Director of the National Institute of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, joins the show to talk about immigration, mass migration, and much more! Recorded in Tampa, FL at the Student Action Summit.
00:00:46.000We have Pete Hegseth coming, Christine Ohm, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Donald Trump Jr., Steve Bannon, Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingram, Ross Ulbricht, Byron Donalds, Tom Homan, Ben Carson, Brett Cooper, Michael Knowles, Brandon Tatum, Benny Johnson, Jack Pesobic, Riley Gaines, James O'Keefe, and more.
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00:02:48.000It's not going to make the front page of the New York Times, but it shows how the administration is focused on real results that benefit the taxpayer and science.
00:02:59.000Charlie, thank you for having me on the show and for giving me the floor to make this announcement.
00:03:03.000So one of the things that's sort of a little known secret about scientific publishing is that when taxpayers pay for research, and they do through the National Institute of Health, lots of great discoveries are made.
00:03:15.000You publish it in a scientific journal.
00:03:17.000And everyone has these ideas about scientific journals as if they're as ways like clean places where people can convey scientific ideas to other scientists.
00:03:30.000But a lot of times the economics of the publishing of the scientific publishing workforce, the publishing industry is actually not so clean.
00:03:42.000And in particular, what happens, we just made an announcement a couple of weeks ago, essentially saying that when an NIH-funded scientist publishes a paper in a scientific journal, that paper needs to be available to the entire public for free without any paywall.
00:04:04.000Actually, I think it was July 1st, we put that in place.
00:04:07.000A lot of the industry, some of the industry responded essentially by telling the scientists that they were going to charge the scientists for the privilege of publishing science in their journals.
00:04:51.000So what we're doing is we announced a policy that in fiscal year 26, that we're going to limit the amount of money that the NIH is willing to pay to scientific journals for having the scientific publications paid for by taxpayers available for free to taxpayers.
00:05:17.000A lot of the sort of predatory practices in scientific journals that take advantage of researchers, we're finally addressing that.
00:05:24.000And we're sort of making the sort of like publication process more in line with the interest of taxpayers and with the scientific community.
00:05:33.000It's going to be weirdly controversial in the scientific community, in sort of the narrow world of science.
00:05:39.000But I think for American taxpayers, it is a big deal.
00:05:42.000It's a big step because it says we are taking seriously the dollars that you entrust us with, making sure we spend it on science, not on exorbitant publication fees that don't produce any good for anybody.
00:05:54.000And so, for example, I know that you guys have had your eyes on many of these publisher companies, one of which is a company, Springer Nature, which is a foreign company.
00:06:02.000And correct me if I'm wrong, but they charge as much as $13,000 per article for immediate open access while also collecting substantial subscription fees from the government agency.
00:06:14.000But then they also receive more than $2 million annually in subscription fees from the NIH, in addition to the tens of millions more through exclusive article processing charges or APCs.
00:06:27.000So correct me if I'm wrong, but that's double dipping by companies like Springer Nature?
00:06:36.000And you've described it exactly right, right?
00:06:38.000So, what happens is in order, okay, so NIH employs a lot of excellent scientists, right?
00:06:45.000So, scientists need to have access to the journals so they can read the journals and see what fellow scientists are doing and have discovered.
00:06:51.000So, the NIH pays Springer Nature, Elsevier, another big player in this industry.
00:07:04.000And then a few other smaller publishers, including like university presses, a contract that says, okay, we would like to have access for our scientists to the stuff that's in your journals.
00:07:21.000You want to have access to these journals for the scientists that are doing their work because that's how they do their work is by sharing information.
00:07:28.000What doesn't make sense, Charlie, is charging scientists for publishing in the journal exorbitant amounts of money just for the right for the public to see the papers without a paywall.
00:07:44.000And the amount of money on that is way, way more than the library fees.
00:07:49.000Really, the big way that these journals take advantage of their duopoly power, duopoly, because there's really two big players in this industry.
00:07:58.000There's Springer Nature, just as you said, and then another company called Elsevier.
00:08:04.000Those two companies basically set the terms for a lot of the scientific journals, and they sort of monopolize.
00:08:10.000You know, it's part like one of the reasons why it was so difficult to get the word out about what scientists were actually saying during COVID, because they had such monopoly power over scientific publishing.
00:08:20.000It's really not a healthy situation for science to be in where you rely on a duopoly publishing industry.
00:08:28.000I don't know much I can do about that, but I can tell you there's no reason for taxpayers to pay twice.
00:08:32.000And taxpayers ought to have a right to see the product of the science that they fund without having to do a paywall.
00:09:07.000So I just want to make sure you know that.
00:09:08.000But let's say another public health concern is emerging.
00:09:12.000How would this way of doing open source, transparent publishing help public health more than the paywall model?
00:09:23.000Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the problem during the pandemic was this sense that there is something called the science.
00:09:30.000So there's a relatively small number of like clergy in science, I mean, effective clergy in science, get to decide what's true and false, right?
00:09:38.000So you have to wear a mask or else you're going to spread COVID.
00:09:40.000The vaccine stops you from getting spreading COVID, so vaccine mandates are a good idea.
00:09:44.000We should close schools for years because that's the only way to stop COVID.
00:09:50.000And there was a lot of literature, scientific literature published, eventually published, that showed that that was false.
00:09:58.000If you open up the access to the journals so that the public and large can see what the scientific debates are actually happening, it makes it much more difficult for a small number of high-profile scientists to dominate the conversation.
00:10:12.000You can point and say, well, look, everyone, I just want to interrupt, just repeat that.
00:10:17.000We know what, we saw this during COVID when people like Berks or Fauci.
00:10:49.000And that fundamentally is an act of freedom.
00:10:52.000If you allow people to have access to those information, those data, immediately upon publication, you make it much harder for a small number of scientific elite to determine what's true and false.
00:11:03.000Instead, you have the data telling you what's true and false.
00:11:06.000You have the scientific debate telling you what's true and false.
00:11:09.000That's why, as you started, your opening was exactly right, Charlie.
00:11:14.000It seems like this is a secondary issue.
00:11:16.000But to me, it's absolutely fundamental to how our democracy functions.
00:11:20.000We have to essentially democratize access to science.
00:11:23.000We have to make science not the domain of a small number of people, but something that's accessible to everybody.
00:11:30.000Now, of course, people have different scientific ideas, and some people are better at science than other people, and it's fine, but that's not the question.
00:11:36.000The question is, can you have this debate?
00:12:02.000It was unfortunately and tragically, science became a tool of totalitarianism when science properly understood, which is understanding the natural world and how we interface with it, should be a tool of liberation and of flourishing and of the betterment of humanity, where science was used to actually suppress liberty and to suppress agency and to suppress freedom.
00:12:22.000I put science in air quotes because it wasn't about trusting the science.
00:12:25.000It was about trusting the scientists that they like.
00:12:28.000So now if there is a heterodox journal that wants to be introduced, for example, saying lockdowns are no good, you call the duopoly.
00:12:37.000Basically, you know, what would this, I suppose I asked this question previously.
00:12:48.000What would this possibly do now to have to change these incumbent major corporate publishing actors?
00:12:55.000Because I believe you say that you're going to have a cap on allowable publication costs.
00:13:00.000What do you expect in response to this?
00:13:02.000Well, I expect that these journals, the Duopolis, essentially will lose some of their market power.
00:13:09.000A lot of the market power has to do with the fact that they essentially bully scientists into paying large fees and essentially end up bullying us.
00:13:17.000Actually, you know, Charlie, it's interesting because the private foundations, the GATE foundations, are not allowing these kind of charges to be paid at all or limiting the charges also.
00:13:25.000For the longest time, essentially, these journals, like Springer Nature, have said, okay, and given a better deal to private foundations than they have to American taxpayers.
00:13:35.000So I expect that there's going to have to be some more actions taken, but ultimately endpoint will be essentially a more democratic science, democratic in the small D sense, right?
00:13:46.000More science that's like open and free where people can have real honest scientific discussions about the data rather than having a few big actors get to dominate the field the way it has.
00:14:03.000When I flip a container around and cannot pronounce nor recognize the ingredients, I put it back.
00:14:08.000That's why you'll find Balance of Nature fruits and veggies supplements on a shelf in my home.
00:14:12.000Every single ingredient is a fruit or veggie plucked from the soil.
00:14:16.000No binders, no additives or artificial colors, no fillers.
00:14:20.000Just whole fruits and veggies, gluten-free and vegan-friendly.
00:14:23.000These harvested ingredients are freeze-dried into a fine powder using an advanced vacuum-cold process to better preserve nutritional value.
00:14:31.000I can say with absolute confidence that I'm getting 31 ingredients from fruits and veggies every single day with Balance of Nature.
00:14:38.000Imagine a platter with 31 different fruits and veggies on it every day.
00:15:21.000Unfortunately, because he was really good on creation and God many years prior.
00:15:25.000So, Doctor, let me ask you, since taking the job, what has been some of the most surprising things that you have learned?
00:15:32.000And what are the major tasks that you are endeavoring to solve as director of NIH?
00:15:37.000Well, probably the most challenging thing has been to try to focus the NIH on the priorities of making America healthy again.
00:15:45.000What that means to me is, you know, if you look back, Charlie, over the last, since 2012, there's been no increase in life expectancy in this country.
00:15:55.000It's a major scandal sitting in front of us, and no one ever talked about it.
00:15:59.000We basically have had flat life expectancy, high rates of chronic disease, including diabetes, including cancer, including obesity, a whole host of conditions that really have gone unaddressed.
00:16:13.000And it's especially working class people and others who felt the brunt of it.
00:16:19.000And the NIH's mission is to advance the health and well-being of the American people, to advance the health and longevity of the American people.
00:16:26.000And so the most shocking thing to me was that was essentially like there are parts of, I mean, I love that mission.
00:16:32.000That's why I agreed to be a director of the NIH, because I think that mission is really important.
00:16:36.000And I think science can do a lot to help achieve that mission.
00:16:39.000But I think there have been parts of the mission of the NIH, of the actual mission of the NIH, which have been sort of adulterated.
00:16:45.000Like a lot of it turned out, at least some parts of the NIH were focused on DEI objectives, essentially to try to achieve sort of social justice for something that the science isn't really well equipped to achieve.
00:16:57.000Instead of saying, okay, what problems, health problems do minority populations have and how can we address them?
00:17:02.000Like it turns out to be problems that everyone has, you know, high rates of obesity, untreated hypertension, diabetes, heart disease.
00:17:11.000All of these problems need to get addressed in ways that really address the problem.
00:17:16.000Instead, it was like, you know, a lot of the portfolio were focused on sort of DEI kinds of objectives that were remote from advancing the health of people.
00:17:28.000And so I've worked, and this happened even before I got in, after President Trump took office, we've worked to try to focus the NIH on real health priorities that matter to people.
00:17:38.000We want advances that improve the health of everybody, no matter what your race, color, it doesn't matter.
00:17:43.000If you have a health problem, the NIH ought to be studying ways to help you, not trying to achieve social justice.
00:17:49.000That's something we're not capable of.
00:17:50.000That's something that other, you know, that's beyond me.
00:17:53.000I just want to simply do science that advances the health of every single American.
00:18:24.000But there are great scientists all across the country.
00:18:26.000And the NIH kind of contributes to this groupthink by concentrating where the money that we give goes.
00:18:33.000Now, of course, the way the NIH gives grants out, we solicit grant ideas, research ideas from researchers around the country.
00:18:42.000They give us their ideas, and there's a big competition to say which ideas are best.
00:18:46.000The problem is that the fixed cost support, the money we give to universities so they can have the lab space and all that, we tie it to having excellent scientists already at the place that can win grants.
00:18:58.000But it's kind of a, it sets up this circular system.
00:19:01.000In order to have excellent scientists, you have to have excellent facilities.
00:19:04.000In order to have excellent support for those excellent facilities, you have to have excellent scientists.
00:19:08.000It's a sort of a vicious circle, which guarantees that excellent scientists outside of the top 20 universities will have a much more difficult time of getting their excellent ideas funded.
00:19:18.000So that's something I'm looking into how to fix.
00:19:20.000We really do need to address that because it's bad for science to have a few concentrated places get all the funding or so much of the funding.
00:19:28.000And you get a scientific groupthink as a result.
00:19:32.000Well, Doctor, I just want to say on behalf of our audience, thank you for your great work.
00:19:35.000And anytime there's breaking news, you can come here.
00:19:38.000And I can rest easy that if there's another pathogen on the horizon, that you will approach it with real science, that with real prudence, and use the scientific method to restore trust and to also uplift humanity.
00:19:56.000Everybody, I want to encourage you guys to get tickets to the Student Action Summit, but let me just say one other thing on Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and that whole team.
00:20:03.000Bobby Kennedy and the Maha movement, love them or hate them, they have done what they said they were going to do.
00:20:09.000There's a lot of coalition angst on foreign policy, sometimes in immigration.
00:20:14.000But I'll be honest, the coalition that has been battle-tested and held together the most of all the coalitions is Maha.
00:20:23.000It's really something to study and to behold.
00:20:26.000Maha is holding strong and doing what they said they would do.
00:20:32.000Look, I know there are a lot of choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service.
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00:22:03.000And the numbers that we're getting of people, considering that President Trump and J.D. Vance are not going to be at this one, which is fine.
00:22:11.000But the fact that we're going to have six, 7,000 people, I mean, we don't know the final number until the end because people just start pouring in.
00:22:24.000Alex, yesterday we were kind of in the center of some news where we were reporting on verified rumors that were circling around about amnesty.
00:22:33.000Byron Donalds confirmed those here on this program.
00:22:36.000And secondly, I had a very high-ranking senator call yesterday afternoon and say, Charlie, your sources are very good.
00:22:42.000And so, Alex, you have actually, you're uniquely positioned to talk about this.
00:22:48.000And I want to just do a little history lesson.
00:22:50.000You guys at Breitbart have kind of been the vanguard of stopping prior amnesty pushes.
00:22:57.000Most notably, you guys at Breitbart were the most responsible for stopping the amnesty push of the Gang of Eight and also the one that Nancy Pelosi was pushing while President Trump was in office.
00:23:08.000Kind of walk our audience through how you've been through these amnesty fights before and why this is really nothing new out of Washington, D.C. Yeah, thank you.
00:23:16.000This is something that Washington, D.C. has always wanted to do is to give amnesty for illegal aliens.
00:23:22.000I think it would make a problem for them go away.
00:23:25.000And so all Democrats and many establishment Republicans have wanted this thing, including some people who are some of my favorites.
00:23:33.000I mean, Marco Rubio has been absolutely on fire, but he was one of the sponsors of the Gang of Ape Bill.
00:23:37.000And this is definitely one that if you've not boned up on this one, definitely spend a few minutes doing this.
00:23:44.000If you use our search engine, you can catch up.
00:23:47.000But overall, this is a major compromise by both political parties to try to get through amnesty for as many illegal aliens as they possibly could, basically say for violent criminals, that they would get to stay here and have a pathway to citizenship, not just that they get to stay, kind of we have a de facto amnesty now and that we don't do enough deportations.
00:24:05.000Trump is ramping that up, but literally put them on a pathway to citizenship, which in turn creates a, through chain migration, which is one of Stephen Miller's issues that he's been on for over a decade, that this is one of the big threats that we have is that each legal alien tends to bring in more.
00:24:21.000Both political parties, shockingly, were for this as of just about a decade ago.
00:24:26.000And it has been a pretty rapid, I would say, pivot for the Republicans to be the anti-amnesty party.
00:24:33.000But there are underlying sources within the party that would like to see more amnesty because, first of all, it would legitimize their decades of past desires for amnesty, which will make them feel good.
00:24:47.000Second of all, it drives the wages down of working class Americans, which would boost their stocks a little bit.
00:26:07.000The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce towards automation and 100% American participation, which again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.
00:26:22.000And then additionally, President Donald Trump, breaking news, I think we have the tape.
00:26:39.000And Rollins is very important here because she's in charge of the farmland in this country.
00:26:45.000And a lot of the case that is made for amnesties is that who's going to work the farms if we do not allow for everyone to say who's an illegal alien.
00:26:54.000So for her to come out and say, we are no longer supporting this.
00:27:02.000She's one of the most important people in this conversation.
00:27:04.000And of course, the most important person is Trump.
00:27:07.000And Trump, I think, is sympathetic to the fact that some working class jobs, particularly in places like the hospitality industry in many corners of the country, particularly blue states, have relied on illegal alien labor for the past several decades.
00:27:19.000It was one of these things that we've normalized it, but we shouldn't have, Charlie.
00:27:23.000And this is where people like me and you come in because we're the ones to say that there is a path forward for America where we don't normalize lawlessness and we don't incentivize people from all over the world to come here thinking they can get a free pass if they just slip in through the through the back door.
00:27:41.000And I think ultimately he's not going to want to do any amnesties on his watch because they haven't gone well.
00:27:46.000Reagan did one and he gets completely crushed online for it and deservedly so.
00:27:50.000Just remind our audience, you live in California, how catastrophic was the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act?
00:27:56.000Yeah, it's changed the state for the worse and it's never come back from it.
00:27:59.000Charlie, I talk about this quite a bit that this was what informed me to become a conservative was largely seeing how the attitude towards illegal aliens in this country was so passe.
00:28:10.000We just allowed for everyone to be here and we just accepted the lawlessness, the filth that can come with it, the underbellies of the cities that would develop because of it.
00:28:20.000And in the meantime, it created permanent political class of Democrats so that Republicans had an impossibility.
00:28:26.000It was an impossibility for us to get any foothold at all, much less control the state, but we couldn't even get a foothold in the state.
00:28:32.000And all of it was because the Democrats were the party of illegal aliens, which would jack up their numbers at an amazing rate in terms of who could vote.
00:30:38.000Shouldn't you be looking into doing that too?
00:30:43.000Alex, I believe we've talked about this before, the future of America goes through its cities, including the reclamation of Los Angeles.
00:30:49.000Walk our audience through what happened yesterday in MacArthur Park, which, of course, is known to be filled with MS-13 activity and what Mayor Karen Bass did.
00:30:58.000Yeah, I think the first thing to talk about is the history, what's going on, what the Trump administration is doing, and the reaction out here, which is all grandstanding.
00:31:06.000MacArthur Park, it is an immigration raid took place against criminals and trafficking.
00:31:46.000They're mostly for homeless people as they are, as Charlie, you point out, in these major cities, which are really kind of a window into our dystopian future.
00:31:54.000If we let the left run the country, all these parks just become homeless dens.
00:31:59.000There's a lot of fentanyl abuse there.
00:33:21.000It's another one, Charlie, where me growing up in blue areas, it helped me a lot because I went to UC Berkeley, which is known for People's Park.
00:33:28.000And People's Park was where all the free speech protests, a lot of them would take place.
00:33:32.000And there was discussion of putting up a parking lot on People's Park in Berkeley.
00:34:03.000It's one of the best pieces of advice you can give people.
00:34:06.000But one of these things that happens in these major cities is that we let the parks just become homeless dens.
00:34:11.000And for some reason, we've accepted it.
00:34:14.000We all hate it, but we've accepted it and we shouldn't.
00:34:17.000And again, another part of that, which is one of the things I speak about often, which is if you can't walk your major cities at night unattended and alone, your country is in a bad shape and things need to dramatically change.