Reflect on this for a moment. Van Jones literally argued that the Chinese Communist Party is more reliable for humanitarian aid than the U.S. government—all because Trump dared to add oversight to a bloated, unaccountable agency.
President Trump has moved to dismantle USAID, merging it into the State Department under Marco Rubio to enforce oversight, stop taxpayer dollars from fueling corruption, and ensure U.S. aid serves American interests.
As expected, the media and Democrats are in full meltdown mode, framing Trump’s crackdown on wasteful spending as a “coup.”
This particular take came from MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who convinced herself that reining in USAID corruption was equivalent to overthrowing a government.
“If this were happening in any other country right now, I promise you, I’d be on the air calling it a coup,” she declared.
Join 100K+ Substack readers and 1.5 million 𝕏 users who follow the work of Vigilant Fox. Subscribe to Vigilant News for exclusive stories you won’t find anywhere else.
In an equally ridiculous media moment, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested that Elon Musk targeted USAID because he was “uncomfortable” with how the agency combatted “corruption.”
“[USAID] not only leads on humanitarian assistance around the world but also works to combat corruption and foreign aid programs. I kind of see how that could make Elon Musk a bit uncomfortable,” Psaki said.
Perhaps Psaki is just panicking because Musk and Trump just shut down one of the Deep State’s favorite laundering machines.
After all, a bombshell FOIA request by the White Coat Waste Project revealed that Fauci’s NIAID and USAID funneled over $40 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to a Wuhan scientist researching bat coronavirus emergence—who later became “patient zero” for COVID-19.
The funding, which ended in 2019, backed risky gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raising major concerns that U.S. tax dollars may have helped create the infamous COVID-19 virus that triggered mass lockdowns, forced vaccinations, and an unprecedented global health crackdown.
The most hysterical take of the night came from CNN’s Van Jones, who claimed that Donald Trump is telling the rest of the world to “DIE” by adding oversight to USAID.
“Donald Trump says, ‘We don’t care. You go die.’ That’s the message from the United States government,” Jones declared, claiming that cutting off its massive foreign aid programs will lead to “people dying in very large numbers around the world.”
Jones warned that Trump’s actions against USAID open the door for China to say, “At least we’re a stable government who’s not going to leave you out here to die.”
Reflect on this for a moment. Van Jones literally argued that the Chinese Communist Party is more reliable for humanitarian aid than the U.S. government—all because Trump dared to add oversight to a bloated, unaccountable agency.
Now, that’s a very bold statement.
The only moment of clarity from the mainstream press came when Scott Jennings methodically schooled his fellow CNN panelists as they vainly tried to defend USAID.
“There is a difference between smart soft power and dumb spending by the leftwing ideologues who inhabit this bureaucracy,” Jennings quickly pointed out.
“There is a difference between soft power and soft stupidity. So whether you’re funding like DEI musicals in some country or transgender surgery somewhere or whatever, that is not what most Americans would say is an effective part of U.S. foreign policy,” he reminded everyone.
The media’s meltdown proves Elon Musk and Trump hit the Deep State right where it hurts.
When oversight is called a “coup,” and the people fixing corruption are painted as villains, you know the regime is in full panic mode.
Because if USAID was just another harmless aid agency, why are they melting down like their slush fund just got nuked?
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more reports like this one.
Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.
Now seated at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is poised to reshape not only the agency’s research priorities but the very culture that pushed him to the fringe.
Imagine spending your career studying infectious diseases, only to find that the real virus spreading uncontrollably is censorship. That was the reality for Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford epidemiologist who committed the unpardonable sin of questioning the COVID-19 lockdown orthodoxy. His punishment? Digital exile, courtesy of Silicon Valley’s Ministry of Truth.
In December 2022, the Twitter Files exposed what many had long suspected: Twitter had quietly placed Bhattacharya’s account on a Trends Blacklist. This ensured that his posts, often critical of lockdowns and mask mandates, would never see the light of day on the platform’s trending topics. In other words, Twitter’s algorithm worked like a digital bouncer, making sure his dissenting opinions never made it past the velvet rope.
And Twitter wasn’t alone. Facebook, ever eager to please its government handlers, scrubbed the Great Barrington Declaration from its pages. That document, co-authored by Bhattacharya and other esteemed scientists, dared to suggest that maybe, just maybe, locking down entire populations wasn’t the best strategy. Instead, it proposed focused protection for the most vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function. For this, it was sent to the digital equivalent of a gulag.
These experiences took center stage during Bhattacharya’s Senate confirmation hearing for the directorship of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Republican lawmakers, who suddenly found themselves cast as the last defenders of free speech in scientific discourse, saw his nomination as a win.
During his testimony, Bhattacharya didn’t mince words. He detailed how the Biden administration played an active role in orchestrating the suppression of alternative views. It wasn’t enough for officials to push their own pandemic policies — they needed to ensure that no one, regardless of expertise, could challenge them in the public square.
The Science™ vs. The Science
Bhattacharya’s testimony laid bare an uncomfortable truth: the pandemic was a crisis of speech. “The root problem was that people who had alternative ideas were suppressed,” he told Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.). “I personally was subject to censorship by the actions of the Biden administration during the pandemic.”
In a functioning society, that statement would spark bipartisan outrage. Instead, it barely registered. The people who spent years chanting “trust the science” were never interested in science at all.
Real science thrives on debate, skepticism, and the understanding that no single expert — no matter how credentialed—holds absolute truth. But during COVID, science became The Science™ — a government-approved doctrine enforced by Silicon Valley moderators and federal bureaucrats. Deviate from it, and you weren’t just wrong. You were dangerous.
A government-sanctioned muzzle
Bhattacharya wasn’t silenced in some haphazard, accidental way. The Biden administration actively leaned on social media companies to “moderate” voices like his. In practice, that meant tech executives — most of whom couldn’t tell a virus from a viral tweet — decided which epidemiologists the public was allowed to hear.
He responded with a lawsuit against the administration, accusing it of colluding with Big Tech to crush dissent. But in a ruling as predictable as it was revealing, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, arguing that Bhattacharya and his fellow plaintiffs lacked standing. Meaning: Yes, the government may have pressured private companies into silencing critics, but unless you can prove exactly how that harmed you, don’t expect the courts to care.
The real role of science
Despite everything, Bhattacharya didn’t argue for scientists to dictate policy. Unlike the public health bureaucrats who spent the pandemic issuing commandments from their Zoom thrones, he made it clear: “Science should be an engine for freedom,” he said. “Not something where it stands on top of society and says, ‘You must do this, this or this, or else.’”
That distinction matters. Science informs, but policy is about trade-offs. The problem wasn’t that officials got things wrong — it’s that they refused to admit the possibility. Instead of allowing open debate, they silenced critics. Instead of acknowledging uncertainty, they imposed rules with absolute certainty.
Bhattacharya wasn’t censored because he was wrong. He was censored because he questioned people who couldn’t afford to be.
His confirmation hearing made one thing clear: science wasn’t about data. It was about power. And in Washington, power doesn’t like to be questioned.
Science, money and power
At the heart of the hearing was a fundamental question: Who controls science that people are allowed to talk about? The NIH, with its $48 billion budget, is less a research institution and more a financial leviathan, shaping the direction of American science through the projects it funds (or doesn’t) fund.
Bhattacharya’s nomination comes at a moment when the battle lines around scientific freedom, government intervention, and public trust in research are more entrenched than ever. The pandemic shattered the illusion that science was above politics. Instead, it exposed just how much political and corporate interests shape what counts as “settled” science.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife. The man once branded too dangerous for social media, blacklisted for questioning lockdowns, and effectively erased from mainstream discourse is now being handed a key role in the very government that tried to silence him. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, once forced to the margins, is now at the center of power.
A new administration has decided that maybe — just maybe — silencing dissenting scientists wasn’t the best pandemic strategy. And in a twist no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare to pitch for being too on-the-nose, Bhattacharya wasn’t being welcomed back into the conversation — he’s being put in charge of it.
Bhattacharya was confirmed following a party-line vote Tuesday evening. The decision came after a similarly partisan endorsement from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), clearing the final hurdle for President Donald Trump’s nominee.
Equally central to his testimony was Bhattacharya’s call for a sweeping shift in NIH priorities. He proposed a decentralization of research funding, stressing the need for greater inclusion of dissenting voices in the scientific process, an apparent rebuke of the consensus-driven culture that dominated during the pandemic. He emphasized targeting resources toward projects with a clear and measurable impact on public health, dismissing other NIH initiatives as “frivolous.”
Now seated at the helm of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is poised to reshape not only the agency’s research priorities but the very culture that pushed him to the fringe. His confirmation, hard-won and unapologetically political, is already shaking the scaffolding of a scientific establishment that long equated conformity with consensus.
President Donald Trump announced a permanent 25% tariff on automobiles made in other countries that will go into effect on April 2.
Trump made the announcement Wednesday in the Oval Office. He also hinted that the reciprocal tariffs he plans to announce on April 2 could be more lenient, suggesting the tariffs would be less than fully reciprocal.
“What we’re going to be doing is a 25% tariff on all cars not made in the U.S.,” the president said.
Asked if any changes could avert the auto tariffs, Trump said they would be “permanent.”
“This will continue to spur growth like you haven’t seen before,” Trump said.
Trump said the tariffs will be good news for auto companies that already build products in the U.S. He also said carmakers that don’t build in the U.S. are looking to do so.
“We’re signing an executive order today that’s going to lead to tremendous growth in the automobile industry,” Trump said.
The White House said it expects the auto tariffs on cars and light-duty trucks will generate up to $100 billion in federal revenue. Trump said eventually he hopes to bring in $600 billion to $1 trillion in tariff revenue in the next year or two.
Trump also said the tariffs would lead to a manufacturing boom in the U.S., with auto companies building new plants, expanding existing plants and adding jobs.
Trump also urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to approve a measure that would allow car buyers to deduct the interest on loans for cars that are made in America. Trump said that such a plan would make cars nearly free for buyers.
“So when you get a loan to buy a car … I think it’s going to pay for itself, I don’t think there’s any cost,” he said.
Trump also said the reciprocal tariffs he plans to unveil on April 2 would be fair.
“We’re going to be very nice actually,” he said. “It’ll be, in many cases, less than the tariff they’ve been charging us for decades.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said tariffs would hurt businesses and consumers.
“I deeply regret the U.S. decision to impose tariffs on European automotive exports,” she said. “Tariffs are taxes – bad for businesses, worse for consumers, in the U.S. and the EU.”
Business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau Federation, have urged Trump to back off tariff threats.
Trump has promised that his tariffs would shift the tax burden away from Americans and onto foreign countries, but tariffs are generally paid by the people who import the products. Those importers then have a choice: absorb the loss or pass it on to consumers through higher prices. He also promised tariffs would make America “rich as hell.” Trump has also used tariffs as a negotiating tactic to tighten border security.
Tariffs are taxes charged on imported products. The company importing the products pays the tariffs and can either try to absorb the loss or pass the additional costs on to consumers.
