It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

THE ORIGINS OF COVID
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

The debate over what generated the novel coronavirus, which has led to one of the most widespread pandemics in history, is boiling up again as the third anniversary of the 2020 lockdowns approaches.

Most aspects of public life and daily routine have been back up and running for a while. Masks are voluntary and in some places — like the U.S. Capitol — rare. But COVID is still wreaking havoc ([link removed]) . And a new report from the Energy Department has renewed the question of where it came from.

Add to this another layer: There’s new reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies may be more divided than previously known on whether the virus jumped from animals to humans or somehow escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Meanwhile, House Republicans in particular had been waiting to gain control of their chamber so they could drive their own investigations ([link removed]) . At this point, two House committees are involved ([link removed]) .

Let’s take a look at what we know — and do not know.

The Department of Energy report

The Wall Street Journal ([link removed]) and multiple ([link removed]) other outlets ([link removed]) have reported that a classified Department of Energy report gives some new credence to the idea that the original source of COVID-19’s spread could have been a lab in Wuhan, the city that became the pandemic’s first epicenter.
* The report itself has not been released and stories summarizing it are based on knowledge of a handful of sources.
* The stories agree: The agency has “low confidence” that a lab leak in China was the cause of the pandemic.
* But it is not clear whether “low confidence” means this theory is one of the least supported of an array of options, or that there is some confidence in this idea, even if it is low. In general, “moderate confidence” is used when agencies have more than “low” confidence.


Among intelligence agencies, no definitive consensus

The report from the Energy Department is the latest assessment showing a continued divide among top government agencies involved.
* A 2021 assessment ([link removed]) revealed that one unnamed agency in the intelligence community had “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 spread from a lab accident. The New York Times ([link removed]) and others reported that agency is the FBI.
* In that same 2021 evaluation, four agencies held the opposite view, though with low confidence — that the virus’s spread was ignited by natural transmission from a wild animal to a person.
* Three agencies had not reached a conclusion at that time.
* And yesterday the White House made it clear that the U.S. government has not reached consensus ([link removed]) .

On Tuesday, China said it has been “open and transparent” ([link removed]) in the investigations into COVID’s origins.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Mao said China has “shared the most data and research results on virus tracing and made important contributions to global virus tracing research.” In part reacting to U.S. officials who have said the country hasn’t been cooperative ([link removed]) , Mao added that “politicizing the issue … will only damage the U.S.’s credibility.”

What led to the differing conclusions?

The 2021 assessment sheds some light.

The agencies that concluded a lab leak was involved give “weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.”

By contrast, those determining it was more likely a disease that jumped from a wild animal into a human give more “weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.”

For his part, President Joe Biden has previously directed U.S. intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts ([link removed]) to get more clarity on the origins of COVID.

But will we ever get a definitive answer? Possibly not. A senior administration official told the PBS NewsHour in 2021 that it may remain elusive.

“The fact is, intelligence officials try to be definitive, but they provide the answers that they have,” NewsHour foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin reported at the time.

We know how the story played out, in illness and deaths and many other consequences. We just may never know how it started.
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: The White House announced it is creating a task force to crack down on migrant child labor ([link removed]) days after a New York Times investigation looked into the violations.
* One Big Question: What will happen under this new Biden initiative? ([link removed]) The Labor Department is supposed to identify and punish companies that violate child labor laws, but inspectors in a dozen states said their offices are understaffed, which made it difficult to respond to complaints.
* A Closer Look: As LGBTQ book challenges rise, some Louisiana librarians are scared to go to work ([link removed]) .
* Perspectives: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart discuss the larger implications ([link removed]) around Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson’s access to the Jan. 6 footage.


BIDEN AND TRUMP FACE HEADWINDS GOING INTO 2024

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Watch the segment in the player above.

By Laura Santhanam, @LauraSanthanam ([link removed])
Health Reporter & Coordinating Producer for Polling

The 2024 presidential election campaign season remains several months away, and while much can change, the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll ([link removed]) shows both Democrats and Republicans are already sizing up potential candidates.

Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have maintained large shares of support among their respective bases. But there is still room for competition to erode the shaky certainty of their 2024 presidential bids, and “we should be very wary of just assuming we know how things are going to play out,” said Amy Walter, editor of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

“The degree that both candidates are viewed skeptically by the party’s base is quite remarkable,” she said.
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Image by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
About half of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents said they would support Biden if his party nominated him for another presidential bid in 2024. That’s up 12 percentage points from December, when inflation had hobbled the economy and midterm election votes were still being counted. Since the midterms, the Republicans saw their “red wave” hopes to take full control of Congress diminish to merely a narrow margin in the House, and inflation-fueled price spikes have calmed somewhat.

But that doesn’t mean Biden — or Democrats — can rest easy yet. In this latest poll, 45 percent of Democrats and like-minded independents said they would rather see someone other than Biden run for the White House.

For Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is emerging as the potential candidate to beat. DeSantis is “aggressively pursuing” policies that aren’t intended to unite the country around him, but instead the Republican Party, said Andrew Seligsohn, president of the Public Agenda, a nonpartisan think tank.

“So far, the evidence suggests he’s really been successful at establishing himself as that alternative,” Seligsohn said.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
By Matt Loffman, @mattloff ([link removed])
Politics Producer

The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday ([link removed]) in challenges to the Biden administration plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans for millions of Americans.

The vast majority of loans are held by the federal government; in all, some 45 million Americans owe a cumulative more than $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.

Our question: When did the U.S. government first offer federal student loans?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Who was the first president to travel internationally while in office?

The answer: Theodore Roosevelt ([link removed]) . The 26th U.S. president went on an “inspection tour” of the Panama Canal Zone in 1906.

Congratulations to our winners: Beverley Chang and Douglas Sheft!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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