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C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins
The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.
That shift is based on “the available body of reporting,” although the other theory remains plausible, a spokeswoman for the agency said, adding that the agency will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting.
Some American officials say the debate matters little: The Chinese government failed to either regulate its markets or oversee its labs. But others argue it is an important intelligence and scientific question.
John Ratcliffe, the new director of the C.I.A., has long favored the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that needs to be understood and that it has consequences for U.S.-Chinese relations.
The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time.
In the final weeks of the Biden administration, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, ordered a new classified review of the pandemic’s origin. As part of that review, the agency’s previous director, William J. Burns, told analysts that they needed to take a position on the origins of Covid, though he was agnostic on which theory they should embrace, a senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Another senior U.S. official said it was Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to declassify and release the new analysis.
There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.
The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency’s work.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, questions have swirled around whether the two labs handling coronaviruses in Wuhan had followed safety protocols strictly enough.
The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and contradictory.
Even in the absence of hard intelligence, the lab leak hypothesis has been gaining ground inside spy agencies. But some analysts question the wisdom of shifting a position in absence of new information.
Former officials say they are not averse to a new examination of the Covid origins intelligence by the Trump administration. President Biden ordered a new review of the intelligence early in his administration after officials told the White House they had still-unexamined evidence.
Mr. Ratcliffe has raised questions about politicization in the intelligence agencies. Mr. Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence in the first Trump administration, argued in an essay for Fox News in 2023 that the C.I.A. did not want to embrace the lab leak to avoid geopolitical problems for the Biden administration.
“The real problem is, the only assessment the agency could make — which is that a virus that killed over a million Americans originated in a C.C.P.-controlled lab whose research included work for the Chinese military — has enormous geopolitical implications that the Biden administration does not want to face head-on,” he said in the piece, which was written with Cliff Sims, a top aide. C.C.P. refers to China’s Communist Party.
Mr. Ratcliffe said on Thursday, when he was sworn in, that a look at the origins of Covid was a “Day 1” priority.
“I think our intelligence, our science and our common sense all really dictate that the origins of Covid was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he told Breitbart. “But the C.I.A. has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
Senior intelligence officials in the Biden administration defend their process and methodology. They have said that no intelligence was suppressed and insist that politics did not play into their analysis.
These officials say that there are powerful logical arguments for both the lab leak and the natural causes theories, but that there simply is no decisive piece of intelligence on either side of the issue.
To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.
Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.
Neither piece of evidence has been found.
But Mr. Ratcliffe has promised a more aggressive C.I.A., and it is possible that he will order more actions to penetrate the labs in Wuhan or the Chinese government in a search for information.
It will not be an easy secret to steal. The senior ranks of the Chinese government do not know, and do not want to know, American officials have said. So if there is intelligence, it is probably hidden in a place that is hard to get to.
Intelligence officials interviewed in recent weeks say it is possible that such a piece of evidence exists in a lab in China, at least in theory. But, they said, it is still more likely that the answers to questions surrounding the virus’s origins will come through a scientific breakthrough, not an intelligence revelation.
Under the Biden administration, the intelligence community leaned toward the theory that the virus came from the market. But officials readily admitted it was hardly a sure thing.
Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment.
Until now, two agencies, the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, thought a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different. The F.B.I. believes the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Energy Department put its bet on another lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
Officials would not say if the C.I.A. believes one lab or the other was the more likely source of the virus.
Paul B. Miller shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio on Dec. 9. Food aid was just one of many services offered here that faced disruption in 2025.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
LOGAN, Ohio – Before dawn, in a cold, blustery drizzle, a line forms outside a small, squat building on an open stretch of road on the outskirts of town.
“My heater quit working in my car,” Scott Skinner says good-naturedly to the next man in line. “Man, what kinda luck am I having.”
The building is called “The Market” because it has a food pantry, but Skinner and the others are here to sign up for heating assistance. He’s been calling for a month to get an appointment with no luck, so he showed up an hour ago to snag a walk-in slot.
The demand for help is more acute than usual because heating aid was suspended during the recent government shutdown. At the same time, SNAP food benefits were suspended for weeks, and some food pantry shoppers are still playing catch up.
One of those people is Lisa Murphy. She’s 61, disabled and relies on Social Security, and says it’s important to have “places like this that really help us.”
“I still owe my gas bill. I owe $298,” Murphy says. “It’s hard to buy food and pay my bills, too.”
Lisa Murphy grocery shops at The Market food pantry in Logan, Ohio. She’s still behind on bills after SNAP food benefits were paused for two weeks during the recent federal shutdown.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
A detail from Miller’s grocery cart; signs tell clients the number of items that can be taken.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
But even as need grows with rising costs and unemployment, local anti-poverty groups like the one that runs The Market say their work has been threatened as never before amid the Trump administration’s funding cuts, pauses and reversals targeting a long list of safety-net programs. The shutdown was only the latest disruption that forced them to scramble to keep operating.
And, they say, the year of chaos has left deep uncertainty over which programs may be hit next.
‘Emergency response mode’
The Market in Logan, Ohio, is part of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action – HAPCAP for short – one of a thousand such agencies across the country that have been around since the 1960s. They connect some 15 million people with housing, health care, food aid and much more.
At HAPCAP, services include Meals on Wheels, Head Start, a public bus system, employment help, and a food bank that serves 10 counties across southeast Appalachian Ohio.
It’s an impressive range, but this year that’s also made it a big target for federal funding cuts.
“Eighty percent of our funding comes from federal grants,” says executive director Kelly Hatas. The “worst day” of her career was back in January, when the Trump administration ordered a federal funding freeze, saying it wanted to shift priorities and promote efficiency.
“When we got that news we were in immediate emergency response mode, like, what are we going to do?” she says.
Kelly Hatas, executive director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP), talks with the child of a couple who are shopping at the food pantry. Hatas says the nonprofit has had to scramble all year as various safety-net programs were hit with federal funding cuts or pauses.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR/www.facun.com
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR/www.facun.com
The most urgent threat was to six Head Start centers.
“Our Head Start director was on a call with all of her center coordinators telling them we’re laying everyone off tomorrow,” Hatas recalls. “And then there was some secondary information that was like, ‘Just kidding … Head Start is excluded.’”
That whiplash shook people’s trust. And the hits kept coming.
In March, the administration canceled or paused a billion dollars that helped food banks. In May, President Trump’s budget called for zeroing out Head Start and heating assistance, along with major cuts to other safety-net programs like rental aid. He also proposed eliminating the $770 million dollar Community Services Block Grant that directly supports these anti-poverty groups, including it in a list of “woke programs.”
Congress eventually funded many of those programs, but the Office of Management and Budget took months to get out the block grant money.
“OMB just decided not to spend it, totally usurping congressional authority,” says David Bradley, who advocates for these local groups with the National Community Action Foundation.
He says they’ve long had strong bipartisan support.
“So we’ve had two major fights with the administration,” he says. “We won them because Republicans helped.”
East Main Street in Logan, a small town in southeast Appalachian Ohio.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
In a statement, an OMB spokesperson said these anti-poverty programs fund “radically partisan activities, like teaching toddlers to be antiracist and ‘LGBTQIA+ welcoming.’” It also criticized a program that combined affordable housing with clean energy “in the pursuit of both economic and environmental justice.”
“President Trump ran on fiscal responsibility and ending wasteful DEI spending in government,” the statement says.“The American taxpayer should not be made to fund critical race theory.”
Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency “administers CSBG consistent with the funding levels Congress provides to support services for low-income families.”
Funding chaos and uncertainty
In Ohio, Hatas says the state has shifted money to help address federal funding crises as they’ve popped up to keep programs going. But the biggest challenge remains uncertainty.
“The panic and the just day-to-day not knowing what’s going to happen, is just really difficult,” she says.
Because of that, HAPCAP has scaled back some plans, including for a new Head Start facility and a much-needed homeless shelter. It’s also had to pull out of food distribution at schools because of a lack of staff. Some employees are leaving, worried about losing their jobs. Others have been laid off or had their hours trimmed.
“It cut my paychecks completely in half,” says Kelsey Sexton, who manages the front desk but was shifted to part-time in the fall. “We have a mortgage, a car payment. With Christmas coming, my husband was like, what are we going to do?”
She was bumped back up to full-time – but so far only temporarily – after the shutdown pause in SNAP payments brought a surge of people to the food pantry.
Losing a job can be extra tough in rural communities.
“We don’t really have jobs growing on trees … and so there’s nowhere for these folks to go,” says Megan Riddlebarger, who heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD) half an hour away in Athens.
Kelsey Sexton (left) had her hours as a desk clerk at HAPCAP cut in half. Megan Riddlebarger (right) heads the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development and says anti-poverty agencies are important for local economies in this rural region.
Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
She oversees federal funding for 17 antipoverty groups across the eastern part of the state, and says they’re important for rural economies.
“These aren’t just, like, people volunteering for fun,” she says. “These are some of the biggest businesses in town, buying most of the products that are bought and sold in the town.”
Helping people stay warm and at home
Down a flight of stairs from Riddlebarger’s office, five burly men at long desks take notes as Dave Freeman goes over how to properly install a water heater vent. It’s a refresher training class for inspectors, part of a weatherization assistance program the White House also wanted to end.
Freeman says many older homes in the area are full of cracks and crevices with almost no insulation.
“That house that you walk in (that) has the blanket at the stairway, so ‘Oh, honey, I haven’t been upstairs, it’s so cold up there,’” he says.
Weatherizing homes not only lets people live comfortably, it also saves them money.
“Say their electric bill goes down or gas bill goes down, they might be able to buy a pizza on a Saturday night,” Freeman says. “And that’s a big thing.”
Adam Murdock (left) attends attends a training class for weatherization inspectors at the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development.
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But COAD’s funding for weatherization was delayed months, which jeopardized staffing. “You can get paid to do similar work in the private sector, and so retaining that staff is already a challenge,” says Riddlebarger.
Most of the agencies she oversees were able to cover the gap until money finally came through in November. But she says it means squeezing what’s supposed to be a year-long program into about half that time “with the same expectations for performance reporting.”
Diana Eads’ volunteer job with COAD – which includes a small stipend – was also at risk earlier this year, when the Trump administration gutted AmeriCorps grants with little explanation. As part of the AmeriCorps Seniors companion program Eads visits and helps out low-income people.
“My companions have been elderly, they’re not able to get out,” she says. “They’re just one-step away from nursing home care.”
Diana Eads, 74, visits with elderly people as part of the AmeriCorps seniors program. When a funding cut threatened her small stipend for gas money, she told an 88-year-old woman who lives far away that she would keep visiting no matter what.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
If they were to land in a nursing home or assisted living, that could cost thousands of dollars a month in Medicaid spending. But Eads helps keep them at home for just $4 dollars an hour, to help cover gas or other small bills.
“Being rural, my one companion, it’s 56 miles roundtrip,” she says.
Riddlebarger managed to secure local philanthropic funding to keep operating, and after a legal challenge AmeriCorps federal funding was restored.
Through it all Eads reassured her companion, an 88-year old woman she’d been visiting for five years.
“I told her no matter what happened, I would not stop visiting,” Eads says. “That was important.”
A grim 2026 outlook
After a year struggling to keep serving those most in need, advocates say they don’t see much relief in site. Republicans in Congress passed major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid and those will start to take hold.
The Trump administration also is considering dramatic limits to rental assistance and has laid out major cuts to long-term housing for people leaving homelessness, a move that faces a legal challenge.
On top of that, the administration’s mass firings and buyouts hit hard in offices that administer various safety-net programs.
The Market runs a food pantry and helps connect people with other services. In December, people seeking an appointment for heating assistance often line up outside before dawn.
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Rich-Joseph Facun for NPR
Riddlebarger says most anti-poverty funding already falls far short of the need, and making it even harder to help people is exhausting.
“Not knowing which of our many services we are going to be able to keep operating makes us waste valuable capacity trying to plug holes that shouldn’t be holes,” she says. “We’re just breaking the wheel and reinventing it at a great cost to all parties.”
People walk through the snow in Brooklyn after an overnight storm on Saturday in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
An intense cyclone system is fueling a mix of severe weather, including a winter storm that will impact upper parts of the United States.
Heavy snow, blizzards, extreme cold and damaging winds are likely to create hazardous conditions stretching from Montana east to Maine, and Texas north to Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
More than eight million people were under winter storm warnings from the NWS on Sunday afternoon. Nearly two million people were under blizzard warnings. Meteorologists warn that after winter weather Friday and Saturday, an arctic front clashing with warm air could rapidly intensify into a ‘bomb cyclone’ over the Midwest and Great Lakes through Monday. A ‘bomb cyclone’ or bombogenesis is a rapidly deepening area of low pressure that creates harsh weather conditions.
“We are anticipating some pretty big snows over the next 24 hours, especially across east central Minnesota to northern Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A lot of those places will have 6-12 inches,” NWS Lead Forecaster Bob Oravec told NPR on Sunday.
Blizzard conditions will cause near zero visibility and possible power outages Sunday night though Monday evening in some locations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, according to the NWS Marquette. A foot of snow or more is possible in areas along Lake Superior with 40 to 65 mile per hour winds, according to forecasts.
Marquette Mayor Paul Schloegel told NPR on Sunday the Marquette Board of Light & Power is prepared to handle any loss of electricity. He said in an email the main priority is keeping people safe.
“We tend to heed the advice of our weather forecasters and prepare to hunker down as needed,” Schloegel wrote. “As far as taking care of the snow, our extremely dedicated public works and MDOT crews do a great job taking care of our residents, they are true professionals. Roads are usually back to normal within 24 [hours].”
Schloegel said Marquette residents appreciate a good blizzard while taking precautions.
“We choose to live here for our love of [four] full seasons and appreciate the effect the greatest lake, Lake Superior, has on our climate,” he said.
Minnesota is also bracing for major impacts. Blizzard and winter storm warnings and advisories are in place for most of the state. As much as 10 inches of snow could fall in the Twin Cities and potentially life-threatening travel conditions are likely through early Monday morning, according to the NWS.
The ‘bomb cyclone’ is also sending cold temperatures below freezing.
Residents of Havre, Mont., about 45 miles south of the Canadian border, could feel wind chill values as low as 15 degrees below zero late Sunday. The actual temperature is forecast to fall to 2 degrees below zero.
Farther south in Dallas, Texas, temperatures are expected to drop dramatically from the 80s on Sunday to highs in the 40s on Monday, according to the NWS.
In the Northeast, freezing rain could cause travel problems, including icing in northern New England and northern New York state, late Sunday into Monday, according to Oravec.
When colder air moves into New York City early this week, remaining snow on the ground from the weekend storm will freeze and create further hazardous travel conditions, Oravec said.
Bob Kafka, a disabled Vietnam veteran, talks with an Austin Police Officer as he and others try to enter a hotel property.
Ilana Panich-Linsman/Getty Images
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Bob Kafka, a renowned disability rights advocate, died at his Austin, Texas, home on Friday. He was 79 years old.
Kafka was an organizer with ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), a group which advocates for policy change to support people with disabilities.
Mark Johnson, co-founder of ADAPT and a longtime friend of Kafka who confirmed his death, told NPR Kafka’s advocacy was as much about changing laws as it was changing lives.
“Maybe it was helping somebody tie their shoes and the next moment, maybe it was helping feed them, or maybe it was raising money through the fun run, or maybe it was negotiating with federal officials,” said Johnson.
Kafka was born in New York City, but spent most of his life in Texas. He was an Army veteran and fought in the Vietnam War.
Since being paralyzed from a 1973 car accident, Kafka, alongside his wife, Stephanie Thomas, prioritized seeking dignity for those with disabilities and helping others adjust to their new lives. Kafka could be seen at disability rights protests sporting a halo of white curls and an unruly beard.
“Very, very rarely do you find people that can, can do what needs to be done and not go around boasting about it,” said Johnson.
He also recalled the selfless nature of the community Kafka fostered, including how Thomas’ first instinct was to ask how he was feeling about losing a friend.
“I’m going, ‘Wait a minute, I’m calling you to ask you how you are,’” Johnson said.
Johnson remembered Kafka as a policy wonk who was as interested in the mechanics of federal bureaucracy as grassroots organizing. He said he hopes his friend will be honored for his work to influence change at all levels.
“If you mention disability to an average crowd, it’s gonna, think of something negative. Bob and others may help people make that shift,” Johnson said.
“They say claiming your identity – your full identity – can be very powerful, very liberating. And I think Bob was one of those people that’s been doing that for 50 years.”
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