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Dr. Anthony Fauci appears before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at the Capitol, Wednesday, July 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

 

TOP STORY

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci is seared into the minds of a lot of people who experienced the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States—and that’s especially true of the GOP members who are part of Sen. Rand Paul’s pursuit of… something.

Fauci, the infectious disease specialist who advised both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump on how to navigate the pandemic, sat for three hours of grilling at the behest of Paul yesterday. He declined to participate in it, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment over 100 times, presumably to avoid answering questions that could lead to prosecution.

That decision set off a firestorm across the media, something that’s on full display in the stack today. Fauci has plenty of sympathizers who see the proceedings as little more than evidence of the Senator’s single-minded obsession; there are also quite a few detractors who have their pitchforks poised for the moment Paul says go.

THREE TAKES

POLITICO Playbook PM, Irie Sentner—Republicans are BIG MAD about Fauci years after the fact, Sentner said today. That was on full display as they “hammered” the doctor for three hours on everything from “what day of the week it was, the color of his tie, and what the Fifth Amendment even says.” Apart from the GOP’s insistence on continuing this “cat-and-mouse-like saga” in which Fauci stars as a “bogeyman—the perfect, suited example of an overeducated Washington bureaucrat hawking masks and school closures,” the hearings were also just more proof of Fauci’s claim Sen. Paul has an “unhinged obsession” with him.

Townhall, Matt Vespa—”Too many Americans endured the indignity of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID regime,” for his testimony to be compelling, a completely reasonable Vespa insisted today. That so-called regime “was based on science fiction, fueled by politics, and ended up causing undue misery and pain for countless American families,” he added. In fact, to Vespa, Fauci is responsible for the “reading and math scores” of American children, which “may never recover,” as well as the closure of scores of businesses.

Vespa also took several in the media to task, including TMZ’s founder Harvey Levin and CNN, for believing in “COVID, global warming, and other hoaxes”—signs of being the true “anti-science crowd.” Oh…kay.

Status, Natalie Korach—Though plenty of conservative pundits were focused on dissecting Dr. Fauci’s documentation of his relationships and interactions with celebrities, the hearings also forced him to face down his adversaries in the media, Korach observed today. That included Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who Fauci had no problem taking to task in the very diaries that prompted Sen. Rand to begin the hearings in the first place.

Ingraham made sure to snag a “highly visible seat directly behind Fauci,” and the “theatrics peaked” after Sen. Bernie Moreno told Fauci to “turn around and look at the people behind you”—alleged victims of the doctor’s shamings–a move that prompted “Ingraham and others to stand in a moment made for MAGA Media.” (Fauci declined to do so.) Ingraham also went on to spend “practically the entire first half of her show” talking about Fauci, something that certainly makes it seem like she’s not quite as vindicated by the hearings as she might be pretending to be.

TAKEAWAY: Predictably, right-wing and conservative media have completely run away with a pro-Paul plot when it comes to discussing the Fauci hearings. Heaping responsibility for everything from children’s struggles in school to the full weight of the COVID-19 pandemic on Fauci is irresponsible, though it does support a party line. But on the other end of things, Fauci may not be the venerated hero the left wants him to be. Perhaps the truth is, as per usual, somewhere in the middle. What’s undeniable is his expertise, and the fact that presidents since Reagan have trusted him to steer Americans through an area—infectious disease—that most of us really know nothing about. Still, unlike before the hearing, most of the newsletters were talking about Fauci today — and that’s unquestionably a win for the right. They’d much rather be talking about Fauci than Iran.

📰 Top SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP 🍨POLITICO Playbook, Will Steakin, Dasha Burns, and Adam Wren—Sen. Majority Leader John Thune “does not have anywhere near the votes to kill the filibuster or pass the SAVE America Act,” he told POLITICO in an exclusive interview. That’s “despite Trump’s wishes,” he also said as he emphasized a need for the GOP to start working together instead of “shooting each other.”

Thune also took the conversation as an opportunity to note that he and Trump don’t often see eye-to-eye. “He sees me as the person that’s the impediment to some of the things he wants to get done. But as I continually point out … I don’t make this stuff up,” Thune told POLITICO. “Math is math, arithmetic is arithmetic. … And part of it, too, is the active role he played in some of these primaries. … He thinks I can wave the magic wand. I wish it were that easy.”

SCOOP 🍨Page Six, Desiree Murphy and Vanessa Serna—Jared Leto has been hit with allegations of sexual misconduct by at least 10 women who are participating in a BBC documentary, now crewmembers who have worked with the actor coming forward with their own experiences. Leto is “horrible” to work with, and “there’s no soul behind his eyes,” one source told Murphy and Serna. “He was a horrible vibe while working with him and he made people uncomfortable. It was really hard to talk to him, if he even tried to talk to us.”

An insider also told the pair that “people who have known him for years” have also noted he is “very problematic with women.” The allegations have dogged Leto for quite some time, and it’s possible a moment of reckoning is on his horizon.

ANALYSIS 👀 To The Contrary, Charlie Sykes—The US Senate is forced to decide whether to confirm the “most corrupt and compromised Attorney General in the nation’s history,” Sykes wrote this morning. Sykes pointed to Todd Blanche’s record, which includes helping cover up the allegations against Epstein, election denialism, and a “slavish eagerness to do Donald Trump’s bidding”—but that’s not all. Blanche’s “willingness to serve up” the head of James Comey is “what got him the job” with the president, and a willingness to “deliver Trump the vengeance” he’s demanded might be what gets him the nomination. This despite the fact he “ignored counsels of prudence and fast-tracked the ludicrous case that sought to imprison Comey on the risible premise that the picture of the seashells constituted a death threat.”

ANALYSIS 👀The Poynter Report, Tom Jones—The new hires at 60 Minutes will have to contend with the weighty expectations the program still demands, at least for now, Jones wrote today. Like others this week, Jones expressed doubts that former NYT Opinion columnist Ross Douthat, who “is joining the gold standard of TV news despite not having any TV news experience,” will be able to hit the ground running. That is, unless the team at 60 Minutes can “coach him up”—a possibility Jones is similarly not sure is realistic. Jones is also “fascinated” by the hiring of Sebastian Junger, who has both “journalistic chops” and “a rugged and charismatic persona that might translate well to television.”

ANALYSIS 👀CJR, Amos Barshard—The Paramount/WBD merger saga is still playing out, and Barshard asks an important question: if the current legal challenges fail to block the merger, what other options are there? “The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission have historically been the most powerful antitrust regulators in the United States,” Barshard wrote today, but that’s something that’s a lot less true under Trump, and the “federal government has voluntarily ceded that role to the states.” Experts told Barshard this lawsuit “has the best chance of slowing or stopping the deal.” Should the merger succeed, Paramount will ostensibly take on $80 billion in debt, a number Barshard suspects the company will deal with by “utilizing AI on a mass scale while gutting the company’s combined workforce.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

Status, Natalie Korach — Inside a tense post-layoff town hall, HuffPost staffers demanded answers about new owner Byron Allen’s vision for the newsroom. In the bloodletting, 15 positions, including the entire video team, were eliminated. The cuts struck employees as contradictory to the billionaire media mogul’s stated ambition to transform BuzzFeed’s brands into video-heavy businesses that can rival YouTube, leaving many feeling disrespected and questioning the company’s journalistic future. Notably, staffers haven’t heard directly from Allen about the layoffs at all. QUOTE 📣One employee said, “I don’t want to become just an aggregation farm for Byron’s bullshit.”

Like & Subscribe, Natalie Jarvey — Top executives from rival podcast platforms got together at a luxe California retreat to fix a $1 billion measurement problem that has been costing the otherwise-successful industry credibility and ad revenue. The coalition, dubbed the Audio Measurement Project (AMP), spent a year debating standards and is now proposing a massive shift away from measuring “downloads” in favor of tracking 30-second “plays” to better prove to advertisers that consumers are actually exposed to their campaigns. QUOTE 📣Per podcast exec Dave Granger, “The point I’ve been trying to make here is that we are all paying an idiot tax in this business, and it’s entirely self-imposed.”

Digiday Daily, Sara Guaglione — Time is officially serving advertisements directly to artificial intelligence bots, successfully enlisting brands like Ally Bank and the Project Management Institute as its first buyers. While the concept sounds a little weird at first, the legacy publisher is betting that delivering targeted markdown pages to AI crawlers will make its content and advertising partners more visible in the rapidly expanding world of AI-driven search. ”

Poynter, Tom Jones — A bipartisan coalition of former Federal Communications Commission officials is now pushing back against Chairman Brendan Carr’s early license review of eight Disney-owned ABC TV stations. The group, which includes former FCC chairs from both the Reagan and Obama administrations, submitted a filing blasting the regulatory probe as a grave violation of the Communications Act fueled by the Trump administration’s distaste for ABC’s programming. QUOTE 📣”This early license renewal proceeding is unprecedented in the history of the Federal Communications Commission and a grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution. Through this proceeding, the FCC seeks to censor Disney’s and ABC’s speech and send a chilling message to all broadcasters: carry speech we don’t like at your peril.”

Status, Natalie Korach — WME executive chairman Ari Emanuel penned a fiery opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal defending the massive Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, but the newspaper is facing scrutiny for failing to disclose Emanuel’s financial ties to Paramount’s David Ellison. While the outlet included a generic note stating Emanuel “does business with movie studios,” media insiders were shocked by the omission of some important context: Ellison recently injected billions in cash into Emanuel’s TKO group. QUOTE 📣 “The note, however, falls far short of informing readers about the fact Ellison just lined Emanuel’s pockets with billions in cash—which seems like crucial context when reading a piece in which the TKO boss offers a full-throated defense of the highly controversial deal.”

Puck’s Line Sheet, Lauren Sherman — Gap is making a major play for the fragrance market with the official relaunch of Gap Beauty, masterminded by industry vet John Demsey. Rather than relying solely on traditional advertising or massive influencers, the brand is taking a highly targeted approach by partnering with respected beauty insiders like Alexis Page to build authentic credibility and prove they can compete with modern powerhouses like Glossier. QUOTE 📣”Gap seems to understand that winning over tastemakers and beauty insiders matters just as much as reaching mainstream shoppers.”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Morning Brew: Thrill-seekers, get ready: A Six Flags in New Jersey has unveiled plans for a new roller coaster called Bakunawa, named after a serpent from Philippine legend. When it opens next year, the ride is expected to break six world records, including becoming the world’s fastest spinning coaster with speeds up to 100 miles per hour.

Morning Brew: In a brilliant marketing pivot, the New Bedford Whaling Museum is turning a bad review into a lucrative fashion trend. The museum took a 1-star Google review from a disappointed visitor who called the museum—which features whale skeletons, not fish—the “worst aquarium ever” and printed it on the back of t-shirts and hoodies. The self-deprecating merch recently went viral on social media, leading to a 250% spike in sales in a single week.

Puck: There once was a TikTokker from Nantucket… Oh, you haven’t heard that one? Well, anyway, Dairy Boy, a brand from influencer Paige Lorenze, is drawing massive lines of young shoppers down the town’s Federal Street. The sudden influx of social media hype hasn’t thrilled all of the locals, however; a neighboring craft and antiques shop actually put up a sign that simply reads, “No influencers.”

WHAT GOT MISSED?

The Poynter Report’s Factually, Enock Nyariki—South Korea’s Network Act, which gives “anyone who believes an online post is false” the option to report that post, went into effect on July 7. The new rule applies to nine different companies, including Tiktok, Meta, and Google. After receiving a report, the company in question has to determine if it’s valid—something that is proving to be “difficult,” Nyariki wrote today. On top of that, the companies only have to publish how any reports are solved on their own every six months, and can “refer a disputed claim to a fact-checking organization” if it is on an approved list (there are only two approved organizations in the country).

The new law presents some problems: “A platform cannot subpoena records or examine witnesses, he said, yet it is being asked to decide quickly whether someone knew a claim was false and meant to cause harm,” Nyariki pointed out. Courts might also not be much help, since the legal process takes time, and these reports are sent immediately. The country now risks substituting fact-checking for “judicial or administrative jurisdiction,” something that does not fall under the purview of the work of journalists.

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

Awful Announcing’s The A Block, Sean Keeley—The WNBA is in a bit of a PR crisis, Keeley wrote today. While it’s not entirely the fault of the league’s leadership, those very leaders don’t appear to “have a strategy for fixing things.”

The 2026 season began on a huge wave of momentum, Keeley also pointed out: a $2.2 billion media rights deal, an increase in viewership numbers, and more people than ever before keeping the WNBA in people’s mouths. But the league has mismanaged much of that influx of attention, something that is playing out this week as the Indiana Fever, which boasts superstar Caitlin Clark, continues to dodge questions about transphobic comments guard Sophie Cunningham made in an interview with ESPN earlier this month. Additionally, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has come under questioning by industry experts, and a video of Paige Bueckers admitting to placing what seemed to be a personal $400 bet on the All-Star Game outcome with Angel Reese was quickly deleted from social media (such wagers are a violation of the league’s CBA).

Though these issues are something “every professional sports league has to navigate,” they are compounding and “feel like an endless cycle of negativity” because of Engelbert’s leadership, or lack thereof, Keeley also asserted. “There’s no quick fix for all of the WNBA’s problems, especially given that it finds itself the target of a media ecosystem that, frankly, seems to want to hate it,” he added. “The women of the WNBA seem intent on breaking the status quo of how professional sports are supposed to work and look like, and that drives a lot of people (mostly men) insane.”

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.