The Daily Caller reported Thursday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was trying to weasel in taxpayer funding for abortions in the emergency spending bill to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. According to senior administration officials, Pelosi lobbied for a mandate for up to $1 billion to reimburse laboratory claims. That mandate would have been taken as a loophole in health spending without protections outlined in the Hyde Amendment.

The Hyde Amendment is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion with two exceptions – to save the life of the woman, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape. Pelosi was taking a page from the playbook of Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel once famously said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” It sure looks like San Fran Gran was trying to pull a fast one for one of her pet projects.

Because of the Hyde Amendment, clinics are forbidden to use federal dollars to perform abortions. Democrats have tried in the past to do away with the Hyde Amendment since President Trump was elected. President Obama signed an executive order lifting the ban. Knowing it was a controversial move, Obama signed it quietly, without fanfare, late on a Friday afternoon. Democrats and Republicans have played this game since 1984.

So, Pelosi took advantage of an emergency funding bill to push the Democrats’ pro-abortion agenda. One official called the money a “slush fund” for abortion services.

“A new mandatory funding stream that does not have Hyde protections would be unprecedented,” one White House official explained. “Under the guise of protecting people, Speaker Pelosi is working to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent covering abortion — which is not only backwards, but goes against historical norms.”

A second White House official referred to the provision as a “slush fund” and yet another questioned “what the Hyde Amendment and abortion have to do with protecting Americans from coronavirus?”

Good question. What does abortion have to do with emergency spending to address a pandemic? Absolutely nothing but that doesn’t matter to the pro-abortion crowds. Like Obama did while no one was paying attention, she thought she’d insist on a loophole going into the wording of the spending bill.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid inadvertently proved that point. She’s a lefty who is a voice in the media for the abortion supporters. She tweeted about the report and ended up not making the point she thought she was making.

Wow… @kasie just reported that Republicans' objections to the House Democrats' emergency coronavirus bill include issues related to abortion. What does that have to do with COVID19…?

— Joy-Ann Pro-Democracy & Masks Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) March 12, 2020

Senator Ben Sasse sounded the alarm as negotiations continued between Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.

“While schools are closing and hospitals are gearing up, Speaker Pelosi is waging unnecessary culture wars. Speaker Pelosi should be fighting the coronavirus pandemic, not politicizing emergency funding by fighting against the bipartisan Hyde Amendment,” Sasse told National Review in a statement. “We need to be ramping up our diagnostic testing, not waging culture wars at the behest of Planned Parenthood. Good grief.”

AOC confirmed the battle between pro-life and pro-abortion politicians.

But Pelosi’s tactics were seemingly confirmed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), who claimed in an interview on Fox News Thursday night that “right now we are hearing that some of the fights and some of the gridlock is because people are trying to put pro-life provisions into this.”

The abortion funding loophole was removed in the final bill that the House voted on in the early morning hours of Saturday. The usual suspects are angry. They are always angry, right?

Yamani Hernandez, the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said it is “immoral to use the declaration of a global pandemic to turn people who need abortions into pawns for cheap political points.”

“In a moment when legislators need to turn towards science and data to stem the tide of a public health crisis that threatens the most vulnerable among us, anti-abortion extremists are instead using fear to opportunistically sneak through ideologically cruel and medically unsound restrictions,” Hernandez said. “We all deserve accurate and accessible healthcare, and this is no time to ram through ways to instead restrict people from any health care needs.”

Pelosi promises the battle will continue in a separate bill.