Dr. Anthony Fauci faces allegations from CIA whistleblower James Erdman of manipulating intelligence to suppress the lab leak theory, while President Trump arrives in Beijing with Elon Musk and Tim Cook to resolve rare earth disputes amid Iran war tensions. Domestically, Vice President JD Vance's task force freezes $1.4 billion in Medicare fraud payments linked to international networks, uncovering $267 million in Medi-Cal scams and referring 562,000 pandemic loans totaling $22 billion. These converging geopolitical maneuvers and massive domestic crackdowns suggest a coordinated effort to reset global supply chains while purging systemic corruption within the US healthcare and intelligence sectors. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey everybody, I'm Dave Rubin and this is First Look.
It's Thursday, May 14th, 2026.
We've got a packed show for you today.
President Trump gets the full red carpet treatment in Beijing as high stakes talks with Xi Jinping begin amid trade tensions and the Iran war.
JD Vance's anti fraud task force freezes $1.4 billion in taxpayer money tied to massive Medicare and hospice fraud schemes.
A CIA whistleblower accuses Anthony Fauci of helping steer the COVID origins investigation away from the lab leak theory in what he calls a deliberate cover up.
Let's dive in.
We start overseas where President Trump arrived in Beijing Wednesday to a massive red carpet welcome from the Chinese government as he prepares for critical meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
And the optics here were unmistakable.
Trump stepped off Air Force One to a full military honor guard.
A Chinese military band, children waving American and Chinese flags, and chants of welcome, welcome echoing across the tarmac in Mandarin.
Greeting Trump personally were Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, Chinese Ambassador Xiaofeng, top foreign ministry officials, along with U.S. Ambassador David Perdue.
The ceremony looked less like a routine diplomatic visit and more like a state level spectacle designed to show that Beijing still views Trump.
As the central figure shaping America's relationship with China.
Now, this trip immediately drew comparisons to Trump's famous 2017 visit to China during his first term.
That trip was filled with pomp and ceremony, a forbidden city tour, Peking opera performances, massive business announcements, and highly publicized personal diplomacy between Trump and Xi.
At the time, the White House announced more than $250 billion.
In commercial deals and cooperation agreements.
Some of the biggest included a $37 billion Boeing jet deal, a $12 billion Qualcomm semiconductor agreement, and major agricultural and manufacturing commitments meant to boost U.S. exports and create American jobs.
Trump's message back then was simple open Chinese markets more aggressively to American companies and workers.
But despite all the pageantry, things deteriorated quickly afterward.
By 2018, Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese imports, China retaliated, a prolonged trade war began, and relations between Washington and Beijing sharply worsened.
Now, nearly a decade later, Trump is back in Beijing, facing an even more complicated geopolitical situation.
This time, the pressure points are enormous the Iran war, Taiwan tensions, rare earth mineral disputes, tariffs, supply chains.
And growing economic competition between the world's two largest economies.
In recent months, China tightened export controls on rare earth minerals.
The Trump administration threatened an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods.
And Beijing has continued pushing back against American pressure campaigns.
Still, Trump appears determined to negotiate from a position of strength.
And he didn't come alone.
Traveling with him is a powerhouse group of American business executives, including Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, and executives from Citi, GE Aerospace, Micron, Blackstone, and Cargill.
That lineup alone tells you what this visit is really about.
Trade, markets, manufacturing, technology, and economic leverage.
Now, one major topic hanging over these talks is Iran.
China has tried to position itself carefully amid the escalating conflict between Tehran and Washington.
But Trump has publicly downplayed any major disagreement with Xi over the issue.
Still, the White House clearly wants China's cooperation, or at minimum less obstruction, as tensions in the Middle East continue impacting global energy markets.
Trump and Xi are expected to hold extended talks Thursday, followed by a formal banquet.
And the big question hanging over all of this is the same one many asked after Trump's 2017 trip can the relationship actually stabilize long term?
Or is this simply another temporary thaw before another major confrontation?
Now back home, where the Trump administration says it is uncovering one of the largest healthcare fraud crackdowns in recent memory.
Vice President JD Vance's anti fraud task force has now frozen $1.4 billion in federal payments tied to home health and hospice providers suspected of widespread fraud.
And the scale of this is staggering.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hundreds of providers across multiple states have now been suspended.
Many were receiving federal funds for years, and roughly 90% of the suspended operations.
Never even contacted CMS once payments were cut off.
That detail is huge.
Administration officials say that strongly suggests many of these businesses weren't legitimate healthcare providers at all.
They were essentially ghost operations existing purely to siphon taxpayer money.
And nowhere was the fraud worse than California.
Federal investigators already suspended 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in Los Angeles alone.
Estimated fraud tied just to those operations more than $600 million.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, now serving as CMS administrator under Trump, appeared on Fox News this week and laid out just how international and sophisticated these fraud networks allegedly became.
Oz said investigators believe Russian linked operations were involved in Los Angeles, Chinese linked fraud rings were operating in New York, and Cuban connected schemes were running through South Florida.
At one point, Oz gave an unbelievable example.
South Florida now reportedly has twice as many durable medical equipment suppliers as McDonald's restaurants.
Many of those companies allegedly billed Medicare for fake wheelchairs and medical supplies, then disappeared with the money before investigators closed in.
Oz summed it up bluntly they're stealing your lives.
Now, the administration says this crackdown is part of President Trump's broader war on fraud, and it goes beyond healthcare.
Just days ago, the Small Business Administration referred 562,000 suspected fraudulent COVID era loans to the Treasury Department for collection.
Those loans totaled more than $22 billion, and many stemmed from the PPP and EIDL pandemic relief programs under the Biden years.
White House officials are openly arguing that the previous administration essentially allowed massive fraud to flourish with almost no oversight.
One senior official said the Biden administration's policy of giving direct cash payments to fraudsters is over.
Now, one of the most revealing moments came during a congressional hearing last month.
Sheila Clark, the president of California's Hospice and Palliative Care Association, testified that investigators could literally walk up to some hospice locations and find no staff, no patients, nobody operating inside, just piles of unopened mail sitting at empty buildings.
And yet, somehow, those operations passed regulatory inspections and kept collecting taxpayer money.
Clark asked Congress, How did that happen?
That's the question a lot of Americans are asking right now.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has already announced arrests tied to one alleged hospice fraud ring that reportedly stole $267 million through fraudulent Medi Cal billing.
And the Trump administration says this is only the beginning.
And finally, explosive testimony on Capitol Hill today as a CIA whistleblower publicly accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of improperly influencing intelligence investigations into the origins of COVID 19.
James Erdman, a CIA special operations officer, testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee after being subpoenaed by Senator Rand Paul.
the U.S. intelligence community away from the lab leak theory.
Erdman described it as part of a broader cover-up.
His testimony centered around two key moments, February 2020 and June 2021.
According to Erdman, Fauci inserted himself directly into intelligence discussions by supplying what he called a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.
Many of those scientists later participated in the infamous February 2020 teleconference that produced the paper, The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.
That paper became one of the central documents used to publicly dismiss the lab leak theory early in the pandemic.
Erdman testified that intelligence managers repeatedly favored the narrative of a natural animal spillover, even when technical experts believed a lab accident was more likely.
He told senators six of the seven technical experts still thought it was a lab leak.
But according to Erdman, management changed the analytic line.
Now, one particularly revealing moment came when Erdman discussed a 2023 CIA assessment that stated, we may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Erdman said that wording itself was suspicious.
He explained, precisely is not a term analysts use.
Instead, intelligence professionals normally use phrases like low confidence, moderate confidence, high confidence.
Erdman argued the wording was intentionally designed to shut down further discussion.
He also accused the intelligence community of withholding roughly 2,000 pages of classified COVID origin material, despite a 2023 law requiring disclosures to the public.
And perhaps most alarming, Erdman alleged the CIA illegally monitored the phones and computers of officials inside Tulsi Gabbard's Directors Initiatives group.
While they were reviewing the COVID investigation, he said these were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president.
Now, the CIA immediately pushed back hard after the hearing.
Agency spokeswoman Liz Lyons accused Rand Paul's committee of staging political theater.
She argued the CIA already concluded that COVID most likely originated from a lab leak and claimed efforts to revisit the issue were unnecessary.
But Republicans weren't buying it.
Senator Ron Johnson publicly demanded an apology from CIA Director John Ratcliffe after reading the CIA statement aloud during the hearing.
And honestly, what makes this story so explosive is that it reinforces something millions of Americans increasingly believe.
The lab leak theory was not debunked, it was aggressively suppressed.
And now, years later, we're still learning how far some officials may have gone to shape the narrative.
And that's your first look this Thursday.
Quick recap President Trump receives a royal style welcome in Beijing as high stakes talks with Xi Jinping begin.
JD Vance's anti fraud task force freezes $1.4 billion tied to massive Medicare and hospice fraud schemes.
And a CIA whistleblower accuses Anthony Fauci of helping shape the COVID origins narrative away from the lab leak theory.