RIGHT SPEAK: FDA Chief Says NIH ‘brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people’; US Wants Back Millions in COVID Relief From Local Governments Over Missing Reports, and other C-Virus related stories

FDA chief says NIH ‘brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people’:

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary again promoted a conspiracy theory about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Wednesday of funding the lab that created the virus.

Makary, when asked by NewsNation’s Connell McShane about the longevity of the Trump administration’s changes to federal health agencies such as the FDA, blasted the previous NIH leadership while floating the theory.

“We are planning to change our health agencies for a generation or longer,” Makary responded.

“Look at the NIH, when Jay Bhattacharya came in there it was a mess,” he continued. “Fourteen percent of the grants were descriptive studies on health equity and the NIH had just funded a lab that brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people worldwide.”

The Trump administration has favored the lab leak theory — even replacing the COVID.gov website that provided resources and information on the virus in April with a page promoting the conspiracy. --->READ MORE HERE

Patrick Semansky/AP

US wants back millions in COVID relief from local governments over missing reports

The U.S. Treasury is seeking to recoup COVID-19 pandemic relief funds from hundreds of local governments that received millions of dollars but never complied with requirements to report how they used the money.

The federal government distributed $350 billion to state, local, territorial and tribal governments as part of the American Rescue Plan approved by Congress and President Joe Biden in 2021. More than 30,000 governments, from the largest state to the tiniest town, were to get a share.

Governments had until the end of 2024 to obligate the money for specific projects and were supposed to file either quarterly or annual progress reports, depending on their population and how much money they received. Most complied. But as of January, about 1,000 mostly smaller governments had failed to file any reports with the Treasury detailing how they used a total of $139 million, according to an analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

A GAO report released last week said the Treasury sent notices to the local governments seeking to recoup the money.

As of June 24, a total of 740 local governments subsequently filed reports and will no longer be subject to repaying their funds, the Treasury said in a letter attached to the GAO report. Thirteen governments returned their funds to the Treasury. But that still left 235 local governments that had never filed a report nor returned their pandemic relief funds. --->READ MORE HERE