There isn't much Republicans and Democrats in Washington agree on these days, but getting to the bottom of how the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic started is receiving bipartisan support.
Earlier this week, an amendment introduced by Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to ban the funding of dangerous gain-of-function research passed the Senate.
"We don’t know whether the pandemic started in a lab in Wuhan or evolved naturally," Paul said in a statement. "While many still deny funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, experts believe otherwise. The passage of my amendment ensures that this never happens in the future. No taxpayer money should have ever been used to fund gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and now we permanently have put it to a stop."
On Wednesday night, the Senate voted to push President Biden to declassify information about the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
By unanimous consent, the Senate just passed a bill requiring the Biden administration, and specifically the Director of National Intelligence, to declassify intelligence related to the origins of COVID19, introduced by Senator's Hawley (R-MO) and Braun (R-IN) - per @kellyfphares
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) May 27, 2021
"Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal revealed three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report. Though many scientists, including former CDC Director Robert Redfield, have been outspoken about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a lab leak, the media and others have denied that possibility from the beginning," Senator Braun said about the legislation and need to declassify information. "Now that it is clear that the lab leak theory is completely viable, Americans need real answers. We will not get those answers from another botched investigation from the World Health Organization, or more cover-ups by China’s Communist regime. Americans have been through so much from this virus. Many of us have lost friends and loved ones, many have lost businesses they’ve spent their lives building."
"President Biden must declassify all U.S. intelligence related to any link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the COVID-19 pandemic, so that independent researchers and the American people can get answers," he continued. "This bill will make sure that Americans and independent researchers have all the information available to them on this issue that matters so much both for those who have been affected by this pandemic, and for preventing the next one."
After repeatedly saying the United States would defer to investigators at the World Health Organization and the Chinese Communist Party, this week President Joe Biden directed U.S. intelligence to look into the origins of the virus after previously canceling an ongoing investigation launched by the Trump administration.