MSNBC's Chris Hayes asks what happened to COVID preparedness funds for schools

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Media top headlines January 6

In media news today, an MSNBC reporter warns that Republicans in state legislature are passing voting laws that make 'January 6 every day,’ a CNN medical guest says that companies should not treat the unvaccinated and vaccinated as equal, and a White House reporter asks Jen Psaki why Biden hasn’t ‘focused more on scolding the unvaccinated.’

Twitter users mocked what appeared to be an almost "red pill" moment for MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes.

On Wednesday, Hayes reacted to recent stories on school closures throughout the country due to the surge in coronavirus cases due to the omicron variant and posed a question on why schools weren't better prepared to handle the pandemic despite billions of dollars being appropriated for schools to manage the pandemic. 

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"I feel like there’s a weird memory-holing of the fact last spring Congress distributed $123 billion dollars to K-12 schools for Covid preparedness. That’s nearly $1 million *per school*. So big q is: what was that used for?" Hayes tweeted.

In February, the Congressional Budget Office revealed that out of the $128 billion allocated for President Biden's COVID-19 relief package, only $6 billion would be used for schools in 2021. The rest of the money is expected to be paid out yearly until 2028. The CBO report also said that previously allocated money for the 2021 school year had not been spent yet.

Many Twitter users quickly mocked Hayes for only now realizing the improperly distributed funds for preparing schools for COVID-19 and not considering government inefficiency as the problem.

The message board in front of Millburn High School during the COVID-19 pandemic, which reads, "Schools Closed but We Never Cancel Hope" on May 9, 2020, in Millburn, New Jersey. (Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

"He’s so close…" The Spectator contributing editor Stephen Miller tweeted.

Ron DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw wrote, "Federal funding for ‘safely reopening’ schools was used for critical race theory indoctrination. Read @lukerosiak he is an actual journalist."

Grabien’s Tom Elliott tweeted, "Liberal getting mugged by reality in real time."

Hayes followed up the tweet with the comment, "There are, of course, literally tens of thousands of different answers to this question and I think they are going to vary quite widely."

A "closed" sign in front of a public elementary school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in March 2020. Michigan closed all schools in an effort to thwart the spread of the novel coronavirus. (iStock)

Hayes' tweets have received notable attention in the past week for promoting or posting perspectives that do not align with the liberal mainstream mindset. In December, he was one of several news reporters who declared that for vaccinated citizens, the omicron variant of the coronavirus is similar to the flu.

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"The risk went from something that we hadn’t really dealt with specifically like this before in our lifetimes – we hadn't quite had an illness this infectious and this possible to cause serious illness – to something that does look more like the flu. The flu of course can still be dangerous …  but we don't orient our lives around the flu. So that's closer to the level of risk that 200 million Americans … are now dealing with," Hayes said.

Political commentator Chris Hayes during an interview on Oct. 13, 2021 (Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

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On Thursday, he also denounced critics of in-person learning advocates who claimed parents just want schools for free day care.

"One the absolutely weirdest things about the debate on here is people framing in-person public schooling - probably the most important public good provided by the state - as nothing more than some stalking horse for capitalism, just daycare that exists so parents can work," Hayes tweeted.