By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Congress is still funding a federal program established by Dr. Anthony Fauci to support emerging infectious disease research — despite cuts implemented last year by the Trump administration and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Disinformation Chronicle reported Wednesday.

The Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID), established in August 2020 under the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), initially earmarked at least $82 million in grants to study “how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife and spillover to cause disease in people.”

Fauci, then-director of NIAID, said at the time that CREID research “will increase our preparedness for future outbreaks.” But last year, NIH determined the research was “unsafe” and ended its funding.

In June 2025, the NIH sent termination notices to CREID-affiliated researchers, notifying them that the research supported by the CREID Network has been “deemed unsafe for Americans and not a good use of taxpayer funding.”

However, the following month, Congress quietly restored its funding to the tune of $18.2 million through its appropriations bill for fiscal year 2026.

Investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker, editor of The Disinformation Chronicle and a former U.S. Senate investigator, told The Defender that “appropriations staff work in secrecy and are incredibly bipartisan.”

“Nobody knows how language supporting CREID centers was slipped into the funding bill and it will likely never become public. This is how appropriations has always functioned,” Thacker said.

BREAKING: I stumbled across this amazing story and checked it with a source inside HHS. It’s what I do. I run investigations.

Science, Nature and other outlets are now trying to follow this breaking news and will pretend to their readers they broke it themselves. Stay tuned…. https://t.co/QoGlpHzcH6

— Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 25, 2026

Some previous CREID grants went to researchers connected with controversial gain-of-function research, according to some experts.

In 2020, for instance, two Fauci-linked researchers, immunologist Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., of Scripps Research and Peter Daszak, Ph.D., of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, received CREID grants.

Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., said CREID was developed to reward scientists whose work was aligned with Fauci’s positions.

“The CREID program was abused by Fauci to reward participants in the reckless research on SARS coronaviruses that caused COVID and to reward participants in defrauding the public and policy makers about the cause of COVID,” Ebright said.

In a post on Bluesky earlier this month, Andersen criticized the NIH’s cuts to CREID.

Did Fauci-era officials lobby Congress to restore CREID funding?

Some experts warned that Fauci-era officials at NIH or NIAID may have played a role in securing the new funding for CREID.

An unnamed U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official told The Disinformation Chronicle that university lobbyists may have played a role in the restoration of CREID’s funding.

Ebright said he suspects that “a Fauci-era hold-over at NIAID who opposes current White House, HHS and NIH policies slipped the budget request for CREID past a naively over-trusting and dismayingly disengaged current NIH director,” referring to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who last week was also named acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I surmise that most Republicans in the House and Senate were unfamiliar with the abuses of the CREID program and were unaware of the incompatibility between the CREID program and current White House, HHS and NIH policies,” Ebright said.

Bryce Nickels, Ph.D., co-founder of Biosafety Now and professor of genetics at Rutgers University, said acting NIAID Director Jeffrey Taubenberger has long supported gain-of-function research — and the CREID program.

“Taubenberger was a strong proponent of the CREID network at its launch, and it is reasonable to infer that he continues to support this line of research today. He can claim otherwise, but his record of support for CREID is difficult to dismiss by simply asserting that he no longer agrees with positions he advocated in multiple publications,” Nickels said.

“If NIH leadership was truly committed to ending the type of research conducted under CREID then they would not have appointed Taubenberger as head of NIAID, just as if they were truly committed to ending dangerous gain-of-function research they would not have appointed him,” Nickels said.

Thacker noted that NIH is one of the most lucrative federal agencies — potentially influencing congressional decision-making.

“Distributing over $37 billion in grants every year, NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research on the planet, far exceeding the European Commission, which spends around $12 billion, and dwarfing the Gates Foundation’s $1 billion,” Thacker wrote in a December 2025 report for RealClearInvestigations.

“NIH money flows to universities, hospitals and biomedical companies in every state, in every congressional district across America. This gives NIH-funded institutions incredible access to members on the Hill to get what they want,” Thacker told The Defender.

“During the last six years, many congressional Democrats have supported Fauci and Fauci’s policies. It is unsurprising that persons who support Fauci and Fauci’s policies would support Fauci’s signature initiatives, including CREIDs,” Ebright said.

Will restored CREID funding support gain-of-function research?

Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order pausing gain-of-function research for 120 days, pending the development of a new set of federal policies governing such research. The executive order also ended federal funding of this type of research in several countries, including China and Iran.

The Disinformation Chronicle reported in December 2025 that the White House was close to finalizing a new gain-of-function policy that “will take a risk-based approach to determine whether a pathogen study will be funded.”

If enacted, scientists who fail to disclose dangerous research could be barred from federal programs, as could their universities.

But so far, the Trump administration hasn’t yet announced a new policy.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said that without such a policy in place, the move by Congress to bypass NIH and the Trump administration is alarming — because CREID research facilities “are the most likely candidates in the U.S. to complete gain-of-function research.”

“The fact that Congress would circumvent an executive order to continue this dangerous work sounds an alarm that the U.S., via HHS, most likely, should enact and enforce a ban of all gain-of-function research,” Hooker said.

In a statement provided to The Defender, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the restored CREID funding would not support gain-of-function research.

“NIH remains committed to advancing evidence-based preparedness without relying on dangerous gain-of-function research, which we do not fund or conduct,” Nixon said.

Separately, The Disinformation Chronicle cited an unnamed senior official at HHS, who said that, even with the restoration of CREID’s funding, none of those funds would be used to fund potentially risky gain-of-function research.

Hooker said that “while it is possible to do research on ‘emerging infectious diseases’ without doing gain-of-function research, it would be very easy to ‘slip in’ such work” into a research project.

“This includes, for example, serial passaging of the virus/pathogen through surrogate animals to make the virus more human transmissible, and aerial transmission of the virus (also serial) in order to enhance the respiratory route of exposure in humans,” Hooker said.

According to Hooker, “this type of research has gone on for far too long in U.S.-funded research laboratories.”

Related articles in The Defender

• NIH Shuts Down Research Center Founded by Fauci, as DOJ Scrutinizes Key Researchers
• Trump Administration Investigating Publisher of COVID Origins Paper for Corruption, Citing Influence by Fauci
• Trump Pauses Federally Funded Gain-of-Function Research in U.S., But for Only 120 Days
• Fauci’s Replacement at NIAID a Cheerleader for Gain-of-Function Research
• New White House Website Declares COVID Escaped From Wuhan Lab
• ‘I Don’t Recall’: Fauci Unable to Answer Key Questions in Pandemic Probe
• Fauci, Other ‘Bethesda Boys’ Colluded to Suppress COVID Lab-Leak Theory, U.S. House Committee Report Finds

The post Congress Restores Funding to Fauci-Linked Research — Is It Gain-of-Function? appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More