A 60-year-old grandmother died without ever meeting her only grandchild after contracting COVID-19 in a slaughterhouse former President Donald Trump ordered to remain open at the behest of scandal-laden Brazilian billionaire backers who misled his administration, according to a new report.
Tin Aye's death was one of hundreds the Trump administration "sacrificed" to protect meat monopolies pursuing billions in profits amid a global pandemic that claimed 7 million lives, author Peter S. Goodman argues in his new book "How the World Ran Out of Everything."
"That so many ordinary workers found themselves in harm’s way in the midst of a pandemic was no mere misfortune," Goodman writes in an excerpt published Monday by Vanity Fair. "It was a direct outgrowth of the business plans pursued by their corporate bosses."
"Worse, they manufactured fears of a meat shortage to gain the complicity of the American government."
By 2020, the Batistas had expanded into the U.S. and their business was worth about $5 billion, Goodman writes.
The same year, Coloradan San Twin's mother Aye was being paid $12 an hour to work in their Greeley slaughterhouse where COVID-19 ran rampant, Goodman writes. Aye was among the first of five workers who died from the disease.
A total of 59,000 U.S. meatpacking workers would contract COVID-19 in 2020 and 269 people would die, according to Goodman.
Goodman reports that JBS Foods responded to mounting concerns by lobbying the Trump administration for support in keeping their facilities open and raising the specter of a meat shortage.
Ten days after a doctor alerted JBS their workers in a Texas facility could get sick and die if they remained open, Trump signed an executive order to ensure it wouldn't close, Goodman writes.
"This was not a coincidence," Goodman writes. "Top agribusiness executives had been meeting and corresponding regularly with senior Trump administration officials to plot strategy engineered to keep slaughterhouses open."
Goodman then notes the food shortage specter raised by the meatpackers did not include a crucial fact: "The largest meatpackers in the United States had enough inventory to stock the shelves of every grocery store in the land."
A year later, San Twin would tell Goodman about the last conversation she had with her dying mother, who had fled Myanmar to escape ethnic persecution and chosen to settle in the U.S. in hopes of finding work.
The day after her son Felix was born, San Twin received a call from another hospital, Goodman writes.
“She was calling to say goodbye,” Twin said. “She said, ‘I really want to see you, but I can’t see you anymore.’ She told me to work hard for Felix. Just believe in the positive view and help yourself and others. And then she dropped the phone, and I never talked to her again.”
JBS brought in $22 billion on U.S. beef sales that year, Goodman notes, and sent Twin $6,000 to help pay for Aye's funeral.
Social media wasted no time in deriding prominent Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who on Friday accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of making "false" testimony to Congress this week and previously silencing opposing viewpoints during the height of the pandemic, including conspiracy theories such as the coronavirus lab-leak theory.
The letter from Jordan to Fauci, dated Friday and obtained by the New York Post, said the Biden-led White House and COVID-19 Response Team coerced major social media platforms such as Facebook into censoring the lab-leak theory.
"Consistent with the silencing of those who dared to express an opposing viewpoint, you and other bureaucrats reportedly 'sidelined' Dr. Robert Redfield, then Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because he 'had a different point of view' and believed the virus 'came from a Wuhan lab.'"
The Response Team under Fauci participated in "extensive efforts to unconstitutionally monitor and censor Americans’ speech on social media platforms," Jordan added. He asked Fauci to appear in a transcribed interview and bring relevant documents to investigators with the Committee on the Judiciary and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Fauci testified Monday before the House COVID subcommittee that he “kept an open mind” during the pandemic that the virus could've escaped from a laboratory mistake, and did not “push to downplay the lab leak theory."
Jordan took issue with Fauci's testimony in his letter and called the statement "false on its face," and gave Fauci until June 21 to respond with an interview date and related documents.
But social media users came to Fauci's defense on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"Wrong again Jim," wrote one user, adding that "Fauci saved lives."
"Dr. Fauci is honest. Jim Jordan is not," wrote another user, who self-identified as a retired nurse.
"Dr. Fauci saved lives while Trump got hundreds of thousands of people killed," a third user and retired veteran said.
A Democratic congressman whose mother and stepfather died of COVID-19 during the pandemic on Wednesday slammed comments made by Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, who insisted on calling Dr. Anthony Fauci "Mr. Fauci," an overt attempt to discredit the nation's former top infectious disease expert over his handling of the pandemic.
At the hearing Monday, Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was grilled by Republicans in a spectacle that featured prominent conspiracy theories such as claims that the true origin of the coronavirus was covered up, and that there was no scientific basis for social distancing.
Greene capitalized on her time by refusing to recognize Fauci as a doctor, refusing to let him answer questions, and saying he should be behind bars.
“Mr. Fauci, because you’re not Doctor,” she said. “You’re Mr. Fauci in my few minutes."
She added: “Does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked and he belongs in prison.”
For Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the disrespect toward Fauci felt personal — and warranted an equally curt response.
"Your 'so-called science' that the gentlewoman is referring to has saved millions of lives in this country and around the world, and I want to thank you for that," Garcia told Fauci, before highlighting some of Greene's past COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
And on Wednesday, Garcia explained to PEOPLE he felt it was important to join the GOP subcommittee and confront Greene because it was an opportunity to "push back on misinformation and conspiracy theories," and support doctors and scientists.
He minced no words chastising Greene for her comments insulting Fauci, calling them "completely shameful and disrespectful." He blasted the GOP leadership for putting Greene on the panel, noting it wasn't interested in "facts or science," but rather in turning the hearing into a "clown show."
"I don't think I've ever been more angry in a hearing," he said.
Garcia added: "We should have been focused on how we can do better for the next pandemic because there willbe a next pandemic. That hearing should have focused on questions like: Could we have done school closures in a better way? Could we have opened up businesses faster? Were there better ways of getting the vaccine to people when it was available?”
In a profanity filled rant, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unleashed a venomous screed in the halls of Congress attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retired immunologist who served as the public face of the federal government's battle against the COVID pandemic — just after she had attacked him face-to-face during a House committee hearing Monday.
Fauci retired at the end of 2022 after serving since 1984 as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but the far-right's conspiracy theories about COVID and Fauci's handling of the pandemic continue to this day.
Many of them were resurfaced during Greene's remarks Monday afternoon.
“The Democrats are responsible for the lockdowns, forced vaccinations, kids being forced to stay home, people committing suicide, and all of the horrors that this country lived through during COVID,” the Georgia GOP lawmaker said on-camera in little-noticed remarks she posted to social media (video below).
“Fauci belongs in prison. He should be tried for mass murder and crimes against humanity. That’s how I feel after that hearing. That’s how the American people feel.”
Both Democratic and Republican governors and local authorities directed Americans to stay home in the early days of the pandemic. Some directed out-of-state visitors to quarantine. Some closed schools and transitioned to virtual classrooms, and some instructed residents to stay home except for medical emergencies or trips to the supermarket.
In December of 2022, The Atlantic's Yasmin Tayag, citing studies, wrote, "by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)"
The Georgia Republican in her hallway remarks on Monday claimed "everything" she said in the hearing was "correct."
"It's how the American people feel, is what we know to be a fact," she said.
Greene said Fauci was not a doctor, as far as she was concerned.
"It's all the evidence has been proven true," she also claimed.
"We have [Democratic Congressman] Jamie Raskin in there accusing us of worshipping Trump, worshipping a convicted felon," Greene also said, using air quotes.
When told Trump is a convicted felon, Greene replied, "Well, yeah. So was George Floyd," referring to the unarmed Black man whose killing by a police officer set off massive nationwide protests.
"The media worships George Floyd. Democrats worship George Floyd, there were riots burning down the f---ing country over George Floyd and Raskin's in there say we worship him? Excuse me, let me correct you, and this is really important. I don't worship, I worship God, God, and Jesus is my Savior. I don't worship President Trump, and I'm really sick and tired of the b------t antics I have to deal with constantly from the Democrats."
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci during the Republican House’s
hearing on the coronavirus pandemic Monday, refused to call him “Dr.,” and promoted lies and conspiracy theories forcing Democrats to denounce her remarks as “crazy and irresponsible,” and demand they be stricken from the record.
Dr. Fauci was the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from 1984 until the end of 2022. In both the Trump and Biden administrations he became the public face of the battle against the pandemic.
But he also became the target of the right and the far-right during COVID, with Congresswoman Greene frequently leading the charge against what she labeled Monday as “your so-called science.”
“We should be recommending you to be prosecuted,” Greene also said during the hearing. “We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison.”
Apologizing to Dr. Fauci, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-FL) blasted Congresswoman Greene, declaring her remarks “completely irresponsible” while saying, “this might be the most insane hearing I’ve actually attended.”
“Your ‘so-called science’ that the gentlewoman is referring to has saved millions of lives in this country and around the world. And I want to thank you for that.” He called Fauci “an American hero,” whose “team has done more to save lives than all 435 members of this body on both sides of the aisle.”
“You guys have worked not just during this pandemic, but over time to save millions of lives in this country and across the world. We lost 1.1 million American lives, 1.1 million American lives, 7 million lives around the world,” Garcia said. “We were having 9-11-like-events death events daily in this country losing 4000 to 5000 people every single day. I was mayor during the time of the pandemic. I remember how painful it was to close businesses, to shut down schools.”
“But how quickly we forget the pain and how scared we were as a country. We were washing our groceries as they were coming in. We were keeping seniors at a distance – the tragedy that was happening in our nursing homes, thousands of people were dying a day. And you and your team of the best and the brightest scientists in this country, and the world were doing everything that you could, and working night and day to save more and more of those lives.”
Congressman Garcia explained how he lost both his parents in the COVID pandemic, explaining, “I take this very personally, especially when other members of this body, who are tasked to be responsible and actually help the American people, attack medical professionals like you and across the world. Vaccines – a vaccine that you and your team helped foster – has saved millions of American lives. These attacks are ridiculous.”
He also pointed out the Rep. Greene had “introduced the ‘Fire Fauci Act’ and promoted on a podcast, saying that COVID was a bio weapon. That is how insane some of these comments are.”
Garcia also quoted Greene saying: “I don’t believe in evolution. These viruses were not making people sick until they created them. They weaponize these viruses to be able to attach to our cells and make us sick. It’s a bio weapon."
He also quoted Greene from a social media post: “The Fauci-funded Wuhan lab created the virus,” and called her remarks, “crazy and irresponsible.”
“In this post,” Garcia continued, “the same member of this committee is accusing you of orchestrating a global conspiracy to create COVID on purpose just to make people get vaccines that you’ve done the sir. The same member routinely promotes complete misinformation about vaccines, and actually has encouraged the routine prevention of vaccinations that even eliminate diseases like the measles. Dr. Fauci, you brought together our nation and world’s best and brightest scientists take on COVID and create a vaccine that works. I want to ask you a question. I want to be crystal clear for the public. You brought together the world and America’s best scientists. Do you believe that the vaccine that you all helped create and ensure is safe and effective for the public?” he asked Fauci.
“Yes, and its track record has proven that,” the doctor replied.
“And you also agree that it saved hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of lives in America and across the world?” Garcia continued.
“That is absolutely correct,” Fauci said. “And it’s very clear that it saved millions of lives here and throughout the world. The Europeans have done the same studies that we have. And the data are incontrovertible that they save lives.”
On social media after the hearing, Rep. Garcia wrote: “Totally insane that Marjorie Taylor Greene would not refer to Dr. Fauci as a doctor. He’s one of the most brilliant medical minds in the country. She’s a national embarrassment.”
President Joe Biden received a standing ovation Wednesday after joking about former President Donald Trump's hair.
The president took a shot at Trump while speaking at the North America's Building Trades Unions conference.
"In fact, construction of new factories has more than doubled in our administration," he pointed out. "Meanwhile, Donald Trump still thinks windmills cause cancer."
After pausing for laughter, Biden continued.
"By the way, remember, he was trying to deal with COVID, he said, just inject a little bleach in your veins," Biden added. "He missed. It all went to his hair."
A Louisiana Republican state lawmaker wants to require anyone in the state donating blood to disclose their COVID vaccination status, and wants to allow blood donation recipients to be given a choice of blood from donors who have or have not been vaccinated against the deadly virus.
The CDC says "COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. During the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of people in the United States received COVID-19 vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history."
State Rep. Peter Egan, a freshman GOP lawmaker, has said he has a "background in healthcare," including as a hospital administrator.
On Monday as reported by the Louisiana Illuminator's Piper Hutchinson, Egan filed HB 822. The bill reads: "Any person who collects human blood donations for the purpose of providing blood for human blood transfusion shall require blood donors to disclose whether the blood donor has received a COVID-19 vaccine or a messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine during the donor's lifetime."
Louisiana is not the only state in the country with a bill requiring vaccination status disclosure. Similar bills have been introduced in Illinois, Rhode Island, and Wyoming. An Alaska bill adds a penalty of a fine up to $1000, up to six months in jail, or both.
"Amid vaccine skepticism and blood shortages, House Bill 115 would require asking the COVID-19/mRNA vaccine status of blood donors, providing some patients a choice to use blood from the unvaccinated," Wyoming's WyoFile reported in February. "House Bill 115 – Donated blood-mRNA disclosure dictates that this decision would only apply in non-emergency situations, but the bill is part of a movement in the U.S. to give patients opposed to COVID vaccines an option."
The news outlet notes, "multiple blood transfusion groups and the FDA say there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines harm people via blood transfusions."
The sponsor of the Wyoming bill, Republican Rep. Sarah Penn, told WyoFile, “Many have strived to keep their bodies free of this technology.”
In Kentucky, Republican state Rep. Jennifer Henson Decker's bill, HB 163, requires disclosure of COVID vaccination status and the name of the COVID vaccine manufacturer. It also requires a two-week waiting period after being vaccinated, and requires the blood tested for "COVID-19 antibodies, evidence of lipid nanoparticles, and spike protein."
Last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement "advising consumers and health care providers that directed blood donations requested for certain donor characteristics (e.g., vaccination status, gender, sexual orientation, religion) lack scientific support and to be cautious about websites that offer memberships for delivery of blood and blood components from individuals who have not been vaccinated for COVID-19."
And in February the Red Cross published a fact check: "You can donate blood after getting a COVID-19 vaccine."
In the United States over 1.2 million have died from COVID-19, while studies suggest that number could be much higher.
Four years into the COVID-19 pandemic, few Americans are especially concerned about catching the disease. A recent poll from Pew found that only 20 percent of Americans consider the virus to be a major health threat. Only 10 percent are concerned about becoming very ill or hospitalized. Less than a third have received an updated COVID-19 vaccine. Pew did not ask how many people still wear masks.
But for many with disabilities and chronic illnesses, it is impossible to move on.
Although vaccination and medications like Paxlovid have helped reduce the number of deaths, disabled people and older adults are still at higher risk. Life expectancy in the United States has dropped, and COVID-19 is the third leading cause of death. Long COVID, the complex and poorly understood constellation of symptoms that linger long after an active infection ends, impacts an estimated 6.8 percent of Americans, or 17.6 million people.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 1 in 4 adults have some kind of disability. It is difficult to know what people with disabilities think about declining interest in COVID precautions as a whole, as they are not generally polled as a demographic. A 19th/SurveyMonkey poll from last year found that a third of disabled respondents also had caregiving responsibilities of their own.
The 19th spoke with four disabled Americans, most of whom have their own caregiving responsibilities for disabled family members, about their experiences four years into the pandemic. They expressed anger, frustration and a profound sense of isolation.
Sarah Anderson, 47, lives in Quincy, Illinois. She writes romance and young adult novels. Her husband is a financial analyst and their son is in his first year of college. Anderson spends much of her time doing caregiving for her mother, Caroline Lucas. Lucas, 81, lives down the street. Anderson does her mother’s grocery shopping, takes her to appointments and helps with some tasks around the house.
Lucas is a stroke survivor and has a severe immunodeficiency she receives regular infusions to treat, plus a number of other medical issues. Anderson, her husband and her mother are careful about masking and have not had COVID, to their knowledge. Her son had it recently, however.
“He’s living in a dorm with a lot of unmasked people. You can’t live 24 hours a day in a mask. We made sure he was up to date on his vaccines and bought him the best air purifier we could,” Anderson told The 19th.
When he comes home, he wears a mask, especially around his grandmother.
“They call it ‘saving Mimi’ – Mimi is what my grandkids call me,” Lucas said.
Because of the lack of precautions others take, Lucas’s world has become very small. She doesn’t go to see shows at the community theater anymore. She only sees family and goes to doctor’s appointments. Anderson and her mother have also struggled to find a home health aide willing to wear a mask while working with Lucas.
“It’s called ‘home health assistance.’ Health is the second word. We had someone who loved cats, got along with my mom fairly well and wore a mask, but she relocated and we’re not going to see her again. So we have to look for someone again. It feels like a mountain you never get done climbing,” Anderson said.
When asked how it feels that most people have stopped caring about COVID, Lucas did not mince words.
“It pisses me off. Such a terrible waste of life has gone on,” she said.
Sonja Castañeda-Cudney, 42, lives in Los Angeles. She is a doctoral student at the University of Southern California focused on mental health policy. She lives with her husband and two daughters, ages 3 and 5. She also has a stepson who lives with his mother nearby. They wear masks regularly and do not eat indoors with other people.
Castañeda-Cudney was careful about COVID from the beginning because her older daughter was born extremely premature. Her older daughter was a twin, but her twin did not survive.
“The girls were born at 26 weeks, emergency C-section. Their lungs were underdeveloped. Their hearts were underdeveloped. Eva was in the NICU for four and a half months and my daughter, Lucia, passed away after 11 days,” Castañeda-Cudney told The 19th.
Despite her efforts, Castañeda-Cudney and her immediate family members contracted COVID in August. Castañeda-Cudney has long COVID as a result, and is on a waiting list to be admitted to a long COVID clinic.
“I never really recovered. I get headaches. It’s like I’m hungover nonstop. It makes it hard to look at screens. It makes it hard to parent. It makes it hard to live a normal life,” Castañeda-Cudney said.
Castañeda-Cudney’s older daughter is in preschool and wears a mask. She says neither of her daughters has had problems tolerating masking. Her 3-year-old was born during the pandemic. “This is her life,” Castañeda-Cudney said.
They go to other children’s parties, but they wear masks and will take their cake and go eat it outside.
Castañeda-Cudney is angry that people are no longer taking precautions.
“It feels like s---. It feels like community care is not a thing. The world is so self-centered right now. If something doesn’t immediately affect you personally, then it’s not something to be concerned about,” she said. “I live with severe PTSD. I already lost a child. I’m not willing to lose another child.”
Hannah Neely, 42, lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two children, ages 10 and 12. She had cancer of the immune system, and between the disease and treatment, her immune system was severely weakened. Before, Neely was a teacher, but she is now too disabled to work. Her husband is a software engineer, although he was recently laid off.
Neely, her husband and her children wear masks. They do not socialize or eat indoors at restaurants. For a while, her children took classes online through the public school system, but eventually she sent them back to school masked.
“We go to the store, we go to doctor’s appointments, we go to our kids’ school, but that’s kind of it. And we mask everywhere,” Neely told The 19th.
In a strange way, Neely feels “lucky” to be a cancer survivor, because it means she doesn’t need to justify her concern about COVID to others. Most people she interacts with do not think she is being unreasonable.
“I am disabled in a way that is invisible, but sympathetic. I haven’t faced the medical gaslighting people with [chronic fatigue syndrome] have faced. … No medical professionals have ever told me I’m overreacting,” she said.
Some family and friends have engaged in a sort of wishful thinking.
“People sometimes say, ‘It’ll be fine. Hannah, I’m sure you’ll be fine. You can’t actually say that with any certainty,” Neely said.
"Voters are supposed to remember the good economy of January 2020, with its combination of low unemployment and low inflation, while forgetting about the plague year that followed," writes Krugman.
So for all the happy talk of the Trump years in office, Krugman maintains that the effort is an "impressive act of revisionism" for the pandemic president.
In sum, Krugman calls the final year of Trump's presidency a scary one.
"So let’s set the record straight: 2020 — the fourth quarter, if you will, of Trump’s presidency — was a nightmare," he writes. "And part of what made it a nightmare was the fact that America was led by a man who responded to a deadly crisis with denial, magical thinking and, above all, total selfishness — focused at every stage not on the needs of the nation but on what he thought would make him look good."
Krugman blames Trump for failing to prevent or take steps to do more when the pandemic landed in the homeland.
"Unfortunately, at the time, the man in charge denied, dithered and delayed at nearly every step of the way," according to Krugman.
In contrast, he suggests Biden has presided over what he termed the "immaculate disinflation" that has helped bolster his unemployment numbers and a sunny economy in his first term as POTUS.
Krugman claims that the one shot Trump had to deal with crisis showed him trumpeting "self-serving fantasies" with "utter indifference to other Americans’ lives in an effort to boost his image."
He then asked: "Are we really supposed to feel nostalgic about 2020?"
Donald Trump said something about public schools that got no media coverage, yet it's causing political analysts, ex-prosecutors, and other onlookers to sound the alarm.
Trump began hinting last year that, if he were made the president once again, he would withhold all federal funds from schools that require vaccines or masks.
As reported by former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), "Trump said in Richmond, that he will take all federal funds away from public schools that require vaccines."
"Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc.," she then added. "So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools."
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu responded to Comstock Sunday, saying, "It's almost like Trump and his advisors want Americans to be sickened from disease..."
The comment further caught the attention of Elizabeth de la Vega, also a former federal prosecutor. She said, "Trump said yesterday that he would take away federal funding from school systems that require vaccines."
"This should be a five-alarm fire," she then added. "In 1955, before the polio vaccine was widely administered, my 13yr old brother spent a year on his back because of polio. My H.S. English teacher, a former football star, walked with arm braces [and] dragged his legs because he'd had polio years before. This is the world Trump wants."
Former "Tea Party" Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman (VA) also chimed in:
"We can only surmise, Trump cares for all children about as much as he cares for his own."
"His ignorance is an infection that needs its own vaccine," the former lawmaker added.
Conservative Rick Wilson called Trump's purported plan "a death sentence for American school kids."
Actor Jon Cryer said it would be "truly psychopathic."
"It's difficult to overstate how disastrous this policy would be if enacted," the former co-star of Two and a Half Men said on Saturday.
Right-wing podcast host Charlie Kirk blamed Travis Kelce's angry moment at the Super Bowl on the COVID-19 vaccine.
Kirk reflected on Kelce's behavior at Super Bowl LVIII on his Monday radio program. The star tight end was accused of having a meltdown after his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, suffered a fumble.
"I don't want this to be forgotten. Yeah, okay, Super Bowl champion," Kirk said of Kelce. "He's, you know, dating Taylor Swift. Good luck with that. I mean, but this is inexcusable. It's unacceptable."
Kirk then played a clip of Kelce grabbing his coach's arm to stay in the game.
"All right. That's way too much spike protein," Kirk said, referring to the COVID-19 vaccine. "Travis Kelce's really fired up. What a great spokesperson for Pfizer — starts shoving 65-year-old men nearly to the ground. Bless your heart, Travis Kelsey. Bless your heart."
But Kirk downplayed conspiracy theories about rigging the game in favor of Swift's boyfriend.
"Now I will say this that it did feel as if you're just watching you're like, oh my goodness, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen," he recalled. "And they just keep on showing the Taylor Swift box, the Taylor Swift box. It just — it felt very — I don't want to say it felt scripted. But if you were to believe things were scripted, it would kind of play out that way."
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. This article was produced in partnership with PolitiFact.
“IT’S BEEN REVEALED THAT FAUCI BROUGHT COVID TO THE MONTANA ONE YEAR BEFORE COVID BROKE OUT IN THE U.S!” — ad from the Matt Rosendale for Montana campaign
A fundraising ad for U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) shows a photo of Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, behind bars, swarmed by flying bats.
Rosendale, who is eyeing a challenge to incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, maintains that a Montana biomedical research facility, Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, has a dangerous link to the pandemic. This claim is echoed in the ad:
“It’s been revealed that Fauci brought COVID to the Montana one year before COVID broke out in the U.S!,” it charges in all-caps before asking readers to “Donate today and hold the D.C. bureaucracy accountable!”
The ad, paid for by Matt Rosendale for Montana, seeks contributions through WinRed, a platform that processes donations for Republican candidates. Rosendale also shared the fundraising pitch on his X account Nov. 1, and it remained live as of early February.
Rosendale made similar accusations on social media, during a November speech on the U.S. House floor, and through his congressional office. Sometimes his comments, like those on the House floor, are milder, saying the researchers experimented on “a coronavirus” leading up to the pandemic. Other times, as in an interview with One America News Network, he linked the lab’s work to covid-19’s spread.
In that interview clip, Rosendale recounted pandemic-era shutdowns before saying, “And now we’re finding out that the National Institute of Health, Rocky Mountain Lab, down in Hamilton, Montana, had also played a role in this.”
Rosendale’s statements echo broader efforts to scrutinize how research into viruses happens in the United States and is part of a continued wave of backlash against scientists who have studied coronaviruses. Rosendale is considering seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Tester, in a toss-up race that could help determine which party controls the Senate in 2025. Political newcomer Tim Sheehy is also seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate.
Rosendale proposed amendments to a health spending bill that would ban pandemic-related pathogen research funding for Rocky Mountain Laboratories and cut the salary of one of its top researchers, virologist Vincent Munster, to $1. The House has included both amendments in the Health and Human Services budget bill that the Republican majority hopes to pass. A temporary spending bill is funding the health department until March.
We contacted Rosendale’s congressional office multiple times — with emails, a phone call, and an online request — asking what proof he had to back up his statements that the Montana lab infected bats with covid from China before the outbreak. We got no reply.
Kathy Donbeck, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Office of Communications and Government Relations, said in an email that the ad’s claims are false. Interviews with virologists and a review of the research paper published shortly before Rosendale’s assertions support that position.
Where this is coming from
Rosendale’s statements seem to stem from a Rocky Mountain Laboratories study from 2016 that looked into how a coronavirus, WIV1-CoV, acted in Egyptian fruit bats. The work, published by the journal Viruses in 2018, showed that the specific strain didn’t cause a robust infection in the bats.
The study did not receive widespread attention at the time. But on Oct. 30, 2023, the study was highlighted by a blog called White Coat Waste Project, which says its mission is to stop taxpayer-funded experiments on animals. Some right-wing media outlets began to connect the Montana lab with the coronavirus that causes covid.
Rosendale’s office issued an Oct. 31 news release saying the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China “shipped a strain of coronavirus” to the Hamilton lab. “Our government helped create the Wuhan flu, then shut the country down when it escaped from the lab,” Rosendale said.
It’s a different virus
Rocky Mountain Laboratories is a federally funded facility as part of NIAID, the nation’s top infectious disease research agency, which Fauci led for nearly 40 years.
According to the study and Donbeck’s email, the Montana researchers focused on a coronavirus called WIV1-CoV, not the covid-causing SARS-CoV-2. They’re different viruses.
“The genetics of the viruses are very different, and their behavior biologically is very different,” said Troy Sutton, a virologist with Pennsylvania State University who has studied the evolution of pandemic influenza viruses.
In a review of media reports on the Montana study, Health Feedback, a network of scientists that fact-checks health and medical media coverage, showed the virus’s lineage indicated that WIV1 “is not a direct ancestor or even a close relative of SARS-CoV-2.”
Additionally, the description of the coronavirus strain as being “shipped” suggests that it physically traveled across the world. That’s not what happened.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology provided the WIV1 virus’s sequence that allowed researchers to make a lab-grown copy. A separate study, published in 2013 by the journal Nature, outlines the origins of the lab-created virus.
According to the study’s methodology, the researchers used a clone of WIV1. An NIAID statement to Lee Enterprises, a media company, said the virus “was generated using common laboratory techniques, based on genetic information that was publicly shared by Chinese scientists.”
Stanley Perlman, a University of Iowa professor who studies coronaviruses and serves on the federal advisory committee that reviews vaccines, said Rosendale’s claim is off-base.
He said Rosendale’s focus on where the lab got its materials is irrelevant and serves “only to make people wary and scared.”
Rosendale’s efforts to prohibit particular research at Rocky Mountain Laboratories appear ill-informed, too. Rosendale targeted banning gain-of-function research, which involves altering a pathogen to study its spread. In her email, NIAID’s Donbeck said the Rocky Mountain Laboratories study didn’t involve gain-of-function research.
This type of research has long been controversial, and people who study viruses have said the definition of “gain of function” is problematic and insufficient to show when research, or even work to create vaccines, could cross into that type of research.
But both Sutton and Perlman said that, any way you look at it, the Rocky Mountain Laboratories study published in 2018 didn’t change the virus. It put a virus in bats and showed it didn’t grow.
And it had no effect on the covid outbreak a year later, first detected in Washington state.
Our ruling
Rosendale’s ad said, “It’s been revealed that Fauci brought COVID to the Montana one year before COVID broke out in the U.S!” The campaign ad and Rosendale’s similar statements refer to research at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories involving WIV1, a coronavirus that researchers say is not even distantly close in genetic structure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused covid-19.
Rosendale’s claim is wrong about when the scientists began their work, what they were studying, and where they got the materials. The researchers began their work in 2016 and, although they were studying a coronavirus, it wasn’t the virus that causes covid. The Montana scientists used a lab-grown clone of WIV1 for their research. The first laboratory-confirmed case of covid was not detected in the U.S. until Jan. 20, 2020. Rosendale’s ad is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
The husband of staunch anti-abortion Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) sold up to $15,000 of stock in a biotechnology company that uses human embryonic stem cells for medical treatments — at the same time she and her husband are suing the government over the use of stem cells in developing COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Raw Story analysis of federal financial records.
Luna reported the Jan. 2 sale of stock in Lineage Cell Therapeutics, valued between $1,001 and $15,000, according to a Jan. 29 financial disclosure report.
In June, Raw Story first reported on her husband’s ownership of the stock in the California-based company that uses “specialized, terminally-differentiated human cells,” to treat traumatic injuries, degenerative diseases and cancers, according to its website.
Concurrently, Luna and her husband, Andrew Gamberzky, are alleging in a lawsuit that the government violated their religious beliefs by requiring military members to get COVID-19 vaccines, some of which were developed using fetal cell lines.
Luna’s congressional office did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Luna spokeswoman Edie Heipel previously toldRaw Story that Luna’s anti-abortion stances are “blatantly clear" and that the congresswoman “has no and has never had affiliation" with Lineage Cell Therapeutics "to include owning stock." Heipel did not respond to several follow-up questions, including why Luna's husband purchased Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock, what she thinks of her husband's stock holding and whether he planned to sell it.
“Hypocrisy is the name of the game for Anna Paulina Luna,” said Lauryn Fanguen, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in response to Raw Story’s investigation last month. Time and time again she says one thing and does another, lining her own pockets along the way. It’s hardly shocking how quickly Luna’s supposed deeply-held moral beliefs fall away when there’s a profit to be made.”
The lawsuit against the government
Luna and Gamberzky are suing the National Guard Bureau, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force and Oregon Department of Military. They allege “significant financial injury” upon Gamberzky’s resignation from the Oregon Air National Guard over his objection to getting the COVID-19 vaccine “based on his sincerely held religious beliefs,” the lawsuit said.
“Plaintiff is unable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines due to what they believe and understand is a connection between these vaccines and their testing, development, or production using fetal cell lines,” Raw Story reported from the lawsuit.
The lawsuit continued: “Plaintiffs hold the sincere religious belief that they must not take anything into their bodies that God has forbidden or that would alter their body functions, such as by inducing the production of a spike protein in a manner not designed by God.”
According to UCLA Health, “The COVID-19 vaccines do not contain aborted fetal cells. However, Johnson & Johnson did use fetal cell lines — not fetal tissue — when developing and producing their vaccine, while Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines to test their vaccines and make sure that they work.”
The National Academy of Sciences states that “cell lines are established by culturing fetal cells in such a way that they continue growing and multiplying in laboratory dishes.”
Luna’s pro-life and anti-stem cell stance
Luna called the use of stem cells for research “morally wrong” and “no better than the Nazis” in terms of human testing, Raw Story reported.
Back in 2019, Luna wrote on Facebook that pro-choice and “pro-woman arguments” are “b-------,” and “abortion was never intended for women’s rights,” but rather “born in eugenics.”
