Morning Wire XX
[0] A months -long investigation has revealed that COVID -19 was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in collaboration with the Chinese military.
[1] Tax dollars were going to fund this gain -of -function research that was a part of China's biological weapon program.
[2] Was the virus created as a bioweapon and did the U .S. funded?
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's Tuesday, June 13th, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] A new report accuses the nation's largest Catholic health network of ignoring official church guidance and providing transgender medical services to patients.
[6] What specifically did the report uncover, and where does the church officially stand on the issue?
[7] And following layoffs across the tech sector, the big names of Silicon Valley are pushing the government to open the door to more foreign workers.
[8] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[9] Stay tuned.
[10] We have the news you need to know.
[11] According to a new report, U .S. State Department investigators looking into the origins of COVID -19 believe the virus came from Chinese military bioweapon research, research that may have started as early as 2016, and been at least partially funded by the U .S. The explosive new report was published in a major British paper The Times over the weekend.
[12] Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to go through the report and the fallout.
[13] Hi, Tim.
[14] So is COVID -19 a bioweapon?
[15] Its release seems accidental, but investigators from the U .S. State Department are confident that the COVID -19 virus was a product of secretive bioweapon research.
[16] According to the Times, the People's Liberation Army started working with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Technology in 2016.
[17] At that time, the Institute had had some success in mutating pathogens with help from a veteran virologist at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Ralph Barrick.
[18] Eric and the Wuhan lab's leading researcher, Dr. Xi Zhongli, actually touted one of their mutations, a supercharged version of the deadly SARS virus, and a 2015 report.
[19] They admitted in the report that they may have taken the research a little too far with that one.
[20] Up until that point, tracking coronavirus research at the lab had been relatively straightforward, but after the Chinese military got involved at the lab, the paper trail all but disappeared.
[21] Wuhan Institute researchers kept experimenting with coronavirus gain -of -function research, but they limited what information they shared with their partners, such as EcoHealth Alliance, that's a group run by Anthony Fauci ally, Peter Dajek.
[22] The U .S. investigators suspect that that's because whatever experiments the Chinese military were involved in were highly classified.
[23] Yeah, so what links do we have that suggest that COVID -19 was a bioweapon rather than an attempt to get ahead of the next pandemic?
[24] Well, investigators were given access to a trove of classified information to aid their investigation that could include things like hacked communications or sensitive source testimony.
[25] We don't know how much information they have access to, but it was enough for them to conclude that COVID -19 was very likely the product of a Chinese bioweapon program.
[26] And COVID -19's genetic code suggests that it was a product of gain -of -function research.
[27] It is the first coronavirus identified with what's called a furen cleavage site, a sequence embedded in its genetic code to make it more infectious.
[28] And we know from a March 2018 grant application that the Wuhan Institute wanted to do almost exactly that to strains, of coronavirus.
[29] And it's worth remembering how far the Chinese government went to hide the origin and the outbreak of COVID -19 early on.
[30] The Wuhan lab and the Chinese government hit its coronavirus research and refused to cooperate with investigators.
[31] U .S. officials suspect that China started working on a vaccine in November 2019, long before it actually recognized COVID -19.
[32] The first COVID vaccine was patented by a Chinese military scientist in February 2020, and that raised a lot of eyebrows internationally.
[33] That virologist was reported dead just a few months later, apparently from falling off the roof of the Wuhan lab, according to Chinese media.
[34] Nobody outside of China has been able to confirm those reports.
[35] Yeah, fell off the roof.
[36] Yeah.
[37] What's the reaction been to this report?
[38] Well, Dajek and the NIH have tried to distance themselves from it.
[39] Dajik told the times that none of the eco -health -related experiments at the Wuhan lab were dangerous and that all lab safety rules were followed at all times.
[40] It's an odd claim to make since U .S. investigators actually audited the lab in 2018 and found a serious shortage of trained technicians and safety measures.
[41] The NIH said it, quote, has never approved any research that would make a coronavirus more dangerous to humans.
[42] That's also an odd claim, considering the agency struck a deal with Dajik in 2016 to let him eco -health and the Wuhan lab continue experimenting on coronavirus as long as the mutant pathogens didn't reproduce too quickly.
[43] It also makes me think of this pretty prescient line of questioning by Senator John Kennedy of Anthony Fauci in May 2021.
[44] Here's what I'm getting at.
[45] You gave them money and you said, don't do gain the function research.
[46] Correct.
[47] And they said, we won't.
[48] Correct.
[49] And you have no way of knowing whether they did or not, except you trust them.
[50] Is that right?
[51] Well, we generally always trust the grantee to do what they say.
[52] Well, it's going to be interesting to see how the Biden administration treats this.
[53] while it's trying to cool tensions with China.
[54] Yeah.
[55] Tim, thanks for reporting.
[56] Thanks for having me. A new report shows the nation's largest Catholic health network has been performing transgender surgeries and providing puberty blockers to minors in violation of official guidance from the church.
[57] Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to tell us more.
[58] So, Megan, where did this report come from?
[59] And what did it find?
[60] Yeah, well, there were a lot of moving parts in it, and it comes from the Lepanto Institute, which is something of a Catholic watchdog organization.
[61] It seeks to protect and support Catholic doctrine.
[62] The 64 -page report that they issued focused on common spirit, which is the largest Catholic nonprofit health care network in the country.
[63] It has over 1 ,000 care sites and 140 hospitals in 21 states, so really a broad base.
[64] Well, the Lepanto Institute found that two of the large hospitals in this network have been offering transgender surgeries and treatments, Daily Wire Field reporter Spencer Lindquist has been covering this in some depth in a series of reports.
[65] And here's what he told Morning Wire about these hospitals.
[66] So the first one is St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.
[67] They not only perform these sex change operations, they actually have what they call their Gender Institute.
[68] They do a variety of different types of sex change operations.
[69] They actually have a multi -million dollar robot that assists with what they call transgender affirming care.
[70] There is also Virginia Mason -Franiscan Health, which is based in Seattle, Washington, and they not only do sex change operations, they also give up puberty blockers to minors.
[71] And then a couple of other notes on St. Francis in San Francisco.
[72] Among the surgical procedures it offers are hysterectomy, vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, scrotoplasty, and penile preserving vaginoplasti.
[73] Here's Heidi Wittenberg, a surgeon and co -founder at the Gender Clinic at St. Francis.
[74] St. Francis has become a hub of specialists, and we want to create a center of excellence for this care and welcome these patients where they have been turned away and not given access to medical care elsewhere.
[75] The gender confirmation surgeries are just to help you match and align yourself to what your true identity is and what you should have been born with.
[76] And both of these hospitals have perfect scores with the human rights.
[77] campaign, which is the largest LGBTQ lobbying group in the world.
[78] So for any institution to get that perfect score, they would have to conflict pretty strongly with Catholic theology on gender and sexuality.
[79] So it sounds like St. Francis is really leaning into this if they have a gender center.
[80] What's the Catholic Church's official stance on this?
[81] And are Catholic hospitals at liberty to disregard that Catholic guidance?
[82] Yeah.
[83] So the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in March that unequivocally stated that Catholic health organizations should not offer any procedures or medical interventions to change sex or gender.
[84] And now the church's reasoning on that is that medical interventions are only moral when they're intended to repair a defect in the body or if you're sacrificing a part of the body for the sake of the whole.
[85] Think about something like an amputation to prevent spreading disease.
[86] Gender transition procedures, they say, regard the created order of sexually differentiated bodies as unsatisfactory, and therefore they are not morally permissible, according to Catholic doctrine.
[87] The bishops also say that transgender treatments do not respect the unity of the body and soul, and that a soul can never be in another body, much less in the wrong body.
[88] Now, has there been a response from the church and or these hospitals?
[89] Nothing really yet, though there are a lot of people on social media right now calling for them to address this situation directly.
[90] And Daily Wire has reached out to Common Spirit Health Network and to the hospitals, but we haven't heard back.
[91] According to IRS filings, though, Common Spirit is technically the equivalent of a diocese or parish.
[92] So it's not just affiliated with the Catholic Church.
[93] It is, in fact, an entity of the Church.
[94] So I think it will be very likely that they will have some response to these revelations.
[95] All right.
[96] Well, we are going to keep track of that.
[97] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[98] Anytime.
[99] Amid widespread layoffs in Silicon Valley, tech leaders are now lobbying the White House to lift a cap on foreign workers in the industry.
[100] Here with more on what it means for big tech and American workers is Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[101] So Cabot, what exactly do these tech firms want?
[102] Yeah, so this month, a trade group representing tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, sent a letter to the Biden administration urging them to revise the H -1B visa program, which regulates the number of skilled foreign workers allowed in the country.
[103] That program was initially created in 1990 to bring in foreign workers to fill high -skilled jobs, at times when labor demand was high, and American companies couldn't find enough workers.
[104] The law currently allows 85 ,000 H1BVs to be issued each year, but these tech companies say that's not enough, and quote, remains insufficient to meet the needs of our economy.
[105] They want that cap raised to allow for more foreign workers.
[106] But critics of their lobbying efforts point to recent mass layoffs in the tech industry, as evidence that they simply want to hire cheaper foreign labor, instead of Americans.
[107] Now, are the H -1B workers qualitatively different in terms of their skills from these American workers that they've been letting go?
[108] Now, that's what the companies claim, but keep in mind, this year alone, nearly 150 ,000 workers in the tech industry have been laid off, including programmers and other high -level jobs.
[109] And many of the companies who fired the most workers are now the ones saying that they can't find enough labor and need to hire foreign workers.
[110] In the last year, for example, Amazon has laid off 27 ,000 people, Microsoft 10 ,000, meta, 21 ,000, Google 12 ,000.
[111] The list goes on.
[112] And shortly after announcing those layoffs, the same companies filed thousands of requests with the labor department seeking approval for foreign worker visas through the H -1B program.
[113] So their argument that they can't find workers is now coming under scrutiny, especially when you consider that an order for a company to bring in a foreign worker on the visa program, they must first prove that no qualified American is available to fill that opening.
[114] So you can see the problem with their argument.
[115] Right.
[116] Now, the H -1B program has been controversial for a while.
[117] What are the two sides of that argument?
[118] So supporters, including those lobbying for the amendments, say that from a free market perspective, if a qualified immigrant will do the same job for a lower salary, the laws of economics say that they should hire them.
[119] And they have hired a vast number.
[120] Current figures show that foreign workers now account for about a quarter of all workers in STEM fields across the U .S. And more broadly, there are currently 583 ,000 foreign workers on H -1B visas.
[121] That's according to federal data.
[122] And companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook are all among the top 15 employers of those workers.
[123] Now, critics, however, say that while foreign workers might be good for the bottom line, most profits come at the expense of American workers.
[124] Now, is that primarily because they miss out on those jobs?
[125] That's definitely part of the argument from critics.
[126] They say the program is a clear example of lawmakers and large corporations basically selling out American workers to prioritize cheaper foreign labor, which then has ripple effects throughout the economy.
[127] H -1B workers not only replace Americans, but they usually work.
[128] work for much less, which softens wage growth for those who remain employed.
[129] For example, critic cite, a 2017 study that shows the use of foreign workers has depressed wages and tech jobs by 10%.
[130] As the Economic Policy Institute, a left -leaning think tank puts it, quote, rather than turning to the H -1B program as a last resort when U .S. workers cannot be found, most employers hire H -1B workers because they can be underpaid.
[131] And it's worth noting, there have been legislative efforts to push back on this program in the past.
[132] In 2015, for example, a bipartisan and group of senators led by Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley pushed the Obama administration to reduce the number of foreign workers coming on H -1B visas.
[133] So as these lobbying efforts from Silicon Valley continue, keep an eye on how lawmakers respond in Washington.
[134] Right.
[135] Well, opinion is pretty split on this one.
[136] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[137] Anytime.
[138] Thanks for waking up with us.
[139] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.