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kuru toga roulette Chuck Woolery , whose game-show hosting career included tenures at Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection , has died at age 83. Mark Young, Woolery’s friend and podcast cohost, shared the news on X on Saturday. “It is with a broken heart that I tell you that my dear brother @chuckwoolery has just passed away,” Young wrote. “Life will not be the same without him. RIP, brother.” Young told TMZ he was at Woolery’s home in Texas when the former TV host reported not feeling well and went to lie down. When Young checked in later, Woolery was having trouble breathing, and despite a 911 call, Woolery died shortly thereafter. Woolery was born on March 16, 1941, in Ashland, Kentucky, to a business owner and a homemaker, according to The Hollywood Reporter . After stints at the University of Kentucky, in the U.S. Navy, and at Morehead State University, Woolery moved to Nashville to start a music career. He and singer Elkin “Bubba” Fowler formed the psychedelic pop duo The Avant-Garde, and their song “Naturally Stoned” peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Lorimar Television/ Everett Collection A singing performance on The Merv Griffin Show led Woolery to audition for a new game show, originally titled Shopper’s Bazaar , that Merv Griffin was developing at the time. After some tinkering, Wheel of Fortune debuted on NBC on January 6, 1975. Griffin earned a Daytime Emmy for his Wheel work and hosted the show until 1981, when a salary dispute led producers to replace him with Pat Sajak . Woolery moved on with a job hosting the syndicated dating game show Love Connection from 1983 to 1994, pulling in 4.5 million viewers a day at one point. He also emceed the game show Scrabble from 1984 to 1990, and between the two shows, he was earning $1 million a year by 1986, as People reported at the time. Woolery also hosted the game show Greed on Fox from 1999 to 2000 and Lingo on Game Show Network from 2002 to 2007. In recent years, Woolery stoked controversy with his political views, posting a tweet that sparked antisemitism accusations in 2017 and then claiming in 2020 that “everyone [was] lying” about the coronavirus pandemic , as Newsweek reported. He also argued that minorities didn’t need civil rights, according to the Associated Press . Woolery was married four times, and his ex-wives included actor Jo Ann Pflug. He had eight children and stepchildren, per THR . More Headlines:

ANN ARBOR, Michigan (AP) — Michigan defensive lineman Kenneth Grant is skipping his final college season to enter the NFL draft. Grant, a key part of the Wolverines' 2023 national championship team, announced his decision Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Fellow Michigan interior lineman Mason Graham had already declared for the draft. Both are projected as likely first-round picks. The 6-foot-3, 339-pound Grant was a third-team Associated Press All-American. He had 32 tackles, 6 1/2 tackles for loss and a pair of fumble recoveries. Grant helped Michigan upset Ohio State in the Big Ten regular-season finale, making four tackles. Cornerback Will Johnson and tight end Colston Loveland have also declared for the draft leading up to Michigan's game against No. 11 Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

AbCellera to Present at Upcoming Investor Conferences in December and January

Chuck Woolery Dies: Former ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Love Connection’ Host Was 83

Is he a hero? A killer? Both? About the same time the #FreeLuigi memes featuring the mustachioed plumber from “Super Mario Brothers” mushroomed online, commenters shared memes showing Tony Soprano pronouncing Luigi Mangione , the man charged with murdering the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Manhattan , a hero. There were posts lionizing Mangione’s physique and appearance, the ones speculating about who could play him on “Saturday Night Live,” and the ones denouncing and even threatening people at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s for spotting him and calling police. It was all too much for Pennsylvania’s governor, a rising Democrat who was nearly the vice presidential nominee this year. Josh Shapiro — dealing with a case somewhere else that happened to land in his lap — decried what he saw as growing support for “vigilante justice.” The curious case of Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione captivated and polarized a media-saturated nation. It also offers a glimpse into how, in a connected world, so many different aspects of modern American life can be surreally linked — from public violence to politics, from health care to humor (or attempts at it) . It summons a question, too: How can so many people consider someone a hero when the rules that govern American society — the laws — are treating him as the complete opposite? Writings found in Mangione’s possession hinted at a vague hatred of corporate greed and an expression of anger toward “parasitic” health insurance companies. Bullets recovered from the crime scene had the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” reflecting words used by insurance industry critics, written on them. A number of online posts combine an apparent disdain for health insurers — with no mention of the loss of life. “He took action against private health insurance corporations is what he did. he was a brave italian martyr. in this house, luigi mangione is a hero, end of story!” one anonymous person said in a post on X that has nearly 2 million views. On Monday, Shapiro took issue with comments like those. It was an extraordinary moment that he tumbled into simply because Mangione was apprehended in Pennsylvania. Shapiro’s comments — pointed, impassioned and, inevitably, political — yanked the conversation unfolding on so many people’s phone screens into real life. “We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” the governor said. “In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.” But to hear some of his fellow citizens tell it, that’s not the case at all. Like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, D.B. Cooper and other notorious names from the American past, Mangione is being cast as someone to admire. Regina Bateson, an assistant political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has studied vigilantism, the term to which Shapiro alluded. She doesn’t see this case as a good fit for the word, she says, because the victim wasn’t linked to any specific crime or offense. As she sees it, it’s more akin to domestic terrorism.But Bateson views the threats , and ticking up — plus the against President-elect Donald Trump this past summer — as possible signs that personal grievances or political agendas could erupt. “Americans are voicing more support for — or at least understanding of — political violence,” she said. Shapiro praised the police and the people of Blair County, who abided by a 9/11-era dictum of seeing something and saying something. The commenters have Mangione wrong, the governor said: “Hear me on this: He is no hero. The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 at McDonald’s this morning.” Even shy of supporting violence, there are many instances of people who vent over how health insurers deny claims. Tim Anderson’s wife, Mary, dealt with UnitedHealthcare coverage denials before she died from Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2022. “The business model for insurance is don’t pay,” Anderson, 67, of Centerville, Ohio, told The Associated Press . The discourse around the killing and Mangione is more than just memes. Conversations about the interconnectedness of various parts of American life are unfolding online as well. One Reddit user said he was banned for three days for supporting Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted after testifying he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot two people in 2020 during protests. “Do you think people are getting banned for supporting Luigi?” the poster wondered. The comments cover a lot of ground. They include people saying the UnitedHealthcare slaying isn’t a “right or left issue” and wondering what it would take to get knocked off the platform. “You probably just have to cross the line over into promoting violence,” one commenter wrote. “Not just laughing about how you don’t care about this guy.”

Giants star WR Malik Nabers (toe) says he's a game-time decisionAP News Summary at 5:36 p.m. EST

Labor eyes last chance of 2024 to tick policy boxesTrump team signs agreement to allow Justice to conduct background checks on nominees, staff

BEIJING , Dec. 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- At the end of 2024, we take a look back at the Chinese economy's performance this year. China's domestic GDP grew by 5.3 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, 4.7 percent in the second quarter and 4.6 percent in the third quarter this year, with an average growth rate of 4.8 percent in the first three quarters. Since September, as a package of incremental policies continues to yield its effects, China's economy maintains an upward trend. Overall, we are fully confident in achieving our economic growth goal this year. The country's economic performance has been hard-won. Externally, transformations around the world unseen in a century are unfolding at a greater pace, with global economic growth remaining sluggish, and the complexity, severity and uncertainty of the external environment on the rise. At home, domestic demand is insufficient, social expectations remain weak and there are difficulties associated with structural adjustments. The situation is severe and complex, and the task is difficult and weighty. However, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, Chinese localities and government agencies are more confident and are taking solid steps to deliver outcomes. The results underscore that "fundamentals of the Chinese economy, and favorable conditions such as a vast market, strong economic resilience and great potential remain unchanged." Huge market, vast space Markets are the scarcest resource. The modernization achieved by 1.4 billion Chinese people has resulted in the addition of a new super-large market larger than those of all developed countries combined. The new development paradigm will enable China to fully unlock its market potential and create greater demand for other countries. With a new car rolling off production line on November 14 , China's annual production of new energy vehicles (NEVs) surpassed the 10 million milestone, becoming the first country in the world to do so. Behind the number is China's robust supply and demand. In the first 10 months, China's production and sales of NEVs grew by 33 percent and 33.9 percent year-on-year, respectively. China continues to take the lead in the electrification and intelligence transformation of the automotive industry, which is attributed to the supply, policy support and demand advantage in the ultra-large market. Markets bring valuable business opportunities. Take cars for example. By the end of June, China had 345 million cars, but the country's car ownership level per 1,000 residents is less than half of that in developed countries. Additionally, China's NEV ownership is only 24.72 million, which means continuous demand in the future. Markets breed competition advantages. China's vast market contributes to the formation of "economy of scale" and "economy of scope," which generates greater profits for enterprises and reduces innovations costs, and also helps provide a large number of application scenarios and boost the large-scale application of innovations. China leads the world in batteries, motors and electronic control technologies, while its intelligent cockpits and intelligent driving are internationally advanced. Thanks to the benign interactions between supply and demand, the industrialization of new technologies and new products is speeding up. Strong resilience, solid basis Resilience strengthens self-belief. China has come to where it is today after overcoming all kinds of difficulties and challenges. Foreign trade is an important barometer in this regard. In the first 10 months of the year, China's foreign goods trade rose by 5.2 percent year-on-year to reach a new high compared with the same period historically. The improvement in the quality and efficiency of the country's foreign trade against the backdrop of shrinking external demand reflects China's economic resilience. This resilience originates from China's solid manufacturing basis and industrial chain advantages. "We could not do what we do without them," Apple CEO Tim Cook said of Chinese suppliers during his third visit to the Chinese mainland this year, as over 80 percent of Apple's 200 major suppliers have set up factories in China . China has the world's most comprehensive industrial categories and a well-rounded industrial system, with the scale of manufacturing industry ranking top for 14 consecutive years. The high-end, intelligent and green development of the manufacturing sector continues to strengthen the stability of the country's industrial and supply chain. In the first three quarters, the manufacturing industry contributed 32.2 percent to the country's economic growth, up 11.2 percentage points. China moved up to 11th place in the ranking of the world's most innovative economies. The basis is solid, and risks and challenges are not to be feared. Resilience also comes from excellent policy adjustments. The nation has been strengthening counter-cyclical adjustments, accelerating the implementation of major national strategies and the development of securities capabilities in key areas while supporting large-scale equipment upgrades and trade-in policies for consumer goods with robust measures, boosting the stabilization of the property market and galvanizing the capital market. The government has also put forward a package of measures to dissolve local government debt risks. This year, a series of existing policies continue to produce effects and incremental policies are being effectively implemented, jointly helping the economy stabilize. Vast potential, strong momentum China's economy has vast potential and many advantages and favorable conditions for sustaining long-term development momentum. China has been the world's second-largest economy for many years, but still has vast development potential in terms of per capita and structure. China's per capita GDP remains relatively low, and the country's amount of infrastructure per capita is only 20-30 percent of that of developed countries. In 2023, China's urbanization rate, which measures the ratio of permanent urban residents relative to the total population, reached 66.2 percent by the end of 2023. Estimates show that each percentage point increase in the urbanization rate could drive 1 trillion yuan ( $137.55 billion ) in investment. Currently, both China's fiscal deficit ratio and government debt ratio are low, and the country's policy toolbox remains well-stocked. The potential also lies in elementary resources. China's human resources in science and technology ranked first in the country and the average length of education received by new entrants into the workforce has increased to 14 years, turning the demographic dividend into a talent dividend. In addition, overall sufficient social capitals, vast room for the highly efficient use of land and the vast unleashing of the potential of digital elements provide solid foundational support. This potential also comes from the huge market. The country's population of over 1.4 billion and middle-income population of over 400 million support a large-scale, diverse and huge domestic market. Accelerating the building of a unified national market will improve overall economic operation efficiency and continuously unleash the potential of domestic demand. Overall, China is a country with vast territory, a large population and unbalanced and uncoordinated development. This is a shortcoming, but also represents potential and a driving force for future development. Sparking vitality and building synergy through reform is essential to continuously unleashing development potential. From implementing regulations for fair competition reviews, accelerating the legislative process of the law on the promotion of the private economy and formulating normal communication mechanisms between governments and enterprises, to releasing a new national negative list for foreign investment and removing all market access restrictions for foreign investors in the manufacturing sector, China's reforms in key fields continue to deepen this year and high-level opening-up advances in an in-depth way. The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization. Driven by reform of the economic system, China is correspondingly boosting reform in other fields, and the internal development momentum and vitality will continue to strengthen. Reviewing allows a clear understanding of the situation and better moving forward. While some major economies experience low growth rates and high inflation this year, China is expected to achieve its economic growth target of around 5 percent, and continue to contribute around 30 percent to world economic growth. This stable performance underlines the fact that China's economy will continue to remain on a positive trajectory over the long run. The story was originally published on the front page of the People's Daily on December 8, 2024 View original content: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-times-peoples-daily-article-says-favorable-conditions-for-chinas-economic-development-remain-unchanged-302325568.html SOURCE Global Times

Adele delivered a night to remember during the final performance of her Weekends With Adele Las Vegas residency at Caesar’s Palace on Saturday, but it wasn’t just her breathtaking vocals that had fans buzzing. The 36-year-old music icon shared an emotional moment with her fiancé, Rich Paul, and her rarely-seen son, Angelo, creating an unforgettable highlight of the evening. As she performed her poignant 2015 hit When We Were Young, Adele stepped into the crowd and stopped in front of Rich and 11-year-old Angelo. A touching video posted on the platform X captured her warmly embracing her son and kissing Rich, a moment that left the audience in awe. Fans online were quick to celebrate the heartfelt exchange, with one calling it "absolutely beautiful" and another noting, "This is why Adele is so loved—she brings such raw emotion to her performances." A photo from the evening also showed Rich, 43, and Angelo seated next to Adele’s mother, Penny Adkins, offering a rare glimpse into the star’s family life. Adele, who shares Angelo with ex-husband Simon Konecki, has long been known for her dedication to her son’s privacy. However, she took a moment to publicly acknowledge Angelo during her emotional address to the audience, her voice cracking with raw emotion. "I chose to do a residency so I could keep his life normal," she shared, reflecting on the two-year Las Vegas run. "And I did do that, and I wouldn’t change it for the world." The Grammy-winning artist, who has kept much of Angelo’s life out of the public eye, offered a rare glimpse into their close bond, telling the crowd, “I love you to bits, peanut. Thank you.” The words were met with cheers and applause, a testament to the heartfelt connection Adele has with her fans. As the evening unfolded, Adele also paid tribute to Rich, whom she referred to as both her “partner” and “fiancé.” She gave a heartfelt nod to his unwavering support during the residency. “Thank you for always picking me up and making me feel like I could do whatever I want to do,” Adele said, her gratitude palpable. “There have been times when I’m too tired or too emotional and drained, and you say, ‘Come, baby. Get up, baby.’ I appreciate that.” Rich, a high-profile sports agent, and Adele began dating in 2021 and have been inseparable ever since. In May, the Someone Like You singer shared her hopes of starting a family with him after wrapping up her residency, and in August, she confirmed their engagement. Though fans have speculated about her massive diamond ring since 2022, Adele made it official earlier this year, and the couple has been glowing ever since. The finale wasn’t just a celebration—it was a farewell to an iconic chapter in Adele’s career. Reflecting on the residency, she told the crowd, “It’s been wonderful, and I will miss it terribly.” Known for her candid nature, Adele admitted she has no immediate plans to perform again. “I don’t have any f—king plans,” she joked, sparking laughter from the audience. “But don’t worry—I’ll be back.” Adele’s two-year Vegas residency has been a triumph, both artistically and personally. In addition to delivering powerhouse performances night after night, she found closure in a deeply personal moment when Celine Dion attended one of her shows last month. The two iconic singers were seen tearfully embracing, a moment Adele described as transformative. “I cried for a whole week,” she revealed during the performance.

Missing Persons: The Characters of “Nightbitch” Are Left Blank

ANN ARBOR, Michigan (AP) — Michigan defensive lineman Kenneth Grant is skipping his final college season to enter the NFL draft. Grant, a key part of the Wolverines’ 2023 national championship team, announced his decision Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Fellow Michigan interior lineman Mason Graham had already declared for the draft. Both are projected as likely first-round picks. The 6-foot-3, 339-pound Grant was a third-team Associated Press All-American. He had 32 tackles, 6 1/2 tackles for loss and a pair of fumble recoveries. Grant helped Michigan upset Ohio State in the Big Ten regular-season finale, making four tackles. Cornerback Will Johnson and tight end Colston Loveland have also declared for the draft leading up to Michigan’s game against No. 11 Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-footballArguments over whether Luigi Mangione is a 'hero' offer glimpse into unusual American momentWASHINGTON — The federal government spent up to $267 million of your money to study and counteract so-called “misinformation” since President Biden took office in January 2021 — as President-elect Donald Trump vows to bar official use of the term . The funds doled out to universities, nonprofits and private companies spiked from $2.2 million in 2020, the final full year of Trump’s first term, to a staggering $126 million in 2021 before tapering off — even as leading US public health officials were imposing mandates they later admitted had no scientific basis — the taxpayer-transparency group OpenTheBooks said in a report released Friday. The findings were released by the group, which was founded by Republican budget hawks, as Trump’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) looks for areas to trim wasteful spending, and after Trump himself pledged to ax the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” from the federal lexicon. OpenTheBooks does not account for the cost of in-house efforts by the Biden White House and various executive branch agencies to fight purportedly incorrect speech, including by pressuring social media companies to censor content. Proponents of fighting alleged “misinformation” argue that it’s in the public’s interest to weed out incorrect claims — with Biden personally accusing social media companies of “killing people” by platforming posts critiquing the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, as anti-“misinformation” spending surged. Opponents of speech-policing argue it both violates the First Amendment and prevents vigorous debate and competing narratives that allow for a more full understanding of issues of public concern. Critics also note that much of what is initially deemed “misinformation” later turns out to either gain broad evidentiary support or outright confirmation, such as the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab that was doing risky US-funded “gain of function” research. Another example is the fact that mandated masks, vaccination, social distancing and economic shutdowns were largely ineffective due to evolving COVID variants or significant side-effects and unintended social consequences. At the same time, the Biden administration was colluding with big tech platforms to police Americans’ free speech online — leaning on Facebook, Twitter and other sites to yank even light-hearted or satirical posts about the pandemic . Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a belated mea culpa in August 2024, telling House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a letter that “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured” his company to wrongly “censor” COVID content. Some government diktats, such as the requirement that people remain six feet apart, actually had no specific evidentiary justification, former federal infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci later admitted. More than two-thirds of the “misinformation” research grants flowed from the Department of Health and Human Service and focused primarily on COVID-19, but also touched on other areas such as climate change. Other big spenders included the National Science Foundation ($65 million), the State Department ($12 million), the Pentagon ($2.9 million) and the Justice Department ($1.7 million). Universities reaped COVID windfall The OpenTheBooks report includes links to federal grant award documents that includes the term “misinformation” and found that major universities raked in millions, particularly by focusing on COVID-19-related issues such as vaccine hesitancy. “Federal spending records show at least $127 million tax dollars funding anti-misinformation efforts directly related to COVID-19 for a variety of activities,” the report read, “from on-the-ground advocacy working to dispel vaccine misinformation, to scientific studies on how supposed “misinformation” is spread online.” The top identified recipient was the City University of New York, which received more than $3.6 million, including nearly $3.3 million from the Department of Health and Human Services for research beginning in September 2022 on how people with mental health disorders can be steeled against “misinformation” with “online attitudinal inoculation.” “Informed by inoculation theory, attitudinal inoculation leverages the power of narrative, values and emotion to strengthen resistance to misinformation and reduce hesitancy and is well-suited for low-information audiences and ideologically polarized or conspiratorial groups,” read’s CUNY’s description of the project, due to end in August 2025. “The proposed research project will leverage the infrastructure of ... a large and geographically diverse community-based US cohort, to tailor and test the effectiveness of a brief digital attitudinal inoculation intervention to increase vaccination among adults with anxiety or depression symptoms.” An additional $328,000 went to CUNY in August 2022 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how alleged “misinformation,” including about climate change and COVID-19, spreads on social media. “Understanding how information flows and its impact on human behavior is important for determining how to protect society from the effects of misinformation, propaganda and fake news,” reads the description of the research, due to end in July 2025. “The research has two main goals: First, it will spot and predict opinion trends and identify users’ polarization on topics of broad interest to society (eg, climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic). Second, it will track information propagation to understand its role in shaping opinion trends and identify the factors that are important for its spread and adoption.” The NSF also handed over $5 million to George Washington University to focus on “misinformation” aimed “at members of expert communities” including “misinformation-driven harassment campaigns [that] have particularly large impacts on those at the forefront of efforts to accurately inform the public, including journalists, scientists, and public health officials.” AnotherNSF grant, of $14 million, went to the University of Michigan for an “American National Elections Study” that homed in on “the spread of misinformation, support for political violence, affective polarization, racial conflict, and threats to the legitimacy of our electoral institutions.” The University of Pennsylvania was awarded more than $2.3 million in September 2022 for “investigating and identifying the heterogeneity in COVID-19 misinformation exposure on social media among black and rural communities to inform precision public health messaging.” That research, running through 2027 seeks to “develop strategies to detect trusted and accurate ‘signals’ amidst dynamic misinformation ‘noise.'” The cash windfall for “misinfo” experts came as leading US public health officials were spreading false narratives of their own. Fauci, now retired, admitted to a House committee earlier this year that COVID-era restrictions like maintaining six feet of distance and masking young children lacked any scientific basis. “It sort of just appeared. I don’t recall,” Fauci said in a January transcribed interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic about the social distancing mandate imposed on federal agencies, businesses and schools. “Just an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even data that could be accomplished.” “At the time, 4,000, 5,000 people a day were dying,” Fauci said in a June hearing before the same committee about masking mandates, before admitting: “There was no study that did masks on kids.” Librarian escape room, ‘slandering’ Trump One way the government fought “misinformation” was through funding an online “escape room” run by librarians, according to the federal records. The University of Washington was awarded a $249,691 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services in September 2021 to “deploy a tested escape room prototype in 10 public libraries” and to “co-design camps around Black Lives Matter and fandom to demonstrate use of the design kit for creating interest-driven escape rooms.” “By building and deploying an online escape room hosted by librarians, the grant will improve libraries’ capabilities to address misinformation through innovative educational programming,” the description says. At least one of the grants focused specifically on how Trump — who controversially promoted use of the drug hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic and rarely wore a mask, while saying others were free to do so — allegedly fueled distrust “thus making [people] more vulnerable to misinformation generally.” George Washington University received a $199,516 NSF grant in May 2022 for a two-year project “to study how populist politicians distorted COVID-19 pandemic health communication to encourage polarized attitudes and distrust among citizens, thus making them more vulnerable to misinformation generally.” The proposal says “focus is on four countries — Brazil, Poland, Serbia and the US — all led by populist leaders during the pandemic.” OpentheBooks derided that expenditure as a “brazen instance” of spending being used for “slandering” Trump. Other major university recipients of funds included Wake Forest University, which received more than $2.8 million, and the University of Texas, which got nearly $2.2 million. Defense and tech industry also among recipients An array of companies also received federal grants for “misinformation” projects. The Department of Health and Human Services awarded $300,000 to Melax Technologies for “real-time surveillance of vaccine misinformation from social media platforms using ontology and natural language processing technologies.” HHS granted $299,964 to Gryphon Scientific for “systematic understanding and elimination of misinformation online.” And the Department of Homeland Security awarded $1,205,826 via the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to defense contractor Guidehouse from 2023 to 2024 for “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation analysis.” Guidehouse had previously produced a report that touched upon “the public’s perception of [FEMA’s role in the COVID-19 crisis.” The technology not-for-profit Meedan received an award for $5.7 million from the National Science Foundation in September 2021 for a three-year project titled, “Fact champ fact-checker, academic and community collaboration tools, combating hate, abuse and misinformation with minority-led partnerships.” Trump team looks to trim Trump announced shortly after his Nov. 5 election victory that Musk, the billionaire owner of X and chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, would lead an extra-governmental effort to identify cost savings — after the president-elect himself vowed to dismantle federal efforts to police alleged “misinformation” in his second term. It’s unclear how much of the pending grant money could be clawed back — and grants already were tapering downward after peaking in 2021, with just $18.4 million in new “misinformation”-related awards identified in 2024. In a policy video released shortly after launching his campaign in November 2022, Trump said, “The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed — and it must happen immediately.” “Within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens,” Trump said . “I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as ‘mis-‘ or ‘dis-information’. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship — directly or indirectly — whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.”