Thousands of federal employees may have wrongfully obtained coronavirus bailouts by claiming to be unemployed, with some even doing so from their desks at government offices, federal investigators found.
Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senator-blasts-biden-for-compiling-naughty-list-of-peddlers-of-misinformation-like-the-lab-leak-theory" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joni Ernst</a> (R-IA) is demanding answers, saying that the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PARC) should &#8220;recover the money that was ripped off, and grant each of those who took advantage of taxpayers by collecting jobless benefits their wish to be unemployed.&#8221;
&#8220;It is appalling for anyone fortunate enough to have the reliability of a government paycheck to take advantage of financial assistance intended to provide a lifeline to Americans who lost their jobs or were unable to work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,&#8221; Ernst added.
A variety of government programs paid significant sums to people who said their jobs had been impacted by coronavirus in 2020. The Department of Homeland Security&#8217;s Inspector General <a href="https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-09/OIG-22-73-Sep22.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that nearly 2,000 applications for &#8220;Lost Wages Assistance&#8221; and unemployment insurance payouts had the names of DHS employees who were ineligible since they were, of course, employed by the government agency.
In fact, of 2,393 applications filed with DHS employees&#8217; names, only 584 could be confirmed as actually eligible for the program — and even some of those bore signs of fraud, such as incorrect amounts.
Benefits could also be paid to people whose hours were cut back because of the pandemic, but in 366 cases, the name associated with the unemployment claim actually worked overtime during the relevant period, the audit found.
In some cases, the fraud may have been the result of criminals stealing the employees’ identities and successfully filing unemployment claims with them. In others, there were indications that the employees were to blame, including that some government assistance forms were actually filled out from computers registering to the DHS computer network.
Either way, fraud was able to occur because DHS had few security measures in place for verifying assistance claims despite being tasked with keeping the nation safe.
&#8220;This occurred because FEMA hastily implemented the LWA program in 11 days, during an unprecedented pandemic, without developing program controls to prevent fraud,&#8221; auditors wrote.
Ernst wrote Friday to Michael Horowitz, chair of the PARC, that &#8220;Employees of other federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Amtrak, and the U.S. Postal Service have also been caught fraudulently collecting unemployment payments, despite being on the federal payroll.”
On January 4, the state of <a href="https://oig.georgia.gov/press-releases/2023-01-04/oig-publishes-open-letter-regarding-ui-fraud-state-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgia&#8217;s inspector general</a> said that &#8220;we have tentatively identified over 280 full-time state employees who erroneously received unemployment insurance (UI) payments in 2020 or 2021. These payments averaged $23,700 per employee and totaled over $6.7 million. And this is a conservative estimate.&#8221;
Those included &#8220;Two Department of Human Services DCSS/DFCS supervisors who received approximately $49,730 and $36,575&#8221; and a state employee whose job was to evaluate unemployment claims, but who himself &#8220;received approximately $31,220 and who continued to update a fraudulent UI account while employed with&#8221; the Georgia Department of Labor.
In October, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/five-current-or-former-irs-employees-charged-defrauding-federal-covid-19-relief-programs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Department of Justice</a> said it had charged five former or current IRS employees with pandemic fraud seeking more than $1 million, which they allegedly used on &#8220;cars, luxury goods, and personal travel, including trips to Las Vegas.&#8221; But the inspector general for the Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the largest coronavirus programs, has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hunter-bidens-laptop-lady-got-20k-federal-stimulus-for-female-owned-sole-proprietorship" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acknowledged</a> that so much money was paid out in such a short amount of time, and with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/coronavirus-loan-fraud-prevention-fell-to-unvetted-firms-that-profited-hugely-while-ignoring-fraud-congress-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">so few safeguards</a>, that only a tiny fraction of suspicious cases have even been investigated.
SBA doled out forgivable &#8220;loans&#8221; to business owners whose livelihood was ostensibly interrupted by COVID, known as PPP or EIDL payments. In its most recent <a href="https://www.pandemicoversight.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/PRAC_Semiannual_Report_Sept_2022_0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">semiannual report</a> to Congress, PARC said that by matching the information of federal employees with these payments, six federal agencies found &#8220;tens of thousands of employees with SBA loans for which they were not eligible.&#8221;
Cross-referencing that list of names — people with stable jobs whose identities are readily known to the government because they work for it — could yield many more problematic unemployment claims at other agencies, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-watchdog-slams-faucis-agency-and-ecohealth-over-deal-with-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ernst</a> said. &#8220;I would encourage you to conduct a similar review to determine how many unscrupulous bureaucrats wrongfully took advantage of the federal pandemic unemployment and lost wages assistance programs,&#8221; she wrote.

Senators Meet For Their Weekly Policy Luncheons

Thousands Of Pandemic Unemployment Claims Listed The Names Of Still-Employed Government Workers, Senator Says

Coronavirus

Coronavirus Relief

Department of Homeland Security

Fraud

Inspector general

Joni Ernst

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-has-a-gigantic-wall-filled-with-portraits-of-himself-in-his-home-office/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Anthony Fauci</a>’s federal science agency and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-nih-letter-about-ecohealth-reporting-failure-raises-new-questions-about-gain-of-function-funding/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EcoHealth Alliance</a>, which took a U.S. grant for bat virus research and paid part of it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, made serious missteps, government investigators said Tuesday.
EcoHealth Alliance did not properly disclose its subgrant recipients—which included the Chinese lab which may have been the origin of COVID—and was two years late in filing a report that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concluded may have revealed “gain of function,” or experiments which make a virus more dangerous to humans, the Department of Health and Human Services&#8217; Inspector General said in a <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region5/52100025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">72-page report</a>. Fauci headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which oversaw the grant and is part of NIH.
&#8220;Our audit found that NIH’s own evaluation of the Year 5 progress report concluded that the research was of a type that should have been reported immediately to NIH,&#8221; it said.  The Year 5 report was filed two years late, but the IG said NIH &#8220;did not effectively monitor or take timely action&#8221; despite knowing about potential risks.
“This oversight failure is particularly concerning because NIH had previously raised concerns with EcoHealth about the nature of the research being performed. Once NIH received and reviewed the late progress report, NIH concluded the research resulted in a virus with enhanced growth,” it said.
EcoHealth Alliance, for its part, said that NIH had never followed up to ask for the late report or information about its subgrantees, and that it seemed to be on good terms with the agency given that it continued to give it funding. After the coronavirus pandemic, NIH terminated EcoHealth’s grant, and EcoHealth successfully appealed the termination—though NIH nonetheless “suspended” it.
Following the coronavirus pandemic, NIH asked EcoHealth for additional information out of Wuhan, but the lab refused to give it to EcoHealth.
EcoHealth’s president, Peter Daszak, was part of the World Health Organization-China team that dismissed the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-investigation-concludes-covid-likely-originated-from-a-chinese-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lab leak</a> hypothesis as “extremely unlikely”—despite having been involved in bat coronavirus projects at Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
A former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whistleblower-says-covid-leaked-from-wuhan-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Andrew Huff</a>, wrote a book titled &#8220;The Truth About Wuhan&#8221; that claimed “EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
In 2014, NIAID awarded a $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth for &#8220;Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.&#8221; The government banned gain-of-function research later that year.
EcoHealth paid $600,000 to WIV and $200,000 to the Wuhan University School of Public Health. Grantees are responsible for their subgrantees under federal regulations, the report said.
&#8220;EcoHealth officials met with WIV staff in person on at least 20 occasions between June 2014 and December 2019 and traveled to Wuhan, China, to meet with individuals from WIV at least annually during that time to discuss the research conducted under its subaward. EcoHealth staff told OIG that they engaged in frequent phone calls and email exchanges with WIV staff throughout,&#8221; auditors said.
In 2016, NIAID told EcoHealth that it &#8220;had determined that the research could be gain-of-function and subject to the funding pause on certain gain-of-function research,&#8221; and asked for information from EcoHealth. The group replied that &#8220;it was highly unlikely that this work would have any pathogenic potential,&#8221; but that &#8220;should any of these recombinants show evidence of enhanced virus growth greater than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, or grow more efficiently in human airway epithelial cells, EcoHealth would immediately: (1) stop all experiments with the mutant [and] (2) inform the NIAID.&#8221;
The inspector general did not weigh in on whether NIAID’s determination that EcoHealth’s work did not constitute gain-of-function was accurate, saying it did not have the scientific expertise, but noted that staff should “err on the side of inclusion when determining whether to refer research that may involve [gain-of-function] for further review.”
In 2017, the ban was partially lifted to allow gain-of-function research in limited circumstances approved by a special HHS committee. In 2018, NIH determined that that approval was not necessary for EcoHealth’s work, but it appeared a close enough call that it inserted a special provision for its five-year report that “should experiments proposed in this award result in a virus with enhanced growth by more than certain specified benchmarks involving log growth increases, EcoHealth must notify NIAID immediately.”
That five-year report was due September 2019, a few months before the global pandemic began. “However, not until after NIH requested the progress report in July 2021 did EcoHealth submit it on August 3, 2021, nearly 2 years late,” auditors said.
When NIH finally saw the report, it “believed there was evidence that the research conducted by EcoHealth’s subrecipient WIV during Year 5 resulted in enhanced growth by more than one log, thus triggering the special term and condition to immediately notify NIAID and potentially requiring the research to undergo review under the HHS P3CO Framework.”
In a response to the IG, EcoHealth quibbled about what metric should be used, and also said that similar findings were in its Year 4 report, so the agency should have known. NIH said describing the results of experiments in scheduled reports is not the same as “immediately notifying” it.
Auditors found that EcoHealth did not properly report information about its subgrantees.
&#8220;Until NIH informed EcoHealth in July 2020 that it was not in compliance with these reporting requirements for its subawards, EcoHealth did not report any of its subawards on the FSRS website according to Federal requirements,&#8221; they wrote. &#8220;EcoHealth had not complied with the subaward reporting 
requirement for at least 5 years. Not reporting required subaward information limits NIH and the general public’s visibility into, and transparency of, how these grant funds were used.&#8221;
That&#8217;s something NIH should have detected, auditors wrote: &#8220;we believe NIH’s monitoring of EcoHealth’s grants should have revealed EcoHealth’s failure to comply with the subaward disclosure requirement as early as 2016.&#8221;
Ironically, EcoHealth said it has been unable to travel to supervise its subrecipients recently because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The report also said that EcoHealth should &#8220;refund to the Federal Government $89,171 in unallowable costs&#8221; including for paying bonuses and salaries in excess of a $180,000 cap. EcoHealth said it has repaid that money, but contended that NIH still owes it a larger amount in other unreimbursed spending.
Even after the pandemic, and while its five-year report remained unfiled, NIH gave more grants to EcoHealth—including special conditions that were the result of NIH’s awareness of EcoHealth’s lack of disclosure about WIV. In June 2020, it awarded EcoHealth another $3 million for viruses in Asia, and in September 2020, $1.1 million for human outbreaks of bat viruses.
After the five-year report that NIH believed may have shown gain-of-function, it yet again gave the group another award. Shortly before Fauci stepped down from four decades leading NIAID, EcoHealth received another <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-pal-at-center-of-covid-lab-leak-suspicions-gets-new-bat-virus-grant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$3.3 million</a> for a grant running through 2027.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) <a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2021-03-12%20Letter%20to%20HHS%20OIG%20Stevens%20Amendment%20Request.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked</a> the IG to examine the funding in March 2021. On Tuesday after the release of the IG report, she introduced a bill to prohibit government funding to EcoHealth. Ernst&#8217;s office said that since 2008, EcoHealth has collected nearly $80 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars, including $46 million from the Department of Health, $16.5 million from HHS, and $11.2 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“The Biden administration is funding EcoHealth to search for risky viruses in places all across the globe, except where they might actually find them: in their own lab experiments,&#8221; Ernst said in a statement Tuesday. “While NIH certainly shares in the blame, EcoHealth Alliance is ultimately at fault for failing to tell the world what was really going on at China’s Wuhan Institute. They are guilty of either complacency or a cover-up&#8230; We can’t afford any more of EcoHealth’s ‘prevention’ efforts. That’s why we must permanently ban them from receiving taxpayer dollars ever again.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory">Atomic Bomb Lab Studying Ways To ‘Combat’ ‘Misinformation’ Including COVID Lab-Leak Theory</a>

Little red flying fox colony hanging from tree limb

Federal Watchdog Slams Fauci’s Agency And EcoHealth Over Deal With Wuhan Lab

Anthony Fauci

China

Department of Health and Human Services

Science

Florida was the fastest-growing state in the country over the last year — the first time that has happened since 1957, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/great-news-this-fathers-day-marriage-rate-going-up-census-shows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Census</a> Bureau said Friday.
“Florida&#8217;s population increased by 1.9% to 22,244,823 between 2021 and 2022, surpassing Idaho, the previous year’s fastest-growing state,” the Bureau <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/florida-fastest-growing-state.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “For the third most-populous state to also be the fastest growing is notable because it requires significant population gains.”
Florida has for decades — since the advent of air conditioning — been gaining population, but between 2016 and 2021, its rate of increase was slowing, growing by only about half a percent in 2020. Since 2020, it began a rapid rise.
This year, Florida beat out Nevada, which has been the fastest-growing state for 36 of the last 76 years.
Earlier this year, a report found that more than 600,000 people <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-more-than-600k-people-leaving-new-york-and-california-for-lower-taxed-states">fled</a> New York and California for lower-taxed states during the pandemic.
The population figures show people “voting with their feet” for the quality of life they perceive in the Sunshine State, and represent another achievement for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), on top of his re-election during this year&#8217;s election cycle.
Florida rejected draconian coronavirus measures. Its schools were open while states like New York remained shuttered. Liberal states that closed their schools saw drops of up to 9% in the number of fourth-graders proficient in reading, while Florida was one of four states whose reading scores <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-vs-red-2022-test-scores-show-devastating-toll-of-school-shutdowns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">actually increased</a> during the pandemic.
Data indicates that school closure length <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/only-2-of-childrens-deaths-were-from-covid-and-school-closures-didnt-reduce-the-number" target="_blank" rel="noopener">didn’t correlate</a> with children dying of coronavirus, either.
DeSantis campaign spokesman Christina Pushaw <a href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1605577366071234561">tweeted</a> this week that Democrat-run states were continuing to make those unpopular choices. “Kids in Democrat-run districts like Philadelphia and Passaic, NJ are being force-masked in schools again. The politicians who make these cruel regulations are partying at maskless galas while forcing kids to cover their faces,” she wrote.
“We’ll probably see these politicians in Florida,” she added. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aoc-lashes-out-at-critics-after-being-caught-in-florida-republicans-are-mad-they-cant-date-me" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vacationed in Florida</a> during the pandemic even as liberals attacked DeSantis for his policies.
Following a resounding re-election victory that won over many typically blue-leaning areas, even as Republicans saw lukewarm success elsewhere, a USA Today/Suffolk University <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/poll-desantis-reverses-lead-trump-held-in-florida-now-leads-by-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">poll</a> found that Republicans in Florida hope that DeSantis is the Republican nominee for president in 2024.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/red-vs-blue-as-dems-deny-defunding-the-police-major-cities-police-forces-are-at-record-lows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Blue Vs. Red: Major Cities’ Police Forces Are At Record Lows As Dems Deny Defunding The Police</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-states-have-worse-inequality-than-red-ones-new-census-data-shows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Blue Vs. Red: Income Inequality Far Worse In Dem-Run States, New Census Data Shows</a>

The Match 7 at Pelican

Census: Florida Was Fastest-Growing State This Year With Historic Population Gains

Census Bureau

Florida

General

Ron DeSantis

U.S.

A Republican senator said President Joe Biden is this year’s Grinch for weaponizing the government to censor or attack Americans for engaging in &#8220;misinformation&#8221; by questioning official government lines.
“You better watch out! President Biden is making a list and checking it twice. Going to find out who is being naughty…exercising their constitutional rights,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said Tuesday.
Ernst urged the Biden administration’s National Science Foundation to pull funding for a $5 million grant to a group called Hacks/Hackers to make software that would essentially turn American citizens into online bots. The tool will ask them to paste in their friends’ tweets and Facebook posts to be told whether they constituted “harmful” “misinformation.” If so, the software will generate rebuttals offering the official positions of groups like the World Health Organization, and ask them to copy-and-paste them as replies to their friends’ posts as if they were their own words. The grant came to light through a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-pay-journalism-group-5m-to-create-software-to-turn-people-into-anti-misinformation-bots" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Daily Wire investigation</a> on December 1.
In addition to the software, called the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-pay-journalism-group-5m-to-create-software-to-turn-people-into-anti-misinformation-bots" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust</a> (ARTT), Hacks/Hackers also hired people for a project to help determine which news outlets are “credible” when it comes to vaccine information and which aren’t. Those who don&#8217;t get the seal of approval won&#8217;t be able to be cited on Wikipedia.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-469649 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ss1-1021x576.png" alt="" width="1021" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss1-1021x576.png 1021w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss1-300x169.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss1-768x433.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss1.png 1468w" sizes="(max-width: 1021px) 100vw, 1021px" /></div>
“To no one’s surprise, liberal outlets, like The New York Times, made Hack/Hackers’ nice list for being ‘reliable.’ The naughty list of ‘unreliable’ or ‘conspiracy’ sources predictably includes conservative-leaning media, like The Daily Wire, which coincidentally exposed this new Washington enemies list!” Ernst wrote.
“I am giving my December 2022 Squeal Award to ‘the minister of misinformation’ himself, President Biden, for promoting blatant falsehoods while his administration is steering tax dollars into these Soviet-style propaganda tactics that target citizens and media who dare question the administration’s narrative,” Ernst said. She bestows the <a href="https://www.ernst.senate.gov/priorities/make-em-squeal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">award</a> monthly on an example of pork-like or abusive government spending.
In an effort to &#8220;pull the plug on this taxpayer-funded troll service,” she wrote to the National Science Foundation&#8217;s director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, that &#8220;We really do not need a return to the dark days when some in Washington maintained an ‘enemies lists’ of fellow citizens and journalists with opposing viewpoints. Instead, the NSF would much better serve taxpayers by supporting our nation’s bright young minds with initiatives to improve math and science education rather than these efforts to troll taxpayers online.&#8221;
She said that the World Health Organization, which is involved in the ARTT project and which the software’s creators take as the north star of truth, has repeatedly been wrong.
“Bending to China’s propaganda machine, a WHO representatives not only announced it was ‘extremely unlikely’ that COVID-19 might have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting dangerous studies on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/coronavirus-loan-fraud-prevention-fell-to-unvetted-firms-that-profited-hugely-while-ignoring-fraud-congress-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">coronaviruses</a> in the very city where the pandemic began, but that a lab leak ‘isn’t a hypothesis we suggest implies further study.’ Does NSF believe these are credible statements based on reliable facts and sound scientific evidence?” Ernst asked the director.
“WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has gone as far as saying, &#8216;We appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak, especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated,&#8217;” she wrote.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-470135" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/ss2.png" alt="" width="1361" height="814" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss2.png 1361w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss2-300x179.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss2-963x576.png 963w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/11/ss2-768x459.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1361px) 100vw, 1361px" /></div>
“It is very disappointing that taxpayer dollars would be spent on this project when our nation is facing a dire shortage of STEM teachers who are vital to inspiring others to pursue careers in the sciences,” she added.
In the Biden administration, a full gamut of government agencies have taken it upon themselves to try to stop Americans from spreading what it deems “misinformation” online, despite it repeatedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dhs-officially-shuts-down-disinformation-board-after-longtime-pause" target="_blank" rel="noopener">backfiring</a>.
The federal laboratory that designed the atomic bomb, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/atomic-bomb-lab-studying-ways-to-combat-misinformation-including-covid-lab-leak-theory">Los Alamos National Laboratories</a>, dedicated eight staff to a study on how to &#8220;combat&#8221; &#8220;misinformation&#8221; that had nothing to do with its field of energy. One of the &#8220;conspiracies&#8221; was that the coronavirus had escaped, accidentally or intentionally, from a lab in China. Los Alamos boasted about its study in September, omitting the nature of the &#8220;conspiracy&#8221; it wanted to learn how to suppress — which by then was widely accepted as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-investigation-concludes-covid-likely-originated-from-a-chinese-lab" target="_blank" rel="noopener">likely</a>.
Both Los Alamos and ARTT said they are using coronavirus as just a pilot program to learn how to police Americans&#8217; speech on other topics in the future, and NSF’s “Convergence Accelerator” has funded several programs similar to ARTT.
In announcing her Squeal Award, Ernst wrote: “Here is a fact: Iowans and most Americans don’t trust Washington and don’t want the government or some state-sponsored group to tell us what we can and cannot think, say, or believe. And we certainly don’t want the Biden administration spending our hard-earned tax dollars to keep lists of approved and unapproved opinions or encouraging citizens to troll their friends with government-generated propaganda.”
“If this effort was applied to statements by the Biden administration, the ‘fact checkers’ would be working overtime countering the disinformation being spread by the president himself. Such as the president’s false claim that he ‘cut the federal debt in half — a fact!’”

Minnesota Vikings v Detroit Lions

Senator Blasts Biden For Compiling ‘Naughty List’ Of Peddlers Of ‘Misinformation’ Like The Lab-Leak Theory

Senator Blasts Biden For Compiling 'Naughty List' Of 'Misinformation' Peddlers

COVID

Misinformation

Social Media Censorship

World Health Organization

The federal laboratory that designed the atomic bomb has set its sights on Americans, funding a study intended to help authorities learn how to “combat” “misinformation” — including the “conspiracy theory” that COVID came from a lab.
Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is ostensibly focused on atomic energy, funded and dedicated eight staff to the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8048710/">study</a> “‘Thought I’d Share First’ and Other Conspiracy Theory Tweets from the COVID-19 Infodemic.&#8221;
&#8220;This study examines four oft-repeated and long-lived conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19: 5G technology is somehow associated with the disease; Bill Gates or the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation created or patented the virus; the virus is human-made and was released from a laboratory; and a COVID-19 vaccine will be harmful,&#8221; the study said. Elsewhere, it clarifies that the conspiracy theory includes the idea that the disease escaped from a lab whether “intentionally or accidentally.&#8221;
“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic clearly illustrates the need to identify health-related misinformation, especially with a lens toward improving communication strategies to combat it,” it said.
The study was published in an academic journal in April 2021 and Los Alamos’s <a href="https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/1663/september-2022/going-viral">website</a> lauded it in September 2022 with a glowing article written for its in-house magazine. Los Alamos’ article, which was written well after it was widely accepted that COVID may have leaked from a Chinese lab, simply omitted the fact that a large portion of the study was demonizing Americans who very well may have been right, and listed only the other three theories when describing what the study looked at.
The federal lab&#8217;s website also said that coronavirus was just a trial run for the government’s efforts in “counteracting” misinformation.
“The Los Alamos team’s work is not limited to COVID-19, nor even to public health,&#8221; it said. &#8220;The scientists are working to characterize misinformation in general, which is an important first step in counteracting its spread. Other online-information work the team members are doing includes identifying and tracking online hate speech.&#8221;
The study relied on a database of purportedly conspiratorial tweets provided by NewsGuard, a group that is partnered with the <a href="https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-partners-newsguard-combat-misinformation-online">American Federation of Teachers</a> union and backed by the liberal Knight Foundation. NewsGuard later <a href="https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/coronavirus-misinformation-tracking-center/">admitted</a> that it disseminated misinformation by asserting without proof that the lab leak was misinformation or a conspiracy theory 21 times, but the academic study has not been corrected.
The study, in fact, seems less concerned with whether the theories being discussed by Americans are actually true than with positioning them as dangerous simply because they are not currently the sanctioned narrative.
&#8220;Although some conspiracies, such as Watergate or the Tuskegee experiments, may eventually be proven to be true criminal acts, the vast majority of conspiracy theories are not true, and their spread can undermine public health efforts,&#8221; it said.
It said those who shared vaccine-related articles were often “knowledge-deficient,” and that “One nationally representative study in the United States found that some myths (eg, that the virus was created or spread on purpose) were believed by over 30% of respondents.”
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;Diversity equals national security,&#8221; it said. &#8220;The key to the Lab’s scientific achievements, and thus to national security, is maintaining a diverse workforce.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
The Los Alamos study acknowledges that it simply strung together &#8220;off-the-shelf&#8221; tools to feed tweets to computers — which could not even differentiate between tweets pushing “misinformation” and those correcting it, and simply treated all of it as misinformation — and came to few, if any, meaningful insights as a result of its analysis. A typical observation is that those tweeting about coronavirus often frequently mention “fauci,” and that those who thought vaccines could have harmful effects wrote tweets that had more negative “sentiment” than those who trusted them.
The study says it was funded by the University of California&#8217;s National Laboratory Fees Research Program and the U.S. Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory&#8211;though the researchers misspell the name of their employer as &#8220;Laboratoory.&#8221;
Los Alamos did not return a request for comment on the study’s relevance to its mission.
The lab that played a role in developing the atomic bomb that killed thousands has become focused on continuing that work alongside progressive rhetoric. &#8220;From the makeup of the workforce to the breadth of the research, Los Alamos National Laboratory embraces diversity to ensure national security,&#8221; the lab (whose workforce is 1.5% black) <a href="https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2022-winter/the-diversity-issue">boasted</a> in November.
<a href="https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2022-winter/diversity-equals-national-security">&#8220;Diversity equals national security,&#8221;</a> it said. &#8220;The key to the Lab’s scientific achievements, and thus to national security, is maintaining a diverse workforce.&#8221;
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) slammed the Energy Department for the study.
“The Department of Energy’s (DOE) misuse of taxpayer dollars chasing after conspiracy theories on the internet is literally leaving Americans in the cold,” Ernst told The Daily Wire. “The Biden administration’s policies are contributing to a spike in home heating costs and putting Iowa and other parts of the Midwest at risk of power outages this winter. The president should flip the switch off on the silly science and redirect the attention and resources of DOE towards finding real energy solutions.”
The study is not the first example of the nation&#8217;s most prestigious national security institutes trading nuclear science for hyper-partisan and intellectually thin activism. In 2020, Christopher Rufo reported that <a href="https://christopherrufo.com/nuclear-consequences/">Sandia National Laboratories</a>, which designs nuclear weapons, &#8220;sent its white male executives to the La Posada luxury resort to undergo a mandatory training called ‘White Men’s Caucus on Eliminating Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Organizations.’” The Joe Biden administration also hired Sam Brinton, a nonbinary gender activist who has since been arrested on felony theft charges and fired, in a high-level nuclear role.
The study also shows how during the Biden administration, a full gamut of agencies has been deputized to root out Americans who are engaging in speech that is not sanctioned by the government. The National Science Foundation (NSF) this year gave <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-pay-journalism-group-5m-to-create-software-to-turn-people-into-anti-misinformation-bots">$5 million</a> to a group called &#8220;Hacks/Hackers&#8221; that says it will make software that will help automate the process of social media users replying to their friends to rebut them with officially-approved lines when their friends post “misinformation.”

USA/Marshall Islands: Mushroom-shaped cloud and water column from the underwater Baker nuclear explosion of July 25, 1946. Photo taken from a tower on Bikini Island, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) distant

Atomic Bomb Lab Studying Ways To ‘Combat’ ‘Misinformation’ Including COVID Lab-Leak Theory

Atomic Bomb Lab Studying Ways To 'Combat' 'Misinformation' Including COVID Lab-Leak Theory

Department of Energy

Twitter

Firms the federal government hired to distribute <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/only-2-of-childrens-deaths-were-from-covid-and-school-closures-didnt-reduce-the-number" target="_blank" rel="noopener">coronavirus</a> Paycheck Protection Program loans promised to use high-tech methods to prevent fraud, but failed in part because abuse hurt taxpayers and not their own bottom line, according to a congressional investigation.
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis found that two financial tech, or &#8220;fintech,&#8221; firms allegedly earned billions in profits by taking a percentage of each loan that they processed — often while barely looking at it. Some of the firms involved had little relevant experience, and one was run by a man who pleaded guilty in 2014 to insider trading.
&#8220;The investigation found that two unvetted and unregulated fintechs that, together, facilitated nearly one in every three PPP loans funded in 2021 — Womply and Blueacorn — failed to implement systems capable of consistently detecting and preventing fraudulent and otherwise ineligible PPP applications,&#8221; a <a href="https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2022.12.01%20How%20Fintechs%20Facilitated%20Fraud%20in%20the%20Paycheck%20Protection%20Program.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">committee report</a> released Thursday said.
Blueacorn gave nearly $300 million in profits to its owners but spent only $8.6 million on fraud prevention, the report said. It spent far more on marketing, and Blueacorn advertised &#8220;free money&#8221; in &#8220;30 seconds&#8221; to applicants, according to the report from the committee, which is led by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina).
Blueacorn had a small company called Elev8 Advisors, which was &#8220;run by a member of Blueacorn’s senior leadership,&#8221; review loan applications, and it was staffed with dozens of friends and family of the owner. The owner, Kristen Spencer, wrote in a text message obtained by the committee: “We are doing this for the people we hired to make money. Our friends and family. That is where the money is going. And it will be life changing money for anyone who does it.”
Employees were told that reviewing each loan should take them &#8220;less than 30 seconds,&#8221; employees told the committee.
Elev8&#8217;s owners, Kristen and Adam Spencer, also received $200,000 in PPP loans — even though the pandemic had been a boon for their business, not a hardship — around the same time they purchased an $8 million mansion in cash, the report said. One of the loans claimed Kristen was an &#8220;interior architect&#8221; for her husband&#8217;s company, even though that company was located in a WeWork, according to the investigation.
Blueacorn&#8217;s owners focused on big loans, which brought the largest commissions, and ignored those from small business owners, writing &#8220;who f***ing cares&#8221; and &#8220;delete them,&#8221; the report said. Blueacorn is owned by Nathan Reis and Stephanie Hockridge. The company also received $300,000 in PPP loans for itself, some of which were vetted by itself. And on the application, Reis falsely claimed to be black and a veteran, the report said.
Another fintech company, Womply, had revenue of $2 billion in 2021 and a gross profit margin of nearly 90%. Lending partners said its anti-fraud controls were &#8220;put together with duct tape and gum,&#8221; the report said. Additionally, the SBA said that even the application for $5 million in PPP loans that Womply filed for itself was ineligible.
Womply CEO Toby Scammell was convicted of insider trading in 2014 and led the company&#8217;s fraud prevention efforts. He also instructed the company not to cooperate with federal investigators, the report said.
Criminals quickly realized that they should apply through fintech firms if they wanted fake loans approved, according to the report. One gang member said that &#8220;everybody in the hood&#8221; was using Womply, according to the report. Investigators believe the PPP loans were used to buy guns and drugs.
Another fintech called Kabbage approved more than 300,000 loans. Its employees were concerned that fraud rates were &#8220;wildly underestimated,&#8221; but a manager told them &#8220;the risk here is not ours – it is SBA’s risk,” the report said.
The report concluded that &#8220;Based on these findings, Congress and the SBA should consider carefully whether unregulated businesses such as fintechs, many of which are not subject to the same regulations as financial institutions, should be permitted to play a leading role in future federal lending programs.&#8221;
The PPP program is overseen by the Small Business Administration. The SBA’s Inspector General has said the levels of fraud present in the PPP program were “unprecedented,” and that &#8220;This problem occurred because the agency did not establish a sufficient fraud risk framework at the start of and throughout PPP implementation.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-uses-little-known-covid-waiver-to-write-off-9b-in-student-loans-for-150000-government-nonprofit-workers">Biden Uses Little-Known COVID Waiver To Write Off $9B In Student Loans For 150,000 Government, Nonprofit Workers</a>

TURKEY-ECONOMY-CURRENCY-DOLLARS-FEATURE

Coronavirus Loan Fraud Prevention Fell To ‘Unvetted’ Firms That Profited Hugely While Ignoring Fraud, Congress Finds

Coronavirus Loan Fraud Prevention Fell To 'Unregulated' Firms That Profited Hugely While Ignoring Fraud, Congress Finds

James Clyburn

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

Small Business Administration

A research accident in China was the most likely cause of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-judges-refreshing-common-sense-ruling-rejecting-new-york-citys-covid-vax-mandate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID-19 outbreak</a>, according to a report <a href="https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/report_an_analysis_of_the_origins_of_covid-19_102722.pdf">released</a> by Senate Republicans Thursday.
The Republican staff of the Senate Committee On Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, led by Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, studied medical literature and other publicly available material for 15 months and found numerous problems with the idea that the disease jumped naturally from bats to humans, as well as numerous reasons to suspect a problem at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIF).
However, it said because of secrecy by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/paypals-scheme-to-sanction-users-for-misinformation-tied-to-chinese-contractor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chinese</a> government, it may be impossible to prove conclusively.
Based on previous similar epidemics such as SARS and MERS, for a virus to jump from an animal like bats to humans, it would typically first mutate enough to “circulate in an intermediate host to increase the virus’ chances of being able to infect and replicate in humans,” the report said. But there is no evidence of such an intermediate host.
“While it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a bat virus, most likely one found in horseshoe bats residing in Southern China or Southeast Asia, it remains unknown how SARS-CoV-2 traveled more than 1,000 miles from Southern China or Southeast Asia before emerging in Wuhan,” it said.
As the virus mutates in ways that allow it to jump species, there are usually failed attempts—in which the virus manages to jump but still cannot replicate once in the new host—that leave behind evidence which can be documented. But that hasn’t been seen in humans or other animals, it said.
Additionally, if some animal species was harboring <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-vs-red-2022-test-scores-show-devastating-toll-of-school-shutdowns" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID-19</a>, it would be expected for multiple different humans to separately become infected from animal contact, setting off distinct infection chains, as happened with the H7N9 Avian Influenza. There is no evidence of people continuing to catch COVID disease from bats, the report said.
The Chinese government initially claimed that COVID came from a &#8220;natural zoonotic transmission occurring at the Huanan Seafood Market&#8221;&#8211;among other claims such as that the U.S. engineered the virus. While many of the earliest documented cases had a nexus to the seafood market, there was a self-fulfilling prophesy: The criteria the Chinese government initially used for counting a case of the new disease required that the person not only have respiratory symptoms, but also have been connected to the seafood market.
The virus was found on surfaces at the seafood market, but &#8220;according to presentations made to the World Health Organization (WHO) by PRC government officials and scientists in early 2020, none of the animals at the market when it was closed, in the market’s supply chain, or in China’s animal farming industry were infected with SARS-CoV-2,&#8221; it said.
Additionally, the people who were infected by COVID after going to the market all had nearly identical strains of the virus, whereas if it was a new disease jumping from animals to people, one would expect to see various mutations.
&#8220;Early SARS-CoV-2 variants had little genetic diversity and were closely related to each other, differing by only two nucleotides out of approximately 29,900 nucleotides,&#8221; the report said.
Meanwhile, there are reasons to believe that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIF)&#8211;located in close proximity to the seafood market&#8211;was conducting highly related research with poor controls.
An accident associated with such work would be far from unprecedented: The previous SARS virus escaped from Chinese labs four times, the H1N1 virus is believed to have been the result of an incident in Soviet Union or Chinese labs, and the American government once had an incident with the &#8220;highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of influenza.&#8221;
&#8220;The WIV collected more than 15,000 bat-related samples around the time the pandemic began. Of these, the WIV had identified more than 220 SARS-related coronaviruses, at least 100 of which have not been made public,&#8221; the report said. This included viruses that are up to 96.8% similar to COVID-19, including one that is 96.3% similar and which WIV only acknowledged in February 2020, after the start of the pandemic.
WIV materials show personnel on virus-harvesting expeditions handling bats with minimal protections, some with bare hands and no masks, it said. WIV was also conducing &#8220;experiments to assess the pandemic potential of SARS-related viruses&#8221; which generate &#8220;ubiquitous&#8221; and &#8220;difficult to detect&#8221; aerosols in a BSL2 laboratory, when Chinese officials have said such risky activities should only take place in higher-security BSL3 or BSL4 labs.
The U.S.-based <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fauci-pal-at-center-of-covid-lab-leak-suspicions-gets-new-bat-virus-grant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EcoHealth Alliance</a> was even working with WIF and described &#8220;the WIV’s intent to search for SARS-related coronaviruses with potential to bind to human ACE2 receptors and that have naturally occurring furin cleavage sites in Yunnan Province, China. According to the proposal, if WIV researchers were unable to find a SARS-related virus with these traits during sampling expeditions, they then proposed to manipulate the ACE2 receptors of SARS-related coronaviruses to increase binding affinity to human lung tissue and to insert furin cleavage sites at the same location where one appears in SARS-CoV-2,&#8221; according to the report.
WIV has been secretive about such research. A WIV scientist &#8220;disclosed that her team infected civets and mice that expressed human ACE2 receptors with chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses. The results of these experiments indicated that SARS-related bat coronaviruses could infect and cause severe illness in humanized mice. The WIV was later terminated as a sub-grantee by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for failing to produce its laboratory notes and other records relating to these other experiments,&#8221; it said.
On Sept. 12, 2019, &#8220;between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. local time, the WIV took down its online depository of data on viral sequences called the Wildlife-Borne Viral Pathogen Database. The database was intermittently accessible from December 2019 to February 2020, before being permanently taken offline February 2020. The WIV had a collection of more than 15,000 samples from bats,&#8221; the report said.
Then there was the fact that WIV was underfunded and operating with poor technology. In May 2019, the director of the WIV BSL4 lab warned that &#8220;Maintenance cost[s] [are] generally neglected; several high-level BSLs have insufficient operational funds for routine yet vital processes&#8230; This makes it difficult to identify and mitigate potential safety hazards in facility and equipment operation early enough.&#8221;
In July 2019, the deputy director of the lab produced a report on equipment shortages, problems with &#8220;the management of biosafety,&#8221; and &#8220;urgent problems.&#8221; A November 12, 2019 report from WIV&#8217;s BSL4 lab also suggested that &#8220;operational errors that give rise to dangers&#8221; had occurred.
Finally, China&#8217;s rapid development of a vaccine for COVID&#8211;significantly faster than America&#8217;s Operation Warp Speed, which itself was considered a &#8220;miracle&#8221;&#8211;raises questions of whether the Communist nation had a head start, the report said.
&#8220;What additional steps, processes, or novel techniques did AMMS researchers take that advanced the development of their vaccine faster than the Operation Warp Speed timeline? If no additional steps were taken to speed up the development timeline, when did researchers in China have access to the genomic sequence? Was it before January 11, 2020?&#8221;

TOPSHOT-CHINA-HEALTH-VIRUS

Senate Investigation Concludes COVID Likely Originated From A Chinese Lab

Congress

Politics

Richard Burr

Academic proficiency plummeted in 2022 to among the lowest on record following the coronavirus school shutdowns, and children in Democrat-run states where teachers union demands led to extended school shutdowns bore the brunt, data released Monday from a national test known as the “nation’s report card” showed.
The <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Assessment of Educational Progress</a> (NAEP) is administered to fourth and eighth graders every few years, allowing for a comparison of reading and math proficiency by state between 2019 — just before the pandemic — and 2022. The decline in math scores was the sharpest ever since the test began in 1990, and the average math scores were the lowest since 2005. The average eighth grade reading score was the lowest since 1998.
&#8220;Today&#8217;s NAEP results are the proverbial final nail in the coffin,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won election in 2021 in a blue-leaning state largely because of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fury over Democrats’ education policies</a>, said Monday. “If this doesn&#8217;t wake you up, then you&#8217;re clearly trying to cover up your own bad decisions. In the business world, if this was your report card, there would be an immediate change in management. You would be fired. And I think that&#8217;s what voters did.&#8221;
He said leaders kept &#8220;schools shut for an unnecessary amount of time, forcing students to learn through a screen and telling them that&#8217;s a meaningful education,&#8221; and that coronavirus decisions followed decades of similarly bad education decisions.
The map at the top of this article shows how badly the number of fourth-graders who scored at least “basic” in reading fell compared to before the pandemic in each state. Basic is the <a href="https://www.nagb.gov/content/dam/nagb/en/documents/naep/achievement-levels-descriptions.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lowest</a> of the three tiers — basic, proficient, and advanced — and those who do not have even basic reading skills by fourth grade are at risk of serious problems when it comes to employment and higher education later in life.
While almost all schools closed in March 2020, schools in conservative areas were often open for the following 2020-21 school year, while those in areas where teachers unions’ Democrat allies hold power were closed or in some sort of hybrid schedule for much of the year.
In the following chart, The Daily Wire plotted the same drop in reading scores according to how much of the 2020-21 school year the average student spent in actual, in-person school — as opposed to so-called distance learning that often consisted of little actual work, and with significant truancy from students. The state names are colored according to whether it had a Republican or Democrat governor at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-454539" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter-763x576.png" alt="" width="763" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter-763x576.png 763w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter-300x227.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter-768x580.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter-1536x1160.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g4_reading_basic_scatter.png 2023w" sizes="(max-width: 763px) 100vw, 763px" /></div>
Clustered in the lower-left are Virginia, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, D.C., Nevada, and New York. That&#8217;s because all of them had among the longest school shutdowns — and drops approaching 9%. Only four states saw improvements in this measure of reading: Florida, whose schools remained open, Louisiana and Alabama, whose schools were also mostly open, and Hawaii — an outlier which saw improvement despite closed schools.
For the percent of time in-person, The Daily Wire drew from <a href="http://www.covidschooldatahub.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">COVID School Data Hub</a>, which tracked schools’ status across the country — though the average figure isn’t perfect since some decisions about remote learning varied across school districts and grade levels. Four states are also missing.
Here we have the same thing but for Grade 8 math. This time, we look at the drop in the percent who scored “proficient.” The even larger drops in this tier highlights that school shutdowns did not only harm students who were barely hanging on even before the pandemic, but were also devastating to previously good students.
<img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-454540" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/g8_math_proficient-769x576.png" alt="" width="769" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g8_math_proficient-769x576.png 769w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g8_math_proficient-300x225.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g8_math_proficient-768x575.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g8_math_proficient-1536x1150.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/10/g8_math_proficient.png 2040w" sizes="(max-width: 769px) 100vw, 769px" />
Deep-blue states including Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Washington had drops of 12% — far more than states that spent more of the year in-person. Every state saw declines, but deep-red Alabama saw the smallest decline.
Though the scores are mostly at the state level, results are also provided for certain large cities. In Miami-Dade, Florida, 71% of 8th graders scored at least &#8220;basic&#8221; in reading, and in 2022, that actually rose to 72%. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the 2019 figure of 64% dropped to 61%. While Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered Florida&#8217;s schools open, the Chicago teachers union refused to work, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chicago-teachers-union-claims-push-to-open-schools-is-racist-and-sexist-sues-to-stop-plan">claiming</a> “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-states-have-worse-inequality-than-red-ones-new-census-data-shows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Blue Vs. Red: Income Inequality Far Worse In Dem-Run States, New Census Data Shows</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/red-vs-blue-as-dems-deny-defunding-the-police-major-cities-police-forces-are-at-record-lows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Blue Vs. Red: Major Cities’ Police Forces Are At Record Lows As Dems Deny Defunding The Police</a>

g4_reading_basic_map-main-image

Blue Vs. Red: 2022 Test Scores Show Devastating Toll Of School Shutdowns

Blue Vs. Red: 2022 Test Scores Show Lasting Toll Of Blue-State School Shutdowns

Democrats

Education

Glenn Youngkin

Los Angeles

Miami

School Shutdowns

Teachers Unions

Children with a specific respiratory illness have been overwhelming hospitals, mainly in the Southern and Northeastern areas of the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/natl-trend.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> recent data showing Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) cases have <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/images/trend_images/RSV124PP_Nat.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spiked</a> over the past month. RSV usually causes children to contract the usual mild-cold symptoms, but the impact could be much worse for those immunocompromised or with a heart defect.
&#8220;We have observed a rise in RSV in multiple U.S. regions, and some regions are nearing seasonal peak levels,&#8221; a CDC spokesperson told <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/surge-rsv-virus-fills-hospitals-can-severely-sicken-babies-rcna52082" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NBC News</a>.
Dr. Juan Salazar, the physician-in-chief of Connecticut Children&#8217;s Medical Center, told <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://thehill.com/homenews/3697459-childrens-hospitals-overflowing-with-respiratory-patients-consider-calling-national-guard/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Hill </a>that cases began exponentially rising at the beginning of September, which he claims is something he has never seen before.
Young children with the virus have swamped the Hartford-based hospital, with staff debating whether to call in the U.S. National Guard and FEMA for support.
&#8220;We just don&#8217;t have as many critical care beds [for children] as we have adult critical care beds simply because we don&#8217;t usually need them,&#8221; Salazar said, according to The Hill.
Federal authorities would set up tents outside the hospital to assist with the capacity spreading the hospital staff thin.
Salazar said theories including herd immunity, immune suppression, and everyone catching the virus at the same time over the last couple of months have caused the emergency department to experience &#8220;the perfect storm.&#8221;
&#8220;Our hospital was full,&#8221; Salazar said. &#8220;Our traditional pediatric in-patient beds … we have three floors with 25 beds in each location — we can expand to 28. All of those were full this morning.&#8221;
The Hill reported Yale New Haven Children&#8217;s Hospital emergency department saw RSV cases almost double last week from 57 to 106 admissions.
The Washington Post <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/20/pediatrics-hospital-capacity-dc-children/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> several D.C.-area hospitals have also reached capacity for weeks.
Over 650 beds from three different hospitals — Children&#8217;s National Hospital in Northwest D.C., Inova Fairfax in Northern Virginia, and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore — have hit their limit this week.
&#8220;We are treating a very high number of severely ill children,&#8221; Sarah Combs, an emergency medicine physician at Children&#8217;s National, told The Washington Post.
Sofia Teferi, a MedStar Montgomery Medical Center pediatrician, told the outlet Wednesday she could not find an intensive care bed for a 4-month-old patient in the region.
&#8220;The fact that you have to look at the parent and say your kid needs ICU-level care, but we have no bed for them: That&#8217;s a very hard conversation to have,&#8221; Teferi said. &#8220;I&#8217;m just floored by the whole thing — in the nation&#8217;s capital.&#8221;
Eric Biondi, chief of pediatric hospital medicine at Johns Hopkins Children&#8217;s Center, told the outlet Thursday that the hospital, which has over 120 beds, is &#8220;completely full.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s not just a problem of how busy we are at Hopkins, which we are, but it flows out to the remote community emergency rooms that have to move kids,&#8221; he said.
NBC News <a class="editor-rtfLink" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/surge-rsv-virus-fills-hospitals-can-severely-sicken-babies-rcna52082" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> hospitals in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Rhode Island have also seen an influx in RSV patients.
The Hill reports that signs a child may have contracted RSV include changes in breathing, grunting noises, and chest caving with each breath. Other symptoms could show the child&#8217;s skin or facial parts turning blue or purple from a lack of oxygen.

RS virus patients in the children’s hospital

Children’s Hospitals Overflowing With Respiratory Illness Patients

Children

Doctors

Health

hospital

The first lady of the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus after she experienced cold-like symptoms on Monday evening.
The White House announced on Tuesday morning that Jill Biden, who has been double-vaccinated with two boosters, has COVID. President Joe Biden himself recently recovered from the coronavirus after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-joe-biden-tests-positive-for-covid-again-will-return-to-isolation">repeatedly testing</a> positive.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Folks, I&#39;m doing great. Thanks for your concern. Just called Senator Casey, Congressman Cartwright, and Mayor Cognetti (and my Scranton cousins!) to send my regrets for missing our event today.
Keeping busy! <a href="https://t.co/uf7AsOg571">pic.twitter.com/uf7AsOg571</a>
&mdash; President Biden (@POTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1550153237021564943?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 21, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The first lady&#8217;s positive test was confirmed through a PCR test, the White House said, and she first tested negative through a rapid antigen test. Jill Biden is experiencing mild symptoms.
According to a pool report, Joe Biden tested negative today and will return to Washington, D.C., from his South Carolina vacation as planned, while his wife will remain in South Carolina to isolate. She reportedly <a href="https://twitter.com/JonLemire/status/1559533234467356675">won&#8217;t return</a> to D.C. until she has had two consecutive negative COVID tests.
<div id="attachment_424598" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-424598" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-424598 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1242501560-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images</div>
“The President tested negative for COVID this morning on an antigen test,&#8221; the White House press secretary <a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1559535345607360513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>. &#8220;Consistent with CDC guidance because he is a close contact of the First Lady, he will mask for 10 days when indoors and in close proximity to others. We will also increase the President&#8217;s testing cadence and report those results.”
This evening, Biden will reportedly travel to New Castle, Delaware, after signing the Inflation Reduction Act this afternoon.

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First Lady Jill Biden Has COVID

Jill Biden Tests Positive For COVID

Jill Biden

Joe Biden

White House

WASHINGTON — During a congressional hearing examining the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and gain-of-function research, multiple scientist witnesses contradicted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/anthony-fauci">Dr. Anthony Fauci&#8217;s</a> claim that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) never funded gain of function research.
“The statements made on repeated occasions to the public, to the press and to policymakers by the NIAID director, Dr. Fauci, have been untruthful. I do not understand why those statements are being made because they are demonstrably false,” Rutgers University microbiologist Dr. Richard Ebright said Wednesday, responding to a question from Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/josh-hawley">Josh Hawley</a> (R-MO).
Sen. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/rand-paul">Rand Paul</a> (R-KY) said on Wednesday afternoon that this contradiction, backed by the other witnesses, was the most &#8220;damning&#8221; thing to come out of Wednesday&#8217;s hearing — the first hearing examining the role of gain-of-function research (a process in which researchers may stitch viruses together to make a “chimeric” virus for the purpose of studying a response).
&#8220;I was told directly to my face, and the quote is there from Dr. Fauci, they had never ever funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan,&#8221; Paul told The Daily Wire as he left the hearing, referring to <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2021/05/11/fauci-denies-funding-gain-of-function-wuhan-lab/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fauci&#8217;s May 2021</a> assertion that “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_419350" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-419350" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-419350 size-large" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/08/GettyImages-1397749482-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />WASHINGTON, DC &#8211; MAY 17: Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci gestures as he waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies of Senate Appropriations Committee at Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 17, 2022 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;All three witnesses contradicted that,&#8221; Paul continued. &#8220;I think that&#8217;s a big deal because the first hearing we have had where scientists who actually look at this information [and], as informed as he is, completely disagree with him and say that the research was gain-of-function and the NIH paid for it.&#8221;
The witnesses at Wednesday&#8217;s hearing called for significantly greater oversight of gain-of-function research. Dr. Steven Quay, the founder of Seattle-based Atossa Therapeutics Inc., warned that &#8220;the work of this committee is critical to protecting the American people and, really, the world at large, from future manmade pandemics.&#8221;
Paul has previously called for Fauci to resign from his position for refusing to admit that the agency funded such risky research.
“Until you accept responsibility, we’re not going to get anywhere close to trying to prevent another lab leak of this dangerous sort of experiment,” the Kentucky Republican <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2021/11/04/rand-paul-demands-fauci-resign-gain-of-function/">told Fauci in November</a>. “You won’t admit that it’s dangerous, and for that lack of judgment, I think it’s time that you resign.”

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In ‘Damning’ Capitol Hill Testimony, Scientists Contradict Fauci’s Claim That NIH Never Funded Gain-Of-Function Research

Rand Paul Touts 'Damning' Statements From Scientists On Origins Of COVID

COVID-19

Pandemic

Rand Paul

China has put a million residents in lockdown due to several coronavirus cases in the city of Wuhan, the place where the pandemic originated back in late 2019.
The lockdown in Wuhan’s Jiangxia district for the next several days comes after four asymptomatic cases were found in the area this week.
There is no way to know how many cases were really found as China has repeatedly lied throughout the course of the pandemic on a variety of issues, ranging from the number of cases and deaths in the communist nation to falsely blaming the U.S. military for the virus.
CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/27/china/china-covid-wuhan-shutdown-district-intl-hnk/index.html">reported</a> that entertainment venues, small clinics, supermarkets, restaurants, places of state-controlled worship, learning centers, and tourist areas were all shut down as was public transportation.
In high-and-medium-risk neighborhoods, residents were banned from leaving their homes in an effort to &#8220;further reduce the flow of people, [and] lower the risk of cross-infection and achieve dynamic zero-Covid in the shortest time possible,&#8221; authorities said in a statement.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has caused trillions of dollars in damage to the global economy and killed an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-61327778">estimated</a> 15 million people, broke out sometime in late 2019. However, an exact timeline of events has never been established due to China resisting international pressure for an investigation inside the country.
Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — China’s first Biosafety level-4 laboratory — were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with COVID-19, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that was released last year.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-report-leaked-docs-prove-china-underreported-pandemic-numbers-hid-previously-unreported-number">reported</a>, U.S. officials have indicated that they believe that China <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-u-s-intelligence-tells-trump-that-china-intentionally-lied-about-coronavirus-outbreak-report-says">“intentionally&#8221;</a> underreported their true numbers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-s-official-gives-fox-news-stunning-estimate-on-chinas-real-coronavius-numbers">“by at least a factor of 50.”</a> British officials reportedly told Prime Minister Boris Johnson early in the pandemic that China could have underreported their numbers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/british-scientific-advisers-claim-chinas-outbreak-could-be-15-to-40-times-worse-than-reported-report-says">“by a factor of 15 to 40 times.”</a>
The Washington Post reported in April 2020 that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/washington-post-evidence-coming-out-of-wuhan-suggests-real-death-toll-over-40000">“evidence”</a> coming out of Wuhan suggested that the real death count was over 40,000, which came as China claimed at the time that it only had a little over 4,600 deaths total nationwide. A conservative estimate in April 2020 from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — which gave China every benefit of the doubt when coming up with their calculations, and then some — suggested that China severely and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aei-releases-conservative-estimate-of-chinas-true-outbreak-numbers-its-staggering">“deliberately”</a> underreported their numbers and that China’s true numbers at the time had to be at least 2.9 million infections with well over 100,000 deaths.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-biden-admits-he-has-not-confronted-china-about-pandemic-lies-changes-tune-on-mlb-rhetoric">Biden Admits He Has Not Confronted China About Pandemic Lies</a>

Daily Life In Wuhan During Lockdown

China Sends Wuhan Back Into Lockdown Over Coronavirus Outbreak

Wuhan

Wuhan Institute of Virology

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