In “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison foresaw ICE’s “Electric Shock Gloves,” and the newest version of the White Man’s sport of Electrocuting Black & Brown Boys.

Steve Villano

Aug 15, 2026

(ICE’s new “Electric Gloves”. The “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation devices” manufactured by Compliant Technologies can cause a person to drop to the ground in pain with one touch.Mother Jones illustration; GLOVE user manual/Compliant Technologies.)

The writer Ralph Ellison was 74 years ahead of his time.

In his National Book Award winning work “Invisible Man,” (Random House, NY, NY, 1952), Ellison detailed the joy white supremacists got from giving electric shocks to Black and Brown men.

That may explain why the white supremacists running the Trump Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE (in their veins), are having multiple orgasms over their new “Electric Shock GLOVES,” meant to “harm people and avoid being sued,” as the investigative reporting magazine Mother Jones reports in its newest issue (“The Orwellian Company Behind ICE’s New Electric Shock Gloves,” by Sophie Hurwitz.

Mother Jones directly quotes the CEO of Compliant Technologies, Jeff Niklaus, from a 2022 YouTube promotional video:

“We have a saying, ‘Feeling is Believing.”

Hurwitz points out that “in promotional clips, you can see people losing control of their limbs, falling to the ground, and crying out in pain after a light touch from the GLOVE. In 2022, the company called it a “weapon” in Instagram posts.”

Mother Jones goes on to quote Assistant Chief Adam Glueck, of the Cape Girardeau Police Department in southeastern Missouri, which purchased electric shock gloves for the Girardeau PD officers.

“In today’s society, you know, everybody is filming everything; everyone has a cellphone,” Hurwitz quoted Glueck as saying. “If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”

I read these chilling quotes when the news hit about ICE buying $10 million of these portable electric chairs for its abusive agents to use on humans and my mind immediately recalled the opening chapter of Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” where the legendary Black writer described an electric shock torture devised by the White elites of a southern town to use on young Black athletes.

Ellison’s eloquent, and electrifying, account was told through the eyes of a young, bright Black character who earned a college scholarship and was informed that in order to pick up the scholarship he had to perform certain “puglistic entertainment,” along with nine other well-built Black men, for the enjoyment of the rich, white, powerful and inebriated audience:

“ All of the town’s big shots were there in their tuxedos, wolfing down buffet foods, drinking beer and whiskey and smoking black cigars. It was a large room with a high ceiling. Chairs were arranged in neat rows around three sides of a portable boxing ring. The fourth side was clear, revealing a gleaming space of polished floor.”

“We were a small tight group, clustered together, our bare upper bodies touching and shining with anticipatory sweat, while up front the big shots were becoming increasingly excited… Suddenly, I heard the School Superintendent, who told me to come, yell, ‘Bring up the Shines, gentlemen! ‘Bring up the little Shines!”

“We were ordered to get into the ring…All 10 of us climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blindfolded, with broad bands of white cloth…I felt a sudden fit of blind terror …I stood against the ropes trembling… it seemed as if all nine of the boys had turned upon me at once…

“Everybody fought everybody else…I heard one boy scream in pain as he smashed his hand against a ring post…The (White) men kept yelling: ‘Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out! Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!’

But, as Ellison wrote, the even more dehumanizing and shocking part of the night’s entertainment for the White supremacists— bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants and pastors — all dressed in tuxedos, was yet to come.

The screaming, rich, racist White men “rolled away the portable boxing ring, and set up a small square rug in the vacant space surrounded by chairs. An emcee gave the signal for the young, Black men to “come and get your money,” a collection of gold, coins and a few crumpled bills tossed in the middle of the rug.

“As told, we got around the square rug on our knees. ‘Ready, Go!’ the emcee said. I lunged for a yellow coin lying on a blue design of the carpet, touching it …A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified…my muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed…

“Suddenly, I saw a boy lifted in the air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped, his wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him yell, and saw him literally dance upon his back, his elbows beating a frenzied tattoo upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the flesh of a horse stung by too many flies… his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran from the floor, amid booming laughter,” of the White Supremacists who took great pleasure in administering pain to these Black boys.

The horrific scene from Ellison’s Invisible Man could be right out a training video for the perversely named company, “Compliant Technology.”

As Mother Jones reports:

Human rights organizations like Amnesty International have long raised concerns about electric shock devices like the GLOVE, as well as other products that Compliant Technologies sells, like electric shock belts and vests, which the company recommends for prisoner transport, courtroom use, and use on “combative individuals” during medical procedures like blood draws.”

Hurwitz goes on to write that “The technology is unregulated “despite the clear human rights risks associated with its use,” Amnesty International researchers wrote in a 2025 report detailing instances in which electric-shock devices have been used for torture. The report ends with a recommendation that countries “cease use of, decommission and destroy any stockpiles of such prohibited electric shock weapons.” Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, called the gloves “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture.”

The Electric Gloves of Human Torture are scheduled to be delivered to ICE by the end of March, 2027, unless Congress, somehow, stops the delivery, of the inhumane device.

But, Niklaus, the “Compliant” Technologies CEO—who believes Trump was annointed by God—is a former Blackhawk Helicopter pilot and a conspiracy theorist.

Mother Jones reports that: “ There is already a pending wrongful death lawsuit, against Compliant Technologies, that alleges that a 43-year-old man named Jonathan Mansfield died because corrections officers shocked him 27 times with the gloves and 13 times with a Taser. Two of the glove shocks lasted 45 and 99 seconds. The manufacturer’s recommended limit is 15 seconds.

Based upon ICE’s track record of killing and brutalizing detainees in it’s custody, or on the Streets of American Cities, what are the odds that at least one untrained, rogue ICE agent will use the Electric Chair Gloves on a Black or Brown victim for much more than 15 seconds?

Or, maybe, as Ralph Ellison foreshadowed this form of torture decades ago, ICE, and private for-profit companies like “Compliant Technologies,” will just build more monstrous metal holding cages and electrify the floors, electrocuting each adult or child considered not “compliant enough.”

It was the perfect, fitting ending for Trump. In order to hide from imaginary threats against him, he hid in a tiny kitchen galley, and His Corpulence got stuck, unable to eat or poop. RIP Gloop.

Steve Villano

Aug 10, 2026

Augustus Trump Gloop,

The Nincompoop, played

Everybody for his dupe.

Ate dollar bills by the scoop,

Especially yours,

Whether or not you bought his poop.

Grifter, swindler, cheater, fraud,

Built a life on lies and gaud —

Took a bribe from the Qataris,

A jet designed by Mata Hari.

“Hurry, Hurry, I need this NOW,”

Trump Gloop said, passing methane like a cow.

“More, I want MORE,” His Corpulence whined,

Another half-billion, and his pockets were lined.

Augustus Trump couldn’t wait for the world to see,

The King’s Air Chariot, made for “Me, Me, Me!.”

But Gloop ignored what he’d been told,

And no security came with the Flying Tomb of Gold.

“Iran could shoot it down,” said Gloop’s glutinous team,

So highly overrated.

Even though they swore Iran’s forces were “obliterated.”

That’s what who stated?

“Quick! Switch the Plane! The Plane!”

Gloops goons said,

“Better that His Flatulence’s face

Be red, then dead!

Back they went to the Air Force One of Old,

Reminding us that like the Disappearing Ballroom,

And the Deflection Pool, they’d wasted so much Gold…

Or, at least, hid it into places that would hold their loot,

And the kickbacks flowing to August Trump Gloop.

And so, again, Augustus Trump Gloop,

The Nincompoop,

Played everybody for his Dupe,

Including the Press, left holding the Scoop.

Gloop went to the Galley to pick up a snack.

And sucking his gut in, slipped out the back.

But the sight of junk food in front of his face,

Had Trump Gloop drooling for one tiny taste.

He ripped open his happy meals,

Tiny fingers working hard;

And His Flatulent Corpulence

Stuffed himself with Lard.

When the Galley landed,

Gloop couldn’t get out,

With ketchup and mustard

Dripping from his snout.

The Press was a decoy,

The Plane was one too,

Only Gloop would survive

If enemy threats came true.

But in his schnorrer madness

To eat his way out first;

Augustus Trump Gloop,

Just simply, burst.

This week is the anniversary of the United States dropping TWO ATOMIC BOMBS on non-combatant Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No other nation in world history has done so.

Steve Villano

August 6, 2026

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/0-ED5g3YwMs?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

(Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sun Is Burning,” song protesting Nuclear Weapons, and the use of the first two Atomic Bombs by the US upon hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. Copyright by Simon & Garfunkel, 1964)

Don’t let Donald Trump’s, Pete Hegseth’s and Bibi Netanyahu’s endless bombardment of lies about Iran, Muslim nations, and other so-called “Terrorist States” vaporize US history into thin air the way hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese citizens were slaughtered by our own country at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 81 years ago this week.

And, don’t get distracted by the culture of American corporate glee that celebrates August 6, as “National Root Beer Float Day.” Really.

For those of us who still have memory, and don’t believe in whitewashing our history, we have to keep reminding our children and grandchildren that, yes, our country really did commit two back-to-back massive War Crimes against civilian populations, killing, burning and radiating more than 200,000 humans beings. And that contrary to the prevailing corporate and political narrative, committing such War Crimes was not necessary to win World War II.

Hitler was already dead for 3 months, when the first bomb was dropped, the Nazis had surrendered, and Victory in Europe was already celebrated by the Allied Forces on May 8, 1945. The original legitimate justification for the US Manhattan Project—to beat the Nazis to developing an Atomic Bomb so they couldn’t use it against the world—no longer existed. Hitler was now dead. And, the Japanese—with nowhere near the scientific sophistication of the Germans or the US,—were about to surrender.

But, don’t take my word for it. Instead, listen to the warnings of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, who had just defeated the Nazis and liberated thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Before the decision to use the bombs in World War II was made, in the summer of 1945, Eisenhower—just off the battlefield—expressed his strong reservations to President Harry Truman’s Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who was leading the charge to use the weapons because we had them. General Eisenhower, the most revered military leader in the United States at the time, made his position clear to Stimson:

“ I told him I was against it (using the bomb) on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon…”

However, what happened after the end of War World II in Europe and the dropping of the first Atomic bomb on Hiroshima just a few months later, was a carefully calculated plan of American diplomatic intimidation, aimed more at impressing Soviet leader Josef Stalin who, with Truman and Winston Churchill, were negotiating over the future of Post-War Europe at the Potsdam Conference in a Soviet-occupied part of Germany, according to historian Gar Alperovitz, in his masterful book of that period, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima & Potsdam—the Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (Vintage Books, 1965, New York, N.Y.)

A growing chorus of battle-hardened military leaders like Eisenhower, strongly opposed sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians as human pawns in an international power struggle between the US and Russia. Admiral William D. Leahy, the most senior Naval Officer on duty during WW II, called the Atomic Bomb “barbarous,” and of “no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

Perhaps the most damning assessment of the Truman/Stimson decision to drop the unnecessary and apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction upon the people of Hiroshima on August 6, and on Nagasaki three days later, came from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey:

“ Certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the War, and even if no invasion had been planned.”

And, even the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur stated numerous times before his death, that he believed the Atomic Bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view. In fact, as Oppenheimer himself later said, the original reason for developing the Bomb to beat the Nazis, morphed into something else:

“I don’t think there was a time where we worked harder at the speed up (of the development of the bomb) than in the period after the German surrender.”

Then, why did we then become the first and only nation in world history to drop, not one, but two nuclear weapons on civilian populations, despite the fears of some scientists, that even a test of the Bomb might set fire to the atmosphere and consume the globe in flames? Why did we do it, if the Atomic Bombs were no longer necessary to defeat the Germans or the Japanese and end World War II?

Some answers, like the outcomes of many criminal trials, reveal themselves in details, dates and bold face:

• · FDR died of a heart attack on April 12, 1945, at the beginning of his fourth term of office, elevating Harry Truman—inexperienced in foreign policy and who never previously met either Winston Churchill or Josef Stalin —to the Presidency;
• · Hitler killed himself a few weeks later on April 30, 1945, effectively ending the War in Europe;
• · One week later, on May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered and the Allied Forces declared Victory in Europe;
• · On July 15, 1945, President Truman arrives on a Sunday afternoon for the crucial Potsdam Conference, scheduled to begin on July 17^th.
• · On July 16, 1945, the US Manhattan Project’s “Trinity Test” of the Atomic Bomb—the first Nuclear Test in world history—was carried out in Alamogordo, New Mexico, 210 miles south of Los Alamos.
• · The following day, on July 17, 1945, the Potsdam Conference– to negotiate the terms for the end of World War II– began in a Soviet occupied part of Germany, just outside of Berlin. In attendance were Winston Churchill, President Truman, and Soviet Leader Josef Stalin. It was the first time Truman met either Churchill or Stalin.
• · July 24, 1945, Truman tells Stalin at Potsdam that the United States had successfully detonated the world’s first Atomic bomb the previous week;
• · July 25, 1945, the formal order to use the Atomic Bomb as a weapon of war against Japan was given by Secretary of War Stimson, with President Truman’s approval.
• · The Potsdam Conference concluded on August 2, 1945. The Soviet Union had not yet declared war on Japan, an important consideration for the US, to preclude Russia’s designs for expansion in the Far East;
• · August 6, 1945, the first American Atomic Bomb is dropped on Hiroshima killing 100,000 to 150,000 people;
• · August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declares war on Japan, at 11 pm that evening, the night before the second US Atomic Bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, and Russian forces invade mineral rich Manchuria, then under Japanese control;
• · August 9, 1945, the second American Atomic Bomb—six times the size and strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—is dropped on Nagasaki, killing 80,000-100,000 people.
• · August 14, 1945, Japan surrenders, ending World War II.

The evidence of the world’s first Nuclear weapons being used as tools to intimidate Stalin and Russia—more than as weapons to defeat Japan—is followed to its logical conclusion by Alperovitz in Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam:

“It might explain why none of the highest civilian officials seriously questioned the use of the bomb as Eisenhower did; for having reversed the basic direction of diplomatic strategy because of the Atomic Bomb, it would have been very difficult for anyone subsequently to challenge an idea which had come to dominate all calculations of high policy…Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed primarily to impress the world (specifically Stalin) with the need to accept America’s plan for a stable and lasting peace?”

Truman’s hand-picked Secretary of State James F. Byrnes of South Carolina, meeting with Manhattan Project scientists in May, 1945, told them that it was necessary for the Bomb to be “successful” because “our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.”

Testifying before Congress some years later, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the Manhattan Project and was adamently opposed to using the Atomic Bomb on civilian populations, admitted that the obsession with post-War stability was the “problem” of Russia:

“Much of the discussion revolved around the question raised by Secretary Stimson as to whether there was any hope at all of using this development (of the bomb) to get less barbarous relations with the Russians.”

A few hundred deaths of Americans in proximity to the New Mexico bomb-test site, and the incineration of a few hundred thousand Japanese children, women and men, were, by those cold calculations, simply the inhumane, collateral damage of war, in a world gone completely mad.

Think about that the next time you hear Trump, or Hegseth, or Netanyahu rant about not letting Iran develop a nuclear weapon because that ancient culture is not civilized enough to control its use. Defining which nations are “terrorist states,” depends upon who is crafting and using the definition, as well as the weaponsof mass destruction, which are the very essence of abject terror against humanity.

Things have gotten so bad in the Trump Mob family, that on the day the Soprano’s “Big Pussy” died, actor BD Wong–the fascinating White Rose in “Mr. Robot,” –expressed sympathy for Jeanine Pirro.

Steve Villano

Aug 02, 2026

(The wickedly smart White Rose—played by the actor BD Wong—from the USA Network series “Mr. Robot,” which ran for four years, from 2015-2019. The character of White Rose was the transgender leader of the Dark Army, a Chinese Hacker Group. The remarkable Wong, a star of stage, television and movies, and a long-time activist for progressive causes, won a TONY Award for his portrayal of Song Liling, in “M. Butterfly.” This spring in Philadelphia, Wong will do a one-person show of “The Glass Menagerie.”)

Don’t cry for Pirro,

White Rosina;

The truth is,

She and Trump,

Are BOTH Hyenas.

Devouring humans,

Destroying Justice;

They kept their promise;’

They simply eat us…

Don’t cry for Jeanine,

Because her boss is meaner….

The truth is,

She isn’t sober;

Trump isn’t either—

He’s drunk on power,

She’s just hungover,

From all devoured.

Don’t cry for Pirro,

White Rosina;

The truth is,

She chose her poison.

All through her wild days,

Her mad existence,

She kept her focus,

The camera’s gaze,

And Liquid subsistence.

Trump hired kickback

Contractors, Pirro-ina;

For massive paint jobs,

A whitewash cleana…

The truth is,

There were no poolboys,

Just mob-upped bagmen,

Out to fool all US boys.

Don’t cry for pickled Pirro,

White Rosina;

The truth is,

She picked a hero,

To charge as vandal.

All through her wild days,

Her legal record,

The same such scandal.

Don’t cry for Jeanine (hiccup!) Pirro,

Who knew the mad king,

Was just like Nero;

He burned down justice,

To lie and steal more.

And give himself,

The keys to jails’ door.

And all Pirro got,

Was one more good pour…..

Don’t cry for her,

White Rosina,

The truth is,

She sold her soul.

To the Flaccid Weiner.

All through their wild days,

Of star-fucked fantasy,

They kept their focus,

On fame’s apostasy….

Don’t cry for Pirro,

White Rosina;

She may sound tougher,

But her soul’s no cleaner,

Then the Reflecting Pool,

Wrecked by Little Weiner.

The truth is,

What turned it greener,

Was a reflection,

Of ALL of their

Scummy demeanor…

Dr. Fauci used the force of his intellect, his integrity, his honesty and his devotion to the truth just like someone else we know, love and trust.

Steve Villano

Jul 30, 2026

(Artwork created by Bob Englehardt for Cagle Cartoons, 2020)

Six years ago this month, I published a piece about Dr. Tony Fauci assuring him that many of us had his back. And, it wasn’t just because we are both passionate Italians from Brooklyn who believe public service is a sacred calling.

Nope, many of us who worked in the HIV/AIDS field and have admired his life-saving work for decades, would do everything in our power to protect him, amidst the craziness and back-biting of the failing first Trump Administration in the summer of 2020, during the COVID Pandemic. He was the only truth-teller in a land of liars, conspiracy freaks, frauds and flim-flam artists, and our very lives depended upon his integrity, courage and devotion to science. He was our Yoda.

Already coming under attack from anti-vaxxers, anti-science nut jobs, and QAnon crazies surrounding Trump, I urged Dr. Fauci to speak the unfettered truth about how Donald Trump was incompetently & ignorantly mishandling the federal response to the COVID 19 pandemic, resulting in, ultimately, over one-million infections and deaths in the United States. Trump’s abject stupidity (“Just ingest bleach”), and his malignant incompetence (“one day, like a miracle, it will go away”) were killing us and many people we loved, including the 92-year old matriarch of our own family.

At almost the precise time I was suggesting that he blow-the-whistle on the Trump Administration’s anti-science idiocy and preventable harm being done to tens of thousands of people, Dr. Fauci was struggling to stem the catastrophe of Covid-19 from within that negligent Administration, since he still had Trump’s support and respect, and he was polling as the most trusted public official in the nation. Yet, like Generals James Mattis and Mark Milley who held their noses and battled to save the country from within, Fauci used the force of his intelligence and commitment to public service to survive, but he could not hide his growing misgivings to himself over what was happening before his own eyes. To preserve his sanity and sort things out, he kept a “private” diary for three years.

On August 4, 2020, as we learned from Dr. Fauci’s private diaries just released this week, Fauci complained that:

“Trump is desperate and doesn’t understand the pandemic.”

Four days later, Dr. Fauci’s private observations became even more dire: ‘

“POTUS acting even more erratically.”

We tried to warn Fauci, at the peak of his popularity, to step out and bring the Science-denying sociopaths in the Trump Administration tumbling down, but his great sense of duty, idealism and ego got in his way. Plus, at that time, was willing to believe the endless depth of the dunderheadedness and depravity of Donald Trump and the people propping him up. Things began to take an even more dangerous turn, as the pandemic raged on, and Fauci wrote about it:

Fauci diary, August 31, 2020: “Trump stoking violence and racial tension in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon (in the aftermath of George Floyd demonstrations.)…embracing false claims by RightWing QAnon groups about deaths relative to COVID-19. QAnon is saying that all the other deaths had nothing to do with COVID-19. The POTUS loves this and is tweeting that Fauci & Birx (Deborah) shut down the country for only 9,000 deaths. What an idiot! “

The actual cumulative COVID-19 death toll in the United States at that time in 2020 was 206,005 reported deaths, with overall confirmed cases approaching 7.2 million cases, making QAnon crackpot conspiracists—whom Trump was trusting for information—approximately 200,000 deaths off the actual total.

As the 2020 Election approached —an election which Joe Biden won by over 9 million popular votes, and 306 to 232 Electoral votes—things got worse. Dr. Fauci wrote in his diary entry of October 15, 2020:

“ As the election nears, the cases increase and surges are more inevitable as we enter cooler weather. Trump is on the campaign trail spewing nonsense. He is really out of control. A true embarrassment.”

Two days before the 2020 Election, which Trump would lose, Trump was bonkers. Fauci wrote that Trump told him:

“You constantly drop bombs on me (by telling the truth); everybody wants me to fire you—you have to be more helpful.

Death threats against Dr. Fauci, his wife and his three daughters, had ratcheted up as the election approached, and for the balance of the year bodyguard protection became a necessity. The vitriol and viciousness aimed at Fauci and his family grew more virulent after Trump lost the election, as Trump was spinning out even more into an “alternate universe,” as Fauci wrote.

Only 10 days after the election on November 13, 2020, Dr. Fauci wrote in his diary:

“ Continued surge: 138,000 new infections yesterday. POTUS has no interest at all in the pandemic. He’s focused on blocking Biden from being POTUS; he is embarrassing the USA….craziness has overtaken the country.”

Even after Biden became President, and Dr. Fauci became his top Medical Advisor, Fauci was increasingly appalled by Trump’s behavior. He wrote in his diary on March 29, 2021, two months into the Biden Administration:

“Trump is truly an obnoxious adolescent.”

Dr. Fauci could have just as well been describing the spoiled child of Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, an eye doctor who cannot see straight because of his insane jealously of Dr. Fauci’s distinguished medical and scientific career, or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s HHS Secretary with no medical background, who lead the anti-vaccine movement in the United States for more than two decades, spreading destructive & widely disproven lies about autism and childhood vaccines.

Fauci’s immense public popularity continued into Biden’s presidency, as the Pandemic proceeded to spread and the first COVID vaccines were administered on a broad scale at the very beginning of Biden’s term, despite opposition by Trump supporters around the country, and anti-vaxxers. RJK Jr., in November, 2021, published a scurrilous book about Dr. Fauci (“The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy & Public Health”). The Science Based Medicine website called Kennedy’s lie-infected screed “a conspiracy theory extravaganza.”

Still, the garbage-dump of a book amplified the drumbeat of hysterical attacks against Anthony Fauci, as his power over the nation’s public health priorities grew during the first two years of the Biden Administration. Fauci left the Biden Administration at the end of 2022.

But the hatred of Fauci and his positive influence on the nation’s public health, by RFK, Jr., and the juvenile mean-girl Senator Rand Paul, festered for years. When Trump was elected President in 2024, RFK, Jr., was appointed head of HHS, and stacked the agency that has enormous influence over public health with the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists who set out to dismantle much of the work Dr. Fauci accomplished over five decades of public service. Senator Paul became Chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Kennedy, who famously claimed to have snorted cocaine off of dirty toilet seats to prove he wasn’t afraid of germs or parasites, assigned some of his most rabid anti-Fauci staff members to comb through three years of contemporaneous notes which Fauci made on government computers over three years, from 2019-2022, during the height of the COVID Pandemic.

Dubbed, “The Fauci Diaries,” it’s took Kennedy’s malevolent minions some eight full months to assemble Fauci’s writings—a staffing decision made at precisely the same time HHS made deep staff cuts and failed to control cases of Measles and Cyclospora induced diarrhea exploding across the United States. Once completed, RFK, Jr., in another act of personal revenge against Fauci, handed over more than 1,000 pages of “The Fauci Diaries,” to GOP Senator Rand Paul, who was chairing a Senate Homeland Security Hearing looking into the origins of COVID.

The Kentucky Republican’s kangaroo-court of a hearing enabled Paul, an insecure, arch enemy of Dr. Fauci going back years, to verbally abuse Fauci and demand that Fauci’s attorney be tossed out of the Senate hearing room. It also provided a platform to Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, to shout at Fauci, “Who the Fuck do you think you are? Do you feel like you are in deep shit?” Those questions were odd, coming from Moreno who has not raised any questions to his own son-in-law, about the domestic violence charges filed by Moreno’s own daughter against his son-in-law—GOP Ohio Congressman Max Miller—for violence against her and against Moreno’s young granddaughter. Moreno’s Ohio voters may have been wondering how hard he’d fight for them, if he wouldn’t fight for his own daughter and young granddaughter. The Fauci show-hearing gave Moreno the chance to act tough.

Senator Paul’s sham Hearing also shined a spotlight on the Lex Luther-like bulging head of one of the biggest hypocrites in US Senate history, Senator Rick Scott of Florida. Scott, whose former health care company—which he oversaw— was found guilty of committing a $1.7 billion in Medicare fraud—self-righteously & shamelessly grilled the leading public health advocate in the nation’s history about Fauci’s record of combatting the most deadly pandemic in U.S. history. Scott, shameless as always, did this with a fraudulent sense of high dudgeon, despite his company being found guilty of committing 14 felonies of defrauding the US government. To avoid prison time by taking responsibility for the egregious crimes, Rick Scott, instead, took the Fifth Amendment 75 times, AND pocketed $350 million from American taxpayers whom he stuck with the bill for his fraud upon the US Treasury.

Ironically, Trump Administration officials and Republican Senators and their right-wing media maggots have been whining about the fact that Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights some 100 times, despite Rick Scott’s record of cheating US Taxpayers by taking the Fifth Amendent 75 times, and Donald Trump—who once famously said “only the Mob takes the Fifth”—invoking his 5th Amendment rights over 400 times in a civil deposition in NY involving his companies defrauding New York State out of over $450 million. Two years ealier in the same case, Trump’s son Eric, a key officer in the Trump Organization, took the Fifth more than 500 times.

Now, at 85 years old, it’s more important than ever for Tony Fauci to know that those of us who have witnessed, first hand, the great advances he guided in medical science and infectious disease research, treatment and care—particularly in the area of HIV/AIDS— during his 54 years of stellar public service, will never be forget his achievements, nor allow them to be minimized.

No one else, before or after Dr. Fauci, has had the enormous capacity, credibility, knowledge, record of accomplishment, depth of expertise, passion for public health, and track record in getting a huge bureaucracy to move into action as Anthony Fauci exercised on behalf of all Americans in battling a cascade of serious public health challenges.

No puerile histrionics by Rand Paul; no feigned outrage by Bernie Moreno—who won’t even protect his own daughter and granddaughter from domestic abuse; and no transparently hypocritical hyperbole by Florida’s utterly corrupt Medicare Fraud King Rick Scott, can undo the historic accomplishments in public health, and public service, of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

With Fauci, the Force is strong.

My brother Michael would have been 86 years old this week. He had many talents, including as a creative cook and an engineer; he lives on in my book as a gentle & loving man, who lost his way.

Steve Villano

Jul 21, 2026

(My book “Tightrope: Balancing A Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother” Heliotrope Books, N.Y.—available on Amazon—and my brother Michael Villano, as I remember him.)

My brother Michael, nine years older than me, would have been 86-years old this week. He’s been on my mind a lot lately, since my son has just co-authored a book about the great chefs and winemakers in California’s wine country, and my brother was a first-rate chef.

He was my first hero, a calm gentle presence in my chaotic early life, the opposite of my father whose temper could explode as quickly as the steam boilers he labored over in the bowels of the basement of a rich man’s office tower in mid-town Manhattan. Gifted with patience, my brother Michael would assemble all of the toys my father had no patience, or time, for putting together.

I always saw my brother through my mother’s eyes, and that view was rose-colored, gentle and perfect, even when my brother’s life veered into a far different direction in later years. To my mother, to me, my brother was always there, ready to help, to calm the waters.

He could build anything—a four-poster bed, a bicycle, or a house like the one he constructed in Paradise Valley, Arizona, when Arizona was still an undiscovered paradise. I once watched him cook a meal from scratch for two dozen people, each ingredient carefully chosen, each choice delicately considered, each course, better than the one before. I was mesmerized by his short, stubby fingers and how much they looked like our mother’s. In a different time, in a different life, with different financial backers than those who dragged him down, my brother could have become one of the great chefs of the world. Who knows? He may have even been featured in my son’s book.

My brother’s life and mine, diverged sharply over the last several decades of his life. As I detailed in my own book “Tightrope: Balancing A Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother,” (Heliotrope Books, N.Y., 2017) Michael worked with the Gambino Crime family and John Gotti as a “bagman,” during the same time I was working with New York State Governor, Mario M. Cuomo—the most prominent Italian-American public official in the United States, a model of integrity who revered the Rule of Law.

I knew, first-hand, that Mario Cuomo had no connections to the Mob, because I did. And my brother and his organized crime associates talked openly how “Mario Cuomo was unreachable,” and how Donald Trump—who slobbered all over them in New York’s construction industry– was a cash-cow they loved to bully, because he would do anything they demanded, terrified of their toughness. Kind of like how Trump still rolls over for another gangster today, Vladimir Putin.

My idolization of my brother Michael turned into sadness, anger, sorrow and then, in the end, love again. He had lost his way, made a cascade of mistakes, and got sucked into a whirlpool of debt and obligation and personal loyalty he could not escape.

On my brother’s 70^th birthday, in 2010, we met for lunch at a waterside restaurant in Northport, Long Island, facing Crab Meadow beach. I told him I was working on my book, and had been since 1988, when he was sentenced to 90 days in prison for income tax invasion.

“Just like Al Capone,” he would joke, referring to the tax evasion convictions, which I didn’t find too funny because of the pain it put so many of us through.

Each time Donald Trump compares his, thus far, 34 Felony convictions to the 23 that Capone had, as if to prove he was tougher and more of a criminal outlaw than Capone, I am reminded of my brother’s braggadocio.

I told Michael I was the only one who could tell this story, and the only one who would do justice to it. He agreed, and was very supportive, even enthused about it.

“Just don’t rat anybody out,” he said to me, in typical New York mob fashion.

I smiled at him.

“That would be kind of hard, Michael, since everyone is dead,” I said.

John Gotti was already dead for 8 years, at age 61, and my brother was no longer involved with the Gambino Crime family. It was 17 years since I worked for Mario Cuomo, and I was now running a non-profit organization and living with my family in Northern California.

In early Spring, 2014, I learned that my brother was battling pancreatic cancer. I no longer had an unlimited amount of time, nor did he. I wanted to finish this story I had been working on for nearly 30 years, so he could read it before he died.

I could not write fast enough. In November, 2014, my brother Michael lost his 9-month long battle with pancreatic cancer. My manuscript now had an added purpose: to give new life and meaning to the memories of my brother, complicated as they were, and to our relationship.

Then, within 60 days of my brother’s death, Mario Cuomo died. I had run out of excuses for not finishing my book. All of the principal characters were dead, but me. And no one else had written the story to give me a final reprieve, as I had hoped, so the only option left was for me to tell it myself; to excise this growth from inside me.

Ironically, after my book was published in the summer of 2017, there were a number of people who wished it had never been written. Sure, as Pete Hamill noted when he wrote “A Drinking Life,” family members hate when “one of their own,” tells the stories everyone was trying to hide.

My family was no different than Hamill’s. My mother died 10 years earlier so I didn’t have to worry about her being upset about “airing our dirty laundry.” In fact, I purposely postponed telling the story as non-fiction for 14 full years before my mother died.

In 1992, I had lunch with the elegant Italian-American writer Gay Talese, at one of his favorite restaurants around the corner from his E. 61^st townhouse in Manhattan. Talese had asked Mario Cuomo to write a book-jacket blurb for his autobiography Unto the Sons, and the Governor delegated the task to me since he had no time to read the book, and knew I loved Talese’s writing.

Talese and I talked a bit about his book, his family, and about the difficulty Italian-American writers experienced in revealing family secrets. As a probing journalist, Talese wanted to know what my family secrets were. I told him that I had written two fictionalized versions of the story—each one, approximately 500 pages.

Talese looked straight at me and told me that such a powerful and unique story begged to be told as non-fiction, a form or writing he favored. He challenged me to do a 10-page outline for a non-fiction book over the next few weeks.

When I got back to him, my “10-page outline” had grown to a 154-page annotated and detailed outline, complete with quotes, contemporaneous notes and sources. Talese took one look at the tome and told me: “You’ve got the book right here.”

“There’s only one problem with it, Gay,” I said. “I won’t publish this story in non-fiction form while my mother is alive, and while Mario Cuomo is still Governor. It would kill my mother, and it could be distorted to be used against Cuomo.”

So, I sat on the story for years, work-shopping it as fiction, as a stage play, or as a screenplay. My brother Michael may have been fine with the non-fiction story of our lives—even a little titillated by it– but his surviving family was not, despite my painstakingly portraying my brother as my life-long hero, and as a good man, who simply lost his way.

The Cuomo family hated it, and expressed to me through confidants that “the book should have never been written.” They were not happy with having Mario Cuomo’s name in the same book as someone affiliated with “the Mob.”

“Why,” I responded, “Only Cuomos are supposed to write books? Only their versions of stories are to be told?”

It did not matter how much I explained that the book was written as an eye-witness account of how Cuomo had NO mob connections; that I wanted to definitively dispel the vicious, ethnically prejudiced rumors that because Cuomo was Italian he must be “mobbed up.” Nothing could have been further from the truth, and I wrote the book to give first-hand evidence to that.

To the Cuomo’s none of that mattered. They were worried about the headlines linking the name “Cuomo” with any mention of the Mob, even if it was to prove those rumors were all lies. Astounding.

In settling on “Tightrope’s” full title, I rebuffed the suggestion from marketing people to put “The Mob” in the book’s title, to sell many more books. I rejected that suggestion, not just to protect Mario Cuomo from malevolent screen shots, but because my life was not torn between me and The Mob, but between me and my brother, who happened to work for the Mob.

In the end, it was my story; nurtured inside me for more than three decades; told over years in parts to therapists, friends and colleagues; recorded in dozens of notebooks, memos and papers kept contemporaneously from my years of working with Mario Cuomo; and from my endless days of witnessing my brother’s criminal record unfold in Federal court, and, finally, being the only family member present to watch him get sentenced to prison.

My brother is dead 12 years now, and each time I go back and re-read a portion of my book about him, he is still alive, and, I’d like to think, wishing he had followed a different recipe for his life and been more in tune with the kind, good person I knew and loved.