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COVID-19 news has taken a backseat to the protests across the country. But amid that backdrop, President Donald Trump last week moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization.
Trump linked his decision to China and the coronavirus crisis.
“China’s cover-up of the Wuhan virus allowed the disease to spread all over the world,” Trump said May 29. “Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities.”
Trump’s allegations mirror his list of complaints in a May 18 letter that he was giving the organization a month to initiate reforms or permanently lose American support and membership. The U.S. paid more than $400 million to the organization in 2019.
China has become a key target as Trump readies for the 2020 election and its role as the birthplace of the virus is central to Trump’s overarching message. But Trump’s case against China, as outlined in the WHO letter and elsewhere, had several factual errors and omitted key details.
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Website claims Pelosi tried to add abortion funding to a new coronavirus bill
In March, conservative groups falsely accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of trying to include abortion funding in the first coronavirus stimulus bill.
Now, pro-life website Life News claims that Pelosi has been “caught” trying to do something similar in a $3 trillion package that passed the House on May 15, 2020.
“Pelosi is back at it — trying to remove the safeguards from the previous bill to exclude Planned Parenthood from small business bailouts in her new Phase 4 relief legislation,” the story says.
The HEROES Act doesn’t contain any mention of abortion services, and the proposed changes to funding rules aren’t specific to Planned Parenthood. The organization would be eligible for Paycheck Protection Program loans under the bill’s expanded eligibility guidelines for nonprofits. Read the fact-check»
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Alex Mahadevan is a senior multimedia reporter at MediaWise. He can be reached at amahadevan@poynter.org or on Twitter at @AlexMahadevan. Follow MediaWise on TikTok.
