WASHINGTON —

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases expert, blasted Sen. Ted Cruz for suggesting that Fauci be investigated for statements he made about COVID-19 and said the criticism by the Texas Republican was an attack on science.

"I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, senator?" Fauci, who is President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." It was a reference to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump that was stoked as Cruz helped lead GOP objections to Congress' certifying the 2020 election results.

Video above: Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci blasts Sen. Rand Paul for virus origins accusation

"I'm just going to do my job and I'm going to be saving lives, and they're going to be lying," Fauci said.

Some Republicans, including Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health funded "gain of function" research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world — at a virology lab in Wuhan, China. Cruz has urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci's statements.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the GOP criticism nonsense.

"Anybody who's looking at this carefully realizes that there's a distinct anti-science flavor to this," he said.

Cruz and Paul say an October letter from NIH to Congress contradicts Fauci. But no clear evidence or scientific consensus exists that "gain of function" research was funded by NIH, and there is no link of U.S.-funded research to the emergence of COVID-19. NIH has repeatedly maintained that its funding did not go to such research involving boosting the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen.

When asked in the CBS interview whether Republicans might be raising the claims to make him a scapegoat and deflect criticism of Trump, Fauci said, "of course, you have to be asleep not to figure that one out."

America is a Republic whose leaders are chosen in democratic elections. Those elections, in turn, must comply with the Constitution and with federal and state law.

When the voters fairly decide an election, pursuant to the rule of law, the losing candidate should acknowledge and respect the legitimacy of that election. And, if the voters choose to elect a new office-holder, our Nation should have a peaceful transfer of power.

The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.

Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.

And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).

Some Members of Congress disagree with that assessment, as do many members of the media.
But, whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all. And it poses an ongoing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations.

Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.

On January 6, it is incumbent on Congress to vote on whether to certify the 2020 election results. That vote is the lone constitutional power remaining to consider and force resolution of the multiple allegations of serious voter fraud.

At that quadrennial joint session, there is long precedent of Democratic Members of Congress raising objections to presidential election results, as they did in 1969, 2001, 2005, and 2017. And, in both 1969 and 2005, a Democratic Senator joined with a Democratic House Member in forcing votes in both houses on whether to accept the presidential electors being challenged the most direct precedent on this question arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race. Specifically, the elections in three states — Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina — were alleged to have been conducted illegally.

In 1877, Congress did not ignore those allegations, nor did the media simply dismiss those raising them as radicals trying to undermine democracy. Instead, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission — consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices — to consider and resolve the disputed returns.

We should follow that precedent. To wit, Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.

Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.

We are not naïve. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise. But support of election integrity should not be a partisan issue. A fair and credible audit — conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20 — would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People.

These are matters worthy of the Congress, and entrusted to us to defend. We do not take this action lightly. We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it. And every one of us should act together to ensure that the election was lawfully conducted under the Constitution and to do everything we can to restore faith in our Democracy.

Seven Democratic senators on Thursday asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the actions of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “to fully understand their role” in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Thousands had gathered that day as Congress voted to formally certify President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in November. Hawley and Cruz led objections in the Senate to Biden’s victory, despite the widespread recognition that the effort would fail.

In the end, Congress certified Biden’s Electoral College victory, but not before thousands marched to the Capitol at Trump’s urging, overwhelmed security and interrupted the proceedings. In the end, the violence led to five deaths, injured dozens of police officers and caused extensive damage to the Capitol.

The Democratic senators said the question for the Senate to determine is not whether Cruz and Hawley had the right to object, but whether the senators failed to put loyalty “to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department.” They also said the investigation should determine whether Cruz, of Texas, and Hawley, of Missouri, engaged in “improper conduct reflecting on the Senate.”

“Until then, a cloud of uncertainty will hang over them and over this body,” the Democratic senators wrote in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Ethics Committee.

The Democratic senators said Cruz and Hawley announced their intentions to object even though they knew that claims of election fraud were baseless and had led to threats of violence.

“Their actions lend credence to the insurrectionists’ cause and set the stage for future violence. And both senators used their objections for political fundraising,” the Democratic senators said in their letter.

Cruz and Hawley have condemned the violence on Jan. 6. Cruz called it a "despicable act of terrorism.” Hawley said those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted.

Cruz helped force a vote on Biden's victory in Arizona, while Hawley helped force one on Biden's victory in Pennsylvania.

“Joe Biden and the Democrats talk about unity but are brazenly trying to silence dissent," Hawley said in a prepared statement. “This latest effort is a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge."

“It is unfortunate that some congressional Democrats are disregarding President Biden’s call for unity and are instead playing political games by filing frivolous ethics complaints against their colleagues," said a Cruz spokesperson, Maria Jeffrey Reynolds.

Those Democrats requesting the investigation are Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The decision by security markets to restrict trading on stocks like GameStop sparked a rare moment of unity between conservatives and progressives on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum — from the left-wing progressive House caucus known as "The Squad" to right-wing Senators who identify as "Constitutional conservatives" — skewered platforms like Robinhood and TD Ameritrade, accusing them of siding with Wall Street elitists instead of Middle-Class America.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, a progressive Democrat and member of "The Squad," called for House Democrats to investigate Robinhood's decision to halt trading on GameStop stock.

"They're blocking the ability to trade to protect Wall St. hedge funds, stealing millions of dollars from their users to protect people who've used the stock market as a casino for decades," Tlaib said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, a fellow "Squad" member and a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said she would support an investigation.

"We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp's decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit," she said.

Ocasio-Cortez's tweet prompted a response from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said he "fully" agreed.

It's rare to see Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz reach an agreement on social media. The two often spar on Twitter on topics like the Paris climate agreement and the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Robinhood — a trading platform that says it aims to "democratize" market trading — announced on Thursday that it was restricting trades on GameStop, BlackBerry and several other stocks that have seen unsual activity in recent days due to "recent volatility."

The meteoric rise of GameStop stock was fueled by amateur or part-time traders who banded together on social media and used apps like Robinhood to spoil Wall Street hedge funds' bets that the retailer's stock would tank. Hedge fund investors who bet against GameStop lost billions of dollars this week alone.

The decision is also causing the New York attorney general to investigate.

WASHINGTON —

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and "we're working to get that done as soon as we can."

More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from "fully realizing" what is happening at the border.

Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States. "It's not a crisis, it's a complete loss of sovereignty down there," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.

Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for "human trafficking abuses."

"If you don't, we'll have 150,000 a month by this summer," Graham said Sunday.

U.S. authorities reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019.

Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the entire month.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the surge was cyclical.

"They're not the result of one administration's policies or another administration's policies. They're the result of, for example, weather disasters in the region. They're the result of people fleeing poverty and violence," Bedingfield said. "So we saw spikes in 2014. We saw them in 2019 when the Trump administration had perhaps the cruelest imaginable policies in place, family separation to try to deter people from coming, and they still came."

The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.S.-Mexico border "remains closed" and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.

"They are fleeing challenging economic circumstances, hurricanes, prosecution in some scenarios," she said. "It does not mean that they get to stay in the United States. It means their cases are adjudicated and we want to treat them humanely, make sure they are in a safe place while their cases are adjudicated. That's what we're talking about here."

Former President Donald Trump expanded and fortified border walls while championing "zero tolerance" policies that made it more difficult to seek U.S. asylum and led to some immigrant parents being separated from their children.

Under federal law, children arriving at the border without parents should be transferred within three days from U.S. Border Patrol custody to long-term facilities run by the U.S. Health and Human Services until they can be released to family members or sponsors.

Psaki said the administration is committed to transparency and providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.

"We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe," Psaki said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on the president to let the media accompany him to a temporary detention facility in Dallas on Monday.

"I again urge you to stop denying reality, confront the consequences of your policies, and allow the media access to these facilities," Cruz wrote in a letter.

Psaki and Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday," while Bedingfield was interviewed on ABC's "This Week."

This week on the Hear Cincinnati podcast, host Brian Niesz is joined by community reporter Lucy May, senior manager of enterprise/investigative Meghan Goth and senior real-time editor Pat LaFleur to discuss child care vouchers, a guilty plea in the Pike County murder case, what the cold snap means for the cicadas, and more.

Later, WCPO 9 News anchor Tanya O'Rourke chats with former House Speaker John Boehner about his new book and reflections on his path from southwest Ohio to Washington and back.

Listen to this episode in the podcast player above.

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