2026-08-06T04:01:29.420Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/06/politics/fauci-contempt-vote-covid-pandemic-rand-paul
新冠疫情是一场历史性的压力测试，暴露了美国政治已破碎到无法应对全国性危机的地步。
六年过去了，一场围绕美国前最知名卫生官员安东尼·福奇博士的新政治风暴表明，这些政治裂痕如今愈发致命。而对这场百年最严重公共卫生紧急事件的迟到清算，比以往任何时候都更加遥不可及。
共和党主导的参议院委员会预计将于周四就认定福奇藐视国会进行投票，此前他在上周一场激烈的听证会上援引《第五修正案》权利超过100次。
委员会主席、参议员兰德·保罗指责福奇阻挠他对疫情防控政策的调查。这位美国国家过敏和传染病研究所前所长拒绝回答问题，并指责这位来自肯塔基州的长期对手设下圈套，试图绕过时任总统乔·拜登对他授予的赦免。
上周的听证会是一场典型的华盛顿闹剧，两党都紧盯一位传奇人物，以推行各自的意识形态议程。而委员会向司法部提交的藐视国会指控，将引发围绕总统赦免权的紧迫法律与宪法争议。
但更重要的是，这场围绕福奇的新风波，为2026年和2028年大选之际新冠疫情仍具影响力的政治遗产提供了一个清晰的观察节点。这场对峙凸显了“让美国再次伟大”共和党人与民主党人之间在公共卫生问题上的共识破裂，两党互相指责对方无视科学。同时，它也提出了一个关键问题：在职业卫生官员与首届特朗普政府之间，以及华盛顿与州和地方卫生及政治领导人之间，围绕新冠防疫措施爆发的激烈政治争端中，人们是否汲取了任何教训。
共和党领导人指责福奇主导了损害经济、公共卫生和儿童教育的封锁政策，并就美国资助的中国武汉研究误导国会，他们坚称实验室泄漏是疫情的源头。
更广泛地说，他们试图为特朗普第一任期内反复无常、有时出于政治私利的危机应对洗白，而这种应对正是导致他在2020年大选中败选拜登的原因之一。例如，美国卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·肯尼迪在周日与CNN主播达纳·巴斯一同参加《国情咨文》节目时，指责福奇“管理新冠疫情不善”，并谎称“特朗普总统曾想要结束封锁”。尽管联邦政府提供了指导方针，但并未强制实施封锁，此类决策均由各州自行决定。
民粹主义共和党人将福奇视为华盛顿精英深层国家的典型代表，称其旨在压制个人自由。俄亥俄州参议员伯尼·莫雷诺上周要求福奇“为你通过行动伤害的民众道歉”，而密苏里州参议员乔希·霍利则称他是“美国历史上最大的骗子”。
民主党人则借此机会提醒公众特朗普在新冠疫情应对中的失败——尽管其首届政府迅速推进了疫苗部署——并将这些失败与特朗普第二任期内对公共卫生指南、疫苗接种计划和学术研究的攻击联系起来。
福奇的处境也算得上是一场华盛顿式的悲剧。在国家过敏和传染病研究所近四十年的职业生涯中，他是罕见的同时受到两党赞誉的官员。外国政府将他视为全球卫生的黄金标准，他参与乔治·W·布什总统的PEPFAR全球抗艾滋病项目帮助挽救了数百万生命。
福奇是典型的华盛顿权力玩家。但现年85岁的他，已成为那些掌权过久、最终名誉受损者的象征。委员会公布的福奇日记节选展现了他虚荣自负的一面，他似乎对自己的媒体曝光度、名气和与名人的互动沾沾自喜。
没人会说福奇事事都做得完美。回顾来看，他的一些建议显得自相矛盾，或缺乏科学依据。
但围绕这位知名医生的政治狂热，或许也阻碍了一件更重要的事：在公共领域对疫情进行全面问责，而这或许能改善美国政府应对下一场紧急事件的能力。
在新冠疫情恐慌的可怕早期阶段，官员们在尚未完全了解病毒特性的情况下迅速做出决策，医院挤满了重症患者，失误在所难免。但有时官员们给出的建议前后不一，或在口罩等问题上反复无常，导致公众信心丧失。
普林斯顿大学教授弗朗西斯·李与同事斯蒂芬·马塞多合著了《新冠余波》一书，她指出，福奇在2020年1月告诉CNN，尽管中国关闭了边境以遏制疫情，但他“无法想象关闭纽约或洛杉矶”。他还补充道：“从历史上看，关停活动不会产生重大影响。”
然而几周后，高级卫生官员却建议州长们关闭学校和企业。“这是怎么发生的？不只是我们实施了封锁，就连那位称武汉模式不太可能成功的人也在推荐这种做法，”李在一次采访中说道。
李认为，疫情是如此可怕的经历，大多数人都想翻篇。但这种愿望削弱了公众和医疗官员对这段时期进行深入审视的清算意愿。“回头看，我们哪些地方做对了？哪些地方做错了？我看不到这种内部清算。”
更多争议围绕疫情限制措施展开。此类措施的评估十分复杂，因为它们取决于封锁时长、病毒传播密度、当时流行的病毒变种以及当地卫生系统的质量。但一场全面、去政治化的国会疫情调查，将探究提前开放的红色州与关闭更久的蓝色州各自的相对成效。这类研究或许能解答诸如关闭学校等决策带来的人力损失问题，这些损失留下了长期的教育、心理和情感创伤。
一些批评者还认为，高级公共卫生官员过于专注于抗击病毒的使命，忽视了全面的后果。他们——以及传播其信息的媒体——或许也更多地关注了蓝领工人所承受的痛苦，这些工人不像办公室职员那样可以居家办公。
但拜登政府时期的白宫新冠疫情应对协调员阿希什·贾哈博士周日告诉CNN的巴斯，福奇“只是提供建议”。
“有些人听了，有些人没听，”贾哈说，并补充道，“问责应该落在我们的政治领导人身上，而不是提供建议的科学家身上。”
福奇听证会也重新引发了关于病毒起源的辩论。当时，特朗普抓住病毒源自中国实验室的说法不放——显然是为了转移人们对其领导失误的注意力。但此后大量学术研究和流行病学数据表明，人畜共患起源——即疾病在动物中自然发生并传播给人类——是导致新冠的SARS-CoV-2病毒最可能的来源，最初的传播与武汉的一个海鲜市场有关。
特朗普的前国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德在6月指责福奇资助武汉病毒研究所的实验室研究，从而引发了病毒。但她公布的文件未能证实这些说法，福奇也对此予以否认。不过，贾哈周日告诉CNN，他自己已经改变了对病毒起源的看法。“基于我了解到的信息和看到的证据，我得出结论，实验室泄漏的可能性更大，”贾哈说。
由于此事涉及中国这个拒绝国际社会要求其提高新冠疫情透明度的专制国家，或许永远无法得出确切结论。但如果国会程序能更冷静地追寻答案，或许能带来一些清晰的结果。
任何公职人员都不应凌驾于基于公共信任职位所做决策的问责之上。福奇的批评者认为他傲慢自大、拒绝接受审查——尽管他们为特朗普的失误开脱，后者在疫情期间经常散布虚假信息和怪异的治疗方案。
但如果像福奇这样受尊敬的官员都无法免受国家领导人恶毒的人身攻击，那么其他知名度较低的公职人员可能会选择转行，这将导致美国在下一场危机中无人可用。
“这些对福奇博士的攻击——不仅仅关乎他本人，”新泽西州民主党参议员安迪·金在上周的听证会上说道。“这在向其他人发出信号……我们的科学家、医生、医疗专业人员、研究人员。（这是在）试图向他们表明，如果你不与政治立场保持一致，你也可能会受到攻击。”
Republicans may finally snare Dr. Fauci in Covid’s last culture war
2026-08-06T04:01:29.420Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/06/politics/fauci-contempt-vote-covid-pandemic-rand-paul
The Covid-19 pandemic was a historic stress test that revealed American politics as too broken to deal with a national crisis.
Six years later, a new political storm over Dr. Anthony Fauci, once the nation’s most prominent health official, suggests those fractures are now even more toxic. And a long-delayed reckoning over the worst public health emergency in 100 years is more distant than ever.
A Republican-led Senate committee is expected to vote to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress on Thursday after he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times during an acrimonious hearing last week.
Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul accuses Fauci of obstructing his probe into pandemic policies. The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases declined to answer questions, accusing his longtime antagonist from Kentucky of laying a trap to get around a pardon he was granted by then-President Joe Biden.
Last week’s hearing was a classic Washington melodrama in which each party zeroes in on a larger-than-life personality to grind ideological axes. And a contempt referral by the committee to the Justice Department would raise pressing legal and constitutional questions over the president’s pardon power.
But more importantly, the new Fauci saga is a clarifying moment regarding Covid-19’s still-potent political legacy heading into the 2026 and 2028 elections. The showdown underscores the shattered consensus on public health between MAGA Republicans and Democrats who accuse their foes of flouting science. And it raises the vital question of whether any lessons have been taken from the vicious political disputes that erupted over Covid-19 mitigation methods between career health officials and the first Trump White House, and between Washington and state and local health and political leaders.
Republican leaders accuse Fauci of presiding over lockdown policies that harmed the economy, public health and children’s education, and of misleading Congress about federally funded research in Wuhan, China, where they contend that a lab leak started the pandemic.
More broadly, they are seeking to whitewash the erratic and sometimes politically self-serving first-term crisis leadership by Trump that contributed to his loss to Biden in 2020. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance, accused Fauci of “mismanaging the Covid pandemic” and said “President Trump wanted to end the lockdowns” in a falsehood-filled appearance with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday. While the federal government offered guidelines, it didn’t mandate lockdowns. Such decisions were left to states.
Populist Republicans see Fauci as an exemplar of an elite Washington deep state out to suppress personal freedoms. Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno last week demanded Fauci “apologize to the people you harmed through your actions,” while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley called him “the biggest scammer in American history.”
Democrats are welcoming a chance to remind the public of Trump’s Covid-19 failures and — notwithstanding his first administration’s swift efforts to deploy a vaccine — to link them to the president’s second-term assault on public health guidelines, vaccine schedules and academic research.
Fauci’s plight is also something of a Washington tragedy. In nearly four decades at the NIAID, he was the rare official feted by Republicans and Democrats alike. Foreign governments regarded him as the gold standard of global health, and his involvement in President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR global anti-HIV/AIDS programs helped save millions of lives.
Fauci was an archetypal Washington power player. But at 85, he’s become a symbol of those who cling to power too long and whose reputations end up tarnished. Excerpts of Fauci’s diaries released by the committee showed a vain and hubristic side as he seemed to gloat over his media coverage, fame and interactions with celebrities.
No one argues that Fauci did everything right. Some of his advice has looked, in retrospect, to be contradictory or not supported by science.
But the political heat around the famous doctor may also be an obstacle to something more important: full accountability across the public square over the pandemic, which might improve the federal response to the next emergency.
In the frightening early days of the Covid-19 panic, officials were making quick decisions without the full knowledge of the properties of the virus as hospitals filled with seriously ill victims. Missteps were inevitable. But sometimes officials gave inconsistent advice or reversed themselves on issues such as masking, resulting in a loss of public confidence.
Princeton professor Frances Lee, co-author of the book “In Covid’s Wake” with her colleague Stephen Macedo, points out that Fauci told CNN in January 2020 that while China had shut down travel to try to contain the outbreak, he couldn’t “imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles.” He added, “Historically when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.”
Yet weeks later, top health bureaucrats were advising governors to close schools and businesses. “How did this happen? And not just that we’re shutting down, but the man who had pronounced the Wuhan approach as unlikely to succeed is recommending it,” Lee said in an interview.
The pandemic was such a horrific experience that most people just wanted to move on. But that desire has tempered a reckoning among public and medical officials for in-depth examinations of the period, Lee argued. “Looking back, what did we get right? What did we get wrong? I don’t see that kind of internal reckoning.”
More controversy surrounds pandemic restrictions. Such measures are complex to evaluate, since they depended on the length of lockdowns, the density of spread of the virus, the variants circulating at any one time, and the quality of local health systems. But a full, depoliticized congressional examination of the pandemic would probe the relative success of red states that opened sooner vs. blue ones that stayed shut down longer. Such a study might address questions about the human toll of decisions such shuttering schools, which left lingering educational, mental and emotional damage.
Some critics also believe that senior public health officials were so fixated on their mission of battling the virus that they ignored the full spectrum of consequences. They — and media outlets carrying their messages — might also have focused more on the pain borne by blue-collar employees, who, unlike office workers, could not log on from home.
But Dr. Ashish Jha, who was White House Covid-19 response coordinator under Biden, told CNN’s Bash on Sunday that Fauci “gave advice.”
“Some people listened. Some people didn’t,” Jha said, adding that “accountability has to be with our political leaders, not with scientists who are giving advice.”
The Fauci hearing has also revived the debate about the origins of the virus. At the time, Trump seized on the idea it came from a Chinese laboratory — apparently to distract from his leadership failures. But the preponderance of academic studies and epidemiological data since then suggests that a zoonotic origin — meaning a disease occurs naturally in animals and spreads to humans — is the most likely derivation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, and that initial transmissions were linked to a wet market in Wuhan.
Trump’s former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, accused Fauci in June of funding lab research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that caused the virus. But documents she released failed to substantiate the claims, and Fauci denies them. Still, Jha told CNN on Sunday that he had changed his own mind on how the virus started. “Based on information I learned and based on information I have seen, I have come to conclude that it is more likely to have been a lab leak,” Jha said.
Since the issue concerns China, an authoritarian state that has refused international demands for more transparency about Covid-19,definitive answers may never emerge. But a congressional process that spent more time in the dispassionate pursuit of answers might offer some clarity.
No public official should be above answering for decisions made in positions of public trust. Fauci’s critics see him as imperious and resistant to scrutiny — even while excusing the failings of Trump, who was often a torrent of misinformation and crank cures during the emergency.
But if an official as respected as Fauci is not immune from vicious, personal vilification by national leaders, other, less high-profile public servants might chose another profession and leave America ill-served in the next crisis.
“These attacks upon Dr. Fauci — it’s not just about him,” Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said at the hearing last week. “It’s sending signals to others … our scientists, our doctors, our healthcare professionals, our researchers. (It’s) trying to show to them that if you don’t get in line with the politics, that you will also potentially be subject to attacks.”