"If there was a smoking gun" on the origin of the novel coronavirus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party "buried it along with anyone who would dare speak up about it," a U.S. official told Josh Rogin in a Politico piece.
Rogin published a column in The Washington Post in April 2020 after someone leaked him cables sent in 2018 from American diplomats who visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were concerned about lab safety and the fact that the lab's work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
Following up on the column a nearly year later for Politico, Rogin reports that U.S. officials grew increasingly convinced an accidental lab leak was a possible coronavirus origin story that at least deserved further investigation (Rogin writes that many politicians and journalists conflated this theory with the false notion that the virus was a Chinese bioweapon.) The WIV was open about their research on coronaviruses, but a senior Trump administration official told Rogin many officials in the State Department and National Security Council came to believe Chinese coronavirus researchers had been taking more risks than previously thought.
Of course, as tensions between the Trump White House and Beijing rose, the matter of the coronavirus' origins became increasingly politicized, so finger-pointing narratives should be viewed with scrutiny. But Rogin notes an under-the-radar study from a group of Beijing researchers released in July 2020 did lead U.S. officials to consider, after consultations with experts, that the Beijing lab was conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with humanlike lung characteristics long before the outbreak began, suggesting similar practices may have taken place in at the WIV.
But it seems unlikely that the speculation will clarify anything. "We'll probably never be able to prove it one way or the other," the official told Rogin. Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell
The Supreme Court has once again ruled against California in a case concerning religious worship during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a 5-4 decision, mostly along ideological lines, the court ruled late Friday night that California cannot enforce its three-household limit on at-home religious meetings, such as prayer groups and Bible studies in. Conservatives were in the majority, with only Chief Justice John Roberts splitting off and siding with the three liberal justices.
A panel of the 9th Circuit of Appeals had previously upheld the state's restrictions on at-home gatherings since it was a blanket ban that applied to secular and non-secular gatherings, alike. The Supreme Court's minority argued along similar lines; in a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that California is not required to "treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons."
But the majority wasn't satisfied with that explanation, suggesting the state was treating secular businesses, like movie theaters and restaurants, more favorably. "The state cannot assume the worst when people go to worship, but assume the best when people go to work," the unsigned majority opinion said. "This is the fifth time the Court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s COVID restrictions on religious exercise." Read more at Politico and The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell
Prince Philip, the late husband of the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II, will be laid to rest next Saturday, Buckingham Palace has announced.
The ceremony, which will take place at St. George's Chapel in Windsor, will reportedly contain many traditional customs associated with the death of a royal family member; however, attendance will be scaled down because of COVID-19 restrictions. The Duke of Edinburgh, who died Friday morning at 99, will not lie in state anywhere accessible to the public so as not to draw oversized crowds, but the funeral will be televised, and eight days of national mourning will precede the event. A Land Rover will carry the duke's coffin from Windsor Castle to St. George's, a nod to the duke's preference for driving himself without a chauffeur, CNN notes.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and Prince Philip's grandson, will travel from the United States to the U.K. for the funeral. His wife Meghan Markle, who is pregnant, will remain at their home on the advice of her doctor. Read more at CNN and BBC. Tim O'Donnell
A previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use that was obtained by The Associated Press provides a clearer picture of the government's response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The timeline shows "the government's failure to comprehend the scale and intensity of a violent uprising by its own citizens," as well as the fact that former President Donald Trump's disengagement meant Pentagon officials, White House aides, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Congressional leaders were left to manage the situation, AP writes. One of the key aspects appears to be an hours-long attempt to coordinate plans between the military, the D.C. National Guard, and the Capitol Police.
The document reveals a minute-long phone call between Pence and then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, in which Pence tells Miller to "clear the Capitol" two hours after the mob initially overwhelmed the Capitol Police and entered the building.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), reportedly grew increasingly frustrated with a slow response after making multiple calls, and at one point reportedly accused "the National Security apparatus knowing that protesters planned to conduct an assault on the Capitol." Read more about the Pentagon's riot timeline at The Associated Press. Tim O'Donnell
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) led the charge in criticizing President Biden's newly-minted 36-person bipartisan commission that's been tasked with studying Supreme Court expansion and term limits for justices, among other judiciary reforms. "This faux-academic study of a nonexistent problem fits squarely within liberals' years-long campaign to politicize the Court, intimidate its members, and subvert its independence," he said in a statement Friday, a few hours after Biden ordered the formation of the commission, which has not been charged with delivering a specific recommendation at the conclusion of its report.
But McConnell most likely need not fear, write Ian Millhiser in Vox and Jonathan Turley in The Hill. Their reasons differ significantly, but the conclusions are the same — the commission looks like it'll be a dud.
That's not to say the members aren't impressive. Both Millhiser and Turley admit it features an all-star lineup of legal scholars, but the former notes that none of the leading academic proponents of Supreme Court reform were named to the commission. "In choosing the members of this commission, the White House appears to have prioritized bipartisanship and star power within the legal academy over choosing people who have actually spent a meaningful amount of time advocating for Supreme Court reforms," Millhiser writes. Subsequently, he argues, members of the Federalist Society praised the makeup of the commission, signaling that they're not threatened by it.
Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, wasn't sold on the bipartisan angle; he believes the commission is "far from balanced," with a handful of its members falling under the right-of-center umbrella. In the end, though, "few moderates or conservatives would put much weight in such a stacked commission," Turley writes. "Rather, it could be an effort to defuse the left while sentencing the court packing scheme to death-by-commission — a favorite lethal practice in Washington." Read more at Vox and The Hill. Tim O'Donnell
China's antitrust regulator doled out a record 18.2 billion yuan fine to e-commerce giant Alibaba on Saturday for abusing its market dominance. The figure is equivalent to $2.8 billion and 4 percent of the company's domestic annual sales. Additionally, Alibaba will have to revamp its operations and submit a "self-examination compliance report" within three years, per The Wall Street Journal.
Considering the penalty far surpasses Qualcomm's previous record $975 million fine in terms of raw money (relatively that was a bigger hit) it seems like a real blow to Alibaba, especially since its founder Jack Ma remains under heavy government scrutiny after criticizing Beijing's regulatory restrictions. But it may actually be a weight off the company's shoulders, at least for now.
"China's record fine on Alibaba may lift the regulatory uncertainty that has weighed on the company since the start of an anti-monopoly probe in late December," Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Vey Sern-Ling and Tiffany Tam said. They described the fine as a small price to pay for some clarity.
The fine alone shouldn't be too much to worry about for Alibaba, suggested Jeffrey Towson, a former professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management. "That is serious money, but it's not going to hinder their development," he told the Journal.
In a statement, Alibaba said it "accepts the penalty with sincerity and will ensure its compliance with determination."
That said, Bloomberg called the Alibaba investigation "one of the opening salvos in a campaign seemingly designed to curb the power of China's internet leaders and their billionaire founders" like Ma, so there may be more to come. Read more at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell
Dr. Andrew Baker, the medical examiner who performed George Floyd's autopsy, testified in former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's murder trial on Friday, telling jurors that the primary cause of Floyd's death was the restraint of his body and pressure on his neck.
Chauvin's defense attorneys have repeatedly argued that Floyd's underlying health issues and drug use were to blame for his death while Chauvin was arresting him in May 2020, reports The New York Times. Baker testified that while Floyd's heart disease and drug use were "contributing conditions," compression of his neck was the primary cause of death.
Baker said medical examiners are allowed to classify the manner of death as "undetermined" if circumstances are unclear, but in this case, he classified Floyd's death as "homicide." Read more at The New York Times.