Will we learn from the lab leak saga?
It has been a bad few weeks for claims that were once among the most sacrosanct truths of the Covid era. Earlier this month, the landmark Cochrane study exploded the case for mask mandates when it found that “face coverings make little to no difference” in slowing the spread of Covid-19. More recently a study published in the Lancet undercut the logic of vaccine mandates when it found that “the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.”
And then, yesterday, the Wall Street Journal delivered a bombshell revelation: that the US Energy Department recently concluded that a lab leak is the most likely explanation of how the pandemic started.
According to the Journal, the White House and key lawmakers were briefed on the issue recently. Though other parts of the intelligence community reached the same conclusion sooner — the FBI did so in 2021 — the Energy Department’s finding is significant because it “is the result of new intelligence” and “because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of US national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.”
The news has been met with plenty of well-earned “I told you so’s” from those who were early to identify a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as the most obvious explanation and a deafening silence from those who spent years dismissing that theory as racist conspiracy-mongering. Taken together, this trio of developments amount to a very valuable lesson about today’s hurry to sort wrongthink from rightthink.
Next time someone laments a lack of trust in various established institutions — from the media to government agencies — you only need to point to the zealousness with which that sorting was done during the pandemic, and the lack of accountability for those who got the big calls wrong. As we argue in our March editorial, we are still paying for those mistakes, especially when it comes to education. And yet there is a maddening lack of interest in addressing the serious and sticky effects of school closures and lockdowns.
If mask and vaccine studies have domestic political salience, the question of how the pandemic started should not be underestimated as an explainer of how America sees its biggest adversary. As Ben Domenech put it in a recent profile of Congressman Mike Gallagher, the pandemic “drives the popular American understanding of China.” And so the more convincing the lab-leak explanation, the more hostile the American public’s attitudes to China get.
And though the Biden administration committed to investigate the lab leak theory early on, its reluctance to embrace it more explicitly is a cause of continuing suspicion among voters. “Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said in an interview yesterday.
But if Biden’s team want a definitive answer, they may be waiting a while. China has not made investigation into the virus’s origins easy — and that isn’t about to change. The administration may claim that such caution is the responsible position — but politically speaking, it is far easier to be the party pointing out what, by now, seems obvious than the party heeding caution on an issue about which voters are understandably very angry.
On our radar
Joe Manchin, independent? Joe Manchin was asked repeatedly during a Fox News interview on Sunday whether he still considered himself a Democrat. He declined to do so. “I’m an American,” said the West Virginia senator. “I’m an American through and through.”
Biden Zooms East Palestine As he was leaving the White House Friday evening, the president was asked by a reporter whether he had any plans to visit East Palestine, Ohio. “At this point I’m not,” he replied. “I did a whole video, um, what the hell, on…” A reporter interjected, suggesting the word he was looking for was “Zoom.” Biden: “Zoom! All I can think of every time is Zoom is that song in my generation, ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’”
Times pans DeSantis book The Florida governor has published a new book, The Courage to Be Free, in which he argues that his home state is a blueprint for the rest of the country. You will be unsurprised to learn that the New York Times review isn’t exactly positive. Jennifer Salzari calls the book “courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernible sense of humor” and argues it reads like “a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT.”
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Does finger-pointing belie bipartisan response to East Palestine?
Obscured by bipartisan finger-pointing over who’s to blame for the East Palestine train derailment are hopeful reports about Democrats and Republicans coming together to prevent another such disaster. Semafor reports that between lambasting the Biden administration for its response to the catastrophe, Ohio senator J.D. Vance and “the three Democratic senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania sent a joint letter to the Department of Transportation asking about potential rail safety reforms.” Vance’s office is also “already workshopping new legislation on the issue with members of both parties.”
Axios notes “multiple House committees are gaming out aggressive hearings on the Biden administration’s response” to the derailment. More signs point to bipartisan action on this issue as the chair and ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, a Democrat and Republican, respectively, issued a joint statement earlier this month announcing they will “hold a committee hearing soon on the environmental and public health impacts of this incident.”
–Teresa Mull
Student debt case gets Supreme Court hearing
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday regarding the challenge to President Biden’s student loan cancellation program. The program would remove $10,000-$20,000 in debt to borrowers under certain conditions, and would cost upwards of $400 billion. Biden claims to draw his authority from the 2003 HEROES Act.
There are two groups of petitioners — six GOP states and two individuals — who are challenging the administration. The states argue that their revenue would be harmed, and are using Missouri’s semi-independent student loan organization as the foundation of their argument, saying it would deprive it of income. The individuals argue that the cancellation is invalid as they were not entitled to receive some or any of the benefits, and appropriate procedures were not followed.
The major question facing the Court at the moment is whether the petitioners have any standing — if they are directly harmed by the cancellation and the Court could rectify said harm. If they succeed, the Court could then move on to the question of whether the administration has gone beyond its statutory authority. The implications for executive administrative power could be significant.
–John Pietro
From the site
Jason Morgan: Washington’s yes-men in Japan
Mark Galeotti: Zelensky’s deadly mind games with Putin
Cindy Yu: Joe Biden is confused about Chinese arms for Russia
Poll watch
President Biden job approval
Approve 44.7% | Disapprove 51.1% | Net Approval -6.4 (RCP average)
2024 Republican presidential nomination
Donald Trump: 43 percent
Ron DeSantis: 28 percent
Mike Pence: 7 percent
Nikki Haley: 7 percent
Mike Pompeo: 1 percent
Tim Scott: 1 percent (Fox)
Best of the rest
Emmanuel Felton, Washington Post: San Francisco debates reparations for blacks, asks ‘Is $5m enough?’
Terrence Keeley, Wall Street Journal: Vanguard’s CEO bucks the ESG orthodoxy
Alexander Burns, Politico: Why can’t Democrats explain themselves on China?
Gabe Kaminsky, Washington Examiner: Government-backed group tried to punish sites boosting Covid lab leak theory
Renu Mukherjee, City Journal: Why does the left hate Nikki Haley?
Jonathan Allen, Natasha Korecki and Ali Vitali, NBC: Ron DeSantis campaign emerges from the shadows
