As home prices continue to climb and mortgage rates remain elevated, buying a home in the U.S. has become increasingly out of reach for the average household.

In 2025, buyers now need six-figure salaries to afford a median-priced home in all but 15 states.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, using data from Realtor.com, maps the annual income required to purchase a typical three-bedroom home in every state, based on a 10% down payment, a 6.65% interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage, and a 30% income-to-housing cost threshold (which includes taxes and insurance).

The Growing Gap Between Income and Home Prices

A recent study found that nearly 50% of U.S. households cannot afford a home priced at $250,000. This is particularly concerning when the median price of a new single-family home nationwide has reached $495,750, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

In many states, the income needed to comfortably afford a median-priced home far exceeds what a typical family earns.

Where Buying a Home Requires the Highest Salaries

Here are the top five most expensive states for homebuyers in 2025:

Hawaii tops the list, where buying a median three-bedroom home requires an annual income of $229,000—the highest in the country. Despite its small population, Montana has climbed into the top five least affordable states, driven by a widening gap between soaring home prices and relatively modest local incomes.

In contrast, in West Virginia a buyer would need a salary of just $71,000 to afford a median-priced home—well below the state’s median household income of $90,000. Other states with lower thresholds include Mississippi, Ohio, and Indiana.

What’s the cost of a median price in every U.S. state? Find out in this map on Voronoi.

Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

“Here comes the sun, and I say, it’s all right” – Wrong, Mr. Harrison!

“Good day sunshine” – Not so fast, Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney!

Standing with both hands extended for a £50 million squeeze of the public teat, United Kingdom scientists claim the sun you celebrate in song contributes to “runaway climate change.” 

And these white-robed high priests of perfidious Albion’s climate cult have a novel idea to control the weather and forestall the impending apocalypse: dimming the sun.

(Apparently, for these climate cult dimwits, sunshine on their shoulders makes them anything but happy.)

Per Simon Kent’s article in Breitbart News, this is not the only harebrained scheme these literal dimwits at Aria (the Advanced Research and Invention Agency) promise for someone else’s money.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a host of possible options for climate control are being considered by scientists with government approval alongside £50 million in taxpayer funds:

Scientists are considering outdoor field trials, which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, as a way to prevent runaway climate change.

Clearly, the old-school itinerant cloud seeders preying upon the angst of drought-riddled farmers and their small towns have nothing on Aria and its siren song of salvation, for they have the entire UK government on board to foot the bill for what should have been named “Operation Daedalus.”

But though the dimwits will be confronting the sun, they assure us that, unlike the heedless youth in Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun, these climate cultists vow to not go down in flames.

According to Professor Mark Symes, there will be “small controlled outdoor experiments on particular approaches.” The professor then went on to preemptively calm any member of the public who had been traumatized by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and had qualms with a lab-coated, modern Prometheus playing God:

“Everything we do is going to be safe by design. We’re absolutely committed to responsible research, including responsible outdoor research… We have strong requirements around the length of time experiments can run for and their reversibility, and we won’t be funding the release of any toxic substances to the environment.” 

(Author’s Note: The professor is not funding anything. The British public is.)

See? 

The only thing going up in flames is someone else’s money. Besides, what could go wrong when prospectively using “stratospheric aerosol injection” that “would see scientists launching sulfate particles into the Earth’s lower stratosphere at altitudes up 12 miles high?” Unforeseen consequences, you say? Please. Next, you’ll claim that COVID resulted from a lab leak.

Nevertheless, one cannot help but wonder how dimming the sun in that renowned fun-in-the-sun island known as England will prevent climate change. Given the UK’s increasing war on free speech, it is best not to ask or to have “Let the Sunshine In” on your iPod.

Oh, wait. It isn’t just us recalcitrant climate deniers worried about the unforeseen consequences of trying to change the weather?

The Telegraph notes geoengineering projects that seek to artificially alter the climate have proven controversial, with critics arguing they could bring damaging knock-on effects. This has been noted previously when scientists looked to “dimming the sun” as a way to shield the Earth’s surface.

There is a rich irony in environmental radicals who only eat organic foods, blithely supporting using artificial means to unnaturally diminish sunlight. I guess it is the climate cult’s version of “We have to destroy a village to save it”—perhaps with dimwits crooning, “I’m blocking out sunshine” to the tune of Katrina and the Waves 1980s hit?

Regardless, the climate cult—starting with the dimwits—refuses to admit how all the diplomas and degrees in the world cannot render anyone infallible. And therein is another more bitter irony: what if a climate apocalypse is manmade—by dimwits like these messing up nature by trying to stop it?

Anyway, “it’s getting near dawn, when lights close their tired eyes,” and mine are glazing over at the climate cult’s toxic imbecility on display. Suffice to say, however the dimwits give us their “dawn surprise,” we can but hope they don’t usher in the next Ice Age—or worse.

Wait! We cannot succumb to our worst fears. That’s what the climate cultists do. No, Annie is right, “The sun will come up tomorrow.” After all, the British public just bet their bottom £50 million on it, right?

The global shadow economy generates trillions in revenue each year, driven by criminal activity and other unreported transactions.

In low income countries, shadow activity makes up a larger slice of GDP, standing at an estimated 42.4% share. In comparison, this drops to 5.9% of GDP in rich countries, with the UAE seeing the smallest share overall.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the size of each country’s shadow economy, based on analysis from the Ernst & Young Global Shadow Economy Report 2025.

Defining the Shadow Economy

To start, the shadow economy includes unreported or untaxed activity, making it difficult for authorities to monitor.

This includes illegal enterprises, drug trafficking, street vendors, or cash transactions made off the books. While measuring the informal economy is hard to quantify, it has shrunk from 17.7% of world GDP in 2000 to 11.8% in 2023.

Breaking Down the Shadow Economy by Country

Here are countries with the largest shadow economies as a share of GDP:

As we can see, Sierra Leone ranks first overall, with its shadow economy equaling 64.5% of GDP.

Like many other sub-Saharan African countries, the informal economy employs millions of workers, including subsistence farmers, street vendors, and small business owners. Underscoring this trend are limited opportunities in the formal sector along with bureaucratic red tape.

In particular, the DRC stands out in both the scale of its informal economy and prevalence of organized crime.

Meanwhile, Nepal ranks third overall, with shadow activity accounting for 51% of GDP. Notably, the agriculture sector employs a substantial share of informal workers. In fact, 85% of Nepal’s labor force participates in the informal economy, making it a vital source of livelihood for many.

In contrast, America’s underground economy comprises just 5% of GDP, yet its sheer size—valued at $1.4 trillion—makes it one of the world’s largest.

To learn more about this topic from a violent crime perspective, check out this graphic on violent crime rates by U.S. state.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

According to British pop star Ed Sheeran, “every area” of London is “dangerous” now, including the supposedly nice ones.

During an appearance on Theo Von’s podcast, Sheeran was asked by the host, “What’s the most dangerous place to be around here?”

“I’d say every area of London, literally every area is sketchy,” the singer responded.

Ed Sheeran says “every area of London” is the most dangerous place to be while interviewing on the Theo Von Podcast. pic.twitter.com/fElxLxzJFn

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) May 12, 2025

“The nice areas are sketchy, the bad areas are sketchy, but you just have to not do stupid shit,” he added.

Presumably, by “stupid shit,” Sheeran means things like not attaching your mobile phone to your body in case it gets swiped.

The crime has reached an “industrial level” in the English capital, with criminals stealing 70,137 devices last year alone, an average of 192 a day.

Compare that to as recently as 2020, when 20,000 phones were reported stolen.

In the supposedly “nice” areas Sheeran references, wealthier people have stopped wearing expensive watches and jewelry due to the risk of having it snatched by criminals on mopeds.

So-called “follow home” robberies, where thieves track victims from luxury shopping districts before striking, are also commonplace in London.

Figures released earlier this year also show that knife crime continues to be a major problem, rising 18 per cent since 2022.

Meanwhile, take a look at how Manchester has been turned into a dystopian hellscape, mirroring virtually every other major British city, as well as many of the smaller ones.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Via Middle East Eye

Clashes between heavily armed militias erupted across the Libyan capital late on Monday night, killing at least six people and plunging Tripoli into renewed violence and fear. The fighting, which continued into the early hours of Tuesday, was triggered by the killing of Abdelghani al-Kikli, a powerful militia commander known as “Gheniwa,” who led the Stability Support Authority (SSA), one of Tripoli’s most influential armed factions.

Heavy gunfire and explosions were reported in several neighbourhoods, particularly Abu Salim, a densely populated southern district. Residents told Reuters they heard intense gun battles. “Six bodies have been retrieved from the sites of clashes around Abu Salim,” Libya’s Emergency Medicine and Support Center confirmed.

The health ministry also said that emergency crews helped evacuate families trapped by the violence and called on hospitals and medical centers “to raise their level of preparedness and ensure maximum readiness to deal with any emergency”.

In the wake of the clashes, the interior ministry of the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) issued an emergency alert urging residents to stay indoors.

Schools and universities suspended classes, exams and all administrative activities. The education ministry cited the “deteriorating security situation,” while the University of Tripoli announced a full closure “until further notice”.

Death of a warlord

Al-Kikli was allegedly ambushed on Monday evening in a facility run by the 444 Brigade, a rival militia led by Mahmoud Hamza, an influential commander allied with GNU Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

While the exact circumstances of his killing remain murky, a nephew of al-Kikli said in a Facebook post that he had been lured under the pretence of negotiations, an invitation that turned out to be a calculated hit. “For many years, Abdelghani ‘Ghnewa’ al-Kikli was arguably one of the most resilient, most successful armed group leaders in Tripoli when it came to extending militia influence beyond hard security,” Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst focusing on Libyan security and political economy, said in a post on X.

“His primary strength lay not in military might – though his territorial holdings did expand – but in his ability to outmaneuver Prime Minister Dbeibah. Today, however, that winning streak looks [like] it has come to an end.”

Al-Kikli had long been a controversial figure in Libya’s volatile security landscape. Amnesty International previously accused him of war crimes and human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings.

The SSA had become one of the most powerful militias in western Libya, with deep entrenchment in state institutions. As Harchaoui noted, al-Kikli had successfully “installed loyalists in key positions across the banking, telecom and administrative oversight sectors, and even within top diplomatic functions”.

A fractured state, again on edge

By early Tuesday morning, authorities said the situation was under control. The GNU said its forces carried out a “military operation” to restore security and reassert state authority in Abu Salim.

“What was accomplished today shows that official institutions are capable of protecting the homeland and preserving the dignity of its citizens,” Dbeibah wrote on X, praising the operation as “a decisive step” against “irregular” armed factions.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) expressed grave concern over the fighting, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilians. “UNSMIL is alarmed by the unfolding security situation in Tripoli, with intense fighting with heavy weaponry in densely populated civilian areas,” it said on X. “Attacks on civilians and civilian objects may amount to war crimes.”

The UNSMIL warned that unless armed groups were held accountable, violence would remain a constant threat to Libyans caught in the crossfire.

The North African country has been divided between rival governments in the west and east since the 2011 Nato-backed uprising that overthrew and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The internationally recognized GNU governs from Tripoli in the west, while a rival administration under Prime Minister Osama Hammad operates from Benghazi in the east with backing from General Khalifa Haftar’s forces.

Despite a 2020 ceasefire and several diplomatic efforts to unify the country, Libya remains fractured, with heavily armed factions vying for power, influence and control of lucrative oil and gas resources.

The latest clashes are the deadliest since August 2023, when rival factions in Tripoli battled for control, leaving 55 people dead.

LIBYA | 🇱🇾 Remember in 2011 how the US, their Allies and NATO planned to “bring democracy” in Libya but had to assassinate Gaddafi first? Well, this was Libya last night. Terrorists are fighting with the Army. It’s horrific. Military vehicles were burnt; people broke into grocery… pic.twitter.com/y9YiiwTH17

— Evaluator. (@_AfricanSoil) May 13, 2025

Anas El Gomati, founder and director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, said on X that al-Kikli’s “elimination leaves Dbeibah as the dominant power broker in western Libya, having systematically neutralised or co-opted potential rivals.

“The timing is particularly significant, coming as US-led negotiations explore the possibility of a unified military council between rival eastern and western factions,” Gomati added. Harchaoui warned that “what is about to follow won’t be smooth sailing.“

“Tripoli faces a territorial reshuffle as Dbeibah’s camp moves to seize SSA-held areas,” he said, adding that clashes may flare, but the real impact is institutional, with both the Central Bank and Libyan Foreign Bank set to be affected by the collapse of al-Kikli’s network.

Authored by Jack Philips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Supreme Court’s chief justice on Monday told an event that criticism of the court should be relegated to its decisions and not the nine justices themselves.

While speaking at Washington’s Georgetown University, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the Supreme Court “has obviously made mistakes throughout its history, and those should be criticized, so long as it is in terms of the decision.”

Roberts said that criticism of the highest court should not be based on “ad hominem” arguments or attacks “against the justices” themselves, referring to the logical fallacy where an argument is dismissed based on the character or background of the individual making that claim.

“I just think that doesn’t do any good. The harshest critics are usually colleagues, if it’s the sort of thing where there are dissents. So it’s something we’re used to,” he continued. “And again, it’s a good thing. We’re not immune from any criticism. And there are many, many instances in our history where it’s been effective over time in leading to a better result.”

The comment from Roberts marks the third time in nearly as many months in response to criticism about the Supreme Court.

In a rare written statement in March, Roberts appeared to respond to President Donald Trump’s public suggestion to impeach a federal judge who had blocked his administration’s deportations of accused Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times at the time. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Following U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s initial ruling against the administration’s use of the 1798 law to deport accused gang members, Trump wrote that the judge wasn’t elected as president.

A senior adviser to Trump, tech billionaire Elon Musk, also commented on the judge’s stymying the administration’s agenda. In a post on Feb. 25, Musk wrote that the only way to allow the agenda to move forward is to “impeach judges,” responding to an article that said El Salvador’s president did the same starting in 2021.

Trump hasn’t been critical of the Supreme Court and has indicated that he will follow orders from any court. Since the start of his administration, numerous lawsuits have been filed against his administration, particularly in relation to his immigration enforcement, spending cuts, and efforts to downsize and reshape the federal government.

And last week, Roberts said during an event in Buffalo, New York, that the judiciary needs to maintain its independence in order to check executive or congressional power.

The judicial branch’s independence is “the only real political-science innovation in our Constitution,” Roberts said. Elaborating, he said that “in our Constitution … the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down … acts of Congress or acts of the president.”

“And that innovation doesn’t work if … the judiciary is not independent. Its job is to … check the excesses of Congress or of the executive, and that does require a degree of independence,” he said.

In his recent remarks and written statement, Roberts did not mention Trump, nor did he mention any other elected official.

China is ramping up efforts to build a circular economy around its booming clean energy sector, as retired batteries and solar panels pile up and global trade tensions make critical minerals harder to source, according to the South China Morning Post.

“There is huge potential in the business of new-energy waste, because new energy is where China and the world are going,” said Ma Long, sales manager at a Henan Hairui Intelligent Technology subsidiary. His company already generates 70% of its business from battery and solar panel recycling equipment.

China’s rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and solar power is driving this trend. After a decade of EV growth, the country is now facing a “large-scale retirement of car batteries,” with retired batteries expected to exceed 4 million tonnes annually by 2028 and generate over 280 billion yuan (US$38.5 billion) in industry output, according to state estimates. Retired photovoltaic modules are also set to surge in the next five years.

“The recycling of minerals is largely for the sake of resource security,” said Du Huanzheng, a circular economy expert at Tongji University. He noted that China’s recycling push, once focused on pollution control, is now also about boosting economic growth and cutting reliance on imported minerals amid rising tensions with the U.S. and its allies.

A Beijing-based professor of environmental economics warned that China is “facing more difficulty in buying from allies of the US, such as Australia and Canada,” while other suppliers like Congo and Chile could be pressured by U.S. trade policy. “Business with other [mineral] suppliers may also be affected,” he added.

In response, China has created the state-owned China Resources Recycling Group to build a nationwide recycling network for products from electronics to retired wind and solar equipment.

The SCMP article says that big players like CATL and BYD are leading the way in battery recycling, but smaller companies are rushing in. Yu Zhongkai, senior manager at Tianli Technology, said a quarter of his company’s business now comes from battery-recycling equipment. “But we’re still experimenting, because there are no industry-wide standards yet, and the market is still unclear,” he admitted.

China’s recycling industry remains in its infancy, though its complete industrial chain and massive market give it an edge over global competitors. Du cautioned that despite investor enthusiasm, “large-scale recycling has yet to come, and a mature recycling system has yet to be formed.”

The government is tightening regulations, with 156 companies on a white list to standardize battery recycling and prevent safety and environmental risks. In February, the State Council passed an action plan to improve car battery recycling, following a December directive mandating stronger quality assurance and product traceability.

Guangdong Brunp Recycling Technology, a CATL subsidiary, claims it can recover over 99% of key metals from retired batteries. “It ensures that the batteries go where they came from, and it improves the resilience of the new-energy industry’s supply chain,” said CEO Li Changdong.

However, challenges remain. Many retired batteries end up in illegal workshops, and rural households are starting to discard old solar panels directly into trash bins, warned environmental activist Chen Liwen.

For now, legal recyclers face overcapacity as waste collection lags behind, but Ma expects the situation to improve as regulations tighten and battery retirements surge.

“So, overall, this is a big track to follow in the next few decades,” he said.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Trump administration is taking aim at automatic engine start-stop systems—technology installed in millions of U.S. vehicles to reduce fuel use and emissions—with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin signaling plans to roll back incentives for the feature that he says drivers despise.

“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy,” Zeldin wrote in a May 12 post on social media. “EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it.”

Zeldin’s announcement comes amid a broader shift under President Donald Trump, whose administration has moved aggressively to dismantle a range of environmental rules it says put pointless burdens on energy producers, manufacturers, and consumers.

While the EPA doesn’t require start-stop systems, it has granted automakers fuel economy credits for adopting the technology. Zeldin’s post suggests the agency may eliminate or revise those incentives, though officials have yet to announce formal policy changes.

The EPA declined to provide details of any plans to revise or eliminate existing incentives in response to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.

Start-stop systems are designed to automatically shut off a vehicle’s engine when it stops—at a red light, for example—and restart it when the driver releases the brake. Proponents say the technology helps reduce emissions and saves drivers money at the pump by improving fuel economy. Critics say that it’s annoying, unnecessary, and sometimes difficult to disable. In most vehicles, drivers must press a button to turn the feature off each time they start the car.

The feature became increasingly common under fuel efficiency rules implemented during the Obama administration, expanding from fewer than 1 percent of new vehicles in 2012 to about 45 percent in model year 2021, according to EPA data. The agency notes on its website that start-stop systems can improve fuel economy by up to 5 percent, with the biggest benefits under stop-and-go city driving.

An Obama-era regulatory impact analysis from 2012 estimated that start-stop systems can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.8 percent to 2.4 percent, depending on vehicle type and size, compared with baseline models. The systems have helped cut nearly 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, according to The Battery Council International.

Zeldin’s remarks come as the Trump administration pursues a sweeping deregulatory agenda across multiple agencies.

On May 9, Trump directed agencies to rescind federal water efficiency standards for household appliances such as showerheads, toilets, dishwashers, and washing machines—calling them relics of a “radical green agenda” that reduced performance and increased costs.

“The federal government should not impose or enforce regulations that make taxpayers’ lives worse,” Trump wrote in a memo, saying the rules made appliances less useful, more prone to failure, and costlier to fix.

The Department of Energy has also begun rolling back efficiency rules for outdoor heaters, decorative hearth products, and other miscellaneous appliances. In each case, the administration says it is eliminating unnecessary regulations and restoring consumer choice, while environmental advocates say the changes could undermine years of progress on conservation and fighting climate change.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Energy is returning to common sense–and that means giving the American people the ability to choose which heaters they use in their own backyards,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a May 2 statement. “To date, rescinding or delaying unnecessary consumer regulations such as this have saved the taxpayers nearly $24 billion–and we’re just getting started.”

The EPA’s expected rollback of incentives for start-stop systems would mark another high-profile pivot away from the climate policies of previous administrations.

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via the DisInformation Chronicle,

A brief flurry of media reports last month criticized letters sent to medical journals by Edward R. Martin Jr., the former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who questioned whether journals have become “partisans in various scientific debates.” One liberal academic called the letters “fascist tactics” designed “to intimidate academic journals” triggering similar allegations across the media.

“Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications,” reported the New York Times, noting that an obscure journal called CHEST had been targeted.

“DOJ questions science journal about bias, triggering free-speech concerns,” reported the Washington Post, adding that three major publishers of medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs, said they had not received letters, while publisher Springer Nature chose not to comment. NPR reported last week that the New England Journal of Medicine had in fact received a letter as had the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA.

The DisInformation Chronicle has learned that the actual target of Martin’s letters is the Nature Springer journal Nature Medicine, publisher of a highly controversial paper “Proximal Origin” which has faced charges of corruption and calls for retraction. A source inside the Department of Health and Human Services said Trump officials suspect the paper is a quid pro quo, written by the authors to dismiss the possibility of a lab accident and who then received a large grant months later from Tony Fauci.

The existence of the Nature Medicine letter has not been previously reported and is being made public for the first time. After Martin lost support among Republicans to be confirmed as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, President Trump picked him to head a new Weaponization Working Group inside the Justice Department.

Follow the science

Published in the third month of the COVID pandemic and arguing “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” the “Proximal Origin” paper became a handy tool for NIH officials and virologists attempting to dismiss as a “conspiracy theory” claims that the pandemic could have started in a Wuhan lab funded by Fauci. Nature Medicine’s editor-in-chief, Joao Monteiro, tweeted that the paper “put conspiracy theories” about the pandemic’s possible lab origin to rest.

NIH Director Francis Collins promoted the “Proximal Origin” paper weeks after Nature Medicine published it on his March 2020 NIH Director’s Blog, and Fauci then seized upon the paper during a televised White House briefing a month afterwards.

“There was a study recently that we can make available to you,” Fauci said during the White House briefing, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists look at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of species from an animal to a human.”

The paper would go on to become one of the most heavily cited scientific papers in 2020. The Nation reported in 2023 that “Proximal Origin” had been accessed online more than 5.7 million times and more than 2,000 media outlets had cited it. ABC News, for instance, ran an article titled “Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists. Study Concludes Covid-19 ‘Is Not a Laboratory Construct.’”

But by then, cracks had already appeared.

Follow the money, follow the documents

Emails made public through freedom of information act requests and by congressional investigators in 2022 showed that the papers’ authors had run it past funders—Francis Collins and Tony Fauci at the NIH, as well as with Jeremy Farrar, who was then at the Wellcome Trust. In one example, lead author Kristian Andersen with the Scripps Research Institute emailed the three funders thanking them for their “advice and leadership” and offering them a right to comment and give suggestions.

Further emails and internal slack discussions calling into question the credibility of “Proximal Origin” became public in the summer of 2023 following a congressional hearing. During the hearing, Republicans charged that Tony Fauci had helped orchestrate the paper’s publication. However, Democrats countered by releasing a report that found Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar helped “organize and facilitate” and “led the drafting process of the paper.”

“Jeremy, Dr. Farrar has been an amazing leader,” wrote “Proximal Origin” co-author Robert Garry of Tulane University in an email released by House Democrats. “Should be author.”

When questioned about his email during a House deposition, Garry agreed that Farrar should have been listed as an author.

According to Nature’s editorial policy, “A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.” However, the paper failed to note the involvement of either Fauci or Farrar, and Nature Medicine has refused to follow its own ethics guidelines.

News sites the Racket and Public co-published a slack message Andersen sent to his “Proximal Origin” co-authors on April 16, 2020, a month after Nature Medicine published the paper in March 2020.

“I’m still not fully convinced that no culture was involved,” Andersen wrote his co-authors, a month after publishing the paper that concluded the virus was not a laboratory construct. “We also can’t fully rule out engineering (for basic research).”

Days after the congressional hearing, the group BioSafety Now wrote a letter to Nature Medicine, signed by over 50 scientists, demanding retraction of “Proximal Origin.” The letter cited an investigation published by The Nation reporting on internal emails by the “Proximal Origin” authors that showed they didn’t even believe what they wrote in the paper.

“The main issue is that accidental release is in fact highly likely,” the Nation reported that Andersen wrote in a message to co-authors some weeks before Nature Medicine published the paper. An online campaign by BioSafety Now has since garnered over 5,700 signatures petitioning Nature Medicine to retract the paper.

In his letter to Nature Medicine, Martin wrote that he has been told that some journals “have a position for which they are advocating due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations).”

The letter also asks, “How do you clearly articulate to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others?”

A source close to the investigation said this question pertains to a grant Fauci awarded Andersen and Garry several months after they published “Proximal Origin” dismissing the possibility of a lab accident. Allegations that this grant was a bribe from Fauci have dogged Andersen for several years, accusations which he dismissed under oath during the July 2023 congressional hearing.

“There is no connection between the grant and the conclusions we reached about the origin of the pandemic,” Andersen wrote in sworn testimony to Congress. “We applied for this grant in June 2019, and it was scored and reviewed by independent experts in November 2019.”

The Intercept later reported that Andersen “knew that was false.” NIH records show the grant to Andersen wasn’t finalized until May 21, 2020, two months after Andersen published “Proximal Origin” in Nature Medicine.

In a guest essay earlier this month for The DisInformation Chronicle, an NIH infectious disease researcher wrote that the “Proximal Origin” authors left a gaping hole in their analysis by failing to account for a common method to manipulate viruses called “serial passaging.”

“And because they didn’t discuss this very common laboratory practice, they did not ‘disprove’ a laboratory origin for the virus,” the NIH research official wrote. “I have no idea how ignoring something so obvious could make it pass peer review and get published in a prestigious journal like Nature Medicine.”

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