The HighWire

🎉This Thursday on The HighWire! It's our 500th episode!! The HighWire celebrates 500 episodes of truth-telling! Del looks back at nine incredible years of reporting the stories mainstream media won’t touch, breaking news that made headlines, and the impact The HighWire has had on the medical freedom movement. In breaking news, ICAN attorney Aaron Siri joins Del to announce a landmark legal victory: the first-ever win against a vaccine manufacturer! Plus, Jefferey Jaxen joins Del at the desk to trace the remarkable evolution of the vaccine awareness movement—from a small group of concerned parents to a powerful force that has reshaped the conversation in America and across the world. And shhhhh… we’ve got a surprise! Two of Hollywood’s boldest truth-tellers join Del in-studio to celebrate our 500th episode and reveal details about their new show that’s already making waves. Join us at 11 AM PT/2 PM ET at TheHighWire.com!

Bayer just got a multi-million-dollar U.S. weapons contract, and yes, it is the same Bayer behind Roundup. But the story is more complicated than the headline. The contract is for white phosphorus, and Bayer happens to control the only elemental phosphorus operation in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. currently depends heavily on imports, including from China, for a material used in military munitions. That supply-chain problem is real. So is the fact that the same executive order protecting domestic phosphorus production also gave Bayer language it has already used in court while facing tens of thousands of Roundup lawsuits. The column digs into that uncomfortable overlap between national defense, corporate survival, and the still-unsettled question of glyphosate safety. Read the full piece by @ChelleWards and @tracybeanz bit.ly/supply-chain-not-safe…

AI is giving predators the ability to reach more children, faster. Britain’s anti-slavery commissioner says gangs are using AI-generated fake profiles to groom kids into moving money, carrying drugs, and even committing violence. Children from stable homes and good schools are increasingly being targeted because authorities may be less likely to notice. The numbers in the U.S. are exploding too. Reports involving generative AI and child exploitation jumped from 4,700 in 2023 to more than 400,000 in 2025. This technology is not just changing how kids use the internet. It is changing how criminals find them. Read the full story by @smiddendorp22 bit.ly/AI_Child_Exploitation thehighwire.com/news/uk-anti…

“If God decides to take me, so be it. But I would rather stay.” Drew Brophy was hospitalized with COVID in 2021 as his condition rapidly worsened. His story is now told in COVID: A Love Story, a deeply personal account of illness, hospital protocols, impossible decisions, and the fight to survive.

“Internet kill switch. Great idea.” As protests spread from France into Spain, Italy, Greece, and Belgium, France’s prime minister is asking telecom companies to prepare to temporarily block access to social media platforms. Instead of cooling tensions by addressing why people are in the streets, the government may soon have a tool to cut off one of the main ways they organize and communicate. That should make everyone pay attention.

“Our nation is going to need you.” Britain’s army chief says political leaders will soon have to tell citizens “just what is going on” before asking them to “take the fight to the enemy.” Across Europe, governments facing debt, unrest, and economic pressure are also preparing for the possibility of a wider conflict with Russia. How close is Europe getting to something much more dangerous?

“They take children under anesthesia and they vaccinate them when they’re out. Sounds like a great plan, right? What could go wrong?” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia runs a program called “Close Your Eyes, We’ll Immunize,” giving flu shots to children while they are already under anesthesia. The concern is what happens if that child has a reaction. Difficulty breathing, swelling, hives, weakness, rapid heartbeat and other reactions can occur after a flu shot. In the middle of a procedure, those symptoms can overlap with complications from anesthesia, medications, or the surgery itself. If something suddenly goes wrong, doctors may be left trying to figure out which variable caused it. Watch "The Download" every Monday night at 8 PM ET!

Christina Applegate became one of the most recognizable public faces of multiple sclerosis after her 2021 diagnosis. Now she says a doctor has told her she may not have MS after all. Her story lands alongside new Cambridge research finding that women are more likely to have autoimmune symptoms dismissed as psychological, misdiagnosed as psychosomatic, or delayed before getting the right diagnosis. President Trump has now created a new NIH task force focused on women’s health, with an emphasis on moving research toward actual clinical outcomes and care. For women who have spent years being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told it was “all in their head,” that shift is long overdue.

MAHA: The Gap Between the Promise and the Paperwork A new editorial by @ChelleWards and @tracybeanz looks at the growing frustration around MAHA and the gap between what supporters expected to happen quickly and what the federal process actually allows. The piece walks through why removing an approved vaccine, pesticide, dye, or other product can take years of studies, hearings, public comment, agency review, and litigation. And it asks a harder question as well - how much of the current disappointment is about lack of action, and how much is about underestimating how difficult the machinery is to move? Read the full column below: bit.ly/MAHA_PromiseGap

What started as student protests in France over the cost of living and pensions has grown into something much bigger. Dozens of outside political and activist groups have reportedly moved into the demonstrations as the country struggles with mounting debt and pressure to cut public spending. And that is the part Americans should be watching. France’s debt problem is squeezing everything from pensions to everyday living costs. The U.S. carries many of the same pressures, with one major advantage for now: the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. What is happening in France may be a warning about what happens when the numbers finally stop working.

🚨 LIVE NOW | THE DOWNLOAD WITH @JeffereyJaxen: Kids vaccinated while under anesthesia, France’s push to shut down social media during protests, and why the screen-time crisis is finally getting attention in Washington. Watch now 👇 teapawt.net/i/broadcasts/1vJpPNymp…

Peter Navarro says one of his biggest regrets from COVID was watching 65 million hydroxychloroquine tablets sit unused after federal agencies turned against the drug. He points to Fauci’s earlier support, long-standing use of hydroxychloroquine for other conditions, and prior NIH research on chloroquine against SARS coronaviruses. Then the conversation goes somewhere even bigger: what federal health officials were already saying in 2019 about rapidly deploying new vaccine technology during a future outbreak. Looking back now, those old clips hit very differently.

What happens when medicine starts serving agendas that have nothing to do with the patient on the table? Children are being given flu shots while under anesthesia for unrelated procedures. At the same time, anesthesiology guidance is telling doctors to lower inhaled anesthetic gas flow in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One adds another variable during surgery. The other brings climate policy directly into the operating room. At some point, medicine has to remember what the priority is supposed to be. 👇Read the full column by @JeffereyJaxen bit.ly/Medicine_new_prioriti…

Del Bigtree says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. missed badly this week when he blamed falling measles vaccination rates on COVID-era shutdowns. For Del, the deeper break happened when people watched the public health system lose credibility during COVID and stopped trusting what they were being told. “If you’re there to bring transparency to science, please stay focused on that duty.” Accountability matters most when it applies to your own side.

Dr. John Gray: Why Men and Women Are Wired Differently Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus sold more hardcover copies in the 1990s than any book except the Bible. Dr. John Gray was on 18 Oprah episodes. Then, in about a week, every corporate booking dried up, the major shows stopped calling, and the media decided he was a sexist. He joins Del for a segment Del says deserves a PG-13 warning, right before Off the Record. Gray’s argument is biological. Male testosterone levels in 20-year-olds have dropped 20% over the last two decades. Atrazine, the pesticide linked to hormone disruption in frogs, is in the food supply and is measurably affecting human hormones. Plastics suppress testosterone in men and elevate it in women. Under moderate stress, blood flow in women moves away from the prefrontal cortex toward the emotional brain. They need to talk. In men under the same stress, blood flow moves away from the emotional brain toward logic. They need silence and a problem to solve. Talking raises estrogen in either sex. Solving problems raises testosterone. Those are not cultural preferences. Gray says they are measurable and reproducible. He connects the hormonal environment to the fertility and intimacy crisis Del opened the show with: sexless marriages, young adults not forming relationships, declining birth rates. Gray’s new book is “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: For Women Only, Be Happy With or Without a Man.” He argues women have moved into more testosterone-dominant patterns through independent professional life, and that the skills for lowering stress, raising estrogen, and reconnecting with a partner are learnable. He also tackles why teenagers are not having sex: pornography and OnlyFans deliver more dopamine with less skill required than real relationships, and until that is addressed upstream, the problem compounds. The conversation continues on Off the Record, which airs Friday nights on thehighwire.com.

Big Pharma Buys Your Doctor With Dinner A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked RFK Jr.’s ACIP appointees. The DOJ is now fighting in the First Circuit Court of Appeals to restore them. Del breaks down what the court actually said, why the judge’s reasoning fell apart, and what a new Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis says about why conflicts of interest on that committee are exactly the problem Kennedy was trying to fix. Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron said from the bench that the lower court’s order lacked any explanation for why blocking Kennedy’s 13 appointees was legally authorized or justified. He said it was “hard to know precisely what harm this relief was designed to address.” All Kennedy did was reconstitute ACIP with members who have no pharmaceutical financial ties. A meta-analysis of 93 studies by the Cochrane Collaboration now confirms what ACIP’s critics have argued for years: pharmaceutical industry contact is associated with less appropriate prescribing, greater prescription volume, and higher costs. The study’s author, Dr. Lisa Barrow, put it plainly. More contact with drug company promotion means prescribing becomes less appropriate, more frequent, and more expensive. That finding came from meals alone. ACIP members receive millions from vaccine manufacturers and vote on recommendations for the entire country. Del notes that Kennedy’s original target was the hepatitis B birth dose, a vaccine unnecessary for newborns not born to hepatitis B-positive mothers. That single proposed change triggered the injunction, blocked every ACIP meeting, and stripped Kennedy of the advisory infrastructure needed to act on anything else.

The UN Quietly Buried Its Own Climate Apocalypse The United Nations has withdrawn its worst-case climate projection: the one that said temperatures would rise eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and polar ice caps would melt completely. @delbigtree and @JeffereyJaxen break down what that retraction means, who paid for it, and what it is already costing people this winter. The World Climate Research Programme, a UN-affiliated organization, issued a new assessment quietly stating that high-emission worst-case scenarios are now “implausible.” Del draws a direct parallel to British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson’s COVID lockdown projections: one worst-case number, adopted globally, used to justify decisions that restructured entire economies. Countries shut down North Sea oil and gas. Energy infrastructure was dismantled. The UK grid operator has put power stations on alert. Europe is set for another year of high gas prices with reserves at critical lows. Britain risks running out of gas by the end of winter. The science was never settled. It said it was. Del and Jaxen point to a Lancet study analyzing over 74 million deaths across 13 countries: cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather. Stripping energy infrastructure in the name of climate fears does not just hurt economies. It kills people. Jaxen notes the timing. The same WEF-aligned companies that promoted net zero and told the public to stop driving and flying are now pouring money into AI data centers that will require 100 times the energy they told us was destroying the planet.

The FDA once claimed it needed 75 years to release the data it used to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. @ICANdecide attorney Alycia Perkins joins Del to explain how that number became 9 million pages released to the public, and what it took to get there. Perkins walks through the full FOIA litigation process: two separate lawsuits (PHMPT1 for ages 16 and up in September 2021, PHMPT2 for ages 12 through 15 and Moderna in October 2022), a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ordering production at 55,000 pages per month, and then a second court order pushing that to 180,000 pages per month after ICAN discovered the FDA had misrepresented how much data actually existed. As of October 1st, the FDA has acknowledged all of it has been released. Science and books are already being written from the data. Del credits the Pfizer data release as one of ICAN’s greatest accomplishments, on par with winning religious vaccine exemptions in Mississippi. Perkins closes with a clear message on what comes next. The FDA demonstrated it can produce over 100,000 pages per month when ordered to do so. There is no justification for reverting to 300 to 500 pages per month on other pending FOIA requests. ICAN has more than 4,000 funded FOIA requests and will return to court as necessary.

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RFK Jr. blamed COVID-era vaccine disruptions for measles. @DelBigtree says that misses the point. A reporter recently asked Kennedy about five measles deaths in Pennsylvania and a possible sixth. He cited Fauci’s warning that COVID shutdowns could interrupt measles vaccination. Del counters with a number of his own: before the measles vaccine, the U.S. saw roughly 400 to 500 measles deaths a year. Using the CDC’s estimates of 3–4 million infections and 400–500 deaths a year, roughly 0.01% of infections resulted in death. But Del says the bigger fallout from COVID was lost trust. People watched the guidance shift and started asking what else they’d been told was wrong. Watch the full response 👇