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Don't Forget How Florida Defeated Faucism and Vindicated Federalism
Townhall.com ^ | 31 July A.D. 2026 | John Hammer

Posted on 07/31/2026 5:23:22 PM PDT by lightman

Anthony Fauci, the public health bureaucrat who became the face of America's botched COVID-19 response, testified this week on Capitol Hill. Except Fauci actually didn't testify: In an astonishing act of hubris and disdain for the countless Americans who bore the brunt of tyrannical COVID-era "Faucism," the mad doctor invoked the Fifth Amendment well over 100 times.

It's an unprecedented defiance of congressional will for a man who has already received a sweeping presidential pardon. Congress would do well to vote to hold Fauci in contempt.

Wednesday's intense senatorial standoff followed Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) earlier release of damning excerpts of Fauci's diary. Those excerpts revealed a man obsessed with his burgeoning self-image. Fauci also harbored grave private doubts about many key COVID-era disputes, such as the virus's hotly contested origins, on which the longtime National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director otherwise projected a sense of confidence to a wary public.

In short, this past week painted a vivid James Bond villain-like picture of the power-hungry "elf" who personified COVID hell for so many.

In lecturing Americans to shut up and simply "trust the science," Fauci committed the fallacy of scientism: He conflated science, or "science," with the public good that statesmen are tasked with securing. Moreover, Fauci's one-man reign of COVID-19-era biomedical terror served as a capstone on the century-long administrative state project of empowering would-be elites in Washington, D.C., over the judgments of the people.

Thankfully, not every American was equally subjected to Fauci's overweening, politically expedient, and often-changing dictates. We have our Founders to thank for that: Federalism mitigated the burdens of Faucism for the many Americans fortunate enough to live in states whose political leadership defied prevailing COVID-era biomedical despotism.

I would know: I moved to Florida in 2021 in no small part due to the way Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) handled COVID-19.

DeSantis, alongside Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature, acted in heroic fashion during COVID. At a time when white coat tyranny raged and most Americans deferred to those who spoke in the name of "science," DeSantis did the reading himself and concluded that the dissenters from groupthink orthodoxy, such as Great Barrington Declaration authors Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, were right: COVID-19 did not necessitate the draconian policy responses demanded by the biomedical clerisy.

Accordingly, Florida under DeSantis fully opened its restaurants, bars and beaches in 2020, well before the feds said it was prudent to do so. Florida under DeSantis mandated that schools had to be open for in-person schooling in fall 2020. Florida under DeSantis blocked local governments, schools and private businesses from imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates in fall 2021.

More than any other state during the COVID-19 era, Florida was freer and more open. For this, Fauci called DeSantis a "complete disgrace" in his now-exposed diary.

But the joke is on Fauci. During the core COVID-19 years of 2020-2022, the Faucian nemesis Sunshine State had an age-adjusted COVID mortality rate that ranked 31st in the nation. That's well above average. Notably, many leading blue states that implemented harsh lockdowns and school closures, such as New York and New Jersey, fared considerably worse.

Americans voted with their feet too: Florida recorded the largest annual net in-migration between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Florida, the once-iconic swing state that decided the 2000 presidential election by 537 votes, now boasts a Republican governor who won reelection by 19.4 percent and a Republican supermajority in both houses of its state legislature.

None of this would have happened had Florida not assembled its own medical team and ignored Fauci and the feds. And Florida didn't just vindicate itself with the voters and the science (if not the "science"). It also vindicated the Founders' vision of federalism.

One-size-fits-all bureaucratic governance from the nation's capital is incompatible with American constitutionalism and the American way of life. As James Madison put it in The Federalist No. 45: "The powers ... which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." Justice Louis D. Brandeis put it memorably in a 1932 Supreme Court dissent: "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

That's exactly what Florida under DeSantis did.

As for Fauci? He's been reduced to ham-fisted legal stunts and temper tantrums. Hopefully he soon takes those pathetic tantrums to prison.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; US: Florida
KEYWORDS: 2020eletion; desantis; fauci; scamdemic; shamdemic; sotlenelection

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1 posted on 07/31/2026 5:23:22 PM PDT by lightman
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To: metmom; Joe Brower

Florida ping.


2 posted on 07/31/2026 5:23:58 PM PDT by lightman (Beat the Philly fraud machine the Amish did onest, ja? Nein, zweimal they did already!)
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To: lightman
I despise Fauci, but I think maybe our legal system has evolved into something that requires one to "plead the fifth" when testifying like this, simply because if someone "mis-remembers" some detail it can put them in great jeopardy.

It did occur to me that Fauci has created his own personal little Hell for himself. There is nowhere on this planet he can go and not be strongly reviled.

3 posted on 07/31/2026 5:29:27 PM PDT by The Duke (Not without incident)
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To: lightman
Stop lionizing that jackass governor and lying about his COVID track record.

On April 1st of 2020 -- AFTER the “two weeks to flatten the curve” ended -- Ron DeSantis issued a 30-day stay-at-home lockdown order for Florida residents.

Read that again. It’s 100% factually true. Some people will never forget the Nazi sh!t that was done by these duplicitous @ssholes.

4 posted on 07/31/2026 5:31:58 PM PDT by Alberta's Child (If I leave here, it’s because I’m tired of arguing with geriatric parrots wearing MAGA hats.)
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To: Alberta's Child

GA opened way before Florida. I was going to a brewery near my house in GA while my Florida friends were still in the Desantis Lockdown for almost another month. People forget that Trump threw GA under the bus for being the first major state to open up.


5 posted on 07/31/2026 5:35:33 PM PDT by Codeflier (Don't worry....be happy)
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To: lightman
Anthony Fauci, the public health bureaucrat despot

Fixed it.

6 posted on 07/31/2026 5:37:06 PM PDT by metmom (He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!)
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To: Alberta's Child

Your DeSantis Derangement Syndrome is showing. Yes…he did that at the start. He was following guidelines all governors were following at that time. He did however become the first to loosen the grip of the idiotic bureaucrats had on the US. He is better than most.


7 posted on 07/31/2026 5:37:24 PM PDT by USAF1985 (Joe McCarthy is a hero...he was absolutely, 100% correct!)
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To: Alberta's Child

I just read a summary of DeSantis’ actions during the covid pandemic.

DeSantis’s record on COVID-19
https://thehill.com/homenews/3840143-desantiss-record-on-covid-19-heres-what-he-said-and-did/


8 posted on 07/31/2026 5:37:55 PM PDT by TTFX
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To: USAF1985

Kemp beat Desantis by over a month to open up.


9 posted on 07/31/2026 5:38:42 PM PDT by Codeflier (Don't worry....be happy)
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To: USAF1985

He was following guidelines all governors were following at that time

- - - - - - -

He shouldn’t have. Kristi Noem refused to follow those guidelines in South Dakota.


10 posted on 07/31/2026 5:39:16 PM PDT by TTFX
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To: USAF1985

It’s not DDS to point out that it’s ludicrous to call DeSantis a champion of freedom when his actions were no different than the sh!t many of us here on FR exposed as Nazi totalitarianism when it was done by Democrats.


11 posted on 07/31/2026 5:42:57 PM PDT by Alberta's Child (If I leave here, it’s because I’m tired of arguing with geriatric parrots wearing MAGA hats.)
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To: TTFX

To be fair, SD is 1/25 the population of FL, with much lower density.


12 posted on 07/31/2026 5:43:33 PM PDT by Codeflier (Don't worry....be happy)
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To: TTFX

Exactly. Some of us still remember that Nazi sh!t like it was yesterday.


13 posted on 07/31/2026 5:43:59 PM PDT by Alberta's Child (If I leave here, it’s because I’m tired of arguing with geriatric parrots wearing MAGA hats.)
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To: lightman

“The first cases of COVID-19 in Florida were diagnosed on March 1, 2020. Three years later, more than 7.3 million people have had COVID-19 in Florida, and more than 93,000 individuals have died from this illness.” University of Florida review, 2026.

Killing off nearly 100,000 of your citizens isn’t anything to brag about.


14 posted on 07/31/2026 5:47:52 PM PDT by Bob Wills is still the king
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To: Bob Wills is still the king

You can’t even accept those numbers at face value. I have yet to come across a clinical definition of what constituted a “COVID death.”


15 posted on 07/31/2026 5:53:33 PM PDT by Alberta's Child (If I leave here, it’s because I’m tired of arguing with geriatric parrots wearing MAGA hats.)
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To: lightman

Faucism.


16 posted on 07/31/2026 5:55:14 PM PDT by griswold3 (Truth, Beauty and Goodness)
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To: lightman

We need that kind of leadership nationally.


17 posted on 07/31/2026 6:03:22 PM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Democrat cult.)
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To: Bob Wills is still the king

My wife died in March 2021 in FL, after 10 years of Multiple Sclerosis. The real reason she died was a dead liver from years of massive MS and pain meds. But they put Covid on the cause of death so the hospital could get more subsidies, and everyone knew what was going on. (I was able to refinance my mortgage and avoid foreclosure because of a special Covid provision.) In short, we will never know how many people actually died of Covid, as opposed to how many people were claimed to have died.


18 posted on 07/31/2026 6:26:43 PM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: chajin

There was a systemic failure to differentiate dying OF Covid from dying WITH Covid.


19 posted on 07/31/2026 6:31:33 PM PDT by lightman (Beat the Philly fraud machine the Amish did onest, ja? Nein, zweimal they did already!)
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To: Alberta's Child

This is true…he changed his policy only when his constituents said BS


20 posted on 07/31/2026 7:09:34 PM PDT by ripnbang ("An armed man is a citizen, an unarmed man, a subject."o)
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