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The claim that the synthetic mRNA-based COVID-19 genetic therapies were "safe and effective" was repeated ad nauseam not only by former President Joe Biden during the pandemic but by health officials in his administration — including former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky. It may then come as a surprise that not all high-ranking federal health officials were keen on this particular characterization.'Science doesn't tell you what your actions should be.'When reached for comment about a new tranche of recently released emails of Anthony Fauci, former Biden administration acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told Blaze News that she protested the "safe and effective" description.But first let's rewind. On Sunday, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) published a May 27, 2021, email sent by Dr. Woodcock to Fauci and then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins regarding the perceived need to set aside scientific research funds to later investigate COVID-19 vaccine side effects."I have been contacted by a number of people who have experienced adverse events post COVID-19 vaccination (from all three of the current vaccines)," wrote Woodcock. "Many are healthcare professionals, some of whom I know. The symptoms do not fit together into a distinctive syndrome and most are not easily quantifiable or evaluated with standard laboratory testing."Woodcock, who became acting FDA commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were being pushed on the nation, was sympathetic to the concerns of some apparent vaccine casualties that "no one takes them seriously, no one knows how to treat them" and that there had been "no effort to study this."RELATED: First domino to fall? Fauci's 'consigliere' pleads GUILTY to role in COVID cover-up Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images"I think it would be worthwhile to do a study and evaluate a cohort of these individuals," said Woodcock. "But of course $ need to be made available, and you would need an investigator who is interested in 'medical mysteries.' I doubt the industry would support, for obvious reasons."Woodcock provided Blaze News with insights into her proposal."I was thinking, 'Could we find some kind of treatment to offer these folks?' But first, you have to understand what's going on, right? You can't just sort of go out and treat people," Woodcock told Blaze News. "So that was my objective in this. ... I don't think it's probably different than any other immune challenge, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I felt the vaccine was dangerous or should not be used or anything. By no means. It was simply that if people were having this reaction, we could find a way to study it."When pressed — in light of her concerns at the time — about the "safe and effective" description, Woodcock responded, "Well, look. I always told our press office, 'Don't call it safe and effective, because no medical intervention is 100% safe.' Even water. You could kill yourself by drinking too much water, literally."The FDA noted in recent years that it was "confident in the safety and effectiveness" of the COVID-19 vaccines. While apparently hesitant herself to use that phrasing, Woodcock stated in 2021 that "the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product."Woodcock offered Blaze News what she regards as a better pitch for the vaccine: "What it is is the benefits far outweigh the risks, and that's the standard for all drugs that are approved, all medicines that are approved, because none of them are free of side effects, which is the kind of ordinary, you know, meaning of the term 'safe.'"While the former acting commissioner noted that many health experts suggested during the pandemic that the "benefits way outweigh the potential harms" of the vaccines, people nevertheless "do use the term 'safe and effective' a lot, which is a statutory term."Woodcock emphasized that any intervention "that you do has to be pretty safe, right? But that doesn't mean it's totally without adverse events."Adverse events were in some cases deadly.The FDA admitted in an internal letter last year that FDA Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance career staff had "found that at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination."Dr. Vinay Prasad, the former chief medical officer at the FDA and director at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the letter that the OBPV performed an analysis of 96 deaths between 2021 and 2024 and concluded "that no fewer than 10 are related. If anything, this represents conservative coding, where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicated in cases of ambiguity. The real number is higher."On the matter of takeaways from the handling of the pandemic, Woodcock told Blaze News that while the "development of the vaccines was a scientific triumph," "science doesn't tell you what to do. Scientists often forget that.""Science just tells you the facts," she continued. "What do to do — especially about society, right — is a value judgement that should take into account the facts, but science doesn't tell you what your actions should be."HHS and the FDA did not immediately respond to Blaze News' requests for comment. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Federal Communications Commission’s latest broadband report makes two things clear: America has made real progress, but the rural job is far from finished.The number of Americans lacking access to fixed terrestrial broadband with download speeds of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 20 Mbps fell roughly 23% in one year, while rural gaps shrank more than 44% over two years. Prices for the mid-tier plans most households buy have also fallen in real terms.The path is simple: Make the biggest users and beneficiaries of Universal Service Fund-supported networks help pay, without raising prices for consumers.Yet the FCC still says deployment is not “reasonable and timely” for all Americans, especially in rural areas and tribal lands. For many families, broadband is now one of the rare essential services that is both faster and more affordable than it was a few years ago.That’s why the Universal Service Fund remains indispensable. It connects an estimated 130 million Americans each year, supporting low-income and rural households, schools, libraries, students, and health care providers. At roughly $8.5 billion annually, USF underwrites a crucial piece of America’s digital infrastructure. It also supports the infrastructure beneath an internet economy measured in the trillions of dollars.The problem is how we pay for it. Consumers bear a monthly surcharge on legacy voice services, while the largest internet platforms, which depend on broadband to generate enormous revenues, contribute nothing.Congress knows the system needs reform. In 2023, Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) launched a bipartisan Universal Service Fund Working Group. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) now shares leadership with Luján, joined by Reps. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), and the working group has heard from hundreds of stakeholders. Its assignment is straightforward: preserve a program that works while replacing a financing mechanism that does not.Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok all depend on broadband networks to reach Americans. Each USF-connected household generates an estimated $3,000 annually in revenue for these companies, which collectively consume roughly two-thirds of U.S. broadband capacity. Data-center expansion will only increase that traffic. As more data centers come online to support AI, cloud computing, streaming, and other digital services, the demands placed on those networks will only grow.Broadband providers, meanwhile, must keep investing in the networks that carry it. Without USF support, many networks would not be built, and broadband could become unaffordable for millions.Don’t put the bill on consumersCongress should not solve the problem by adding another fee to household broadband. Affordability remains politically and economically sensitive, and even modest price increases can push consumers out of the market. Broadband has remained relatively stable in price even as Americans have absorbed years of inflation elsewhere in the household budget.RELATED: The FCC finally cuts local TV loose monticelllo/iStock/Getty ImagesEconomists Hal Singer and Ted Tatos found that a 5% increase in broadband prices could cause roughly 10 million households to cancel service. Their review found a different dynamic for large digital advertising platforms, where end users generally do not pay subscription fees and companies are better positioned to absorb assessments.Former FCC Chairman Brendan Carr suggested assessing digital advertising revenue from the largest platforms. Congress could also consider certain transmission services — cloud interconnection, backhaul, content delivery networks, satellite transport, and wide-area networking — that depend heavily on the broadband ecosystem.The precise mechanism matters less than the principle: Broaden the contribution base so consumers carry less of the burden. Bipartisan legislation already points in that direction. The Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act would extend contributions to large internet service providers, with thresholds aimed at companies of significant scale.The rural job is not doneSome argue that low-earth-orbit satellite services have largely solved rural broadband and made subsidies unnecessary. They have not. Satellite is valuable where terrestrial networks are uneconomical, but it remains capacity-constrained and is not a full substitute for high-capacity terrestrial broadband in every household or community.A rural family with several people working from home, taking virtual classes, or using telehealth can need sustained high-speed service and reliability that satellite cannot always guarantee as cell density grows. Prices have also risen, weakening the case for satellite as a cheap universal backstop. Satellite belongs in the mix, but it cannot carry the entire rural-connectivity burden by itself.Big Tech should pitch inBig Tech benefits from some $200 billion annually in USF-supported broadband investment, yet the companies oppose contributing to the fund by calling such payments a “tax.” That evades the basic question: Why should the largest users and beneficiaries of broadband infrastructure be the only major participants paying nothing toward its cost?Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta spend billions building their own data centers, cloud networks, and related infrastructure because infrastructure has economic value. They would never give unlimited use of those facilities away for free. Yet they expect private broadband networks to reach their customers without contributing to the universal service system that expands access to those networks.RELATED: This app censors your phone in a stunning new way — and people are using it on purpose Tamer ALKIS/iStock/Getty ImagesThe contradiction is especially striking because 13 bipartisan governors recently joined major technology companies at the White House, where the firms pledged to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades needed for their data centers while protecting consumers from higher electricity bills. The Ratepayer Protection Act would codify those pledges. Congress should apply the same logic to broadband.How Congress can actUniversal service already enjoys bipartisan support. In Consumers’ Research v. Federal Communications Commission, 29 lawmakers and working-group members filed an amicus brief defending USF before the Supreme Court. They warned that dismantling the fund would harm millions of Americans, particularly low-income and rural households. Congress established universal service in 1996 and has repeatedly recognized the need to adapt it as communications technology changes.The Supreme Court upheld the program’s constitutionality. Congress defended USF in court; now it should make the funding system fair and sustainable in statute.The path is straightforward: Broaden the contribution base to include the largest users and beneficiaries of the networks USF supports, while protecting consumers from rising costs. The companies that profit most from ubiquitous broadband should help ensure that ubiquitous broadband continues to exist.

On a recent episode of "The Drive," my co-host, Karl Brauer, mentioned taking his 2018 Dodge Demon to the dealership and having his car's key-programming system permanently locked down. The trade-off was significant: If Karl lost his keys, the dealer couldn't simply program him another one. The car's Radio Frequency Hub would have to be replaced before new keys could be programmed.Why would anyone deliberately make his own car that inconvenient?Fortunately, one of the easiest precautions against relay theft specifically is remarkably low-tech.Because Karl was worried somebody else might make a key first.Fob jobChallengers and Chargers, particularly high-performance models such as the Hellcat and Demon, had become notorious theft targets after criminals discovered they could exploit the same electronic system dealers used to program replacement keys. After getting into the vehicle, thieves could access the RF Hub and program their own fob. The car would then recognize the thief's new key as legitimate.Karl's solution turned out to anticipate Dodge's own. The company later introduced Key Programming Lockdown, which permanently disabled new key programming through the RF Hub. Dodge acknowledged the inconvenience: If an owner lost all existing keys, the RF Hub itself would have to be replaced.While Dodge addressed this particular vulnerability, that was only one way thieves were learning to defeat modern vehicle security. Other attacks don't require programming a new key at all.Relay raceTake the proximity key. You keep the fob in your pocket, walk up to the vehicle, open the door, and press a button to start. It works because the key and vehicle communicate wirelessly — and thieves have learned how to exploit that communication too. One increasingly common method is known as a relay attack. Using electronic equipment, thieves can capture or extend the signal from a legitimate key fob inside a house to a vehicle parked outside. The car thinks the key is nearby, allowing the thief to unlock it, start it, and drive away.This isn't the old image of somebody smashing a window and hot-wiring an ignition. As vehicles have become more technologically sophisticated, so have the people stealing them.Bluetooth bluesAnd new vulnerabilities continue to emerge. In July 2026, University of California San Diego researchers disclosed a Bluetooth flaw affecting dealer-installed KARR/SWDS anti-theft systems in at least 2.2 million vehicles. Researchers found that a nearby attacker could potentially exploit the system to unlock doors and interfere with the immobilizer. These aren't all the same attack. The Dodge thieves programmed a new key. Relay thieves fool the car into believing the owner's existing key is nearby. The KARR vulnerability involved Bluetooth. But they all demonstrate the security challenge created as vehicles become increasingly dependent on wireless electronics.Your car may recognize you automatically. Your phone can become a digital key. Doors unlock as you approach. Apps can start vehicles remotely. Each feature offers convenience, but each wireless connection also creates something manufacturers have to secure.RELATED: Gone in 60 seconds: How high-tech thieves can steal your car Jeff Greenberg/Getty ImagesLow-tech fixFortunately, one of the easiest precautions against relay theft specifically is remarkably low-tech: Put your keys in a Faraday pouch when you're home, particularly if your vehicle sits outside. A properly functioning Faraday enclosure blocks the signal thieves are trying to relay.Also think about where you leave your keys. Tossing them on a table beside the front door or garage can make the signal easier to reach.I know how miserable vehicle theft can be because it happened to me.Years ago, my modified 1985 Mustang GT was stolen. Police eventually found it stripped and burned. Then came the insurance fight, and the theft even affected my insurance afterward.People sometimes joke that if an insured car gets stolen, it's the insurance company's problem. It isn't. You're the one filing police reports, dealing with adjusters, finding replacement transportation, and potentially watching your insurance costs rise. If the vehicle is dismantled for parts, shipped overseas, or otherwise disappears into the criminal supply chain, there's a good chance you'll never see it again.Automakers have spent years making it unnecessary to take a key out of your pocket. Thieves have spent those same years learning how to attack the technology that replaced it.Sometimes the smartest way to protect a $50,000 vehicle is a $20 pouch that stops your expensive technology from talking to anybody.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched a cooking series titled "The Real Food Show" last month with the aim of helping Americans prepare healthy and affordable meals.Despite the show's upbeat, informative, and apolitical nature, the liberal media reflexively found something to whine about.'Very hard to swallow.'After CNN's Erin Burnett devoted a segment of her show on Wednesday to attacking the initiative, Kennedy responded by diagnosing the host with "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and giving her something to chew on.The showKennedy announced the launch of the "The Real Food Show" on July 30, stating, "The Real Food Show reminds Americans that healthy eating starts at home — and that cooking with real food can be simple, affordable, and within reach for every family.""By bringing people back to the kitchen table, we can strengthen our families, improve our health, build healthy habits that last for generations to come, and Make America Healthy Again," added the HHS secretary.According to the HHS, each episode features a recipe that uses real, whole-food ingredients; is kid-friendly and easy to prepare; works in a basic home kitchen; and "costs less than $5 per serving whenever possible."The premier episode featured chef Andrew Gruel, the executive chef of Calico Fish House in Huntington Beach, California, who demonstrated how to prepare salmon cakes and a fresh salad. Liberal gasWeeks after MS NOW did something similar, Burnett's CNN show ran a snark-saturated report on Wednesday casting doubt on the affordability of the recipes featured in "The Real Food Show."After accusing Kennedy of incorporating "dubious claims about the food industry, science, and public wellness" into his cooking show, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman claimed that "the math doesn't add up in this cooking class."Foreman purportedly went to a store and bought all of the ingredients mentioned on the first episode of the HHS cooking show."When we started buying ingredients used in the show, even going for the lowest prices at a big competitive chain, the cost heated up fast," said Foreman.The CNN correspondent, who evidently missed the HHS' note that canned salmon would also work for the recipe, claimed that he couldn't find frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon for under $24.Burnett's crony also complained that Kennedy had priced just the ingredients used in the recipe."That's the trick here, because they're only pricing that one egg out of the carton," said Foreman. "And that gets worse with other things. For example, this red onion, they say they only spent eight cents on this because that's how much they used. Getting the whole onion cost us more than a dollar.""They're only pricing parts of it. And grocery stores don't sell things that way," added Foreman.Since CNN priced out every single ingredient for the four-serving meal as it appears whole in stores, not as it appears fractionally in the recipe, it ended up with a price tag of $70.54 instead of the roughly $20 indicated by the HHS show.Burnett thanked Foreman for his misleading report, which he said was "very hard to swallow."Kennedy dishes out a responseKennedy responded on Thursday to the anti-MAHA segment, writing, "Trump Derangement Syndrome has so debilitated @ErinBurnett that she has abandoned both common sense and basic arithmetic.""CNN wants us to incorporate the full package price of every ingredient, regardless of what is used in the recipe," continued the HHS secretary. "If you put a squirt of ketchup on your burger, would you be surprised if the restaurant charged you for the whole bottle?""The Real Food Show uses standard recipe costing: we count what the recipe actually uses. The rest stays in your kitchen for the next meal — and the meals after that," added Kennedy.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!