Rand Paul Will Continue His COVID-19 Investigations From Atop the Senate Homeland Security Committee
When Republicans officially take control of the U.S. Senate in January, a longtime critic of the national security state and the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic will helm a committee with the power to investigate both.
As the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) says he aims to do exactly that.
“I intend to restore our Committee’s rightful place as the oversight body of the Senate,” Paul wrote in a letter sent to his Senate colleagues on Thursday, shared with Reason.
Paul, who has been the top Republican on the committee for the past two years, said he would continue the committee’s investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Secret Service’s security failures surrounding the assassination attempts against Donald Trump. He also promised “new investigations into executive branch failures and abuses, as well as conducting oversight of every dollar spent by the government.”
Paul says that the committee’s first tasks under his leadership will be confirming South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, as the incoming Secretary of Homeland Security and examining the possible reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” policy—an immigration rule implemented during the first Trump administration that required asylum-seekers to remain outside the country to await hearings in immigration courts. The Biden administration scrapped that rule after a lengthy legal battle.
But it seems likely that Paul will keep the committee’s attention largely focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the role that the federal government played in funding gain-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan, China, where the disease is believed to have originated. That’s been a priority for Paul in recent years, and investigatory work led by his office helped to confirm the “lab leak” theory that public health authorities had initially dismissed.
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