Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) released documents from Dr. Fauci's diary and emails Monday detailing his dangerous NIAID-funded research during the Obama Administration, including a 2015 experiment that exposed vaccinated monkeys to aerosolized Ebola.
The risky research was conducted at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick under a NIAID task order. The NIAID study compared four vaccines in groups of four monkeys exposed to aerosolized Ebola. The exposure was engineered to drive the virus deep into the lungs in a way natural infection would not, the records show.
The vaccinated primates reportedly developed necrosis, inflammation, and fibrin in the lungs, while the unvaccinated controls did not, indicating that the vaccine itself was making the disease worse. The experiments left 80 percent of vaccinated monkeys dead.
"What idiots those guys at USAMRIID are," Fauci wrote on March 7, 2016. The work "should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place," he added. Two days later, however, then-NIAID director wrote that the experiments were "important for bio defense."
Fauci was outraged that the failed vaccine research was shared with U.S. embassy officials in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
"This should have been a classified experiment," he wrote in his diary. "The foolish DOD people send the data to the FDA and then circulated as FYI to various embassies including those in West Africa where we are about to engage on a much larger DSD vaccine trial for Ebola."
According to Fauci, the embassy officials "went bonkers" because it looked like the U.S. wanted to vaccinate people with a dangerous vaccine.
He also said such experiments should have been classified because they "could indicate a vulnerability."
However, NIAID's own report states that at no time had clearances been requested, nor was classification ever mentioned. Moreover, the data had already gone to vaccine manufacturers, and some of it had already been published.
Nonetheless, Fauci was dismayed when a Department of Defense official mentioned the experiments were funded by NIAID during a White House briefing. "No one followed up on that, but I almost fell off my chair!!!!" he wrote in an email to his colleagues at NIAID.
Following this disclosure, NIAID officials discussed "damage control" in an email chain. "We may need to a bit of damage control here," NIAID's biodefense director wrote.
The problem for Fauci wasn't the dangerous experiments, but the possibility the public could find out about the dangerous experiments. So he took immediate steps to have the research classified.
"The DoD folks said that they wanted to publish the data. I said that I thought that it should be classified and the NSC people blew them out of the water and said that they agreed with me," he said.
Deputy Director Cliff Lane told two NIAID scientists not to move forward on Ebola experiments until the dust settled, warning that "one might consider this dual use research." He instructed his colleagues not to discuss the matter with anyone until he had a chance to talk to them.
Four days later, NIAID researcher Peter Jahrling warned that if aerosol challenge studies were treated as dual use research of concern, "the entire MCM development paradigm is gutted," and wrote "I will keep the rest off Email."
In the same message, Jahrling ominously noted that with the Ebola work paused, NIAID would "continue to make plans to initiate the CoV [COVID-19] study as soon as the lights turn green."
Tyler Durden Tue, 09/29/2026 - 11:10Fair Isaac, the company that produces FICO scores, saw its shares crash the most in 22 years early Tuesday in cash trading after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte announced on X that a mortgage-pricing change that Wall Street analysts say could accelerate adoption of rival VantageScore and undermine FICO's moat.
"We are Simplifying Mortgage Pricing following feedback from lenders and consumers. Instead of two separate pricing grids, which makes zero sense, Fannie and Freddie are hereby moving to ONE PRICING GRID with VantageScore joining the existing FICO Classic pricing grid," Pulte posted on X Monday.
We are Simplifying Mortgage Pricing following feedback from lenders and consumers. Instead of two separate pricing grids, which makes zero sense, Fannie and Freddie are hereby moving to ONE PRICING GRID with VantageScore joining the existing FICO Classic pricing grid. pic.twitter.com/g9h1EqsDca
— Pulte (@pulte) September 28, 2026Pulte cited a press release from Rocket Mortgage that stated: "Rocket Mortgage did an extensive study that helped the company determine VantageScore 4.0 opens access to some clients who wouldn't be served otherwise, and many are able to secure a mortgage on better pricing terms. For those who saved money with VantageScore 4.0, the savings was an average of $1,600 at closing. FHFA and Director Pulte are encouraging competition and innovation in pilot programs."
The below is from Rocket Mortgage. Only happens because because of President TRUMP:
“Rocket Mortgage did an extensive study that helped the company determine VantageScore 4.0 opens access to some clients who wouldn't be served otherwise, and many are able to secure a mortgage on…
The change gives lenders a stronger incentive to adopt VantageScore, potentially lowering costs for homebuyers while threatening FICO's market share and pricing power. Traders responded by sending FICO shares tumbling 22% earlier this morning - the largest intraday decline since July 13, 2004.
Here's what Wall Street analysts had to say (courtsey of Bloomberg):
FT Partners
TD Cowen
RBC (rates FICO as outperform)
Deutsche Bank analyst Faiza Alwy asked clients, "Where is the moat?"
Alwy provided clients with her first take on the developments:
Single pricing grid plus Rocket to use VS4 as preferred credit scoring model
There were two important and negative developments that happened post-close yesterday. The first one was FHFA Director Pulte indicating on X that based on lender feedback, the GSEs will operate on one LLPA grid and VantageScore 4.0 (VS4) will now join the existing FICO Classic grid. This means that the VS4 20 point discount to FICO has been removed by the FHFA and both scores will now be treated the same by the GSEs. This would likely in and of itself result in higher number of mortgages that will see favorable pricing with VS4 vs. FICO Classic. We would have expected continuing gaming and for lenders to optimize pricing with this change. However, the announcement from Rocket this evening following this change is meaningfully negative and consequential for FICO.
Rocket Mortgage announced that it will become the first mortgage lender to use VS4 as its preferred credit scoring model for all eligible loans. Specifically, during 4Q26, the company will default to VS4 for mortgages that will be delivered to GSEs, VA home loans and any other eligible mortgages. The company noted that after four months of testing, it found that VS4 helped more clients qualify and move forward in the mortgage process, while also reducing credit scoring costs. Rocket is a top mortgage originator with ~5-6% share (possibly higher following the acquisition of Mr Cooper in 4Q25).
We're not entirely sure what the words "preferred" and "default" exactly mean at the moment but the worst case interpretation for FICO would be that Rocket Mortgage will not be pulling FICO scores at all when eligible. Important to note that the above excludes mortgages for investment properties and second homes, HELOCs, FHA loans, jumbo loans and some other products. Rocket Pro, the division that provides home loans through mortgage broker partners, will continue to provide both VantageScore and FICO to mortgage brokers. Rocket Pro comprised about 30% of the company's origination volume in 2025. We estimate that in aggregate about both scores would be pulled 50% of the time (at origination). Encouragingly for FICO, Rocket did indicate that they will continue to evaluate new options as they become available (a likely reference to FICO 10T).
Could other lenders follow suit? It would make sense to assume that UWM would follow suit but we note that UWM operates exclusively as a wholesale lender and competes directly with RocketPro. Other lenders were not particularly active in the pilot program, so we expected limited movement near-term.
What does this mean for FICO's mortgage strategy? FICO's management continues to believe that notwithstanding significant price increases in the last few years, the score remains under-priced relative to the value it is providing. We expect FICO's 2027 approach to pricing to be variable by lender with the company offering and implementing the performance model for some lenders. Ultimately this makes us much less confident with respect to FICO's mortgage revenue algorithm at least in the near-term. That said, we believe the non-GSE securitization market will require FICO Classic for an extended period of time; recall that the FHFA has indicated it will provide both VS4 and FICO on all GSE loans that are securitized to investors. We suspect FICO will attempt to monetize the securitization channel or GSEs.
We will revisit our model as we gather additional information and the mechanics of these new late developments. In the interim, we expect FICO stock to understandably react negatively.
With FICO's competitive moat under pressure, this new development raises the risk of "score shopping," as lenders select the credit-scoring model that secures the most favorable mortgage pricing for prospective homebuyers.
Tyler Durden Tue, 09/29/2026 - 10:55After five straight months of JOLTS beats earlier in the year, including two blowout prints for April and May and zero misses since 2025, the June JOLTS report was a surprising miss (despite the previously discussed surge in government job openings). One month later, the July JOLTS report made it two misses for two, when the US reportedly had 7.271 million job openings, modestly below the consensus estimate. Fast forward to today when moments ago the BLS reported that in August the number of job openings dropped from an upward revised 7.335 million (which ironically would have been a beat to last month's estimate), to 7.079 million...
.... missing the consensus estimate of 7.228 million for the third month in a row.
Notably, this was the first upward revision to the data after three months. Of course, nobody can possibly forget the three straight years of negative revisions between 2023 and 2025...
Where did the openings come from? According to the BLS the number and rate of job openings were little changed at 7.1 million and 4.3 percent, respectively. As shown in the table below, there were gains in trade, information, leisure and hospitality job openings, offset by declines in construction, manufacturing, professional/business services, and private education job openings.
The most notable category, however, was real estate and rental and leasing job openings, which plunged by almost half, dropping to just 50K in August, the lowest since Feb 2014.
The August rise in job openings was juxtaposed with an overall drop in July employment, which meant that after 9 months of labor surplus which ended in March, and after 4 months of modest improvements in the number of excess job openings, we are back to being on the verge of having fewer job openings than unemployed workers, as the August surplus tumbled to just 48K from 419K the month before, and a concerning development for the broader labor market which according to most other measures continues to fire on all cylinders.
The latest JOLTS data also means that after rising as high as 1.1x in July, the ratio of job openings to unemployed dropped back down to 1.0x.
While the job openings number was far weaker than expected for the third time this year, in July we also saw continued weakness in quits offset by a small bounce in hires. In August the number of Quits - or the "take his job and shove it" indicator - dropped by another 23K to 3.066MM from 3.089MM indicating a drop in confidence that better jobs await elsewhere; at the same time hires rose modestly by 46K, from 5.146MM to 5.192MM.
It goes without saying that disappointing job openings (which tumbled after an upward revision) while quits slump and hires barely rise, leads one to scratch their head how weak the labor market truly is.
In any case, since this hires number feeds directly into the payrolls calculations (after netting out separations) this explains why the August payrolls report surged by 162K (at a time when the hires less separations print was 122K). And since the JOLTS implied number is far weaker than that, having printed negative for a third month in a row, we expect the August payrolls report this Friday to be yet another catch down, and will likely be much lower than the 162K increase reported last month.
Overall, this was a weak JOLTS report, with weakness in both openings and quits, and shows that after some significant strength in the early part of of 2026, US labor market is now hitting an air pocket and this could translate into another notable miss in this Friday jobs report.
Tyler Durden Tue, 09/29/2026 - 10:45