Will Biden and Fauci Consider Leaving Before 2025?

“Fauci says he will retire by the end of Biden’s term,” reads the headline of a Washington Post article. Yasmeen Abutaleb writes:

Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s pre-eminent infectious disease expert who has served as the face of the response to the coronavirus pandemic for more than two years, will retire at the end of President Biden’s term after more than 50 years in the administration , he confirmed Monday to The Washington Post.

“By the end of the Biden administration’s term, I think it’s time to step down from this position,” Fauci said.

Fauci’s decision to retire by 2025 was first reported by Politico.

Politico’s Sarah Owermohle previously reported in a way that also suggested Mr. Biden is a one-termer:

America’s most famous scientist is about to retire.

After more than five decades of federal service under seven presidents, Anthony Fauci says he is leaving at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. In a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO, he spoke about his legacy, the hard truths about the country’s response to the pandemic, and his desire to calm the politicization plaguing the country.

“We are now in a pattern. If someone says, ‘You will leave when we are out of Covid’ then I will be 105. I think we’ll live with it,” Biden’s chief medical adviser said when asked if he was staying at home in his role out of a sense of duty.

He is not. But his assessment that we’ll be living with Covid-19 for many years to come is a chilling admission from the longtime infectious disease expert, who said the country can flatten the curve and achieve herd immunity, first through social distancing and then vaccination.

if dr Fauci turns 105, he will likely never be able to undo the damage that Covid policies have done to America’s children. He promoted a policy of closure that isolated them from friends, opportunities and care, saddled them with trillions of dollars in national debt, and – due to poor education – reduced their future earnings. He could never have sold lockdowns in 2020 if he said then what he says now about the long-term presence of Covid.

Even in the spring of 2020, there were enough reasons to question the wisdom of lockdowns, and many of us did. There was ample evidence that children were at low risk from Covid and that schools would not be the super spreaders of media lore. There was also ample reason to focus on protecting the vulnerable rather than turning society upside down. dr Fauci’s endorsement of school closures, while frankly admitting he didn’t thoroughly understand the harm, should teach public health schools a lesson in the need to avoid panicking about future viruses.

This column will get on its feet and predict that if Republicans take over one or both houses of Congress this fall — to gain board of supervision and subpoena authority — Dr. Fauci will be leaving well before January 20, 2025.

As for the President, one cannot help but wonder how much longer he intends to remain in office. Last week, Geoffrey Skelley noted a somber political milestone for the White House on the FiveThirtyEight website:

… Biden is dancing with a somber piece of history: His 39 percent approval rating is now the worst of any president-elect at this point in his presidency since the end of World War II, according to FiveThirtyEight’s historical presidential approval data. In other words, Biden is arguably in worse shape than any other president-elect heading into his first midterm election, including his four most recent predecessors who, like Biden, have operated in an increasingly polarized political climate.

Forget partisan polarization. Even within the Democratic Coalition, it is repeatedly claimed that the President will not be re-elected. On Friday, Jim Tankersley, Lisa Friedman and Coral Davenport reported in the New York Times on the failure of the president’s efforts to enact new climate spending and tax increases:

The death of the legislature is just the latest but arguably worst blow to Mr Biden’s climate agenda as his tools to combat global warming have been gradually stripped away.

“There has been a failure by the entire party leadership to address this,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise movement, an environmental group that represents many young climate activists.

“I want to make sure Biden and his administration hear this loud and clear,” Ms. Prakash said. “They must create a response in all government agencies at all levels over the course of the two and a half years that they remain in office to do everything in their power to address the climate crisis or risk becoming a major failure and disappointment for the American people and especially for young people.”

If even Democrats reach a consensus that Mr. Biden should leave office in January 2025, why would he want to stay that long?

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Can anyone imagine a more deserving taxpayer??

“Harvard lobbies Congress to lower endowment tax,” reads a headline from Inside Higher Ed. Meghan Brink writes that the Ivy League university, which says its endowment surpassed $53 billion in 2021, wants relief from Trump’s 2017 tax reform. Ms Brink reports:

The 1.4 percent tax on net investment income applies to all colleges with endowments of more than $500,000 in assets per student. Almost 100 universities are currently subject to tax.

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James Freeman is co-author of The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.

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