Month: September 2024

Authored by Emily Kopp via The Brownstone Institute,

The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s chief American collaborator leveraged connections in Anthony Fauci’s inner circle to survive federal scrutiny and keep millions in public funding flowing without turning over key data, new records show.

Hundreds of documents — emails obtained under Freedom of Information Act lawsuits or Congressional subpoena, as well as Congressional interview transcripts — show Fauci’s institute protected EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated on novel coronavirus discovery and engineering projects with the Wuhan lab. 

At a congressional hearing this summer, Fauci cast EcoHealth and its president Peter Daszak — who are currently under proposed debarment by the federal government — as minor and rogue grantees.

But EcoHealth was among the first grantees that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases contacted as news of a novel coronavirus first swirled, and Daszak requested supplemental funds to respond to the crisis. In early February 2020, when NIAID began conducting weekly calls with a few experts about the novel coronavirus, Daszak was among the invitees. And at the height of pandemic confusion and controversy in the summer of 2020, EcoHealth maintained the goodwill of NIAID, which awarded EcoHealth two new grants totaling $19.8 million, weakening the leverage of other officials to obtain information from one of the US government’s only sources of insight into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fauci “asked how Peter is doing, as he often does, and he seemed to commiserate with him to a degree,” Fauci’s senior scientific advisor David Morens wrote in apparent reference to Daszak on Nov. 18, 2021. 

At the time, officials at the National Institutes of Health’s central headquarters or “Building One” — at the demand of the Trump White House — had suspended EcoHealth’s existing NIAID grant and sought lab notebooks and unpublished genomic data as a condition of getting its funding back. This information could have shed light on the coronavirus research in Wuhan before the pandemic. 

But aided by allies within NIAID, millions continued to flow to EcoHealth, and Daszak would not ask his longtime collaborators in Wuhan for information sought by the US government until 20 months later, in January 2022 — two years after the pandemic began. 

Some of the NIAID officials who helped Daszak were key to approving his coronavirus research in Wuhan in the first place, including gain-of-function research, research that can enhance the pathogenicity or transmissibility of a pathogen. Some of these NIAID officials had spent years championing gain-of-function research as worth the risks, Congressional transcripts also show. Namely, Morens and another NIAID employee named “Jeff T.” were the liaisons between the scientific community and Fauci during the years-long debates about gain-of-function research leading up to the pandemic, one email shows. After the pandemic arose, Morens and another NIAID scientist named Jeffery Taubenberger wrote an editorial defending EcoHealth and referred to people concerned about gain-of-function research as “luddites” and “the complaining crowd.” 

Thousands of pages of grant proposals and other documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know show that EcoHealth planned to use the new NIAID funding to continue research similar to the work that had brought the group under scrutiny, using the very same viral samples.

Most of the NIAID employees who helped Daszak maintain funding amid the pandemic still retain positions of influence at NIAID.

PUThe revelations come as the US Senate considers legislation championed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that would move regulation of the riskiest gain-of-function research out of the funding agency — which is typically NIAID — and empower an independent panel of scientists to determine when engineering new pathogens is worth the risk.

More than four years after the pandemic began, the Department of Health and Human Services initiated debarment proceedings against EcoHealth and Daszak, citing problems uncovered by government officials outside of Fauci’s institute and the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Funding to the group and its president has been suspended.

Daszak said he would contest the prospective debarment. He has continued to lean on influential allies.

None of the NIAID employees named in this story replied to questions.

‘A Friend in These Efforts…But Not Too out Front’

Daszak was among the first scientists contacted by people within NIAID when news first broke of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan.

Daszak spoke to his program officer Erik Stemmy, who broadly oversaw NIAID’s coronavirus research portfolio, on January 6, 2020.

“Definitely focusing attention on this, Erik,” Daszak wrote. “I spent New Year’s Eve talking with our China contacts and with ProMed staff in between glasses. I’ve got more information but it’s all off the record. Could I give you a call to fill you in?”

Yet he had stopped receiving updates on the emerging pathogen from his colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology 12 days prior. He had last heard from Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan lab on December 25, 2019, six days before the world became aware of a new pathogen in Wuhan on December 31, 2019.

By the spring, speculation that the lab had been the pandemic’s source reached a fever pitch.

On April 17, 2020, Trump called for EcoHealth’s grant to be ended “very quickly.” 

Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, got in contact with the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a Congressional report.

NIH Director of Extramural Research Michael Lauer in the weeks following sent letters to EcoHealth in an attempt to end and investigate the grant, culminating in a July 8, 2020, letter that suspended all activities under the grant. 

The letters sought information about the coronavirus work underway at the subcontracted lab. Lauer asked that Daszak arrange for an outside inspection. The letter asked that “specific attention” be paid “to addressing the question of whether WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] staff had SARS-CoV-2 in their possession prior to December 2019.” 

Lauer had previously spearheaded NIH’s response to the intellectual property and fraud concerns posed by China’s Thousand Talents Program, which Daszak noted with apparent annoyance to colleagues.

Daszak contacted NIAID for help.

David Morens and Jeffery Taubenberger

Daszak leaned on the advice of his close friend and a longtime senior advisor to Fauci, Morens.

“The fact that the determination letter came from ‘Building 1,’ that is, the NIH director’s office, and not NIAID, is telling,” Morens wrote on April 26, 2020. “There are things I can’t say except Tony is aware and I have learned that there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer this with minimal damage.”

Morens said in another email that NIAID was a “friend” of EcoHealth. 

“I have spent alot of time over the last few months…to try to undo the harm that was done to Peter’s grant, PREDICT, and related things,” Morens wrote on August 18, 2020. “Lots is happening behind the scenes…Given that I work for NIAID, and that Tony Fauci is my boss, I have to be careful and generally talk to reporters off the record, but I think I can say that NIAID, at least, is a friend in these efforts, just not able at this time to be too out front.”

Daszak was advised not to respond to Building One until the funding for a new multimillion-dollar project had landed in EcoHealth’s coffers.

“This is an affront to science,” Gerald Keusch, director of the Collaborative Research Core at Boston University’s maximum security lab, said on April 24, 2020. Keusch is the former director of NIH’s Fogarty International Center. “It must be challenged. The question is not only how but also when – certainly not before the EIDRC funding comes through. And then in a smart manner.”

He promised to lean on influential contacts, including former NIH Director Harold Varmus, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health President Maria Freire, and Research!America President Mary Woolley to vouch for him.

Keusch’s lab was set to be a collaborator on EcoHealth’s EIDRC project, grant documents show. 

The acronym EIDRC, or alternatively CREID, stands for Emerging Infectious Diseases Research Center. EcoHealth was being considered as one of just 11 of these multimillion-dollar projects across the country.

Daszak had good reason to tread carefully.

A formally binding term of award for his new EIDRC project had not yet been issued by the time Building One came knocking. According to the NIH website, an “NoA” or notice of award is “the official grant award document notifying the recipient and others that an award has been made.” Daszak conceded the project could “just quietly disappear” before any funding was guaranteed.

“I am also very concerned that Trump could target our organization or me personally, leading to our EIDRC being nixed and we don’t even have an NoA on that, so it could just quietly disappear,” Daszak said.

Morens noted that people within NIAID “will be your advocates.”

Morens is “going to talk with Greg Folkers (Chief of Staff for Tony Fauci) to find out if Tony knows, and why it happened. He’s then going to let Tony know…We won’t respond to the termination notice (Michael Lauer) until we’ve found out more,” Daszak said on April 25, 2020.

An editorial coauthored by an NIAID virologist gave credence to Daszak’s cause.

Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the viral pathogenesis and evolution section at NIAID and a pioneer in the controversial reconstruction of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus, was carbon-copied on a May 2020 email strategizing about how to recruit leadership at the prestigious American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to protect EcoHealth.

To that end, Morens and Taubenberger co-published a July 2020 op-ed in the society’s scientific journal, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Taubenberger lent his credibility to the argument that the “theories about a hypothetical man-made origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been thoroughly discredited by multiple coronavirus experts.”

The virus that causes Covid-19 is “thus a virus that emerged naturally,” the article reads. 

Morens described the article in an email to a Science reporter, cc’ing his coauthor Taubenberger, as a publication that “defends Peter and his Chinese colleagues.” 

The reporter thanked Morens and offered to link it in a recently published article, an interview with Shi in which she refuted the lab-leak theory, demanded an apology from Trump, and deemed the suspension of the EcoHealth grant “absolutely absurd.”

Erik Stemmy and Emily Erbelding

On April 23, 2020, as EcoHealth first began to dodge questions from Lauer, an EcoHealth employee pointedly told him that “as usual we are in close contact with our program officer Erik Stemmy.”

Stemmy, Daszak’s program officer in the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and Emily Erbelding, the head of the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, participated in Zoom calls with Daszak about his suspended research funding and flagged other alternative avenues of funding. Erbelding and Daszak had served together on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine forum together for years.

Although his existing grant was in jeopardy, Stemmy and Erbelding pointed Daszak to other funding opportunities and participated in Zoom calls with him.

“We are always interested in hearing about your scientific advances,” Erbelding wrote. “I hope that you have seen our rolling [grant] announcements, which might afford you an opportunity to continue progress under another grant number. I know that Erik [Stemmy], Diane, and Alan in the Respiratory Disease Branch would be happy to advise you on a potential submission.”

In May 2020, Daszak thanked them for their “support on this and other work.”

As the topic heated up on Capitol Hill in the summer of 2021, Stemmy and Erbelding met with Daszak again. The NIAID meeting occurred on July 16, 2021, a few days before Lauer requested more information from EcoHealth on July 23, 2021.

It’s clear from internal records that Stemmy and Erbelding were well aware of the lab origin controversy as they met with EcoHealth.

Erbelding had been dispatched by Building One to discover how many of EcoHealth’s grant dollars had been subcontracted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology when the grant first received attention from the Trump White House, according to emails and congressional testimony. 

When Fauci met with EcoHealth collaborator and University of North Carolina coronavirologist Ralph Baric in February 2020 to discuss whether his research with the Wuhan lab had been properly regulated, Erbelding was in the room. 

Of course, the EcoHealth controversy threatened to turn a spotlight on the earlier decisions of NIAID officials.

Stemmy had helped scientists from the Wuhan lab, including Zhengli Shi, obtain approval to visit the institute’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, in June 2017. As EcoHealth’s program officer, he helped facilitate EcoHealth’s gain-of-function research during a pause on most coronavirus gain-of-function research from 2014-2017 and did not recommend the work be evaluated by the Pandemic Potential Pathogen Committee (“P3CO”) put in place after the pause.

Stemmy had also not flagged that EcoHealth missed a September 30, 2019, due date to submit its progress report describing its work in the months before the pandemic’s outbreak, Congressional testimony shows. In response to Lauer’s letters, the progress report was submitted on August 3, 2021, after the pandemic had already emerged, when an immense incentive existed to not disclose experiments that could bring the group under further scrutiny.

Jean Patterson

Despite concerns about Daszak’s research in the media, in the White House, and in NIH’s Building One, his goodwill within NIAID had apparently not diminished. 

By August 2020, new NIAID funding of $7.5 million surged to EcoHealth to create an NIAID Center for Research on Emerging Infectious Diseases, its most generous NIH grant to date. 

Once the funding was formally awarded, Morens asked Daszak about receiving a “kickback,” a comment he would later describe as “black humor.”

“Ahem.… do I get a kickback???? Too much fooking money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss….” he wrote. “Seriously, this is great news.”

After his NIAID grant was suspended, Daszak had pitched the idea of continuing the same research in Southeast Asian countries bordering China to circumvent the concerns about the pandemic’s origins.

“We’re working on a short draft of how we could have easily changed the geography to the countries adjacent to China, as we proposed to Erik Stemmy and Emily Erbelding,” Daszak wrote on April 25, 2020.

According to a press release on the EcoHealth website that has since been deleted, the new project expanded their controversial research beyond coronaviruses in China to several families of viruses in Southeast Asia. Draft grant documents describing the $7.5 million project obtained by US Right to Know through a FOIA lawsuit further reveal the shift in focus to Southeast Asia. 

Daszak even leveraged his contacts at NIAID to push back on provisions of his new contract related to biosafety. Daszak found a sympathetic ear in Jean Patterson, then the head of translational research at NIAID’s Virology Branch, who oversaw the CREID grants.

“By the way, I’m currently in the process of dealing with unexpected changes to my Notice of Award for my new contract with NIAID. We had a para inserted that means we have send copies of subcontracts to NIAID, and explain our ‘Biosafety monitoring’ plans,” Daszak wrote to Morens in October 2020, a few weeks after the award was announced. “I spoke with Jean Patterson who’s running these CREID contacts and she had no idea what they were after. Clearly it’s the [NIH] director’s office interfering.”

Daszak also said he may alert the press of his outrage over this proviso. 

“I’m going to try to deal with it quietly for now,” Daszak said. “But if they fuck me around, I’ll be talking with the press.”

Just weeks later, in September, NIAID obligated a further $2.3 million to EcoHealth for research on Nipah virus.

“I’m thrilled to share the good news that our proposal to study Nipah virus has been awarded!” Vice President for Science and Outreach at EcoHealth Alliance Jon Epstein wrote on September 22, 2020. “The research has high relevance given the current pandemic.”

Anthony Fauci

Daszak praised Fauci’s statements to the press downplaying the possibility of a leak at Daszak’s partner lab — comments that Daszak in turn highlighted to Fauci’s employees at NIAID. Even as he expressed bitter resentment against Collins, Daszak expressed gratitude for Fauci. 

Daszak flagged comments by Fauci “throwing cold water on the conspiracy theory coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab,” as they were summarized in the press, to Stemmy.

“We’re all very delighted to see that Tony Fauci came out publicly with a comment that dispels the lab origin theory of COVID-19,” Daszak wrote. 

Daszak also highlighted comments Fauci made in a National Geographic interview headlined, “Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab” in which he “stated that he doesn’t buy the ‘accidental lab release’ hypothesis,” to Morens.

“It’s a very worrying time for us here at EcoHealth, but knowing that you’re all out there working in the background and that Tony’s speaking truth to power is extremely important — a slight relief in a tough week,” Daszak wrote to Morens on May 7, 2020. 

At a June 23, 2020, Congressional hearing when Fauci was asked about the grant being terminated, he did not defend the decision by others within NIH to seek data from Wuhan. He simply stated, “It was canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it,” in an apparent allusion to Trump.

Three days later, House Democrats addressed a letter to HHS expressing concern about the termination of EcoHealth’s grant, citing press reports and Fauci’s testimony to characterize the grant’s jeopardy as part of a wider provocation of China by the Trump administration.

In early 2021, Daszak briefed NIAID, and may have briefed Fauci directly, another email indicates, on the World Health Organization-commissioned international mission to China. Daszak had advanced the conclusion that a lab leak in Wuhan was “extremely unlikely” as the only American citizen on the team, bringing him into conflict with the World Health Organization Director-General Adhanom Ghebreyesus Tedros, who argued the possibility had been ruled out prematurely without evidence.

But NIH officials outside of NIAID continued to ask EcoHealth about the Wuhan lab into the summer and fall of 2021. Daszak dragged his feet. 

That year, the issue of a possible connection between NIAID and the pandemic’s origin became more salient because of a series of high-profile Senate hearings in which Paul questioned Fauci about it.

Morens apparently ferried information from Daszak to Fauci about efforts in Congress to investigate the pandemic’s origins.

In an October 24, 2021, email, Daszak asked Morens for input on a response to a letter from Lauer seeking, among other information, unpublished data that might shed light on whether the Wuhan lab housed a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.

“Peter, from Tony’s numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you, which protects their own reputations,” Morens wrote back.

The next day, in an October 25, 2021, email, Morens advised Daszak on a few points about how he should respond to Building One after speaking with Fauci. He did so through their colleague Keusch, as he had been advised by Fauci not to speak to Daszak directly. Daszak was advised to contact Stemmy to ensure he was “on board” with Daszak’s responses to Lauer.

“First, on the timeline to make it more specific with dates and details. Getting in touch with Stemmy is really important and being sure he is well informed, acknowledges the communications you mention, and is on board because he will certainly be questioned,” the email reads. “He also suggested that you discuss with him that…when you were aware that it was necessary to file the 5 year report the system shut you out and you presumed that was normal process as you were then into grant year 1.”

In other words, Fauci’s aide Morens, after speaking with Fauci, advised Daszak to confer with Stemmy on his explanation for the late progress report. Daszak has said that there was a technical glitch, so EcoHealth decided to forgo the final year’s report given some of this information had been reported in an application for an extension of the grant.

Stemmy denied speaking to Daszak to advise him on responses to Lauer in a congressional interview.

More of the Same

It was obvious to Fauci’s inner circle at NIAID that the new CREID grant mirrored EcoHealth’s prior work — just the sort of research that had alarmed the public and the White House in the first place.

Morens described the CREID endeavor to Folkers, Fauci’s chief of staff, as “PREDICT on steroids.” PREDICT was the name of EcoHealth’s grant with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which dovetailed with the group’s work for NIAID.

The group may have simply reappropriated samples from its PREDICT program for the project, according to draft grant reports.

Draft grant documents describing the $7.5 million project obtained through a FOIA lawsuit show the group intended to continue working with the viruses that had in part brought EcoHealth under scrutiny, namely viruses from Mojiang, a county in rural Yunnan, China.

The “Mojiang mine” is the test cave in rural China where the American-Chinese research collaboration discovered one of the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2. The mine is also associated with a 2012 cluster of respiratory illnesses.

Pressure campaign targets Francis Collins

Several emails reveal the quarrel between NIH Building One, which was attempting to obtain information from EcoHealth, and NIAID, which was helping Daszak. Daszak worked connections in the scientific community to turn up the heat on Collins.

Across many emails, Daszak and his allies expressed resentment against NIH’s Building One, especially Collins and Lauer.

“Good that he’s going,” Daszak wrote in response to the news that Collins would be stepping down as NIH director in 2022. “But he’s left our organization as a daily target for conspiracies, with death threats, media attacks, and legal actions against us. All this began when he decided not to stand up to political interference in NIH funding, under Trump.”

Daszak appears to have expressed no such resentment against Fauci, to whom he had a line through Morens.

Daszak put pressure on Collins to restore his prior NIAID funding in late August, around the same time the separate $7.5 million grant had been formally secured.

An August 19, 2020, Wall Street Journal story quoted Harold Varmus, the former NIH director whom Keusch told Daszak he would contact about his grant, denouncing the grant’s suspension.

After the story published, Collins wrote to Varmus, linking to an article describing NIH’s pressure on EcoHealth Alliance to provide records about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and another link to an article calling attention to RaTG13 and the Moijang mine.

“This EcoHealth grant and its connection to Wuhan has presented one of the most difficult and wrenching situations of my 11 years as NIH Director. Most of that is not appropriate for email,” Collins wrote. “There’s a lot more to this story than we have been able to talk about. Tony and I would like the chance to speak with you about this.”

Collins’ board of advisors also backed Daszak.

“Recent statements from numerous scientific organizations and leaders in the scientific community express grave concern about the termination of an NIH grant to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance,” the statement read. “Members of the NIH ACD share the grave concerns expressed by the community.”

Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs, which sells restriction enzymes used in viral engineering, organized a group of Nobel laureates to oppose the suspension of the earlier grant. A letter of opposition signed by a coalition of scientific professional societies soon followed. 

Daszak also recruited members of the press to pressure NIH into restoring funding without turning over key documentation. 

Just 10 days after Daszak’s grant first generated controversy at a White House press briefing, Politico ran a story titled “Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties.”

Keusch tried to persuade the Politico reporter to continue to turn her investigative spotlight on NIH’s Building One. 

“The spotlight needs to turn on NIH and what it has done and what that is unleashing,” he wrote.

“Pushing on this as I can,” the reporter replied.

In a similar vein, Daszak persuaded a BuzzFeed reporter to submit a FOIA request for Lauer’s records to investigate Building One. The resulting story faulted an activist group for having “tapped into partisan politics to make big problems for Fauci” over the EcoHealth grant beginning in April 2020, when Fauci had first become privately concerned about NIAID connections to Wuhan two months prior.

Other stories in the mainstream press also portrayed the termination of the grant as strictly political and scientifically unsound. 

Despite Daszak’s ire, Collins was publicly dismissive of the idea that the pandemic could have resulted from EcoHealth’s research in Wuhan. 

Under Collins’s direction, NIH apparently did not respond in detail to Congressional questions about its efforts to obtain more information from EcoHealth.

When Congressional Democrats asked for details about EcoHealth’s grant in June 2020, NIH stonewalled. 

“We are going to draft a response to the letter that doesn’t actually answer the questions in the letter but rather presents a narrative of what happened at a high level, ending with the reinstatement and attaching the NIH reinstatement letter,” wrote then-NIH Associate Director for Legislative Policy & Analysis Adrienne Hallett on July 21, 2020.

“Sounds like a good plan,” Collins replied.

In addition, Collins’s office reassured a Congressional committee and the public in October 2021 that the viruses and experiments funded by the US could not be connected to the pandemic’s origin.

Collins’s public reassurances did not reflect the fact that NIH wrote to EcoHealth in a letter dated the same day asking for unpublished viral genomes.

Known Unknowns

Daszak never turned over genomic data about the viruses housed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology or lab notebooks. He only asked them for them once.

Daszak sent the email to his longtime collaborators in January 2022, 20 months after Lauer first questioned EcoHealth about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in April 2020.

“We did try to get them by the way,” Daszak said in reference to the lab notebooks at a Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on May 1, 2024.

“Well, ‘try’ might be a strong word,” replied the committee’s staff director Mitch Benzine.“You never actually requested the lab notebooks, you just forwarded the [NIH] letter. And you never emailed again?”

“Correct,” Daszak replied. “Clearly the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] is not going to reply.”

“It’s possible they have hidden away some viruses from us that we don’t know about, yes,” Daszak also conceded at that same hearing.

To the public’s knowledge, the US government has never accessed the coronavirus genomic data stored in Wuhan, some of which was collected with American funding. 

“We determined at the time we could not resolve the WIV record problem,” Lauer told congressional investigators.

In July 2023, federal funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been temporarily suspended pending a debarment investigation. Two months later, in September 2023, the investigation concluded resulting in a 10-year debarment for the Wuhan lab.

Lauer was asked by Congressional investigators whether he had seen any similar situations with a grantee or subgrantee refusing to turn over lab notebooks.

“Yes, I have seen that,” he replied. “I’ve seen that in scientific misconduct investigations, where laboratory notebooks or other original files are requested and the parties concerned will state that they lost them, they don’t have them.”

EcoHealth’s NIAID grant was reinstated by April 2023, a decision reached by Lauer, Erbelding, and Fauci’s principal deputy, Hugh Auchincloss. The grant would proceed without collaboration from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with stricter biosafety and reporting standards. 

Though NIH had given up on obtaining more information, journalists and Congressional investigators pried documents from EcoHealth through the Freedom of Information Act and Congressional subpoena.

Evidence emerged of other apparent violations of federal grant laws, including evidence that EcoHealth planned to conduct risky coronavirus experiments at the lab in Wuhan without adequate biosafety protections, while telling prospective funders at the Pentagon that the experiments would be performed at a more rigorous biosafety level in the US.

These revelations came in spite of Morens attempting to omit some of his emails with Daszak from their legally required public disclosure via FOIA and to obstruct the Congressional investigation, internal emails suggest.

EcoHealth and Daszak found all of their federal funding suspended in May 2024 and a debarment investigation was initiated, more than four years after Lauer sent his first letter to the group.

Emails used in the story were obtained through U.S. Right to Know FOIA lawsuits against the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, as well as other FOIA lawsuits and congressional subpoenas. Read all of U.S. Right to Know’s documents concerning the origins of Covid-19 here.

Timeline

January 6, 2020

As word of a novel coronavirus in China spread, Erik Stemmy, who oversees the coronavirus research portfolio at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, contacted EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak for intel.

“Definitely focusing attention on this, Erik,” Daszak replied. “I spent New Year’s Eve talking with our China contacts and with ProMed staff in between glasses. I’ve got more information but it’s all off the record. Could I give you a call to fill you in?”

January 8, 2020

Daszak spoke to Stemmy and Alan Embry, chief of the NIAID’s respiratory diseases branch. 

Daszak reported that he had stopped receiving updates on the rumors from his colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology two weeks prior. He had last heard from Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan lab on December 25, 2019, six days before the world became aware of a new pathogen in Wuhan on December 31, 2019.

January 14, 2020

Daszak informed Stemmy that the recently published genome of the novel coronavirus reveals it is similar to a virus collected by EcoHealth, “Rp3,” a likely reference to RaTG13, a bat coronavirus stored at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with 96 percent homology with SARS-CoV-2.

January 23, 2020

Daszak and Stemmy discussed supplemental funds for EcoHealth Alliance.

January 27, 2020

Daszak shared information about the novel coronavirus and his own work with David Morens, senior scientific advisor to Anthony Fauci, and Stemmy.

February 4, 2020

NIAID began hosting weekly calls about the “nCoV,” or novel coronavirus. Stemmy and Daszak were participants on this call.

April 11, 2020 

A Daily Mail story, citing research by animal rights group White Coat Waste Project, reported that “the Wuhan Institute was experimenting on bats from the area already known to be the source of Covid-19 – and doing so with American money,” prompting questions from Congress. 

April 14, 2020

Lawrence Tabak, then the principal deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, copied Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer on an email thread about the controversy.

“April 14, 2020: Larry Tabak (“LT”) loops in Mike Lauer (“ML”) on email string regarding Animal Rights and Congressional complaints,” Lauer wrote in his notes.

April 15, 2020

Daszak briefs NIAID on sarbecovirus gene sequences that he says help shed light on the geographic origins of SARS-CoV-2.

April 17, 2020

Fauci was asked about the lab origin hypothesis at a White House press briefing with former President Donald Trump present.

Fauci stepped up to the podium, and citing a recent scientific editorial, said the genome was consistent with a natural spillover.

Unbeknownst to the public, the March 2020 editorial in Nature Medicine Fauci cited to downplay the lab origin theory — “The proximal origin of SARS-Cov-2” — had been prompted in part by him, and he had been privy to its drafting. The authors’ private concerns about evidence for a lab origin and their lack of confidence in their key arguments were later revealed through FOIA and congressional subpoena. 

Despite Fauci’s bravado, a few minutes later, another reporter pressed further on the possibility of a lab origin and the American grant that had funded coronavirus research at the lab at the center of speculation.

“Why would the US give a grant like that to China?” she asked.

“We’re going to end that grant very quickly,” Trump responded.

Daszak, watching the press conference at home, hushed his family in sudden panic, Science later reported.

April 18, 2020

Daszak forwarded two news stories about Fauci’s comments diminishing the possibility of a lab origin to Erik Stemmy, the NIAID program officer overseeing his grant. He copied Emily Erbelding, the director of the NIAID division of microbiology and infectious diseases.

“We’re all very delighted to see that Tony Fauci came out publicly with a comment that dispels the lab origin theory of COVID-19,” Daszak wrote. 

Daszak sent the hyperlinks to two news stories about Fauci’s endorsement of “Proximal Origin,” one headlined, “Fauci Throws Cold Water on Conspiracy Theory Coronavirus Escaped from Chinese Lab.”

April 19, 2020

A letter suspending funding to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology was drafted by then-general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services Robert Charrow at the request of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Tabak asked that Lauer send the letter. NIH Director Francis Collins was also part of discussions about this letter with Lauer and Tabak. The letter from NIH’s central “Building One” sought information about the Wuhan lab from EcoHealth as a condition of restoring the group’s NIAID funding. 

The letter explicitly mentioned concerns about the pandemic beginning at the Wuhan lab.

“The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19,” the letter read.” Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs. While we review these allegations during the period of suspension, you are instructed to cease providing any funds to Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Lauer asked Daszak for a list of Chinese collaborators on his NIAID grant, “Type 1 and Type 2,” meaning both the original multiyear grant and its more recent renewal: “It would be helpful for us to know about all China-based participants in this work since the Type 1 grant started in 2014 – who they were and how much money they received. The sooner you can get us that information, the better. Best, Mike.”

April 20, 2020

An op-ed appeared in the Washington Post about State Department cables warning of safety issues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

April 21, 2020

Daszak apparently misled Lauer in response to his request for a list of China-based participants on his research grant. 

He responded by email to Lauer: “I can categorically state that no funds from 2R01 AI110964-06 have been sent to Wuhan Institute of Virology, nor has any contract been signed. Furthermore we will comply with NIAID’s requirements, of course.” The email referred to a grant number that only applied to the group’s grant since July 2019.

Daszak may have “played semantics” to give a false impression that EcoHealth had never signed a contract with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or subcontracted funds there, according to a Congressional investigation. Daszak did not mention the extensive work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the “Type One” NIAID award that underwrote the research collaboration until 2019. Daszak would soon after describe the group’s relationship with “colleagues in Wuhan” as spanning 15 years.

Lauer responded to Daszak: “Many thanks Peter for your response. We note that: No monies have gone to Wuhan Institute of Virology on the Type 2 award and no contract has been signed. You agree you will not provide any funds to Wuhan Institute of Virology until and unless directed otherwise by NIH. All foreign sites for the Type 1 and Type 2 awards have been documented in the progress reports submitted to NIH. We appreciate your working with us. Best, Mike.”

April 22, 2020

Lauer sent Tabak detailed information about EcoHealth and WIV, according to his notes.

April 23, 2020

On April 23, 2020, an EcoHealth employee told Lauer that “as usual we are in close contact with our program officer Erik Stemmy.”

Daszak’s office again reached out to Stemmy and Erbelding at NIAID about NIH’s requests for documents, which Daszak mistakenly refers to as a “FOIA request.” The three apparently participated on a call the next day.

April 24, 2020

Lauer sent a letter to Daszak terminating the grant.

“I am writing to notify you that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an Institute with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has elected to terminate the project Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, funded under grant R01 AI110964, for convenience,” it stated. “At this time, NIH does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.”

April 27, 2020

EcoHealth scheduled a call about “potential for geographic expansion” and “advice on next steps” with Stemmy, Erbelding, and Erbelding’s deputy.

The email subject line was “EHA EcoHealth, NIAID, NIH Geographic Expansion Call.”

Daszak wrote later that he made a pitch to Stemmy and Erbelding to expand EcoHealth’s research to Southeast Asia as a means of quelling concerns about its research in China. Four months later, NIAID granted EcoHealth a $7.5 million grant for the “Emerging Infectious Diseases South East Asia Research Collaboration Hub.”

April 28, 2020

Morens helped Daszak edit a statement about the grant’s termination.

April 30, 2020

Stemmy reached out to Daszak with “two new funding opportunities.”

May 6, 2020

Lauer sends detailed information about EcoHealth and the Wuhan Institute of Virology to “OIG OI / ONS,” according to his notes, likely the HHS Office of the Inspector General’s Office of Investigations and HHS Office of National Security.

May 21, 2020

A letter cosigned by 77 Nobel laureates protests the grant’s suspension. The letter was prompted by Rich Roberts, chief scientific officer at New England Biolabs.

May 22, 2020

The law firm representing EcoHealth notifies the NIH that it was appealing the termination.

May 25, 2020

Daszak writes to Stemmy and Erbelding to inform them that he is appealing the termination of his grant. He thanks them for their “support on this and other work.”

Erbelding points Daszak to new funding opportunities and says that NIAID officials can advise him on how to successfully submit a proposal.

“We are always interested in hearing about your scientific advances,” Erbelding wrote. “I hope that you have seen our rolling [grant] announcements, which might afford you an opportunity to continue progress under another grant number. I know that Erik [Stemmy], Diane, and Alan in the Respiratory Disease Branch would be happy to advise you on a potential submission.”

June 23, 2020

At a June 23, 2020, Congressional hearing when Fauci was asked about the grant being terminated, he did not defend the decision by others within NIH to seek data from Wuhan. He simply stated “it was canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it,” in an apparent allusion to Trump.

June 26, 2020

Democratic chairs of the House Committees on Energy and Commerce, and Science, Space and Technology address a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services with “strong concerns” about the termination of the EcoHealth grant, citing Fauci’s testimony in order to characterize the grant’s suspension as part of a wider provocation of China by the Trump administration.

“The Administration has been pushing this [lab leak] theory despite scientific experts saying this path of transmission would be virtually impossible given what is known about the virus and lab safety protocols,” the letter read. “If this theory is the basis for the grant termination, it would be an egregious example of the Administration politicizing scientific decision making in order to further a politically convenient narrative.”

July 8, 2020

Lauer suspends EcoHealth’s grant and asks Daszak for more information about the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He writes that EcoHealth is out of compliance with laws regulating federal subcontractors. 

Building One sought information about RaTG13, a closely related virus to SARS-CoV-2 collected with the assistance of EcoHealth, a third party audit of the lab, and other details about the coronavirus work underway at the partner lab. Lauer asked that Daszak arrange an outside inspection of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

The letter asked that “specific attention” be paid “to addressing the question of whether WIV staff had SARS-CoV-2 in their possession prior to December 2019.” 

July 21, 2020

Democrats send a letter to NIH opposing EcoHealth’s suspension, citing Fauci’s congressional testimony, putting Building One in a bind.

“We are going to draft a response to the letter that doesn’t actually answer the questions in the letter but rather presents a narrative of what happened at a high level, ending with the reinstatement and attaching the NIH reinstatement letter,” wrote then-NIH Associate Director for Legislative Policy & Analysis Adrienne Hallett on July 21, 2020.

“Sounds like a good plan,” Collins replied.

August 27, 2020

The Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases grant moves ahead, and EcoHealth received a surge of $7.5 million from NIAID without having to turn over data about the Wuhan lab. 

Like Daszak had suggested, the grant involved shifting some of the same lines of research to China’s neighbors.

Another $8.9 million is also awarded to two coauthors of the “Proximal Origin” paper that Fauci cited to downplay the possibility of a lab leak at the April 17, 2020, press conference.

October 23, 2020

Lauer rebuts the letter from Daszak’s lawyers and requests additional documents.

February 1, 2021

Morens writes to Daszak to request a briefing for Fauci on the WHO-China mission to Wuhan, in which a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was described as being “extremely unlikely.” 

March 3, 2021

Erbelding has a call with Daszak. “Confirmed: Call with EcoHealth Alliance,” the email subject line read.

March 10, 2021

Lauer resends two prior letters (July 8, 2020 and October 23, 2020) to Daszak.

March 17, 2021

Morens meets with Daszak and Keusch on Zoom.

March 29, 2021

Morens edits Daszak’s response to Lauer.

April 11, 2021

Daszak replies to Lauer but the reply includes none of the requested documents.

April 13, 2021

Lauer again asks Daszak for documents.

April 23, 2021

Daszak submits some documents to Lauer. 

May 16, 2021

The NIH Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration and Office of the General Counsel finds “multiple deficiencies” in the documents, according to Lauer’s notes.

May 26, 2021

The Office of the Director of Extramural Research, Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, and Office of the General Counsel meet and suggest that the Office of the Inspector General audit EcoHealth.

June 11, 2021 

OIG notifies NIH of a planned audit of NIH and EcoHealth.

Meanwhile, Collins’s advisory group at NIH opposes the scrutiny of EcoHealth in a statement: “Recent statements from numerous scientific organizations and leaders in the scientific community express grave concern about the termination of an NIH grant to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance,” the statement read. “Members of the NIH ACD share the grave concerns expressed by the community.”

July 16, 2021

Erbelding and Stemmy had another call with Daszak about his grant update.

July 23, 2021

In a letter dated July 23, 2021, the NIH requested that EcoHealth provide records “validating expenditures specific to R01AI110964 as well as any and all monitoring, safety, and financial reports specific to R01AI110964 that WIV submitted to EcoHealth, in order to analyze WIV compliance with the terms and conditions of the grant.”

The NIH also informed EcoHealth that it was delinquent in the submission of its progress report for the period from June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019. The report was due on September 30, 2019. The NIH requested that EcoHealth provide the remaining documents and outstanding reports by August 27, 2021. 

August 27, 2021

EcoHealth progress report submits some of the requested paperwork, including a progress report due nearly two years prior.

October 20, 2021

NIAID concedes that it funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan via EcoHealth Alliance, and it was not properly reported to NIH, as reflected in the newly submitted progress report.

Yet Collins may have misled Congress and the public when NIH asserted in a press release that “analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.”

The statement did not reflect that the very same day NIH had asked EcoHealth to turn over any missing viral data. The NIH requested that EcoHealth provide all unpublished data supported by the grant not already reported in its progress reports. 

October 26, 2021

Daszak asked Morens to help him edit his response to questions from Lauer, including the request for unpublished data.

November 2021 

Lauer asked EcoHealth to provide missing lab notebooks and electronic files requested by NIH, which had still not been supplied by Daszak. 

January 6, 2022

The NIH again requested that EcoHealth provide the lab notebooks and WIV electronic files. 

January 21, 2022

EcoHealth informed the NIH that it had forwarded the NIH’s January 6, 2022, letter to their collaborators in Wuhan but that they had not heard back. 

August 19, 2022

The NIH notified EcoHealth that it was terminating the subaward from EcoHealth to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

September 28, 2022

Erbelding and Daszak participate on a call. The subject line is “Aim Renegotiation Discussion.” 

October 18, 2022

Erbelding and Daszak participate on another call. The subject line is “Aim Renegotiation Discussion.” 

May 8, 2023

EcoHealth’s grant is reinstated in a joint decision reached by Lauer, Erbelding, Diane Post, and Fauci’s principal deputy, Hugh Auchincloss.

The grant would proceed without collaboration from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and with stricter biosafety and reporting standards. 

September 2023

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is debarred from receiving federal funding for 10 years.

May 2024

Prompted by a Congressional investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services initiates a debarment investigation into EcoHealth and Daszak that could bar them from federal funding for years. Both the organization and Daszak personally have funding suspended as the investigation proceeds.

Daszak vows to contest it.

August 2024

EcoHealth repeats its strategy of leaning on contacts in the scientific community to maintain funding as it contests the debarment, releasing a statement to “commend virologists speaking out against lab leak disinformation and the anti-science movement.” The statement praises Fauci and media articles downplaying the lab-leak theory a conspiracy theory. It calls upon scientific organizations and professional societies to do the same.

Republished from U.S. Right to Know

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Two time failed presidential loser Hillary Clinton has said that she wishes she’d been MORE derogatory toward supporters of Donald Trump in 2016.

Clinton has stated that her “basket of deplorables” comment was “too kind.”

Writing in the legacy propaganda outlet The Washington Post, Hillary noted “In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as ‘the basket of deplorables.’ I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug.”

Hillary admitted that the comment was political suicide, but says she still wishes she’d gone further.

“It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6,” she writes.

“The masks have come off, and if anything, ‘deplorable’ is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters,” she further snides.

She continues:

“Talking about the ‘deplorables’ in 2016, I said, ‘Some of those folks, they are irredeemable.’ Part of me would still say this is objectively true.”

As we highlighted, just a day after Donald Trump was almost murdered by a deranged leftist lunatic for the second time in as many months, Clinton got on TV and described the former president as “dangerous.”

She then ordered the media not to tone down the rhetoric where Trump is concerned and “stick with” the narrative that he is a ‘dangerous demagogue.’

Who are the extremists?

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday ruled that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name will remain on the state’s presidential ballot in November even though he has suspended his independent campaign.

In a ruling on Sept. 27, the Supreme Court said Kennedy’s appellate briefs offered no argument that the lower court misinterpreted the law stating a candidate can only be removed from the ballot in the event of their death.

The court also found that Kennedy’s appellate briefs were inadequate for reviewing his claims and the lower court exercise of discretion in denying his request for a temporary injunction—which would have removed his name from the Wisconsin ballot.

“The challenger must demonstrate that the circuit court did not examine the relevant facts, apply a proper standard of law, or reach a conclusion that a reasonable judge could reach by applying a demonstrated rational process. We conclude that he has failed to satisfy this burden,” the ruling stated.

The Supreme Court noted that the lower court had concluded that Kennedy did not suffer any irreparable harm since he had voluntarily submitted his nomination papers and declaration of candidacy.

The lower court also said that removing Kennedy’s name from the ballot could inflict harm on the public, citing the high cost of reprinting ballots and logistical problems in conducting an election with ballots on which stickers were placed to obscure his name, according to the ruling.

“We emphasize that we are not making any legal determinations on our own regarding the claims made by Kennedy and we are not agreeing with the circuit court’s legal conclusions on those claims. We simply are unable to make such determinations, given the inadequate briefing presented to us,” the Supreme Court stated.

“Consequently, because there is no basis in this appeal on which we could determine that the circuit court erroneously exercised its discretion, we must affirm the circuit court’s order denying Kennedy’s motion for a temporary injunction,” it added.

The Epoch Times reached out to Kennedy’s attorney for comment but has not heard back as of publication time.

In a concurring opinion joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, Justice Rebecca Bradley stated that she did not disagree with the Supreme Court’s finding that Kennedy’s arguments were “insufficiently developed.”

However, Bradley said that the timelines under which the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) and the Supreme Court operate “hamstring candidates in Kennedy’s situation.”

“Kennedy could have filed an original action petition with this court rather than proceeding in circuit court, but this court’s decisions to grant or deny original action petitions lack predictable standards, leaving parties to guess the right avenue for challenging WEC’s decisions,” the justice stated.

Bradley also raised concerns over the “immense” ramifications of the case, saying that keeping a non-candidate such as Kennedy on the ballot could lead to confusion among voters.

“Voters may cast their ballots in favor of a candidate who withdrew his candidacy, thereby losing their right to cast a meaningful vote. Ballots listing a non-candidate mislead voters and may skew a presidential election,” the justice stated.

Kennedy withdrew from the presidential race at the end of August, endorsing former President Donald Trump and seeking to have his name removed from the ballot in key battleground states so as not to split the conservative vote.

After the WEC voted to keep Kennedy on the ballot despite his request to be removed, he filed a lawsuit in early September, alleging discrimination.

His attorneys claimed that major-party candidates were subject to a “different playbook” from the one for independent or third-party candidates, who faced a tighter deadline to pull their nominations.

Dane County Circuit Judge Stephen Ehlke denied Kennedy’s request on Sept. 16, and stated that many county clerks had already sent out ballots for printing with Kennedy’s name included ahead of a looming deadline.

Authored by Noel Williams via AmericanThinker.com,

Harris’s handlers try to portray her as joyful, and Trump as angry. 

How dumb can they be?  How dumb do they think we are? 

Harris’s supposed joy is sickeningly fake, but Trump’s anger is righteous.

Emotions of anger are often viewed negatively; in fact, change agents often experience anger, and they are also optimistic.  Those traits are not mutually exclusive, but often mutually dependent.  Indeed, angry people are often more optimistic. 

Trump is well known for his negotiating strategies; his book The Art of the Deal is a bestseller — multiple times.  Well, it turns out that anger can also be a shrewd negotiating strategy.  As this research indicates, “Viewing angry negotiators as formidable opponents, we respond to their demands by making concessions.”

In addition to being more optimistic and stimulating formidable negotiating tactics, anger is, when channeled constructively, a motivating force.

So if Trump is angry, according to Harris, then bring it on! 

Optimism, strength in negotiations, and motivation are what America needs right now.

What we don’t need is another village idiot in the White House.  They can be mistaken as “joyful,” but that’s just a case of ignorance being bliss.  How dumb do they think we are?

Our Founders were angry at times.  They were also motivated and optimistic, though Benjamin Franklin intimated some concern about the fragility of republics. 

In reply to a question about what the constitutional delegates had crafted, he said: 

“A republic, if you can keep it.” 

Keeping a representative republic sometimes requires anger, and its accompanying traits, rather than wanton, incongruous joy.

Given the anti-American policies and anti-republic demagoguery the disdainful Dems have wrought, we need some authentic anger to restore American exceptionalism. We need some grit and passion to assert our rightful place as the last great hope of Earth.  We need an “angry” negotiator like Trump to keep our republic, and that’s an optimistic and motivational point of view. 

The current village idiot in the White House is angry, but without the positive synergetic traits; for the sake of our republic, we don’t want to replace him with a “joyful” village idiot. To play on the clarion call from the great Patrick Henry: Give me liberty, or give me joy.  The latter could be the death knell of our great republic.   

Harris’s fake joy is a euphemism for blissful ignorance.  She can’t stand alone, so the Dem and MSM apparatus are propping her up, but we are not as dumb as their joyless village idiot. How dumb can they be? 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

There is an interesting controversy growing over an alleged eviction by an Airbnb host in Philadelphia of Trump supporters. The conservative site Breitbart is reporting that “ballot chasers” for Trump were allegedly given an hour to clear out after the host learned that they were in Pennsylvania to get out the vote for Trump. If true, the incident raises a serious matter for Airbnb over hosts imposing political conditions for the use of their property.

Once again, we have not heard the other side to this controversy. However, if these allegations are established, it raises a variation of an issue that has been discussed for years on this blog: the role of private companies or businesses in censoring speech or blacklisting individuals.

First for the obvious threshold point. Private property owners have a right to exclude people from their property on any number of issues. This homeowner is likely to be lionized by many who agree with the decision. If an owner wants to run their home like an Airdnc, they have every right to do so. The question is whether they can do so as an Airbnb.

It is worth noting that many of the same individuals supporting this owner likely opposed the right of business owners in cases like Masterpiece Cake Shop and 303 Creative. In those cases, the owners refused to make products for celebrations that conflicted with their religious views.

I have previously written why businesses should have the right of such denial as a matter of free speech, including in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

In this case, an owner is accused of refusing service or rentals based on political grounds.

The question is not whether this owner has the right of exclusion in a home, but whether Airbnb is now allowing such threshold political tests to be applied by owners. It would create an uncertainty for guests who would not know if they may be tossed to the street if they reveal their political viewpoints or affiliations.

The incident could be a type of micro-cancel problem. We have seen universities and colleges cancel conservative and libertarian speakers under pressure from faculty and students who cannot tolerate opposing views from being spoken on campuses.

Citizens Alliance’s PA CHASE says that it is still pursuing a requested $5,000 refund.

Airbnb notes in its contractual language that

“Guest identity verification, reservation screening and the 24-hour safety line are tools or features used by Airbnb to help verify guest identities, screen reservations for potential party and property damage risk, and provide access to Airbnb’s 24-hour safety line.”

There is no indication that the group was planning large gatherings at the location. However, it could be cited by the owner.

If the group is mistaken or misrepresenting the facts, Airbnb should make that clear. It should also make clear what its policy is on possible political conditions for Airbnb listings. One possibility is that the owner will argue that he or she did not want the property used for a high-traffic political effort operating out of the home. A homeowner could reasonably demand that the property not be used for large parties or high-traffic enterprises.

Conversely, Citizens Alliance is suggesting that they were simply planning to stay at the home. Moreover, other guests have likely held parties on rented premises without such alleged peremptory action. Notably, Airbnb promises homeowners up to $3 million in insurance for any damage to property.

Airbnb has a strong anti-discrimination policy on race but is silent on political viewpoints.

If the host barred Trump supporters due simply to their political affiliations or the purpose of their visit, it would seem inimical to the business model of the company. However, there are difficult hypotheticals on the extremes.

For example, what if an owner came to hand over the keys only to find guests wearing KKK or neo-Nazi outfits? What if a pro-life owner learned that the home would be used at the base camp for a pro-abortion campaign? Do they have the right to decline service like a cake shop or web designer?

The difference may be based on the use of the property. Airbnb operates like an aggregated hotel chain using private owners to supply the rooms. Just as Hyatt cannot impose political litmus tests, it is unworkable to allow such a test by individual owners and still maintain a viable national chain.

If this owner was in compliance with Airbnb contractual conditions, the site should make that clear to renters. At a minimum, Airbnb would have to require owners to state upfront any threshold political conditions. That would be a nightmare for the company since the site would turn into a patchwork of threshold exclusions. That would destroy the premise of the site which treats the room stock as uniformly available and only differentiated on physical layout and pricing.

Notably, in cases like Masterpiece Cake Shop, the owner insisted that he would sell pre-made cakes to anyone who wanted to buy them. He only objected to preparing special cakes for ceremonies that contradicted his religious views.

In the same way, Airbnb could make clear that, so long as the property itself will not be used for political or advocacy activities, owners are expected to adopt a non-discriminatory policy on political viewpoints. The cost of renting out your home to strangers is that you will likely disagree with the values of many of the renters.

Airbnb is reportedly still looking at the refund request.

By Jesse Colombo

Two days ago, I published a Substack piece titled “Here’s When Silver Will Surge Like Gold” and followed it up with a related Twitter thread that quickly went viral. On Tuesday, China cut interest rates and unveiled an extensive stimulus package to boost its struggling economy. These announcements sparked a surge in commodities like gold, silver, and copper, bringing my bullish outlook on silver closer to fruition. I decided it was an opportune time for a quick update.

Let’s start with silver’s daily chart. Since its peak in May, silver had been languishing for several months until it finally broke above a downtrend line that started in May, closing above it last Friday. In my original Substack piece, I highlighted this breakout as a promising sign of strength. On Tuesday, silver had surged 4.56%, reaching its highest level since May. Silver now needs to close above its $32.50 resistance level with strong volume to confirm that the next leg of the bull market is underway. Once silver clears the $32.50 resistance, it’s likely to surge toward $50 rapidly. I’m focusing on $50 as an intermediate-term target because it’s a significant psychological level and the peak reached during both the 1980 and 2011 rallies.

For further confirmation, I find it valuable to analyze silver priced in euros. This method removes the impact of U.S. dollar fluctuations, offering a clearer view of silver’s intrinsic strength or weakness. Interestingly, silver priced in euros often respects round numbers like €26, €27, and €28, frequently establishing key support and resistance levels at these points. These levels are worth monitoring closely—take a look for yourself. On Tuesday, silver closed above both the €28 level and a downtrend line that started in May, marking a very bullish development. The final hurdle is for silver to decisively close above the €30 level on high volume, which would be the signal that silver is ready to take off.

Silver mining stocks are also important to watch for confirming silver’s price movements, as they often mirror investor sentiment toward the metal. The Global X Silver Miners ETF (symbol: SIL), the most heavily traded silver mining stock ETF, has been stuck in a flat range since April. A strong, high-volume close above the $36 to $37 resistance zone would signal that both silver mining stocks and silver itself are poised for a significant breakout. After surging on Tuesday, SIL is very close to breaking out.

Similarly, the Amplify Junior Silver Miners ETF (symbol: SILJ)—a key proxy for junior silver mining shares—has been range-bound for the past five months. A decisive, high-volume close above the $13 to $13.50 resistance zone would indicate the start of a rally for both silver mining shares and silver itself. After its sharp rise on Tuesday, SILJ is very close to breaking out.

Gold, a major driver of silver prices, is generating a tailwind for silver after breaking through two key resistance levels in the past month and a half. In a recent Substack piece, I explained how gold’s breakout across multiple currencies sets the stage for an imminent surge toward $3,000.

The gold-to-silver ratio is a valuable indicator for gauging silver’s price direction. A double top chart pattern appears to have formed over the past two months, indicating a likely decline in the ratio. This suggests that silver may soon start outperforming gold. A close below the 83 to 84 support zone is key to confirming the start of a silver rally and its outperformance of gold. Following silver’s strong performance on Tuesday, the ratio is starting to break below the critical 83 to 84 support zone—an unmistakable sign of strength for silver.

The price of copper is often an underappreciated factor in silver’s performance. Copper’s decline over the past several months has dragged silver down with it, but the copper rebound I’ve been anticipating following a technical breakout should significantly strengthen silver’s rally.

Another potential bullish factor for silver, gold, and copper is the prospect of a weaker U.S. dollar as the Federal Reserve begins its rate-cutting cycle. Since commodities typically move inversely to the U.S. dollar, this is a critical development to monitor. The key level to watch is the 100 support on the U.S. Dollar Index. A close below this level would strongly suggest a continued decline toward the 90 support level. At the time of writing, the U.S. Dollar Index is trading at 99.95.

As silver nears a critical breakout, the convergence of multiple indicators signals a strong bullish outlook. Recent economic developments, such as the U.S. rate cut and China’s stimulus measures, have fueled momentum in commodities like silver, gold, and copper. Silver’s ability to break through key resistance levels, both in U.S. dollars and euros, alongside potential strength in silver mining stocks and a weakening U.S. dollar, reinforces the bullish outlook. As the gold-to-silver ratio shows signs of decline and copper rebounds, the stage is set for silver to make significant gains, with $50 as a key intermediate-term target. Investors should keep a close eye on these developments as silver’s next major bull market may be just days away.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out my recent piece, “Why Another Chinese Gold Mania May Be Starting.”

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against the State of Alabama, accusing the state of breaking the law with its voter roll purge program that targets individuals who are—or once were—noncitizens.

The DOJ announced the legal action in a Sept. 27 press release, in which the agency contends that Alabama’s program, which targets individuals with noncitizen identification numbers, violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) by removing potentially eligible voters within the federally mandated 90-day “Quiet Period” before an election.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said that Alabama’s actions risk disenfranchising eligible voters just weeks before a key federal election.

“As Election Day approaches, it is critical that Alabama redress voter confusion resulting from its list maintenance mailings sent in violation of federal law,” Clarke said in a statement. “The Quiet Period Provision of federal law exists to prevent eligible voters from being removed from the rolls as a result of last-minute, error-prone efforts.”

The NVRA’s Quiet Period provision prohibits states from conducting systematic voter roll purges within 90 days of a federal election to prevent errors and ensure eligible voters are not wrongfully removed.

The legal dispute centers around a program initiated by Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen that aimed to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama from the state’s voter rolls.

The actual details of this DOJ lawsuit against Alabama are insane.

Kamala’s DOJ is suing them because they removed less than 4,000 people from the voter rolls who registered despite not being citizens. pic.twitter.com/rXne2h4l9d

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 28, 2024

Allen’s office announced on Aug. 13 that 3,251 individuals on the state’s voter rolls had been flagged for removal due to being issued noncitizen identification numbers by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Allen instructed the state’s 67 county boards of registrars to deactivate these voters and begin the process of removing them from the rolls.

“I have been clear that I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections,” Allen said in a statement at the time.

Allen noted that while some of those identified may have since become naturalized citizens, these individuals would need to update their status using a State of Alabama voter registration form in order to remain eligible to vote.

Allen said that due to a lack of cooperation from the federal government in providing up-to-date lists of noncitizens for the purposes of the voter roll purge, Alabama had to rely on older data that does not reflect whether the individuals flagged for removal have since gained citizenship.

Ask yourself — Why would the Harris-Biden DOJ be fighting to keep illegal immigrants on the voter rolls? https://t.co/h0lAD1dgjq

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 28, 2024

The DOJ’s lawsuit said Alabama’s program could disenfranchise eligible voters, particularly naturalized citizens who were once issued noncitizen identification numbers. The department’s review found that both native-born and naturalized U.S. citizens had received letters stating that their voter records had been made inactive and that they would be removed from the rolls unless they submitted a new registration form.

The DOJ is seeking an injunction to halt the voter roll purge and reinstate the rights of eligible voters. It’s also pushing for remedial mailings to inform voters about the restoration of their rights, along with training for local officials and poll workers to address any confusion or distrust among eligible voters wrongly flagged as being noncitizens.

The Alabama Secretary of State’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the most recent DOJ lawsuit.

In an earlier statement, Allen defended the program as necessary to maintain the integrity of Alabama’s elections, while vowing to continue efforts to ensure only U.S. citizens are registered to vote.

“This is not a one-time review of our voter file. We will continue to conduct such reviews to do everything possible to make sure that everyone on our file is an eligible voter,” Allen said in a statement.

“I am hopeful that in the near future the federal government will change course and be helpful to states as we work to protect our elections.”

This is not the first legal challenge Alabama has faced over its voter roll maintenance efforts.

Earlier this month, a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the League of Women Voters of Alabama, filed a separate lawsuit accusing the state of targeting naturalized citizens with the purge. This lawsuit claims that many of those flagged for removal are now U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, but are being forced to re-register.

Maersk, one of the world’s largest container shipping lines, notified clients on Thursday that “recent social unrest in Haiti” has sparked disruptions at a key port in the failed Caribbean nation, prompting the shipper to suspend all new bookings immediately. 

“In the wake of the recent social unrest in Haiti, which is preventing normal operations at the terminal, it has been decided, effective immediately, to stop any new bookings from and to Haiti to prevent the accumulation of boxes at the transshipment terminals,” Maersk said. 

One day earlier, Reuters reported land access to the main container terminal in Port-au-Prince, called Caribbean Port Services, a privately owned and operated company that handles the majority of the container volume in the country, was closed off due to a surge in attacks by armed gangs. 

“CPS will shut its barriers to all types of land-based traffic from Sept. 26 to Sept. 29,” CPS wrote in a statement, indicating this time will allow the military troops and national police to secure the terminal.

This is insane. More from Reuters…

A shipping official told Reuters this week that ships were being shot at, preventing them from docking and unloading containers, while authorities have reported the kidnapping of two Filipino crew members from a cargo vessel in the port.

Senseless gang violence has led to the deaths of 3,661 people in the collapsed Caribbean nation in the first half of the year. 

“This situation is not just a humanitarian emergency but it is a threat to the stability of our nation,” Haiti’s transition council president Edgard Leblanc Fils told the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, adding, “It’s never too late to act.”

The number of people internally displaced by gang violence has jumped to more than 700,000, while 1.6 million face food and housing insecurities. 

Earlier this year, Haiti’s main container port and international airport were shut down for three months following an eruption in violence. The chaos included a massive jailbreak, allowing thousands of prisoners to escape.

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration has been flooding small town USA with Haitians, as seen in Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania. There are reports some of these Haitians are being trafficked domestically in labor mule schemes by staffing companies. 

What a mess the West is in. 

Authored by Jacob Burg and Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sept. 26 to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve active shooter drills in schools throughout the country.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris discussed the order during a joint event on gun violence at the White House on Thursday.

The first prong of the order targets machine gun conversion devices—which can convert a pistol or semi-automatic gun into an automatic—and 3D-printed guns.

Under federal law, a machine gun is a firearm that fires continuously while the trigger is depressed.

Commonly called “Glock switches” or “auto sears,” machine gun conversion devices are illegal after-market parts that alter a gun’s trigger to allow legal semi-automatic firearms to operate as illegal, fully automatic weapons.

The White House noted that, between 2017 and 2021, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives recovered 5,454 guns that had been converted to match or “exceed the rate of fire of many military machineguns with a single engagement of the trigger.”

In the order, Biden indicated he would like the law expanded to also ban devices like bump stocks that increase a shooter’s rate of fire but don’t mechanically alter the gun. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns under current federal law.

“The Vice President and I strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down an important gun safety regulation on bump stocks—the device used in the shooting at a crowded music festival in Las Vegas—and called on Congress to clarify that this dangerous accessory is a machinegun,” Biden stated in the order.

Harris said more work needs to be done to make sure all Americans feel protected in public spaces.

“I believe the right to be safe is a civil right, and that the people of America have a right then, to live, work, worship and learn without fear of violence—including gun violence—and yet, our nation is experiencing an epidemic of gun violence,” Harris said.

The executive order targets 3D-printed firearms built with 3D printers using computer code downloaded from the internet. They lack serial numbers, making them difficult for law enforcement to trace.

Unserialized guns are often referred to as “ghost guns.”

Through the order, the White House will establish an emerging firearms threats task force that will generate a report within 90 days to assess the threat of these guns, how federal agencies can mobilize to combat, detect, and confiscate them, and congressional funding projections to limit these weapons.

The order’s second portion aims to improve active school shooter drills in the nation’s schools. The Biden administration has reported that schools lack adequate resources for conducting these drills and that parents fear potential trauma for students from the drills.

Biden’s order directs the secretaries for the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security—in coordination with Attorney General Merrick Garland—to create and publish informational resources for schools to reduce and minimize trauma from shooter drills and gives them 110 days to do so.

Biden and Harris also discussed additional executive orders that will advocate safe gun storage, promote red flag laws, bolster community violence intervention funding, announce states that may allow Medicaid to pay health providers for parental and caregiver counseling on firearm safety and injury prevention, and improve the background check system.

Harris is campaigning on signing universal background checks and a ban on so-called assault weapons. Both would require congressional approval—a difficult task without solid Democratic majorities in both chambers.

“We know how to stop these tragedies, and it is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I am in favor of the Second Amendment,” Harris said ahead of Biden’s signing the order.

Biden agreed and said it was time to pursue a ban on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Second Amendment advocacy groups dismissed the order as nothing more than campaign rhetoric.

“This Executive Order is just one more attempt by the Biden-Harris Administration to deflect attention from their soft-on-crime policies that have emboldened criminals in our country. The orders are notably heavy on election-year rhetoric and light on substance,” Randy Kozuch, Executive Director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a statement on Thursday.

Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), said the order will backfire on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. In a statement on the GOA website, Pratt lists what he says are elements of the order that infringe on Second Amendment rights instead of dealing with violent criminals.

“The White House just made a huge mistake by reminding gun owners of Kamala’s radical, gun-grabbing agenda, with the election a mere month or so away. Kamala Harris just claimed responsibility for each infringement—every banned gun and part—by ATF in the last four years, so we are pushing back and calling her out,” Pratt wrote.

During his term, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022 that strengthened background checks for those purchasing guns between the ages of 18 and 21, made it a federal offense to buy guns through straw purchases or trafficking, and specified the status of a federally licensed firearm dealer.

Last year, Biden established the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which has been overseen by Harris.

It has been a space in EVs that has been mostly ignored, especially since the auto market is drifting back toward hybrids…but now, eyes are starting to turn to charging for large electric trucks…

Spending is increasing for charging infrastructure, according to Bloomberg, who writes that “hundreds of millions of dollars” in grants awarded by both state and federal programs are being written. 

For example, Greenlane Infrastructure LLC, a $675 million joint venture involving Daimler Truck North America, NextEra Energy, and a BlackRock fund, has begun construction on its flagship site for a 280-mile commercial charging corridor between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Additionally, the Bloomberg report states that TeraWatt Infrastructure Inc., backed by over $1 billion in funding, is building a heavy-duty charging network from California’s Port of Long Beach to El Paso, Texas. WattEV, supported by Apollo Global Management and Vitol, currently operates several charging depots and has 15 more planned along the West Coast.

Erika Myers, executive director of Charging Interface Initiative North America said: “We’re seeing industry making bigger investments.”

She added that there’s a lot of “excitement and enthusiasm for the development of electrification in the medium- and heavy-duty space.”

Electrifying medium- and heavy-duty trucks seems like an obvious solution for cutting emissions, as these vehicles make up just 5% of US road traffic but generate nearly a quarter of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gases.

Yet adoption has been sluggish. BloombergNEF even labels the US a global “laggard” in decarbonizing its commercial fleets, with electric medium- and heavy-duty trucks accounting for only 6% of sales as of June and fewer than 1,000 sold in the first half of 2024.

Bloomberg calls the issue a “classic chicken-and-egg problem”: manufacturers hesitate to produce electric trucks due to a lack of charging infrastructure, while infrastructure developers are reluctant to invest without a substantial EV fleet in place.

A strained power grid, high vehicle costs, and uncertain policy support—especially with the upcoming presidential election—further complicate the transition.

Recall days ago we wrote that EV semi prices still needed to fall between 30-50% to compete with diesel trucks, according to a new study. 

Currently, less than 2% of the EU’s heavy freight vehicles are electric or hydrogen-powered, but this must rise to 40% of new sales by 2030 to meet EU climate goals. Electric trucks cost 2.5-3 times more to produce than diesel ones, and logistics companies are reluctant to bear the higher costs, making this target challenging, the report says. 

McKinsey suggests electric truck prices should be no more than 30% higher than diesel models, requiring major battery advancements. 

Reuters writes that a 25% reduction in charging costs and 900,000 private charging points by 2035, needing a $20 billion investment, are also key to the EU’s CO2 strategy. Additionally, European truckmakers face competition from Chinese manufacturers, who have captured 20% of the bus market with cheaper products.