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--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: And I'm John Bickley, Editor-in-Chief of Daily Wire. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Today, we're covering a heated exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci over the origin of COVID-19 and "gain of function" research. We'll also look at what teachers groups are planning for the new school year and the latest on the infrastructure bill.
--:-- John Bickley: That's right. And joining us to break down the details is Daily Wire's Ian Howarth. Good morning, Ian.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Good morning, Georgia. Good morning, John.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So, Ian, how did we get to this point? There's a lot to this story, with the feud between Dr. Fauci and Senator Paul going on for months at this point.
--:-- Ian Howarth: The latest move in this ongoing battle came during a Senate hearing on Tuesday regarding the federal government's COVID-19 response, with Senator Paul implying that Dr. Fauci broke the law.
--:-- John Bickley: Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress. Section 1001 of the U.S. Criminal Code creates a felony and a five-year penalty for lying to Congress.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So Senator Paul openly accused Dr. Fauci in a Senate hearing of committing a felony?
--:-- Georgia Howe: It appears so. The senator said that evening that he would be sending a letter to the DOJ asking for a criminal referral.
--:-- Ian Howarth: So what specifically is he accusing Dr. Fauci of? The accusations tie into the broader lab leak theory, where COVID-19 was thought to have been released, whether intentionally or by accident, from a Chinese lab, specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
--:-- John Bickley: In this case, Senator Paul has pushed Dr. Fauci on the notion of gain-of-function research carried out at this lab, and where the funding for this type of research was provided through various grant systems by America's medical research agency, the NIH.
--:-- Ian Howarth: An accusation, by the way, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has denied.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Can I pause you for a second? Gain of function, we've been hearing that term a lot lately. Can you define it for us?
--:-- Ian Howarth: Sure, that's actually a point of debate. There is some disagreement over what gain of function means. It's usually defined as a type of medical research which deliberately changes an organism or disease to increase various factors like transmissibility or the type of hosts it can infect.
--:-- John Bickley: Scientists acting in good faith usually carry out this research to better understand new infectious diseases in order to prevent or treat them in the future.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Okay so how does this all tie in? Well during the hearing Senator Paul discussed a Wuhan Institute researcher named Dr Xi who wrote a paper titled Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat SARS-Related Coronaviruses.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Senator Paul said that Dr. Xi credited the NIH, provided the number of a grant she was given, and explained the research she carried out. In this paper, she took two bat coronavirus genes, spike genes, and combined them with a SARS-related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature.
--:-- John Bickley: These lab-created viruses were then shown to replicate in humans.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The important detail here is that, according to Senator Paul, this appears to fit the definition of the gain-of-function research the NIH said it paused between 2014 and 2017.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Okay. Back in May, Dr. Fauci denied that the NIH had ever funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So this led Senator Paul to accuse him of lying to Congress.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?
--:-- Senator Rand Paul: Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The two then argued with Dr. Fauci accusing the senator, who is also a doctor, by the way, of not knowing what he's talking about.
--:-- Senator Rand Paul: You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You're saying that's not gain of function?
--:-- Dr. Anthony Fauci: That is correct.
--:-- Senator Rand Paul: And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about.
--:-- Georgia Howe: OK, so a lot of drama here. The battle of the doctors. And it's certainly not over.
--:-- Ian Howarth: Thanks for the breakdown. Daily Wire's Ian Howarth.
--:-- John Bickley: Up next, we'll look at what teachers groups are planning for the new school year.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Watch Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tell his story in Created Equal, a documentary that follows his journey from the segregated South to the highest court in the land and the contentious confirmation battle he fought to get there. The documentary is streaming now for Daily Wire members.
--:-- John Bickley: So go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and get 25% off your new membership with code JUSTICE.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In recent months, parents have begun pushing back on how race and identity are being taught in public schools. With the national debate over critical race theory ramping up, some parents are speaking out over what they say is politicized messaging from teachers.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Advocates for critical race theory are even arguing that merit is even racist. They argue that math is even racist.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I am worried about the dumbing down of curriculum. I am worried about this, about forced equality. I think we're going into Marxism.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak has been covering this issue and has an update on what teachers are working on this summer.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Good morning, Luke.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Good morning.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So professional groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics set the direction for how those subjects are taught in K-12 schools, and most of them have an annual conference each summer.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: You went through the agendas for each of these groups' conferences. What did you find?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, race is clearly dominating the discussion. In fact, the groups for every single subject have made race the focus this year.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: For example, the National Science Teaching Association is having a conference titled What is Social Justice Teaching in the Science Classroom? It begins by racially segregating the attendees with white teachers going into one room and minority teachers going into another.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I heard about this. They call it affinity groups, right?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: The mathematics conference meanwhile is oriented around sessions like social justice in mathematics teaching and learning, and how do you purposefully advocate with your mathematical curriculum?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Nearly all the other sessions focused on race or advocacy in some form. So a lot of focus on social justice and race. What's the rationale for that? From an academic standpoint?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, the argument is that schools can improve outcomes for students of minority backgrounds if they focus on eliminating the hidden forms of racism, which they claim have been holding those students back.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Is it working? Do we have data about whether this type of teacher training is improving academic achievement, specifically for minority kids?
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Well, we don't have data about these trainings specifically, but we know that in general, reading and math scores have been falling for a while, since 2013, really.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In 2019, only 24% of all 12th graders were proficient in math and 22% in science. And that data was from before coronavirus remote learning, which of course set students back even more.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: You've been tracking this issue for a while now, and you've reported that these teachers' organizations are focusing heavily on race and identity. But what do you know about the average teacher? Do you have any sense of what regular teachers think about this new direction?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great question. It's hard to know exactly what most teachers think. But as we've just seen, the agenda really is being set by these big national teachers' councils and, of course, the teachers' unions.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: And those who disagree with these organizations might be reluctant to push back, at least publicly.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So if these conferences are an indicator, we can expect a heavy focus on race this year.
--:-- Luke Rosiak: Thanks for coming on, Luke.
--:-- Georgia Howe: No problem. Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak.
--:-- John Bickley: The Senate is nearing a bipartisan agreement on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. Joining us to discuss the negotiations is Daily Wire reporter Chrissy Clark.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Chrissy, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So there's been a lot of back and forth on this bill with multiple versions. What exactly is included in this infrastructure bill?
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Yeah, the bill allocates most of the money to what Americans traditionally think of when they hear the word infrastructure. Think roads, bridges, and public transportation.
--:-- John Bickley: Democrats and Republican negotiators, Senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, have also agreed to spend an additional $15 billion specifically on green infrastructure, think electric vehicle charging stations and electric school buses.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: But not everything in this bill is considered infrastructure. Right. We've seen a lot of debate over what exactly constitutes infrastructure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So what else is in this bill?
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Well, the most obvious example is that Democrats also want to add a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
--:-- John Bickley: Okay, obviously not something Republicans will accept.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: How is this bipartisan bill different from the one President Biden proposed?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, for starters, the price tag. President Biden proposed $2 trillion in spending, so almost twice the cost.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: It included a proposal to spend $400 billion on caregiving and expanding access to Medicaid. The caregiving proposal won't make it into this bill, but Democrats are moving it into their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which has zero Republican support.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So some of the spending is being shifted to the other bill.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Right. When will the Senate take up the vote?
--:-- John Bickley: Democrats tried to pass the bill yesterday, but Senate Republicans delayed it in hopes of extending negotiations to Monday.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: When the Senate voted yesterday the text of the bill was not finalized Democrats are arguing that Republicans are obstructing this process by delaying But Republicans like Senator Rob Portman say they are willing to move forward with a vote on Monday
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah I mean what they like to do is be able to say today that we not supporting it. We are. We just want time to get it right. It's too important, you know, for us to rush a vote here for an arbitrary deadline.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: So today, we're not going to be able to support moving forward. We will be able to on Monday.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What parts of the bill are Republicans is focusing on?
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Transit is a major focus. Republicans are hesitant to spend $48.5 billion because $70 billion in COVID-19 relief funds already went to transit.
--:-- John Bickley: Aside from this bill, Congress invests $12 billion each year.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Republicans aren't the only ones that could stall this bill, though. Progressive Democrats in the House have indicated that they want to add more climate change provisions to the legislation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Speaker Nancy Pelosi is urging progressives to take the bipartisan win and add those provisions to the Democrats' reconciliation bill.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: If the bill does pass, how does Congress plan on paying for this increase in spending?
--:-- John Bickley: According to Senator Portman, this bill has no new tax increases.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: But again, we haven't seen the entire thing yet. Other plans include using unspent funds from prior COVID packages and using revenue from selling off oil reserves.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So it sounds like we're really about to see this bill passed.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Are both parties generally satisfied with it?
--:-- John Bickley: Moderate Republicans are excited to get an infrastructure bill passed, though many feel that the price tag is steep.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Republicans are now far more worried about the Democrats' reconciliation bill, which they argue will worsen existing inflation, whereas Democrats are arguing that infrastructure and spending bills will help the economy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Chrissy, thanks for breaking this down for us.
--:-- Chrissy Clark: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: Those are the top stories this morning, but there's more in the news to keep an eye on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Other big developments that we're tracking this week.
--:-- John Bickley: At least 25 people have been killed in massive seasonal flooding in central China, with thousands more trapped in schools, homes, and businesses.
--:-- Georgia Howe: At least 100,000 people have been evacuated.
--:-- John Bickley: About half of Australia's population is again under lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the Delta variant.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The state of South Australia has initiated a seven-day lockdown after recording five cases, and the state of Victoria has extended its lockdown another week after cases exceeded 100.
--:-- John Bickley: The country's largest city, Sydney, with a population of over 5 million, is in its fourth week of lockdown, reporting over 1,000 cases.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And visitors to museums, theaters, and swimming pools in France will now be required to show a health pass proving they have been vaccinated for COVID-19 or that they have had a recent negative test.
--:-- John Bickley: In August, the health pass will be required to enter restaurants, bars, some trains, and airplanes.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This past weekend, over 100,000 people took to the streets in France to protest government overreach.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If you liked this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five-star review.
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: If you like this podcast, subscribe to our Morning Wire newsletter available exclusively to Daily Wire members.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Get the Morning Wire newsletter delivered straight to your inbox when you join at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
