On August 10, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released to the public text messages sent on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former government phone related to the Covid vaccine during Dr. Fauci’s tenure as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The phone contains over 34,000 messages and 522 voicemails, and the two senators released screenshots showing eleven texts they identified as concerning related to the vaccine policy pushed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the pandemic.
In the press release, the senators noted that “the text chain released today could have an immediate impact on public health and the principle of informed consent.” The text chain released by the senators can be read here.
In one text discussion, on Jan. 25, 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then an adviser to President Biden on the vaccine, asked Dr. Fauci about potential risks to pregnant women from taking the vaccine or any “data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred.”
Dr. Fauci stated in response that there was “no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.” However, he added: “since many people have significant cytokine storms and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
The following day, Dr. Fauci noted that any vaccine with limited research on safety during pregnancy should be carefully considered, saying, “one must weigh the potential risks against the benefits” — a reasonable statement that was not echoed in formal recommendations to the American people.
The CDC formally recommended that pregnant women receive the vaccine on Aug. 11, 2021, stating the vaccine was “safe for pregnant people.” There was no accompanying statement about honoring individual choice and no statement about recommending women weigh the risks and benefits.
So far, subsequent studies fortunately have not shown an increased miscarriage rate among pregnant women who were vaccinated, but it’s good that it is being investigated.
In May 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. shifted away from recommending the Covid vaccine for pregnant women from “Recommended (the current COVID-19 vaccine)” to “No guidance/not applicable”.
But Democrats and the mainstream establishment are pushing back on the approach the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans have taken with regard to unearthing pandemic-era communications and policies among top government officials, maintaining that conservatives are on a witch hunt to vilify Dr. Fauci for political reasons.
Institutional Democrats would prefer the possible misinformation that came out of the federal government during the pandemic be swept under the rug of history.
Conservatives say that this is not about personal vilification but about exposing whether our government acted judiciously to protect freedom and safety during a global crisis or instead handed out misinformation and pushed citizens into compliance.
This should not be a political issue, but it is. The Democratic Party has become synonymous with top-down institutional authority, and they are pointing the finger at conservatives as if we’re the issue for asking if the government possibly overstepped during the pandemic.
The pursuit of information about how the pandemic was handled is deeply relevant to our freedoms now and in future crisis events. If the government mishandled information and refused to share vital, life-altering information with its citizens, that should be made public.
Is the Trump administration saying the government outright attempted to push dangerous policies and misinformation? Not necessarily. There were likely plenty of individuals in health policy acting in good faith and hoping to save as many lives as possible.
But it is possible the government glossed over concerns and took an ideologically-motivated approach to pushing the vaccine early, and on people who did not need it. The recent texts imply that at least some safety concerns, or even questions about safety, were withheld.
The way the pandemic was handled paints a picture of how our government operated in an extreme crisis. What did we learn? That in a crisis, our government does not “err on the side of caution”, respect autonomy or allow citizens to consider waiting for long-term safety data. Instead, it launches forward with a top-down campaign that in 2020 and 2021 threatened Americans with isolation and job loss if they merely raised concerns.
In an ideal scenario, medicines would have been developed by the free market and tested and offered to the public. Honorable, data-based recommendations that took into account individual risk from serious infection for Covid, and factors such as age, lifestyle and existing medical issues, would have been presented. Individuals would have been able to weigh the costs and benefits of vaccine interventions and other interventions for themselves and loved ones.
The pandemic was a devastating unforeseen event. No one is saying government should have been able to handle it perfectly. We are saying that if it was not handled with dedication to freedom and safety and if government did overstep, we need to reform the policies that led to that in the first place. Anyone standing against merely auditing the federal government’s process during a life-altering global event is ideologically attached to their side being correct.
Conservatives are not rehashing the pandemic for political reasons. Exposing institutional mishandling of information is about making the public aware of the fact that if our own government became a fast-acting bully during times of crisis and withheld important details once, then it can happen again.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
