Gavin Newsom’s DEI Hire Rejects Biosafety, Why?

By Hans Mahncke & Jeff Carlson

If you search recent news for "Laphonza Butler" + “gain-of-function,” chances are that you will get either no results or perhaps one result, a paywalled snippet from Politico Pro. 

Shockingly, yet not surprisingly, the media has buried what should be a significant story and that is the story that Laphonza Butler, Gavin Newsom’s unelected Senate appointee, has just voted against regulating gain-of-function experiments that brought us 20 million Covid deaths. 

One might argue that this isn’t unusual since Democrats frequently oppose common-sense measures, and this brings us to the crux of the matter: for once, Democrats did not follow that trend. When the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted last week on whether to regulate reckless gain-of-function experiments, all members of the Committee—both Republican and Democrat—supported regulation, with the exception of Laphonza Butler.

So, who exactly is Laphonza Butler, and why would she oppose biosafety in light of all the death and destruction caused by Covid?

Butler is Gavin Newsom’s hand-picked and unelected DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Senate appointee after the death of Dianne Feinstein. Curiously, when Feinstein died in 2023, Butler wasn’t even a resident of California, having moved to Maryland a few years earlier. But Newsom did not care. He appointed her anyway. This is how CNN reported Butler’s appointment: 

“Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler made history Tuesday when she was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris as the first out Black lesbian to enter Congress and the only Black woman presently serving in the Senate. Butler, who was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, becomes only the third Black woman to serve as a US senator.”

Nothing is mentioned about policies or plans. Instead, the focus is entirely on DEI—first this, first that. A closer examination of Butler reveals that her primary issues are union advocacy and abortion rights advocacy. Before becoming a prominent supporter and advisor for Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign (yes, the ill-fated campaign that did not last long enough to reach Iowa), she served as the president of the Service Employees International Union. After Kamala became vice president, Butler took on the role of president at EMILY’s List, an organization whose mission it is to elect Democratic women who promote abortion rights.

Why a prominent lesbian would chair a group devoted to abortion is far from clear. Be that as it may, Butler now stands out for a third issue: Rejection of biosafety. 

Let’s take a brief look at the history of the issue that led the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee to adopt the Risky Research Review Act last week.

In 2011, scientists implemented new techniques for the first time to manipulate the genetic sequences of viruses, making them more deadly. This process is known as gain-of-function research. A notable example was the now-infamous Fauci-funded experiment that modified the H5N1 flu virus to become airborne, thereby significantly increasing the risk of transmission and lethality in humans. Fauci described the experiment as a “risk worth taking,” asserting in the Washington Post that although there was a possibility of these new, deadly superviruses leaking from the laboratories where they were created, the potential benefits justified the risk. 

To this day, there is no evidence supporting any benefits from these experiments, rendering Fauci’s premise entirely unfounded. 

To their credit, President Obama and his team recognized the dangers of these experiments and instituted a moratorium on U.S. government funding for gain-of-function research. Prior to that, there were no regulations governing these reckless experiments. But Fauci circumvented the moratorium by outsourcing the research overseas and granting special exemptions to continue the experiments, notably to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, which was engineering Frankenstein’s monster versions of SARS viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

During the transition from Obama to Trump, Fauci utilized the interim period to establish a P3CO scheme (2017 Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens) that effectively replaced the moratorium. Although Fauci’s scheme appeared to provide a regulatory framework for gain-of-function research, it was merely a façade—a smokescreen designed to create the illusion of oversight when, in reality, none existed. 

Then Covid emerged, originating from the Wuhan lab pursuant to the 2018 DEFUSE blueprint for making a Covid in a lab. That blueprint involved not only Daszak but U.S. government actors and agencies. 

With all this in mind, Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democratic Senator Gary Peters decided to take action. They have now devised a new regulatory framework that prohibits the government from funding any experiments that could potentially create pandemic pathogens. Instead, this authority will be entrusted to a new Life Sciences Research Security Board, consisting of nine members appointed by the president. As mentioned, the proposed law was adopted unanimously, except for Butler, who voted against it. Why? We do not know, and because the media is primarily focused on what DEI milestones she has “achieved,” no one seems to have asked her about it. 

While we do not know why Butler would oppose biosafety, we can make some educated guesses. First, there is China, which should always be at the top of the list when trying to understand why anyone would trivialize the 20 million deaths caused by Covid. To be fair, unlike, for instance, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, there is not much of a record that ties Butler to China. However, there is one very peculiar occurrence. When the TikTok bill was being considered in the Senate, Butler appeared to take a pro-Chinese Communist Party stance. She made an announcement saying that TikTok’s 8,000 U.S.-based employees, should all keep their jobs, claiming, “These dedicated workers have been crucial to the overall success of the platform, and some have also been essential to advancing our understanding of the national security and data privacy concerns raised by TikTok’s Chinese ownership.” Viewed in the most charitable light, Butler had no clue what she was talking about. A less charitable interpretation would suggest that she believes U.S.-based TikTok employees can address national security concerns, despite the fact that the primary issue has always been Beijing’s ongoing access to data.

A more plausible reason for Butler's rejection of biosafety may be her advocacy for the NIH IMPROVE Initiative. The NIH, of course, is the organization facing defunding concerning gain-of-function experiments. While the project's stated goal is to research preventable causes of maternal deaths and improve health for women, which appears uncontroversial, its specific objectives are vague, and its DEI language establishes the usual red flags: IMPROVE “includes a special emphasis on health disparities and populations that are disproportionately affected, such as racial and ethnic minorities”. Did Butler wish to avoid upsetting the NIH, which is overseeing one of her favored projects? Perhaps. However, being the only senator to oppose biosafety seems rather extreme if that were her sole motivation.

Ultimately, we do not know why she acted as she did. Perhaps she harbors such strong animosity toward President Trump that she cannot bear to grant him even a minor victory, i.e. an indirect admission that Covid came out of the Wuhan lab, as Trump has been saying since April 2020. We will likely learn more once the act is presented to the full Senate. If she remains the sole dissenting vote, it will suggest that there is more to her very odd rejection of biosafety.