Crooked Media - What A Day: Wray of dumbshine

Three years into the coronavirus pandemic, the United States has seen an explosion in conspiracy theories and misinformation (in a country already fairly well saturated with both, by the way).  
 

• In a new classified report, the United States Department of Energy concluded with “low confidence” that the pandemic likely originated from a laboratory leak, a finding that has reignited an ongoing debate and fueled existing right-wing conspiracy theories that the virus was manufactured as a Chinese bioweapon. The report offers no new public evidence for its assessment, and there is no consensus within the intelligence community about the origins of the virus, but that has of course not stopped the Lauren Boeberts of the world from running with it as vindication. (Of what? Read on!). An expert group from the World Health Organization said last year that “key pieces of data” are still missing to explain how the pandemic began. 
   

• So the Department of Energy report changes virtually nothing. Nevertheless, Trump-appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray gave an exclusive interview to Fox News on Tuesday (yes the same Fox News that was just exposed as a cesspool of lies, greed, corruption, and for coordinating with the trump campaign) in which he noted that the FBI “has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” That’s convenient for Fox since the network was already interested in pushing the lab-leak theory again as a culture-war issue. It’s a perfect time for them to do so, since most of America has (rightly or wrongly) moved on from COVID, and Democrats and liberal institutions are no longer hypervigilant in policing lies and conspiracy theories related to the virus now that the curve has largely been flattened. 
   

• Democrats currently don’t want to raise the salience of the pandemic as a political issue, so they have mostly halted any coordinated effort to push back on lies. Many scientists still believe the likeliest explanation is that the coronavirus jumped from animals to humans at Wuhan’s seafood and livestock market, the way so many pandemics start, and that there’s no credible evidence to support the lab-leak hypotheses. The most generous interpretation of available findings is the World Health Organization’s director-general saying, “all hypotheses remain open and require further study.” Very “we don’t have proof of aliens but we can’t rule it out.”

Republicans are exploiting the nothingness of the new report, because they don’t have a lot else going on. 
 

• This whole situation dovetails neatly into the hyper-nationalistic GOP revenge agenda, where in the House this week the newly-formed Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (bit wordy there, guys) held its first committee hearing yesterday. It’s a bipartisan committee, but Republicans seem to be particularly obsessed with China as a threat, though they seem to ignore their favorite president’s extremely close and effusive relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

• The lab leak theory is of great interest to the Fox News set and Trump allies because it insulates Trump and his administration from scrutiny for coddling Xi in late 2019 and early 2020 and then subsequently botching the pandemic response (to put it mildly). And again, any fabricated narrative like this is meant to obscure the fact that the Republican Party has, say it with me, nothing of substance to offer the vast majority of Americans. Furthermore, let’s play their game: if the virus did escape from a lab, wouldn’t it behoove us to make sure every American is vaccinated? And take pains to slow the spread? And develop new treatments and cures? And try to prevent the next pandemic anywhere viruses might cross over to humans? The true origins of this coronavirus have few policy ramifications, but could help Republicans try to wash their hands of responsibility for letting the virus (which they also call a liberal hoax, no worse than the common cold) spread uncontrolled in the U.S., causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. 

As much of a dreary inconvenience as it may be, the pandemic is not fully behind us, and it has killed a staggering seven million people worldwide. Democrats should still be engaging in a full-court press against lies and disinformation, because Republicans show no signs of hitting the brakes.

The Willow Project is a disastrous Western Arctic drilling plan that could generate as much carbon as 76 coal plants emit in a year, jeopardize the health and traditional practices of nearby Alaska Native communities, and devastate local wildlife like polar bears, migratory birds, and caribou. Help us stop the Willow project.
 

ConocoPhillips is planning this massive oil drilling project in the Western Arctic, and the Biden administration has less than 30 days to finalize its decision to grant or deny permits to ConocoPhillips. You can pressure the administration to do the right thing. Tell President Biden to halt it for good.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that a Senate committee will consider legislation next week that would repeal two authorizations of war in Iraq in a renewed push to reassert Congress’ role in deciding to send American troops to the battlefield. 

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also sent a letter to Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, asking him to stop Fox News hosts from “spreading false election narratives,” (because Murdoch admitted that he and other Fox executives did not stop them in his explosive Dominion Voting Systems deposition) as they could lead to “further acts of political violence” like the January 6 insurrection. Meanwhile, disgraced former president Trump demanded that Murdoch keep lying. 

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has lost her campaign for reelection, with Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson advancing to a runoff on April 4.

TikTok announced that it will set daily screen-time limits for users under 18 to one hour. I’m sure no one will be able to find a way around that! 

According to a new intelligence report, the mysterious ailment known as “Havana syndrome” did not result from the actions of a foreign adversary.

Medical licensing officials in multiple states are launching an emergency effort to stop nurses with fraudulent academic credentials from caring for patients, after three Florida schools were accused of selling thousands of bogus diplomas. 

Futures traders predict that the Federal Reserve will raise its interest rates to a range of 5.5-5.75 percent by September. 

An ethanol-fueled fungus known as whiskey fungus has encrusted an entire Tennessee town, fed by alcohol vapors from a local Jack Daniel’s distillery. 

The City of Baltimore agreed to pay a $6 million settlement to the family of a driver who was killed during a 2010 police chase by its rogue law enforcement unit the Gun Trace Task Force. 

New York City has agreed to pay $21,500 to each of the more than 300 people arrested in the Bronx during the George Floyd protests in June 2020.

President Biden is using $1.5 trillion in new federal spending to reshape the United States economy by redirecting corporate profits and reversing a longstanding decline in the worker benefits. The administration is using new guidelines to pressure companies to expand child care, produce more products and materials in the United States, and use equitable hiring practices. Ganesh Sitaraman, who heads a new political economy initiative at Vanderbilt University said that Biden and his advisers are “pushing forward an agenda aimed at building things in America…and taking on corporate power.” The Inflation Reduction Act gives the Treasury Department oversight of corporate tax incentives, which the agency says it is using to grow clean-energy projects that pay competitive wages and will hire apprentices. Republicans and Biden’s adversaries have jeered the administration’s agenda as “anti-business,” which is an all-too-familiar spin on any policy that seeks to give workers a fair share or make sure corporations are not exploiting their employees. In fact, the Democratic Party should continue to be as “anti-business” as they want to be for the good of working people. 

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Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl cooked for nearly 500 unhoused people seeking shelter from unusual winter storms in Los Angeles.  
 

Rep. Joanna McClinton (D-PA) has become the first female speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. 
 

A unique solar farm and storage power plant has broken ground in Holtville, CA. The plant will allow batteries to shift daytime solar production to late afternoon and evening hours, providing on-peak energy whenever necessary. 

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tried to cite the Global Times as a news source before Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl pointed out that it’s...a Chinese government propaganda outlet. 

Eli Lilly announced that it will cap the monthly out-of-pocket cost of insulin to $35. The company has raised the price of its most widely used insulin product by more than 1,000 percent in the past three decades, so this is largely a face-saving move after President Biden repeatedly called out insulin manufacturers for their craven profiteering. But a win’s a win.