and the courts become the final arbiters of vast areas of public policy, from environmental regulation to healthcare to energy and beyond.Not because Congress expressly assigned them that role.Because the doctrine increasingly sends every difficult question there.This is judicial power assembled in the language of restraint.The tension has not gone unnoticed. Even some textualist and originalist scholars have argued that the doctrine sits uneasily with the principles it claims to advance. If a statute means what its text says, they argue, then the importance of the policy at issue should not change the method of interpretation. A doctrine that alters its approach when the stakes become sufficiently large begins to look less like a neutral rule of construction and more like a substantive preference.³²The problem returns us to the same question raised by the Austrian critique.The rule of law requires rules that are general, predictable, and knowable in advance. Citizens should not have to guess which statutes will be treated as ordinary and which will be deemed major. Agencies should not have to predict how a future court will measure significance. Congress should not have to legislate in the shadow of standards that no one can clearly define.Otherwise, discretion has not been eliminated.It has merely been relocated.First from Congress to the agencies.Then from the agencies back to the courts.The label changes. The underlying problem does not.The conservative legal project set out to reduce government by unaccountable experts. In a political system where Congress increasingly refuses to legislate, the practical effect may be to increase government by unaccountable judges.That is not necessarily a contradiction. It may simply be what happens when the institutions that are supposed to make the law stop doing so.What This MeansFor Congress, the message is straightforward.The courts are increasingly demanding clear legislative authorization for major national policies. Yet Congress has shown remarkably little ability to provide it. Durable policy now requires legislation, and recent decades suggest that legislation is precisely what Congress struggles to produce. The hard decisions are being returned to the branch that has spent half a century finding ways to avoid making them.For agencies and presidents, the lesson is equally clear.The soft instruments of government are becoming less durable. Guidance documents, advisory recommendations, agency interpretations, executive orders, and informal exercises of administrative power all stand on shakier ground than they did a decade ago. Policies created through those mechanisms can still be implemented. They are simply less likely to survive a challenge and less likely to outlast the administration that created them.The March 2026 ruling against the vaccine schedule change illustrates the point as clearly as any reversal of a prior administration’s policy. Increasingly, if Congress wants a policy to endure, Congress must enact it. Broad delegations of authority and administrative workarounds are becoming less reliable substitutes for legislation.For the courts, the difficult questions are only beginning.What qualifies as a major question? Can the doctrine continue to be used offensively to dismantle existing regulatory structures? How far will courts push structural-accountability theories involving FACA, the Appointments Clause, and nondelegation? What happens if challenges to ACIP’s legal architecture ultimately succeed?Those questions will shape the next phase of the administrative-state debate.Beneath all of them lies a deeper problem.If major policies can be created by one administration’s interpretation of an old statute and dismantled by the next administration’s reinterpretation of the same statute, stability becomes impossible. Every election becomes a struggle not merely over policy but over the meaning of the laws already on the books. One administration builds. The next tears down. The one after that builds again.That is not a system governed by settled law.It is government by oscillation.A free society depends on rules that are durable enough for citizens, businesses, institutions, and states to plan around them. A legal regime that changes direction every four or eight years may expand liberty in one moment and restrict it in the next, but it cannot provide the predictability that liberty ultimately requires.The greatest risk is not that one side wins.It is that nothing ever stays settled long enough for self-government to work.The Branch That Cannot ActThree doctrines. One target. Three different destinations.A doctrine worth having is one you would accept in the hands of your opponents.A rule worth keeping is one that binds the people who created it.A limit on power is only a limit if it still applies when your own side holds power.The major questions doctrine revives a legitimate principle. It insists that major national decisions should rest on clear legislative authority rather than administrative improvisation. But it comes with costs: discretion shifted to judges, a persistent deregulatory bias, and a legal landscape in which major policies become increasingly provisional.Its greatest virtue may be that it does not care who holds office.The doctrine that restrains a Biden administration restrains a Trump administration. The doctrine that blocks one executive action can be used to block the next. That neutrality is the source of its legitimacy, even if it is often the feature its supporters are least eager to discuss.In theory, the doctrine returns major questions to Congress, the branch closest to the voter and the institution the Constitution expects to make law.In practice, Congress increasingly refuses the assignment.The result is a transfer of power that looks different from the one many expected. Questions that agencies can no longer answer do not automatically return to the legislature. They flow instead to the courts, which must decide what statutes mean, what powers were delegated, and what questions are sufficiently major to require something more.  And of course, it is the courts that have decided the structures resulting in the functional transfer of power to the courts.The branch that will not act hands its work to the branch that cannot avoid acting.A movement that set out to reduce the influence of unelected officials has, at least for now, increased the influence of the least elected officials in the American system.That may be a flaw in the doctrine.  Or it may be a hidden intention.Or it may simply be what happens when a constitutional system built on legislation encounters a legislature that no longer legislates.The next decade will tell us which.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.References1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act,” final rule, Federal Register doc. 2026-03157 (Feb. 18, 2026), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/18/2026-03157/rescission-of-the-greenhouse-gas-endangerment-finding-and-motor-vehicle-greenhouse-gas-emission ; EPA fact sheet 420F26003 (Feb. 12, 2026), https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2026-02/420f26003.pdf.2. EPA statement attributing “the single largest act of deregulation” and the $1.3 trillion figure to the agency; see also World Resources Institute, “EPA’s Endangerment Finding Repeal, Explained” (Feb. 19, 2026), https://www.wri.org/insights/endangerment-finding-repeal-explained.3. FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 120 (2000).4. West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022).5. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).6. Congressional Research Service, “The Major Questions Doctrine,” In Focus IF12077, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12077.7. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).8. Lisa Heinzerling and others on the deregulatory asymmetry of the doctrine; “The National Security Consequences of the Major Questions Doctrine,” Michigan Law Review (2025), https://michiganlawreview.org/journal/the-national-security-consequences-of-the-major-questions-doctrine/ ; Institute for Policy Integrity, “Statutory Interpretation and Deregulation,” https://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/Statutory_Interpretation_and_Deregulation_Issue_Brief_vF.pdf.9. Executive Order, “Directing the Repeal of Unlawful Regulations” (Apr. 9, 2025); analysis in Arnold & Porter, “Deregulatory Executive Orders: Issues Under the Administrative Procedure Act” (Apr. 16, 2025), https://www.arnoldporter.com/en/perspectives/advisories/2025/04/deregulatory-eos-issues-under-the-apa.10. HHS and FDA, “HHS, FDA Issue RFI on Deregulatory Plan to Lower Costs and Empower Providers” (May 13, 2025), https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/hhs-fda-issue-rfi-deregulatory-plan-lower-costs-and-empower-providers ; Holland & Knight, “HHS, FDA Issue Request for Information to Support Administration’s Deregulatory Agenda” (May 14, 2025), https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/05/hhs-fda-issue-request-for-information-to-support-administrations.11. National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, OSHA, 595 U.S. 109 (2022) (per curiam).12. Biden v. Missouri, 595 U.S. 87 (2022) (per curiam).13. Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, 594 U.S. 758 (2021) (per curiam).14. The White House, Executive Order, “Realigning United States Core Childhood Vaccine Recommendations With Best Practices from Peer, Developed Countries” (May 29, 2026), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/05/realigning-united-states-core-childhood-vaccine-recommendations-with-best-practices-from-peer-developed-countries/ ; CBS News, “Trump signs order directing CDC to align with assessment calling for fewer childhood vaccines” (May 29, 2026), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-executive-order-cdc-childhood-vaccines/.15. CDC, “CDC Acts on Presidential Memorandum to Update Childhood Immunization Schedule” (Jan. 5, 2026), https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2026/2026-cdc-acts-on-presidential-memorandum-to-update-childhood-immunization-schedule.html ; Fierce Healthcare, “Trump signs off on HHS overhaul of childhood vaccine schedule with new executive order” (Jun. 1, 2026), https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/trump-signs-hhs-overhaul-childhood-vaccine-schedule-new-executive-order.16. American Hospital Association, “President signs EO on childhood immunization schedule” (Jun. 1, 2026), https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2026-06-01-president-signs-eo-childhood-immunization-schedule.17. American Academy of Pediatrics v. Kennedy, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Mar. 16, 2026); NPR, “Federal judge halts RFK Jr.’s changes to children’s vaccine policies” (Mar. 16, 2026), https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749530/judge-blocks-rfk-jr-vaccine-changes ; NBC News, “RFK Jr. rewrites rules on CDC panel after judge blocks vaccine changes” (Apr. 7, 2026), https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rfk-jr-rewrites-rules-cdc-panel-lawsuit-vaccine-changes-rcna267069.18. Congressional Research Service, “Changes to CDC Vaccine Recommendations in 2025 and 2026,” Insight IN12684, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12684 ; KFF, “ACA Preventive Services Are Back at the Supreme Court: Kennedy v. Braidwood,” https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/aca-preventive-services-supreme-court-kennedy-braidwood/.19. Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. (U.S. Jun. 27, 2025); KFF, “Kennedy v. Braidwood: The Supreme Court Upheld ACA Preventive Services but That’s Not the End of the Story,” https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/kennedy-v-braidwood-the-supreme-court-upheld-aca-preventive-services-but-thats-not-the-end-of-the-story/.20. Georgetown Law, Health Care Litigation Tracker, “Braidwood Management, Inc. et al. v. Kennedy et al.” (amici including Cato Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, Goldwater Institute, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons), https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/litigation/braidwood-management-inc-et-al-v-xavier-becerra-et-al-3/.21. Robert W. Malone, “The Executive Order That May Change the Vaccine Debate Forever,” Malone News (May 30, 2026), https://www.malone.news/p/the-executive-order-that-may-change.22. Medscape, “Executive Order on Vaccine Schedule ‘Flies in the Face’ of Federal Ruling” (Jun. 3, 2026), https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/executive-order-vaccine-schedule-flies-face-federal-ruling-2026a1000iik.23. F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 519-530.24. F. A. Hayek, “The Pretence of Knowledge,” Nobel Memorial Lecture (Dec. 11, 1974).25. Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944).26. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); and The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).27. Pew Research Center, “Congress has long struggled to pass spending bills on time” (Oct. 1, 2025), https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/01/congress-has-long-struggled-to-pass-spending-bills-on-time/.28. Congressional Research Service, “Continuing Resolutions: Overview of Components and Practices,” R46595, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46595 (all twelve regular appropriations bills enacted on time only four times since FY1977, and 207 continuing resolutions enacted from FY1977 through FY2025).29. Congressional Research Service, “Overview of Continuing Appropriations for FY2026 (Division A of P.L. 119-37),” R48765, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48765 ; H.R. 5371, 119th Congress, https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5371 (the funding lapse beginning October 1, 2025, and the continuing resolution through January 30, 2026).30. Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Appropriations Watch: FY 2026,” https://www.crfb.org/blogs/appropriations-watch-fy-2026 ; International Economic Development Council, “Federal Funding Update: FY 2026 Appropriations and January 30 Deadline” (Jan. 28, 2026), https://www.iedconline.org/news/2026/01/28/federal-policy-updates/federal-funding-update-fy-2026-appropriations-and-january-30-deadline/.31. Bloomberg Government, “What a Continuing Resolution Means for Appropriations Strategy” (Aug. 7, 2025), https://about.bgov.com/insights/budget-appropriations/what-a-continuing-resolution-means-for-federal-contractors-agencies-and-appropriations-strategy/ (fiscal year 2025 funded entirely through continuing resolutions, including a full-year measure signed March 15, 2025).32. On the doctrine’s tension with textualism and its lack of defined limits, see Cato Institute, “Responding to the New Major Questions Doctrine” (Summer 2023), https://www.cato.org/regulation/summer-2023/responding-new-major-questions-doctrine ; and Ballotpedia, “Major questions doctrine,” https://ballotpedia.org/Major_questions_doctrine.

Summary: How Federal Power Is Being Rewritten


Homesteading: The Filly, the Freeze, and the Sourdough Experiment

Summer is almost upon us, although here it still feels more like spring. Some big jobs have been accomplished, while others continue to languish. Such is life on a farm.The biggest news is that yesterday we welcomed a healthy filly out of our homebred mare, Tantra. She is a lovely buckskin, or perhaps a bay. At this point, only color testing will settle the question. If she moves as well as she looks, I suspect she will be a keeper.Our mare Caranja, whom we have owned since she was a filly, is now nineteen years old. Although we have scaled back our breeding program, we are not quite finished. Caranja is due as well, though I am not sure how many more foals she has left in her. One or two, perhaps, if we are lucky. In total, we are expecting two more foals this month.I have been riding at least one horse, and often two, every day. That is a considerable investment of both time and energy, which means some of the less essential chores around the farm have been pushed aside. There are only so many hours in a day.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The garden, however, is thriving. Garlic harvest is just around the corner. The kale has gone absolutely crazy, although I have not frozen any yet, which is entirely my fault. The squash is already producing. Carrots are up and looking good. The basil has finally sprouted. I plant it later in the spring because otherwise it simply refuses to cooperate. We have been eating a lot of beet tops, which I sauté with garlic and squash - very tasty with a b-b-que! The tomatoes are growing well, and there are already tiny green fruits hanging on the vines. We have enjoyed plenty of lettuce, cilantro, and spinach, although the spinach has now surrendered to summer.I am most proud of my Apios americana plant, which already has lots of ground tubers growing.  This is also called the American ground nut and a favorite of native Americans in this region in times past.The Apios also has a wonderful flower and is quite the specimen plant.Unfortunately, Virginia was hit by an almost unheard-of late freeze near the end of May. It wiped out nearly all of the young fruit across much of the state.  So, although all our trees and we have about 60 fruit trees, look great - there is very little fruit this year.Our blueberries and blackberries escaped and should produce exceptional crops, but peaches, apples, plums, and cherries are another story altogether. The damage has been severe enough that Governor Youngkin has petitioned the federal government for disaster assistance. It will be a lean fruit year for many growers.Peacocks and guinea fowl hanging by the baby turkeys in the fruit orchard.Prince Caspian loves to hang with the dogs… it is kind of sweet, really. Under the peach trees is a favorite hang-out place.I have been on a sourdough bread-making kick in recent months. Robert has decided that sourdough agrees with his digestive system better than other breads, so I set out to learn how to make it efficiently. It has taken the better part of six months to develop a system, but I think I finally have it figured out and can now reproduce the results again and again.Sourdough starter (or mother) being expanded at 77 degrees.  I use a yogurt maker for this job, although a warm counter works too.I expand the starter and make enough dough forfifteen to twenty loavesat a time. I know crazy, right?  Then, I go through the process of kneading, proofing, etc., which is labor- and time-intensive.  It also uses just about every mixing bowl in the house. Then I divide it all into loaf-sized portions and freeze them. When we need bread, I simply pull out a dough loaf, let it thaw overnight, shape it, allow it to rise a bit more, and bake it.I also dehydrated a large quantity of starter for long-term storage. Once the frozen bread supply is gone, I can simply rehydrate the starter and begin again. The result is that I can do one concentrated burst of bread-making and then largely forget about it. Aside from occasionally baking a loaf, there is very little maintenance required. So far, it has worked remarkably well.For the next batch, in a couple of months, I will write up a photo journal on my adventures in making sourdough (trust me, there have been mishaps) as a homesteading article.As I write daily, ride daily, entertain guests, travel, and help maintain a busy farm, anything that reduces routine maintenance is a welcome development. I think others might appreciate the idea of making a lot of dough at once, then freezing.  Plus, I have found a number of little shortcuts in making sourdough, so stay tuned for that.This week we had visitors staying in the guest house. Our friends,Taylor FerberandRob Nelsonhave been visiting for the week. Robert and I both have a tendency to work, work, and then work some more, so having friends in town gave us a good excuse to step away from our routines and enjoy ourselves a bit.We had several excellent meals at local restaurants, including Patty O’s, which holds a Michelin Selection in the tiny town of Washington, Virginia. The same owners also operate the Inn at Little Washington, located next door, which is a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. While there, we unexpectedly met up with our friends Nina and Colby May, which is always a pleasure.On occasion, we can actually clean up pretty good!We also spent plenty of time cooking together here on the farm and fired up the grill more than once.One day we went ziplining. Another day Taylor and I did what women occasionally must do and went shopping for clothes.Now, I do not always drive fast cars. In fact, I am quite fond of my Ram 3500 dually. But when I do drive a sports car, I prefer a Porsche. For those who do not know, my husband maintains a long-running and entirely unapologetic love affair with fast and vintage automobiles.On the poultry front, we now have three peababies hatched, with more on the way.A funny thing is that the peacocks (below is a young male) are fascinated by the little chirps that the babies make.  Soon after the above birds hatched, this yearling bird below wandered into the office to come gander at the babies in the incubator.The video below: Robert and I gently herding the boy outside…The older little one that imprinted on me remains thoroughly convinced that I am its proper parent. It has no interest whatsoever in spending time with the younger birds and still prefers riding around on my shoulder whenever possible.We also ended up with two turkeys, which have now been moved to an outdoor pen and have become surprisingly calm. In another ten to twelve weeks, they should be ready for processing. I never look forward to that day, although it is part of raising your own food.The chickens continue to lay and lay and lay. I am constantly making dog food with the extra eggs, finding ways to use them ourselves, and giving cartons away to friends. We feed the hens plenty of scraps, and I must say that laying hens are truly God’s gift to the farm. They turn leftovers into breakfast with remarkable efficiency.Mowing season is now in full force. Our friends have even been lending a hand, with Rob Nelson, who grew up on a farm, helping bush-hog some of the back pastures. Until the summer heat finally shuts down the rains, usually sometime in August, mowing and weed-whipping are never-ending chores, particularly since we do not use herbicides. As a result, Robert and our farmhand are already putting in long hours on both the tractor and the zero-turn mower.As for the division of labor, I occasionally bush hog, but I rarely mow. Robert, on the other hand, spends far more time on the tractor than in the vegetable garden. The garden requires watering several times a week when the rain does not cooperate, plenty of weeding, and a steady stream of planting and maintenance.The cows have not been bred yet, although I have had a veterinarian out to begin the process of artificial insemination. With the horses, we do this ourselves, but breeding cattle this way is new territory for us. We will be using sexed semen, which is somewhat less viable, but the increased likelihood of producing a heifer makes the extra effort worthwhile. In the dairy world, bull calves simply do not command the same value.As foals are born, mares must be bred also.  As always, there tends to be more than one “yahoo” moment when dealing with 1200-pound hormonally motivated animals, with 100-pound babies running around underfoot. All must be carefully controlled, so no one gets hurt.As I write this, a gentle rain is falling outside, which means I am temporarily excused from watering duties. But there is always another task waiting. The peababies have outgrown their box, so today I need to move a stock tank into the house and set up larger accommodations for them.It is going to be a busy day. Robert will be taking our friends to the airport, and I will be hauling Jade to another farm where a trainer from Portugal is working with several students.The partners in crime:When I ride daily, I always have company - the three amigos don’t actually want to be in the arena with me (too boring).  Yet, spend the entire time peeking under the gate - making sure I don’t go anywhere?So with that, I bid you all farewell for the day. The farm is calling, the horses are waiting, and the peababy is undoubtedly planning her next attempt to turn my shoulder into permanent real estate.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.Share

Summary: By: JGM


Friday Funnies: Tickman cometh

Embedded deep in the operating system… lies the most dangerous tick of all.This year, the headlines warning of the “worst tick season ever” are everywhere. These alarms are particularly loud, arriving just as Pfizer and Valneva prepare to seek approval for the first Lyme vaccine in a generation.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Current projections from industry reports suggest a possible launch around late 2027, assuming regulators accept the application and approve itTo be clear, ticks are real. Lyme disease is real. Nobody who has spent time in the woods, on a farm, or hunting needs a journalist paid by big pharma to explain that.But it is fair to ask whether we are witnessing an objective assessment of risk or the early stages of market development. After all, pharmaceutical companies do not spend billions developing products and then hope people forget the disease exists.Perhaps this really is the worst tick season ever. Again.Or perhaps Americans are being reminded, hourly, that ticks are lurking behind every blade of grass just as a new vaccine approaches the finish line.Funny how that works. The ticks always seem to get their best publicist right before product launch.Remember that word?And for those who somehow think that because we advise people not to fall for fear porn, we don’t believe Lyme is an issue -(it is) - please read,or re-read the following that Robert wrote in early March of this year:True story:We don’t throw away perfectly good food in this house.We put it in Tupperware, ignore it until it reaches peak chicken cuisine, then serve it to the flock. The chickens, unlike the rest of us, appreciate properly aged leftovers.Since publishing ‘The Decline and Fall of Elon Musk,’ Musk has only managed to become the first trillionaire, dominate global satellite communications, launch a successful SpaceX IPO, and remain the most influential entrepreneur on Earth.Other than that,The Atlanticpretty much nailed it.Whenever The Atlantic announces someone's decline and fall, it is usually a good time to buy stock.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareA fan on X rejiggered a photo of Robert…Just for the record, my great-great-grandfather was a Captain in the CSA Alabama Second, served under Stonewall Jackson and Lee, and lost his leg in the battle of Richmond.  Campaigned right through the area we now live in.  Presumably, he also fought in the second battle of the Wilderness, which took place near our farm under notoriously horrid conditions.  So, probably the uniform would have been gray, not blue.In all seriousness, we had a lovely black filly born yesterday.  She is out of Quieta (inspection score 71.25), who is a Jade daughter, so we had to go outside for the stallion.  Lider Seven is the sire (inspection score 70.50), which horse was named USDF Horse of the Year 2024 and Grand Prix reserve champion before passing suddenly.  Not surprisingly, this one looks to be a good mover.  Maybe a keeper!“Don't make it hard - just take care of yourself and your family.Eat healthy food, cut out the junk, don't overindulge (limited intake), exercise, don't drink too much, get outside, and enjoy life.”- Dr. Robert Malone“Homesteading for Health” is available for pre-order, and this includes the audio version!I am off to ride a couple of stallions before it gets too hot.Have a great day, Folks!JGMMalone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Summary: The realities of herd-poisoning


News Flash: Kennedy leaving HHS?

BREAKING- There is a very active rumor mill currently with specifics from senior USG (government) employees that RFKjr will be leaving as Secretary of HHS in July, after the 4th.  Apparently, there was a meeting last Monday.Oz to head transition team.This is reported to have been widely and openly discussed during Wednesday's annual Congressional baseball game.End.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: Friday News Drop


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEODNI News Release No. 10-26June 12, 2026DNI Gabbard Reveals Evidence of U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Global Biolab ProgramPRESS RELEASE FROM ODNIWASHINGTON D.C.— After months of searching through Intelligence Community holdings and files, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is revealing new evidence of longstanding United States government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries. These biolabs include labs in Ukraine, which may be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. For example, the Intelligence Community previously warned that a US-funded biolab in Ukraine likely housed dangerous pathogens and remained vulnerable to longstanding threats of Russian attack, seizure, or damage.The newly declassified evidence can be foundHERE(the four images are also copied at the end of this press release).Until now, evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from the American people. The information surrounding the existence, history, locations and funding of these US funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people falsely, claiming that they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise to be foreign assets and traitors to America.Many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function research, with very little visibility or oversight.President Trump understands the serious threat dangerous Gain-of-Function research poses to the American people, which is why he took decisive action on May 25, 2025, signing EO 14292 to end federal funding of Gain-of-Function research around the world.“Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth. ODNI will continue to work closely with partners across the government to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain to end dangerous Gain-of-Function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and people around the world,”said DNI Gabbard.DNI Gabbard issued new guidance to the Intelligence Community directing increased collection on these laboratories and facilities overseas. This directive is already providing new details on clinical trials that are underway at these facilities, raising significant ethical, financial, and security concerns regarding these supposed public health initiatives and U.S. national security.EndMalone 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.ShareThe four images released by DNI Gabbard:These were the March, 2022 Malone.News coverage of the Ukraine Biolab story, for which I was censored and vilified, but once again have been vindicated with this new press release.  At the time, our coverage was much more detailed than much of what is covered in this new release.  The story of censorship, vilification, targeted delegitimization, followed by eventual vindication is getting a bit old.  By the way, it was disclosed to us by a US Army officer that the labs were intentionally destroyed using US fighter/bombers to destroy the evidence due to the risk of being overrun by Russian forces.  You may recall that the existance of these biolabs was specificially cited by Russia as justification for the initial invasion.and then from May 2025

Summary: Press Release copied from the DNI Website


The AI They Don't Want You to Have

Anthropicis a U.S.-based artificial intelligence company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives and researchers, including Dario Amodei, that develops the Claude family of AI models and focuses heavily on AI safety, alignment, and national security applications.Anthropic's recent restrictions on public access to its most advanced AI systems for biological research reveal something far more significant than a debate about artificial intelligence.They reveal the emergence of a new doctrine.Powerful capabilities for the public will be restricted.Powerful capabilities for governments and approved institutions will continue.The justification is biosecurity.According to Anthropic, its most advanced models demonstrate capabilities for sophisticated biological research. The company has cited concerns that these systems may assist with advanced experimental design, biological reasoning, and other activities that could be misused.Powerful technologies create risks.The argument being made is simple. These capabilities are supposedly far too dangerous for independent scientists, small laboratories, entrepreneurs, citizen researchers, and the general public. Yet they are somehow safe in the hands of governments and the institutions governments choose to trust.What evidence supports that conclusion?Before we hand control of these technologies to governments and their preferred partners, perhaps we should examine the track record of the institutions demanding that trust.The same federal apparatus now positioning itself as the guardian of biological AI spent years funding, overseeing, defending, and, in many cases, obscuring controversial gain-of-function research programs.For years, Senator Rand Paul pursued questions regarding NIH funding streams, EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the bureaucratic shell game that often allows agencies to distance themselves from responsibility while retaining control over funding and policy. It is now difficult to deny that federal funds flowed through a complex network of grants, subcontracts, foreign laboratories, and research partners engaged in increasingly risky virology research. Strong evidence has emerged that U.S.-supported research contributed to work relevant to the development of SARS-CoV-2, and some of that work occurred in laboratories here in the United States.A revealing aspect of this history is not the research itself, but the effort required to uncover basic facts about it.Obtaining answers required years of congressional inquiries, subpoenas, hearings, document requests, whistleblowers, litigation, and relentless public pressure. Emails were withheld. Records were slow-walked. Definitions shifted. Agencies repeatedly appeared more interested in protecting programs and reputations than in providing transparency.That is not evidence of a system characterized by openness and accountability.It is evidence of a system resistant to oversight.Which brings us to Congress.What has Congress actually done with the information it has uncovered?There have been hearings. There have been reports. There have been sharply worded letters, subpoenas, referrals, and public confrontations. Yet the fundamental architecture remains largely intact. The same agencies continue to fund research (with the notable exception of USAID, some of whose “dual function” research activities have been moved to other agencies). The same biodefense bureaucracy continues to operate. The same grant-making mechanisms continue to function. The same oversight failures that generated concern in the first place remain virtually unchanged. Anyone who challenges the system isn’t just shut down; they are ostracized by the government. Their services no longer needed. Their opinions should not be considered.Congress has demonstrated its ability to investigate. It has not demonstrated its ability to govern.That failure matters because the debate over biological AI assumes the existence of competent and accountable oversight. Yet the recent history of gain-of-function research suggests precisely the opposite. If Congress has struggled to exercise meaningful oversight over traditional biological research programs, why should anyone assume it will be more successful overseeing AI systems capable of dramatically accelerating biological research?The question looms large.Why is Anthropic, or any frontier AI company, for that matter, being permitted to move forward with technologies that their own executives describe as presenting unprecedented biological risks?And if these capabilities truly are as dangerous as claimed, who exactly is providing oversight?At the moment, the answer appears to be a small circle of corporations, federal agencies, contractors, and selected partners making decisions on behalf of everyone else.That is not a biosecurity strategy.It is a concentration of power.Join over 350,000 readers who rely on Malone News for independent reporting and analysis of science, medicine, politics, and public policy. Subscribe for free to receive every post in your inbox. Become a paid subscriber to support our work and help us continue challenging conventional wisdom and holding powerful institutions accountable.Then there is the matter of operational competence.Just this year, federal prosecutors charged NIH researcher Claude Kwe and NIH scientist Vincent Munster in connection with the alleged smuggling of biological materials, including mpox samples, into the United States.The same institutions that assure us that advanced biological AI capabilities must be tightly controlled cannot reliably control the illegal and illicit global movement of biological materials by government researchers, and cannot control the movement and monitoring of dangerous pathogens within their own research ecosystems.The public is asked to believe that future AI systems capable of accelerating biotechnology research and bioweapons will somehow be managed with greater competence than the pathogens and biological materials already under government supervision.Why should anyone believe that?The deeper problem is that the biosecurity argument assumes the government is a unitary actor.It is not.Government is a sprawling collection of agencies, contractors, universities, military laboratories, intelligence organizations, grantees, subcontractors, and international partners.  Many experts involved in senior US Government operations describe the structure as more akin to an aggregate of separate governments - each cabinet-level agency is semi-autonomous.The people advocating centralized control often speak as though assigning responsibility to “the government” solves the problem.In reality, it merely changes the location of the problem.The same incentives remain.The same human weaknesses remain.The same bureaucratic failures remain.The same conflicts of interest remain.The same secrecy remains.And now there is another development.According to statements recently attributed to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. government has acknowledged overseas biological research conducted through a network of international partnerships and laboratories. The appearance is that there has been an active, sustained “offshoring” of dual-function biological research.  Dual-function is a polite and politically correct euphamism for biological research that can be used for either biodefense or biowarfare purposes.Whether these programs are described as biodefense, public health preparedness, threat reduction, pathogen surveillance, or something else is almost beside the point.The central fact is that biological research is already conducted through a complex international ecosystem that few citizens understand and even fewer policymakers can fully map. For whatever reason, these biolabs are often located in hot zones, such as the Ukrainian/Russian border, which gives the impression that they are being used for ulterior purposes.  That the “dual-function” label appears to be a cover what is functionally prohibited biowarfare research and development activities.  A case can be made that the real reason the US Government is so reluctant to modify the UN Biowarfare Treaty (“The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction”) to provide some enforceable teeth to the thing is that it might be used to hold the US Government accountable for activities relating to this topic.Yet we are now told that these same institutions should be trusted with exclusive access to AI systems capable of dramatically accelerating biological research and development including “dual-function” activities.All the while, by limiting public knowledge and access to advanced AI systems, the government and transnational corporations effectively eliminate public oversight.That proposition deserves skepticism.Advanced AI will help build dangerous biological engineered systems. That is a given.Here is another uncomfortable reality. Advanced biological AI presents genuine biosecurity risks, so restricting access within the United States does not prevent hostile nations from developing or acquiring similar capabilities.  In fact, as sure as the sun rises in the east, we can be assured that they will and are.The emergence of DeepSeek should have ended any illusion that advanced AI capabilities can be permanently contained within a handful of American companies. In a matter of months, a Chinese firm demonstrated that many of the capabilities previously thought to require enormous resources and privileged access could be replicated at far lower cost than experts had predicted. Whether one views DeepSeek as an innovation story, a national security concern, or a market disruption, the lesson is the same: knowledge spreads. Information and technology know no borders.China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other adversarial states are unlikely to voluntarily limit research into technologies that could provide strategic advantages in biotechnology, biodefense, pharmaceutical development, pathogen characterization, or potentially biological weapons programs. If frontier AI systems can meaningfully accelerate biological research, those capabilities will inevitably proliferate.The result may be a world in which American citizens, independent scientists, and smaller research organizations face increasing restrictions, while foreign governments continue to advance their own programs with few comparable constraints.In that scenario, the policy does not eliminate risk. It merely concentrates capability among states and large institutions while hoping America's geopolitical competitors choose not to pursue the same technological path. DeepSeek suggests that hope is unlikely to be rewarded.At this point, there is no international framework capable of controlling AI-assisted biological research. There is no enforceable treaty, no inspection system worthy of the name, and no reason to believe geopolitical rivals will voluntarily restrain themselves. The Biological Weapons Convention is an artifact of another age. It has no meaningful verification provisions, no meaningful enforcement powers, and no ability to prevent nations from pursuing capabilities they deem strategically important. It offers the appearance of control without much of the substance.There also appears to be no way to put the genie back into the bottle.The question is who gets the capability.Anthropic and others appear to be moving toward a model in which governments, large corporations, intelligence agencies, military organizations, and approved partners retain access while the public receives increasingly restricted versions.The public rationale is safety.The practical effect is the concentration of power.But before surrendering these capabilities to the institutions that brought us years of gain-of-function controversy, opaque biodefense programs, international research networks, contractor oversight failures, and repeated transparency battles, citizens should ask a simple question.What exactly has this governing class done to earn that trust?Lots of talk, Potemkin oversight, and no legislation.Recent history suggests the simple, transparent and straightforward answer: not much of anything.  It appears that “incentives to act are not aligned”.Malone News exists because informed citizens need access to facts, analysis, and perspectives often overlooked by legacy media. Subscribe for free to stay informed, or become a paid subscriber to help keep this work independent.Found this useful? Share it. Independent voices grow one reader at a time.ShareRWM/JGM

Summary: Biological Intelligence, Government Power, and the New Biosecurity State


Sunday Strip: Money, Money, Money

Bernie Sanders just can’t help himself (true story):In response to the above, the Burnie Senders Parody Account on X rewrote the above; the message speaks  clearly between the lines :“You speak of value as if creating rockets that reach space cheaper and connecting poor regions to the internet is some great achievement.But that is exactly the danger. When one individual is permitted to accumulate and direct so much surplus, he ends up creating technologies and opportunities that should have been planned and controlled by the Central Committee from the beginning.Now we have the problem that thousands of ordinary workers became millionaires. They gained independence instead of remaining dependent on the State. This is not progress for the proletariat. It is a loss of control.Individual initiative on this scale is unpredictable. It creates wealth that escapes central direction and gives people options they should not have without permission.These outcomes must be prevented, not celebrated.The power to decide what gets built, who benefits, and how resources are distributed cannot remain in private hands.The 5 year plan is perfect ☭”Burnie Senders@BurnieSendersXHomesteading for Health by Drs. MaloneAvailable for pre-order!This is about the halfway point. Below is for paying subscribers only.(Hint: the best is yet to come)Read more

Summary: Versus Central Committee control


Well Being: Berberine Revisited

Back in 2023, I wrote about berberine after hearing my friend and colleague Dr. Paul Marik discuss repurposed therapies. At the time, berberine was still relatively unknown outside of integrative medicine circles. Today, it has become one of the most talked-about supplements in the world.In typical fashion, the conversation has become polarized. Some social media influencers now market berberine as “Nature’s Ozempic.” Others dismiss it as little more than internet hype. As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere between those extremes.The comparison to Ozempic is understandable. We are living through a period in which GLP-1 agonists such as semaglutide and tirzepatide have become some of the most profitable pharmaceutical products ever developed. Weight loss has become a national obsession. Every new compound that appears to influence body weight is immediately compared to these drugs.Of course, the real culprits are a sedentary lifestyle and a culture that disdains physical labor, along with an abundance of highly addictive, ultraprocessed foods - full of carbs and sugar. But there it is. GLP-1 agonists are here to stay and are one way to combat the epidemic of metabolic disease that has overtaken America.But I digress.  Back to berberine as a “natural” Ozempic. The comparison is misleading.Berberine is not Ozempic. It does not produce the dramatic appetite suppression or rapid weight loss associated with modern GLP-1 therapies. It is not a pharmaceutical agent designed to target a specific receptor. Rather, it is a naturally occurring plant alkaloid with a remarkably broad range of biological effects that influence metabolism through multiple pathways.Berberine is found in several plants, including barberry, goldenseal, and Oregon grape. Traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine have used it for centuries, primarily for gastrointestinal infections and digestive disorders. Modern research, however, has revealed a much broader range of biological activity for this natural product.One reason berberine has attracted so much attention is that it appears to activate one of the body’s central metabolic control systems: AMP-activated protein kinase, or AMPK.AMPK functions as a cellular energy sensor. When activated, it promotes glucose uptake, improves insulin sensitivity, enhances fat metabolism, reduces hepatic glucose production, and helps regulate energy balance throughout the body. These effects have obvious implications for many of the chronic diseases that now dominate modern medicine.Since my original article, multiple reviews and meta-analyses have continued to support berberine’s role in improving metabolic health. The evidence suggests that berberine can modestly reduce fasting blood glucose, improve insulin sensitivity, lower LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, and support modest weight loss in some individuals.The effects are not dramatic.They are also remarkably consistent.This distinction matters.Medicine often falls into the trap of assuming that bigger effects are always better effects. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not. Metabolic health is not simply a matter of losing weight. It involves a complex interplay between insulin sensitivity, inflammation, mitochondrial function, lipid metabolism, gut health, physical activity, and nutrition.Berberine appears to touch many of these systems simultaneously.In many respects, it behaves more like a naturally derived cousin of metformin than a GLP-1 agonist.Metformin is a prescription drug, best known as a first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes. It lowers blood sugar by reducing glucose production in the liver, decreasing absorption of sugar from food, and improving the body's response to insulin.This is one reason researchers continue to investigate berberine’s potential role in prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), and polycystic ovarian syndrome.But let me digress (again):As someone who has spent much of a career evaluating therapeutics, I find compounds such as berberine particularly interesting because they remind us that biology rarely operates through a single pathway. This is also true of ivermectin, which is the primary reason the FDA has had such a hard time approving it for various infectious disease indications.It is the reason given by the FDA to stop my team and me from conducting clinical trials on the use of ivermectin for COVID.We were told that, first, we would have to prove the mechanism of action of ivermectin against COVID in tissue culture.A truly impossible task and a completely absurd FDA edict.  Ivermectin was already an approved drug. Furthermore, we have extensively documented that ivermectin acts through multiple pathways to reduce disease symptoms.Below was the FDA’s response to us and highlights why it takes so long to get anything through the FDA.  BTW- we actually did not need the FDA’s approval for this clinical trial, but the US military, which was funding this work, had it as a requirement for continued funding.The FDA official in charge of writing this response in April of 2021 was Dr. Sumathi Nambiar.  Guess where she went once she left the FDA, somewhere around 2024?And so it goes.  If you don’t upset the apple cart and piss off big pharma while at the FDA, you will be blessed with a high-paying second career soon after departure.We were also told that to conduct clinical trials using already-licensed drugs (repurposed drugs), we would have to include remdesivir as the standard of care. And that means we would have to conduct toxicology studies on the combination of remdesivir and ivermectin. This demand, despite the fact that remdesivir was already known by the FDA’s own reporting not to have any mortality benefit. In fact, in late 2020, the WHO's large multinational Solidarity Trial determined that remdesivir had little or no effect on overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, or duration of hospital stay.Again, the FDA imposed an impossible standard during a fast-moving pandemic for drugs that are already licensed, safe, and effective.In retrospect, it was clear that the FDA’s decision to block, in a timely manner, the main clinical trials for the use of ivermectin and other repurposed drugs in the USA was about stopping any treatment that would conflict with the economic drivers behind the vaccines that came at us like a freight train.However, this example shows just how impossibly complex these issues are.The reductionist mindset that dominates modern drug development seeks highly specific targets. Block one receptor. Activate one enzyme. Modify one signaling pathway. If you can’t prove that, the FDA will not allow a clinical trial to proceed.Human physiology is rarely that simple.Berberine appears to influence metabolic regulation, inflammatory signaling, oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, and the gut microbiome. Those systems interact continuously. The result may be a series of individually modest effects that collectively become clinically meaningful.The Microbiome ConnectionOne of the most fascinating developments since I first wrote about berberine involves its interaction with the gut microbiome.Over the last several years, evidence has continued to accumulate suggesting that berberine alters microbial populations within the gastrointestinal tract. Some investigators now believe that a substantial portion of its metabolic effects may be mediated through changes in gut ecology rather than through direct systemic absorption.This hypothesis makes sense. Berberine has notoriously poor oral bioavailability. Yet despite limited absorption, it consistently produces metabolic effects in both animal and human studies.The gut microbiome may help explain that apparent paradox.Increasingly, researchers are recognizing that metabolism, immunity, inflammation, and the microbiome operate as an interconnected system rather than as isolated biological compartments. Berberine appears to function within that interconnected network.The more we learn about the microbiome, the more we appreciate how many chronic diseases may be linked to disturbances in this ecosystem. Obesity, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and even some cancers have all been associated with alterations in gut microbial communities.Whether berberine’s primary mechanism ultimately proves to be direct metabolic regulation, microbiome modulation, a combination of both, or another mechanism of action remains uncertain.What is becoming increasingly clear is that the microbiome cannot be ignored.Berberine and CancerOne of the more intriguing developments since my original article involves the growing body of research examining berberine and cancer biology.Whenever discussing cancer research, it is important to separate laboratory findings, animal studies, cancer prevention, and treatment of established disease. These categories are often blurred together in popular reporting, creating unrealistic expectations and unnecessary confusion.The strongest human evidence involving berberine and cancer does not concern treatment.It concerns prevention.In 2020, investigators published a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study involving more than 1,100 patients who had recently undergone removal of colorectal adenomas. These adenomas are precancerous lesions that can progress to colorectal cancer over time.Patients receiving berberine experienced significantly fewer recurrent adenomas than those receiving a placebo.The recurrence rate was approximately 36 percent in the berberine group versus 47 percent in the placebo group. In the world of cancer research, this is a very big deal.That does not prove berberine prevents colorectal cancer. It does, however, represent one of the stronger human studies demonstrating that a relatively inexpensive natural compound can favorably influence a clinically relevant cancer-related endpoint.Beyond colorectal adenomas, the cancer literature remains largely preclinical.Researchers have reported that berberine influences numerous biological pathways associated with tumor growth and progression, including apoptosis, cell-cycle regulation, angiogenesis, inflammatory signaling, oxidative stress, cellular metabolism, and mitochondrial function.Laboratory studies have demonstrated activity in models of breast cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, gastric cancer, and colorectal cancer.A systematic review and meta-analysis of animal studies published in 2019 concluded that berberine consistently reduced tumor volume and tumor weight across multiple experimental models.That finding is encouraging.Cell cultures are not people. Mice are not people.  Something the FDA still fails to understand. Many compounds that appear promising in preclinical cancer research ultimately fail in human trials.The purpose of preclinical research is to identify signals worth pursuing. Berberine continues to generate those signals.There is also growing interest in its potential role as an adjunctive therapy. Experimental studies suggest that berberine may increase sensitivity to certain chemotherapeutic agents and may help overcome mechanisms of drug resistance that frequently emerge during cancer treatment.Whether those observations ultimately translate into meaningful clinical benefits remains to be determined.For now, the most scientifically defensible conclusion is that berberine demonstrates credible anticancer activity deserving further investigation, while remaining far from a proven cancer therapy.That said, taking berberine as an adjunctive therapy to other cancer treatments seems like a no-brainer.  This is not medical advice, just an observation.The Economics of Medical ResearchThe story of berberine also illustrates a larger problem within modern medicine.At the same time that governments, insurers, and healthcare systems are spending tens of billions of dollars annually on GLP-1 agonists, relatively little funding is available to rigorously study inexpensive natural compounds such as berberine.This is not because berberine lacks biological activity.It is because berberine lacks patent protection.Modern biomedical research is largely financed through a system built around intellectual property. Pharmaceutical companies can justify investing hundreds of millions of dollars in clinical trials when exclusive rights offer the potential for billions in future revenue.The scientific consequences are significant.A naturally occurring compound may demonstrate therapeutic promise across multiple disease categories and yet struggle to attract the funding necessary for definitive Phase III trials. The result is a peculiar form of scientific limbo. Evidence accumulates slowly. Small studies show benefit. Mechanistic studies identify plausible biological pathways. Researchers continue reporting encouraging findings. Yet the large-scale clinical trials required to change guidelines never materialize. Of course, the National Cancer Institute at NIH, as usual, appears to be asleep at the wheel. They have little interest in funding products without economic sponsors.Then critics point to the absence of those trials as evidence that the therapy lacks merit.This creates a self-reinforcing cycle.Compounds with commercial potential attract funding, generate evidence, receive regulatory support, gain physician acceptance, and become standard of care. Compounds without commercial potential often remain trapped in a perpetual state of scientific uncertainty regardless of their biological promise.To be clear, this is not an argument against GLP-1 drugs.Semaglutide and tirzepatide represent important therapeutic advances. For many patients, these medications are genuinely life-changing. The clinical data supporting their effectiveness are impressive. Yes, there can be severe side-effects for some, but for others, these drugs are life-saving. Living with severe metabolic disease is eventually a death sentence and greatly affects quality of life. These drugs are giving many a new lease on life.The question is whether our research priorities have become too narrowly focused on what can be monetized.Obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and even many forms of cancer share common metabolic roots. If an inexpensive natural compound demonstrates evidence of improving insulin sensitivity, reducing inflammation, altering the microbiome, improving lipid metabolism, and potentially reducing recurrence of precancerous lesions, should society not invest serious resources into determining its true clinical value?One cannot help but wonder what the evidence base for berberine would look like if it carried a patent and a multibillion-dollar marketing budget?Would there now be dozens of large multicenter trials?Would physicians routinely prescribe it?Would treatment guidelines mention it?Would insurers reimburse it?We cannot know the answers.What we do know is that the amount of evidence available for a therapy often reflects the economic incentives behind studying it as much as the biological potential of the therapy itself.That reality should make all of us a bit more cautious when equating “lack of evidence” with “lack of efficacy.”Sometimes the missing evidence reflects not scientific failure, but market failure.Berberine may ultimately prove to be modestly useful, highly useful, or only useful in select circumstances. The honest answer is that we still do not know. But we do know that it has already proven itself to be useful.What we can say with confidence is that the question deserves far more investigation than it has received.Safety and Quality MatterOf course, berberine is not risk-free.The most common adverse effects remain gastrointestinal. Constipation, diarrhea, bloating, and abdominal discomfort are all reported.Berberine can also interact with prescription medications used to treat diabetes, hypertension, anticoagulation disorders, and other chronic conditions. Individuals taking prescription drugs should discuss supplementation with their healthcare provider before beginning use.Quality control is another concern.Unlike pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements are not subject to the same manufacturing standards. Independent testing has repeatedly demonstrated variability among commercial products. Choosing reputable manufacturers remains important.If you are tired of corporate media narratives, government talking points, and manufactured consensus, you’ve come to the right place. Malone News provides independent analysis, investigative reporting, and informed commentary on science, medicine, public policy, and culture. Subscribe for free to receive new posts, or become a paid subscriber to help keep this platform independent.Final ThoughtsBerberine is not a miracle drug.It is not a substitute for proper nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, sunlight, social connection, and maintaining a healthy body composition.It is not a replacement for good medical care.However, the accumulated evidence suggests that it remains one of the more promising natural compounds available for supporting metabolic health. Its effects are biologically plausible, clinically relevant, and increasingly supported by a growing body of research.The emerging data involving the microbiome, metabolic disease, and even cancer prevention only strengthen the case for continued investigation and use.In an era when obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and metabolic dysfunction have become defining public health challenges, therapies that safely improve metabolic resilience deserve serious attention.Sometimes the most interesting therapies are not the newest, the most expensive, or the most heavily marketed.Sometimes they have been sitting quietly in nature all along.RWM/JGMThe best way to counter censorship, narrative management, and information silos is person-to-person communication. If you found this article useful, please share it with others.ShareReferencesCicero, Arrigo F. G., and Alessandro Colletti. “Berberine for the Treatment of Metabolic Disorders: A Comprehensive Review.”Nutrients16, no. 2 (2024): 201–216.Feng, Rui, Yao Shou, Jian Li, et al. “Efficacy and Safety of Berberine Alone for Several Metabolic Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials.”Frontiers in Pharmacology14 (2023): 1198476.Li, Yong, Jie Wang, Xin Zhang, et al. “Effect of Berberine on the Recurrence of Colorectal Adenomas: A Multicentre, Double-Blind, Randomised, Placebo-Controlled Study.”The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology5, no. 3 (2020): 267–275.Liu, Chao, Xiaoqing Zheng, and Yanfang Wang. “Berberine as a Potential Anticancer Agent: A Review of Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Prospects.”Cancer Cell International24, no. 1 (2024): 112.Sun, Yan, Jing Li, et al. “The Antitumor Effect of Berberine in Animal Models: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.”BMC Cancer19 (2019): 589.Wang, Yujie, Lin Zhao, and Rui Chen. “Berberine Modulates the Gut Microbiota and Improves Metabolic Homeostasis: Current Evidence and Future Perspectives.”Frontiers in Microbiology15 (2024): 1364582.Yu, Yan, and Xiaohua Zhang. “Berberine and Metabolic Syndrome: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Evidence.”Pharmacological Research203 (2025): 107143.

Summary: Three Years Later, What Have We Learned?