| From Afghanistan to the coronavirus to the Jan. 6 investigation, Wednesday brings updates and questions on three major political stories. 1. The origin of the coronavirus is? We still don't know. That's despite President Biden specifically asking the intelligence community to find an answer. They don't have one, according to my Washington Post colleagues who reported on a classified report the president just received. (We should get to see an unclassified version soon.) That doesn't come as a surprise to many scientists, who had warned it could take much longer than a 90-day review to solve the mystery — and it may never be solved. I think it's interesting and noteworthy that the most common way for new viruses to emerge — from animal to human — isn't the consensus among U.S. scientists and spies, when it comes to the coronavirus. That leaves room for what was once cast aside as a conspiracy theory: that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab. As president, Donald Trump had repeatedly aired this claim, but Biden is also talking about such a possibility. My colleagues report that earlier this year, Biden "disclosed that two agencies leaned toward the hypothesis that the virus emerged from human contact with an infected animal, while a third leaned toward the lab accident scenario."  Workers handle swab samples for coronavirus in China, where the virus originated. (Chinatopix via AP) | 2. What was the Trump White House's posture toward the Jan. 6 attack? There's a special committee in the House of Representatives to investigate what happened the day Trump supporters overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a deadly insurrection as lawmakers were certifying Biden's win. This week, the panel requested a ton of information from federal agencies about the view from the White House and Republican members of Congress on Jan. 6. The committee asked for answers to questions including: - Who in Congress talked to the White House on and around that day.
- Whether Trump planned to march to the Capitol on the 6th.
Their records requests indicate they're also looking into Trump's broader efforts to fight his election loss and replace top government officials with his own loyalists, reports The Post's John Wagner. Background: The panel is led by Democrats, and there are two Republican lawmakers on it who have been willing to criticize the former president. Last month, the committee interviewed U.S. Capitol police offers about their experiences with the mob. In the months to come, we could learn much more about the tumultuous last three months of Trump's presidency — arguably some of the most unstable moments of modern American democracy. 3. How will Americans in Afghanistan get out soon? Biden is decisive: Tuesday is the last day to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But there are still a thousand or more Americans — and thousands of Afghan allies to the U.S. war — in the country, according to State Department estimates. So the White House is trying to figure out how to leave by next week's deadline, but still help Americans in the country get out after that. It's not clear they have an answer. "Our expectation and the expectation of the international community is that people who want to leave Afghanistan after the U.S. military depart should be able to do so," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. Before you go: The political right's vehemence to coronavirus restrictions Vaccines. Mask mandates. Even just wearing masks. The political right has been particularly and strongly opposed to public health restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Fix's Aaron Blake reviewed data from the Pew Research Center that compared the U.S.'s political battles over coronavirus restrictions with other countries. - In countries such as Australia, Italy, Germany and South Korea, there was modest opposition to coronavirus restrictions (roughly 20-30 percent of people who identify as conservative say there should have been fewer restrictions).
- In the United States, most Americans on the right — 52 percent — say there should have been fewer coronavirus restrictions. The United States is significantly more polarized on this, compared with other developed nations.
"That's particularly striking given that the United States' restrictions have generally been less severe than those of most other developed countries, according to Oxford University's government response stringency index," Blake writes. | 
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