Not real news
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
ClaimAn order from the U.S. Department of Energy under President Joe Biden blocked Texas from generating adequate power during the recent statewide emergency because it would exceed pollution limits.
The FactsThe order did the opposite of what social media users are claiming. It gave the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates Texas' power grid, emergency permission to produce enough energy to restore power to Texas homes, even if it temporarily exceeded pollution limits.On Feb. 14, as a severe winter storm wiped out heat and electricity for millions of Texans, ERCOT asked the Energy Department for emergency permission to generate electricity at maximum capacity to get the power grid up and running.Later the same day, the Energy Department granted ERCOT's request, allowing the agency to dispatch enough additional units to “maintain the reliability of the power grid” through Feb. 19, even if it exceeded “emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon monoxide emissions, as well as wastewater release limits.”The order gave ERCOT these waivers to avoid blackouts, while asking that the agency exhaust all “reasonably and practically available resources” prior to increasing energy generation in order to decrease environmental impact.
ClaimPresident Joe Biden restored taxpayer funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The FactsSocial media users are falsely claiming the Biden administration is bankrolling the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that has faced unproven allegations that the coronavirus leaked from the facility, leading to the global COVID-19 pandemic.“Biden not sending out COVID relief checks, but refunding the Wuhan lab where COVID came from is THE PERFECT EXAMPLE of America last,” read a screenshot of a Twitter post shared on Instagram.“Voila — U.S. taxpayer money was returned to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” a Washington Times opinion piece stated.The claims seemed to originate with distortions of an article on the conservative news website The Daily Caller, which claimed the lab was eligible to receive U.S. taxpayer funding until 2024. The article never said the lab was grant-funded.It's true that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has fulfilled one requirement that animal research facilities outside the U.S. need to receive a NIH grant: foreign assurance approval. This assurance issued by the NIH Office of Laboratory Welfare confirms that the lab complies with certain guidelines on the humane care and use of laboratory animals. The institute's foreign assurance was issued in 2019 and expires in 2024, the NIH told The Associated Press.However, foreign assurance is just one requirement and “does not determine whether an organization can or will receive a grant award or subaward,” according to the NIH. In 2014, the NIH granted an award to the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based environmental health nonprofit, for a research project on bat coronaviruses. As part of that project, the nonprofit worked with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But in April 2020, the NIH terminated that grant.In July, the agency technically reinstated the grant, but suspended all activity related to it, citing “bio-safety concerns” at the lab and asking EcoHealth Alliance to meet a list of conditions. Those conditions included arranging for an outside team to investigate the lab “with specific attention to addressing the question of whether WIV staff had SARS-CoV-2 in their possession prior to December 2019,” according to a letter from the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance.
