Happy New Year 2025

Tag: COVID

Trump executive order to block funds for schools with COVID vaccine mandates

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Friday barring schools who still have coronavirus vaccine mandates from receiving federal funds.

The order, according to a report from Breitbart confirmed by the White House, prohibits “federal funds from being used to support or subsidize an educational service agency, state education agency, local education agency, elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education that requires students to have received a COVID-19 vaccination to attend in-person education programs.”

It also tasks Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and the Secretary of Education to establish guidelines for compliance and to “provide a plan to end coercive COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”

That includes coming up with a system to block federal funding to “educational entities” that have coronavirus vaccine mandates.

NO LONGER TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF: TRUMP SIGNS ORDER PRIORITIZING ‘UNIFIED’ US FOREIGN POLICY FRONT

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House, where he signed an executive order, on Thursday, Feb. 13. (AP/Ben Curtis)

TRUMP ISSUES EXECUTIVE ORDERS ON RECIPROCAL TARIFFS

An executive order Trump signed in late January called a vaccine mandate for U.S. service members “unfair, overbroad, and [a] completely unnecessary burden.”

That order called to “make reinstatement available to all members of the military (active and reserve) who were discharged solely for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and who request to be reinstated.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The order said in August 2021, the Secretary of Defense “mandated that all service members receive the COVID-19 vaccine.” That mandate was rescinded in January 2023.

Trump also signed an executive order in January that removes federal funding from K-12 schools that teach critical race theory.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Greg Norman is a reporter at Fox News Digital.

February 14, 2025
Second-in-command at NIH who led agency during COVID resigns

The No. 2 in command at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, who served as acting director of the agency during the COVID-19 pandemic, has abruptly resigned.

Tabak, 73, has been at the NIH for 25 years, first serving as director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research before eventually becoming the NIH’s principal deputy director in 2010, which is the second-in-command at the agency. Tabak also served during transitional periods as acting director, including during the COVID era when he was regularly grilled by Republicans, alongside Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the NIH’s response.

“I write to inform you that I have retired from government service, effective today, 2/11/2025,” Tabak wrote in an email, reportedly circulated to staff at the NIH, earlier this week. The note did not explain the reason for his departure.

SENATE DEMOCRATS RAIL AGAINST RFK JR. IN LATE-NIGHT SESSION AHEAD OF VOTE

Dr. Lawrence Tabak testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education on Capitol Hill on May 4, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Tabak’s resignation comes amid a shakeup within the Health and Human Services Department, the NIH’s parent agency, that occurred once President Donald Trump took office in January. Under Trump, the agency has faced cuts to programs and reports have indicated the administration has plans to fire a trove of HHS employees. Typically, Tabak would have been promoted to acting director while Trump’s nominee awaited confirmation. However, the position was instead assigned to Dr. Matthew Memoli, a former top researcher at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a known critic of COVID vaccine mandates.

Tabak was part of a group of agency leaders, including Fauci and former NIH Director Francis Collins, who congressional investigators accused of trying to manipulate the narrative around the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Through GOP investigations, it was determined Tabak was part of a controversial phone call with Fauci, Collins and several prominent scientists that critics have argued was a catalyst for the publication of a scientific paper that was released positing that it was not plausible the virus originated in a lab.

SCIENTISTS EXPECT MAJOR ‘MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS’ DESPITE TRUMP’S CAP ON NIH RESEARCH FUNDING

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

He was also front-and-center when it came to GOP probes into whether risky gain-of-function research was occurring at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and faced criticism for slow-rolling the release of information requested by Republican investigators for these concerns.

Tabak “[dealt] with all of the messy or intractable problem[s]” and was “often… the fall guy when things [went] sideways,” Jeremy Berg, former director of NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, said on social media following news of Tabak’s resignation. “Larry has shoveled so much s— over the years that he would have been well qualified to work behind the elephants in an old circus.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Fox News Digital reached out to the NIH for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

February 13, 2025
Fauci potentially to be deposed as GOP continues investigations into COVID

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing his efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he wants answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In his new position as chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, Paul issued subpoenas to 14 agencies from the outgoing Biden administration aimed at building on past congressional investigations into the COVID-19 virus and risky taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research. It is unclear who exactly from each agency will ultimately be deposed, but a Fauci deposition is possible.

“In the wake of Anthony Fauci’s preemptive pardon, there are still questions to be answered,” Paul said in a statement after announcing the issuance of his subpoenas. “Subpoenas were sent from the Committee to NIH [National Institutes of Health] and 13 other agencies regarding their involvement in risky gain-of-function research. The goal of the investigation will be to critique the process that allowed this dangerous research, that may have led to the pandemic, to occur in a foreign country under unsafe protocols and to ensure that there is sufficient oversight and review going forward, making sure a mistake of this magnitude never happens again.”

FORMER NASCAR STAR DANICA PATRICK SUPPORTS TRUMP REVOKING FAUCI’S SECURITY DETAIL

While former President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci to protect him from political retribution under the new Trump administration, legal experts have questioned the validity of such a pardon. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Baily suggested to Fox News that since Biden’s own Justice Department indicated he lacked the mental faculties to be held criminally liable for improper handling of classified documents, it could be argued he also lacked the mens rea to issue pardons to people like Fauci. Additionally, the pardon Fauci received only covers his actions from January 2014 to the date of his pardon. As a result, a refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena could also potentially result in criminal charges.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., questions former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci during a hearing about the U.S.’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Paul’s investigation will build on a previous bipartisan probe launched by the Senate’s Homeland Security committee last year looking into the national security threats posed by “high-risk biological research and technology in the U.S. and abroad.”

A second investigation being launched by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Permanent Select Subcommittee on Investigations, will similarly probe concerns in the new Congress surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and will include a review of email communications from Fauci.

MISSOURI AG SAYS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ANTHONY FAUCI IS STILL ON THE TABLE

Since the pandemic began, Paul has sent dozens of requests for information related to the origins of the COVID-19 virus and gain-of-function research. Last year, his efforts revealed documents that he said show that government officials from at least 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was working on creating a coronavirus similar to COVID-19.

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

The WIV has been a centerpiece in the debate over the origins of COVID-19, as it was eventually discovered that American scientist Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was using taxpayer dollars to conduct risky research on the novel bat virus out of the WIV prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services barred Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance from receiving federal funding for five years.

Meanwhile, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Congress in May 2021 that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

DR. FAUCI SAYS HE APPRECIATES PRESIDENT BIDEN’S PARDON BUT INSISTS ‘NO CRIME’ WAS COMMITTED

Dr. Anthony Fauci is sworn-in before testifying in front of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing an executive order to halt all U.S. funding going towards gain-of-function research.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Federal officials remain split on where the COVID-19 virus originated from. Three agencies — the Department of Energy, the FBI and the CIA — have determined that the most likely origin narrative is the lab leak theory, but others in the intelligence community and throughout the federal government say they can either not conclude that a lab leak was the most likely scenario, or they say that a natural origin scenario is most likely. A declassified intelligence report from 2021, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, posited that if a lab leak did turn out to be the catalyst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was likely the result of an accident.

Representatives for Paul declined to comment for this report, while Fauci did not respond to a request for comment.

February 1, 2025
CIA releases new analysis on COVID origins favoring lab leak theory

The CIA has changed its assessment on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, now favoring the lab leak theory. Under its new director, John Ratcliffe, the agency released an assessment on the origins of COVID-19.

The review was ordered by former President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan toward the end of Biden’s time in office.

Analysts made the assessment with “low confidence” despite former CIA director Bill Burns, who remained agnostic on the origins, telling the agency it needed to look at the existing evidence again and come down on one side or the other.

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus made a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

JOHN RATCLIFFE SAYS US FACES ‘MOST CHALLENGING SECURITY ENVIRONMENT’ EVER IN CONFIRMATION HEARING

The agency has maintained for years it did not have enough intelligence to conclude whether COVID originated in a lab or a wet market in Wuhan, China. Despite the new assessment favoring a lab leak, there was no indication of new evidence.

“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News.

“We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”

Ratcliffe, who was confirmed Thursday, has long been a proponent of the lab leak theory. In an interview with Breitbart, Ratcliffe framed the assessment of COVID’s origins as part of a broader strategy “addressing the threat from China.”

He also said he wants the CIA to “get off the sidelines” and take a stand.

John Ratcliffe appears for a Senate Intelligence confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill Jan. 15, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WHO RENEWS CALLS FOR CHINA TO SHARE DATA ON COVID ORIGINS 5 YEARS LATER

In a March 2023 Fox News piece co-written with Cliff Sims, Ratcliffe accused the Biden administration of trying to keep a growing consensus around the lab leak theory quiet by suppressing “what can clearly be assessed from the intelligence they possess.”

He also cast doubt on the notion that the CIA did not have enough evidence to come to a conclusion about the virus’ origins.

“The CIA is the world’s premier spy agency. Its reach is unmatched, its ability to acquire information unrivaled. And yet here we are three-and-a-half years later and there is ample public reporting that the CIA just doesn’t have enough information to make an assessment. This is utter nonsense,” the March 2023 piece says.

A sign about COVID-19 testing is displayed outside a COVID-19 testing site as a health walker collects testing tubes in Wheeling, Ill., Dec. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In the same piece, Ratcliffe and Sims dismissed the idea that the virus emerged naturally, claiming there was “a complete absence of intelligence or scientific evidence” pointing to that conclusion.

When he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in April 2023, Ratcliffe said the lab leak theory was “the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.”

Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.

January 26, 2025