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Kentucky Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Charles Booker has already made history. After winning his primary election in June, Booker became the first Black person to be a major party nominee for Senate in the Bluegrass State. Now, Booker is hoping to unseat Republican Sen. Rand Paul in the November midterm election.

Were on a path to not only beat Rand Paul, but win our future, Booker told theGrio during a recent interview.

The 37-year-old lifelong Kentuckian, who comes from a long line of ministers, was Kentuckys youngest Black state lawmaker when he was elected in 2018. Booker, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Senate nomination in 2020, sees his campaign as an opportunity to make Black history yet again as Kentuckys first elected Black U.S. senator. He also seeks to rise above partisan politics to address issues he believes all Kentuckians can support like halting hate, ending poverty, investing in solid infrastructure, and making health care more affordable.

Booker, who said he is proud of the history hes already made in this race, injects an aspirational and unifying tone familiar to Barack Obama, which earned the former president the kind of broad coalition support Booker will need to win a statewide election in Kentucky. The red state hasnt elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly 25 years and has voted for every Republican presidential candidate since 2000.

My hope is that we can inspire people all over Kentucky, and across the country, to know that their voices matter democracy is still worth fighting for, and that we can defy the odds at a time when division is so high [and] hatred and racism is so high, he said. It would mean a lot to send this type of message for the country.

Growing up in one of the poorest zip codes in one of the most impoverished states in America, Booker said a major focus of his campaign is addressing poverty, which affects hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians, white and Black.

Poverty is generational in Kentucky, declared the Senate nominee, who introduced his Kentucky New Deal agenda to address economic challenges in his state.

The reason why this campaign is so powerful is because were speaking to the issues from a real place, he explained. Im a Type 1 diabetic. Ive had to ration my insulin because we couldnt afford it. And diabetes is not a partisan thing. The challenges of putting food on the table are not actually partisan. And by telling that story, were motivating and mobilizing people that voted for Trump, Bernie Sanders [and those who] never voted before.

While Booker is unifying in his message, he is also not shy to call out his Republican opponent. The Democrat said Paul, the son of a former U.S. congressman and physician, doesnt understand the economic hardships that he and other Kentuckians have endured.

He is someone who is essentially a privileged, spoiled brat, said Booker. He doesnt think he belongs or is responsible to anyone. He doesnt see the struggles that we face because he hasnt lived them. And quite honestly, he has sold us out.

Earlier this year, Booker went viral for a campaign ad invoking the imagery of a noose in which he called Paul out for once comparing expanded health care to slavery, saying he opposed aspects of the Civil Rights Act and voted against a version of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in 2020 at the height of the George Floyd uprisings in protest of racial injustice and police brutality. Paul later co-sponsored a revised version of the anti-lynching bill in 2022 that was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Rand Paul has built a career out of weaponizing hate and hiding his hand, said Booker, who noted that the Republican lawmaker also voted alongside GOP senators to block a domestic terrorism bill after the mass shooting of nine African Americans inside a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, earlier this year. He doesnt think racism is a problem, and we cant fix what we dont face.

As the United States grapples with political divisions, Booker said the country is currently fighting for healing just as much as were fighting to beat back fascism and secure our pursuit of democracy. He declared that his campaign is building a movement he calls a new Southern strategy.

This campaign is a testament to regular people from the hood, to the holler, I always say folks from the forgotten places, people that have felt like democracy didnt account for them, that justice didnt see them, [or] folks who were sort of accepting the struggles, not realizing that we can move them, that we can change them, said Booker.

A lot is riding on this Novembers elections for Democrats, who are seeking to hold onto their slim majority in Congress, particularly in the Senate. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in recent months have been giving speeches across the country urging voters to elect more Democrats in the Senate in order to eliminate the Senate filibuster and pass Democratic agenda items like voting rights reform and federal abortion rights.

Democrats hope that Senate nominees like Booker will be successful on Nov. 8, which would give them the numbers they need to bypass some of the roadblocks created by conservative Democratic senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

While he supports the Democratic Partys mainstream agenda like abolishing the filibuster and unpacking the Supreme Court, Booker is also leaning in on the nonpartisan items of his Kentucky New Deal to invest in the states infrastructure, create sustainable jobs, putting more money in the pockets of regular people, protecting social security, [and] making sure everyone has quality health care.

We can do those things in very short order by expanding the majority in the Senate, said Booker. Winning this seat, getting rid of Rand Paul and expanding the majority means we can do a lot of good.

Gerren Keith Gaynor is the Managing Editor of Politics and Washington Correspondent at theGrio. He is based in Washington, D.C.

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Charles Booker on Kentucky Senate race to unseat privileged, spoiled brat Rand Paul and make Black history - TheGrio

Divisions on abortion were on display in Congress this week as both the House and Senate returned to Washington, D.C., after a lengthy summer recess.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday introduced a national abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The proposal drew a quick rebuke from Democrats campaigning on expanded abortion access and disagreement from fellow Republicans who want to leave abortion decisions up to states.

Also this week, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, the Twitter whistleblower, testified before Congress that federal regulators are not powerful enough to deal with Big Tech companies like Twitter. And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) once again squared off with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing.

Here's a look at scenes from the Capitol the week of Sept. 12, captured by Washington Examiner photographer Graeme Jennings.

Sen. Lindsey Graham unveils his nationwide abortion ban

GRAEME JENNINGS

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Twitter whistleblower Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko testifies before Congress

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Dr. Anthony Fauci faces off with Sen. Rand Paul, again

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Sen. Bernie Sanders blocks GOP proposal to force rail unions to avert labor strike

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Jan. 6 committee members face questions on plans for next hearing

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of kicking activist

Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

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Graham ignites abortion firestorm: Washington photos of the week - Washington Examiner

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., accused government health officials of taking a wrong approach in evaluating COVID-19 vaccines by failing to take into account people's previous infections.

The Kentucky Republican then implied that there could be a reason for this. Stating that government vaccine committee members have not disclosed what, if any, royalties they have received from companies that make the vaccines, Paul said that if the GOP takes control of the Senate in November's midterm elections they will investigate the matter.

"We've been asking you and you refused to answer whether anybody on the vaccine committees gets royalties from the pharmaceutical companies," Paul said Wednesday to Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. "I asked you last time, and what was your response? We don't have to tell you. We've demanded them through the Freedom of Information Act. And what have you said? We're not going to tell you. But I tell you this, when we get in charge, we're going to change the rules and you will have to divulge where you get your royalties from, from what companies, and if anybody in the committee has a conflict of interest, we're going to learn about it. I promise you that."

Fauci responded by saying that those committees are advisory committees with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet Paul keeps asking about him.

RAND PAUL BLASTS FAUCI AFTER JUDGE DEMANDS MISINFORMATION EMAILS: AMERICA SHOULD BE APPALLED

Paul responded by saying that Fauci himself has refused to say which companies, if any, gave him royalties, or paid royalties to other scientists.

"They are not my committees," Fauci reiterated, without addressing Paul's claim that Fauci himself has not been transparent.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is stepping down from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Getty Images)

The discussion of royalties from pharmaceutical companies stemmed from Paul's claim that Fauci and other officials were not following established science because they were ignoring the effects of COVID-19 infections when looking at vaccines. He began his segment by showing an interview Fauci gave in 2004, in which he said regarding the flu that "the best vaccination is to get infected yourself."

Paul asked Fauci why that same idea does not appear to be reflected in the government's approach to COVID-19.

WHITE HOUSE WANTS SIMULTANEOUS COVID, FLU SHOTS: THIS IS WHY GOD GAVE US TWO ARMS

"Currently, antibody surveys show that 80 percent of children, approximately 80 percent of children, have had COVID, and yet there are no guidelines coming from you or anybody in the government to take into account their naturally acquired immunity," the senator said, adding that death rates from COVID-19 are similar "if not less than that" of the flu.

"So when we look at this, we wonder, you know, why you seemed to really embrace basic immunology back in 2004, how you or why you seem to reject it now," Paul said.

Fauci denied rejecting basic immunology and said he "never denied that there is the importance of the protection following infection." Still, he said the FDA and CDC support the idea that "vaccination following infection gives an added extra boost."

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The problem, Paul said, is that "almost none of your studies from the CDC or from the government have the variable of whether or not you've been previously infected."

"If you ignore whether they've been infected, you're ignoring a vaccine, basically," he added.

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Rand Paul threatens to investigate royalties to Fauci, other officials, if GOP takes Senate - Fox News

WASHINGTON With a small business innovation grant program favored by the Pentagon set to expire this month, Congress is racing to draft compromise reauthorization legislation that addresses concerns about companies abusing the awards process.

Democrats and Republicans on the Small Business committees in both the House and Senate convened a so-called four corners meeting this week to negotiate draft legislation, which is in its final stages.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., the ranking member on the House Small Business Committee, said Thursday that the committees hope to finish drafting legislation that reauthorizes the Small Business Administrations Innovation Research and Technology Transfer awards which are made jointly with 11 federal agencies by the end of the week.

Weve got a general agreement already with the four corners on this, but the devils always in the details, he told Defense News. We want to make sure that what comes out in text is what we agreed to in concept.

Were knocking out the text as we speak, so everyone can see it today or tomorrow, Luetkemeyer added. Hopefully next week we can our side of the bill firmed it up and get it through.

Both Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., who chair the Small Business Committee in their respective chambers, noted that negotiators have made a lot of progress on the compromise reauthorization.

Velazquez told Defense News that she feels optimistic and that she expects final legislation soon.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the ranking member on the Senate Small Business Committee, downplayed the negotiations on Wednesday and told Defense News that they have not assuaged his concerns.

Paul has argued that the program lacks protections against ties between program awardees and China, and that some companies rely entirely on SBIR grants to sustain themselves without spinning off new businesses or products.

Dr. Paul will not reauthorize this program without reforms to strengthen research security and stop abusive behavior by bad actors lining their pockets with taxpayer dollars at the expense of new small businesses with emerging technologies being able to access SBIR awards, a spokesperson for the senator told Defense News in June.

Reauthorization of the program was originally included in an earlier version of the CHIPS and Science bill, but the provision was not included in the final version of the legislation that passed in July.

The total budget for the 40-year-old program ballooned to nearly $3.3 billion in 2019, with the Department of Defense accounting for the majority of the awards. Individual grants range from tens of thousands of dollars to more than a million for a two-year grant.

SBIR provides funding in three phases, with grant amounts typically increasing throughout each stage. For defense SBIR awards, companies are eligible to submit multiple project ideas, which some say leads to companies applying for multiple Phase I awards without ever maturing the proposed technology.

Were trying to find ways to incentivize and do the work yet provide the oversight to continue to do the work not just ripping off the program to continue to get these grants and at the end of the day theyre just making money, but theyre not actually producing products, said Luetkemeyer.

For some entities, for some different departments, there arent that many alternatives to go toto be able to produce or develop a particular product or service for the Defense Department he added. Weve got to be very careful that we dont preclude the ability of companies to be able to meet our defense needs by hamstringing this bill.

Kea Matory, director of legislative policy at the National Defense Industrial Association trade group, said in an interview that criticisms of awarding companies too many Phase I grants signal contrasting standards for small and large companies.

Lots of our bigs get multiple awards, she said. We would never tell one of our large primes oh, youve had too many, you need to sit down.

Matory added that delays in reauthorizing the program are already impacting small businesses.

A lot of them are already hearing that SBIR could go away, she said. Its like a game of telephone as it gets passed along to each person; it sounds more doomsday.

When it comes to innovation, small businesses frequently bring new ideas to the table that could help the Pentagon with its modernization goals, she said. Without SBIR, many of those companies would be disincentivized to want to do business in the government and defense sectors.

The Pentagon will not award new SBIR grants starting Oct. 1 if the legislators fail to reauthorize the program. Ongoing contracts may continue but will not receive further SBIR/STTR funding.

If the draft legislation wins over Paul, the House and Senate could reauthorize SBIR as stand-alone legislation by the end of the month.

And if that doesnt work, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., told the Defense News conference that negotiations are also underway to include SBIR reauthorization in the continuing resolution that Congress needs to pass by the end of the month in order to fund the government and avoid a shutdown.

I would prefer that we get reauthorization as a stand-alone bill versus just a straight reauthorization where we stick it into a [continuing resolution], said Luetkemeyer. That really doesnt solve problems. It extends the same problems that we have now.

As a last resort, Congress could reauthorize the program in the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act although Congress is unlikely to finalize that legislation until after the SBIR/STTR grants expire.

The House NDAA, which passed 329-101 in July, has a provision that reauthorizes the program without any changes. The Senate must still pass its version of the bill before both chambers agree on final legislation a process that usually takes several weeks.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

Catherine Buchaniec is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where she covers artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and uncrewed technologies.

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Congress races to reauthorize innovation grants favored by Pentagon - DefenseNews.com

Commentary

Lets imagine that one day, liberty, prosperity, security, and rationality were all shredded. Most of the country could not go to church, send their kids to school, get a drink at a bar, go to the gym, or even hold a dinner party. Hospitals intubated patients and 88 percent died. This persisted for months, even a year in some places, after which the government came along with a shot many were forced to get else lose a job, and this shot was not needed by most and had sketchy efficacy and safety data.

One might suppose that if such a thing should happen, the perpetrators of such an outrage would be found and justice would be meted out.

Of course all the above did in fact happen in this land of the free. But here is where it gets strange: no one seems responsible for it all. Another way to say this: no one is willing to take responsibility for what happened.

Anthony Fauci, more than anyone else, appears to be the main architect of American lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He was doing several media appearances a day for the better part of two years, adored by the media and parading around like a master of the universe. He claimed that attacks on him were nothing but attacks on science.

One might suppose that he, more than anyone, would bear responsibility for failure. According to him, the opposite is true. He never gave any orders to anyone, he says. Clearly, he has been planning his escape for years.

Once his emails started coming out thanks to FOIA requests, I noticed that he had a special talent for avoiding responsibility. He is a master bureaucrat. Even though he was running everything, he was always careful never to give direct orders in email or make strong judgements. His emails were carefully worded to avoid that. He would always answer in vague terms, never decisively and never with revealing text.

Even when he and his cohorts ordered a direct hit on the Great Barrington Declaration, he tried to keep his fingerprints off of it. It was Francis Collins of the NIH who called for a quick and devastating takedown of the document, whereas Fauci merely sent back links. He did not add any strong words of encouragement. And when confronted about this by Rand Paul, he pointed that out.

This is how a master bureaucrat works. They gain ever more power but they also get ever better at not leaving a paper trail, always setting others up for failure while the master bureaucrat himself avoids having the blame for failure pinned on him.

Such people are everywhere in the workforce, not just the government. You have probably experienced them before in your workplace. They are unusually maddening figures, typically lacking in much skill at all besides the skill of surviving and thriving in a bureaucratic thicket of their own making. Lacking actual skill, they surround themselves with people who can do their work, leaving them all the time in the world for plotting, scheming, and taking credit for all successes. They are equally flattered by everyone around them and secretly despised by these same people.

They have no loyalty to others but demand 100 percent loyalty to themselves. They are always ready to conspire against colleagues and hurl them out if there is a perception of any threat to themselves. They are constantly creating alibis to mask their own incompetence. People fear them so much that they can get away with this caper for years. Eventually of course such people wreck whole institutions.

Senator Rand Paul knows exactly what is going on with Fauci and works to expose him in whatever way he can, given the very limited time he has when Fauci testifies before the Senate. Yesterday, the subject concerned Faucis very obvious and completely untenable neglect of natural immunity in the case of COVID.

Rands point is very obviously beyond dispute. Its one of the biggest scandals of the whole pandemic era. NIH and the CDC in their studies and guidelines buried this point of science as deeply as possible. Why? Because doing so helped whip up disease panic, underscore the thinking behind masks and force human separation, and prepared the way for vaccine mandates. It got so bad that even the World Health Organization removed natural immunity from its website.

In the end, of course, it was natural immunityexposure then recoverythat got us out of the pandemic. No one really disputes that, especially given that the vaccine predictably protects against neither infection nor transmission. Even when Fauci was asked point blank about the subject during the pandemic, he would quickly demur and say that they are studying the problem.

That Fauci buried this known point of science is truly beyond dispute. Of course with Fauci, ever clever, he cannot be trapped. Rand began his brief interrogation by showing a video of Fauci from 2004 in which Fauci says that the best vaccine is infection and recovery. Fauci immediately picks up a sheet of paper from Reuters claiming that the video is taken out of context.

Then Rand moved on to discuss vaccine trials, guidelines, and mandates and how they too completely neglected natural immunity. Almost none of your studies, from the CDC or from the government, said Rand, include the variable of whether or not you have been previously infected. He demanded to know why Fauci has so completely neglected the topic.

Fauci says in response. You keep saying you approve, you do this, you do that. The committees that give approval are FDA, through their advisory committee. The committees that recommend are CDC through their advisory committee . They are not my committees . I dont have any idea what goes on.

Here is the full exchange.

Wow. Listening to Fauci on this occasion, you would think he bears no more responsibility for the pandemic response or bad vaccine science than the server who brought my veal parmesan to the table last night. He is completely innocent of all things! He even posed as a victim here, shoving all responsibility for everything to some vague committees.

This is another master bureaucrat trick: surround yourself with committees that you can always blame for all failure. An investigator can take the next step and talk to all committee members one by one. In the event of success, every member will be glad to take all credit. In the event of a true failure, every single member will claim to have been skeptical all along but got overruled by other idiots on the committee. This is absolutely inevitable, and precisely why these committees exist in the first place: so that no one in particular is ever made responsible.

This strange pattern not only exists at the federal level. It exists in every state, every county, and every city. For that matter, it exists in every country. There is right now a vast and international scramble to avoid all responsibility. We end up with the spooky reality that the world was utterly wrecked by human hands and yet no one can figure out who or what is at fault. We think we know but pinning the disaster on anyone in power is like nailing jello to the wall.

And the problem is across the board. I touch a nerve by writing on the murderous use of ventilators early in the pandemic. Thousands died unnecessarily. But try to find the responsible party and you come up dry. Readers said that I was unfair to Jared Kushner and that might be correct, since he was just following the prescribed treatment at the time. But who prescribed this ghastly method of addressing a respiratory infection? No one seems to know.

Here is the essence of the problem of systemic human evil through history. We know what happened and we know how horrible it all was. But we are too often at a loss to assign agency in the actions themselves. For the bureaucrat, success means avoiding all responsibility. Anthony Fauci is the paradigmatic case of a person who has mastered the craft. His most perfected science is the science of survival.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Fauci, the Master Bureaucrat, Says Its Not His Fault - The Epoch Times