Category: Fact Check

In the midst of a growing measles outbreak in Texas that has killed one child, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has misleadingly focused on vitamin A, including from cod liver oil, and two non-standard medications as treatments for measles.

Vitamin A is recommended around the world for measles because there is evidence it can help if someone is deficient, but the benefit to patients in the U.S. is unclear. Cod liver oil, which contains vitamin A, isn’t advised at all for measles — and would need to be consumed in a potentially dangerous amount to get the recommended dosage of the vitamin used during an infection.

The other medications Kennedy has discussed, a steroid and an antibiotic, aren’t specific treatments for measles, experts told us. Neither vitamin A nor these medications replace vaccination, which is safe and effective in preventing the highly contagious disease.

Kennedy made his remarks in an interview with Fox News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel. Snippets of the interview were featured in four Fox News or Fox Business segments airing on March 4.

“They have treated most of the patients, actually, over 108 patients in the last 48 hours. And they’re getting very, very good results, they report from budesonide, which is a steroid, it’s a 30-year-old steroid,” Kennedy said in the longest of the segments. “And clarithromycin [an antibiotic] and also cod liver oil, which has high concentrations of vitamin A and vitamin D.”

“We need to look at those therapies and other therapies,” Kennedy said in another segment. “We need to really do a good job of talking to the front-line doctors and see what is working on the ground, because those therapeutics have really been ignored by the agency for a long, long time.”

In each segment, Kennedy either referred to the importance of vaccination in some way or Siegel paraphrased Kennedy making such remarks. That’s a change for Kennedy, who has spread falsehoods about vaccines for 20 years and in a 2021 book wrote that measles outbreaks “have been fabricated to create fear.” But in each of the Fox clips he also emphasized personal choice or included statements that could undermine vaccine confidence.

“The CDC in the past has not done a good job at quantifying the risk of vaccines — we are going to do that now,“ Kennedy said during a segment featured on Bret Baier’s “Special Report.”

“The best thing that Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy,” Kennedy said in the full interview, which is available on Fox Nation, the network’s subscription service. “It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services has said that the school-aged child who died from measles “was not vaccinated and had no known underlying conditions.” As of March 7, there have been 198 cases associated with the outbreak, including 23 hospitalizations. Another 30 measles cases, which are suspected to be related to the outbreak, have been reported in New Mexico. One of those individuals, an unvaccinated adult who did not seek medical attention, died, although the official cause of death isn’t yet known.

Kennedy’s interview follows an editorial he penned for Fox News on March 2, which discussed vaccination but also emphasized vitamin A and called good nutrition “a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses.” For many diseases for which there are vaccines, vaccines are the best defense, as they are the only way of providing specific immunity against a pathogen.

The opinion piece was notable in that it was seemingly Kennedy’s strongest endorsement of vaccination to date. A subheading called the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine “crucial” and Kennedy wrote that “vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.” But the piece did not explicitly say the MMR vaccine is safe, nor did it specifically advocate vaccination. Instead, Kennedy urged parents “to consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine,” calling the decision to vaccinate “a personal one.”

On Feb. 26, as we’ve written, Kennedy downplayed the Texas outbreak, saying it was “not unusual,” and falsely stating that hospitalizations had occurred “mainly for quarantine.”

Vitamin A

Vitamin A is recommended for people who contract measles. People who are vitamin A-deficient tend to have worse measles outcomes, and studies in lower-income countries where many people lack the vitamin have shown that certain high-dose bursts of vitamin A help reduce measles mortality.

A 2005 Cochrane review, for example, found that when pooling the results of three studies conducted in Africa, two large doses of vitamin A given on consecutive days — the standard protocol for supplementation in measles cases — to children younger than 2 reduced deaths by about 80%.

But few studies exist for populations without vitamin A deficiencies, so it’s not known if supplementation improves measles outcomes in countries like the U.S.

A 1999 study of 105 children in Japan found that measles patients given vitamin A did not develop pneumonia less frequently, but they coughed and had a fever for a shorter period than those not given the supplement. A similarly sized 2021 study of children admitted to the hospital for measles in Italy found no differences in a variety of symptoms or complications in kids given vitamin A compared with those who were not.

Given that it’s possible that some people in higher-income countries might have a deficiency, and because measles itself can lower vitamin A levels, the World Health Organization recommends that all measles patients receive vitamin A, regardless of where they live.

“I think it’s somewhat of a 50-50 chance of, you know, whether it actually supports somebody’s overall health and recovery” when they don’t have a deficiency, Dr. Michael Mina, an infectious disease expert who previously was a professor at Harvard School of Public Health, told us in a phone interview.

All of this context was missing when Kennedy wrote in his editorial, “Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality.”

Similar to the Cochrane review, the meta-analysis Kennedy cited found that at least two doses of vitamin A cut measles mortality by 62%, as measured by the same three studies in Africa. The paper, notably, also concluded that a single measles vaccination reduced measles disease by 85%.

Some experts are concerned that Kennedy’s messaging on vitamin A could lead people to incorrectly assume the vitamin is so effective that they don’t need to get vaccinated.

Adm. Brett Giroir, the former coronavirus testing czar who served in various other health capacities during President Donald Trump’s first term and is temporarily advising Kennedy on infectious diseases, wrote on X, “please do not rely on #VitaminA to save your child in the US – helps in Africa where there is deficiency-not here.”

“No one should take, and no one should give to their child, vitamin A in the hopes it will prevent measles,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told us in a statement. 

“There’s a time and place for talking about nutritional status and vitamin administration. It’s just so much more important to prevent measles in the first place through vaccination,” Mina said.

Vaccination, Mina said, uses “the natural processes of your body … to be your first line of defense — way before you have to deal with vitamin A because your kid is sick.”

Unsupported Therapies

As for Kennedy’s claims about measles patients in Texas getting “very, very good results” with cod liver oil, clarithromycin and budesonide, experts said none of them are specific treatments for measles. They aren’t supported by evidence, and in some cases could be dangerous.

“Cod liver oil has vitamins A and D but is not something we recommend for measles,” O’Leary said in his statement. 

The problem with using cod liver oil for measles is that even assuming vitamin A works for a patient, it would be very difficult to consume enough oil to reach the recommended dosage of the vitamin — and that much oil could itself be a problem.

“It’s not a reasonable suggestion,” Mina said. “It’s damaging because it’s misleading, and I would argue it’s harmful.”

For measles, vitamin A should be given in two very large daily doses, with a third dose several weeks later if a child appears to be vitamin A-deficient, according to the World Health Organization. Because vitamin A is fat soluble, it’s possible to take too much of the vitamin, so guidelines call for consulting with a doctor about dosage.

Clarithromycin might be used if a person with measles developed a secondary bacterial infection, but O’Leary said it would “not be a first line choice” antibiotic for such an infection. 

As several physicians wrote in a 2019 feature on measles in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Antibiotics, in the absence of pneumonia, sepsis, or other signs of a secondary bacterial complication, are generally not recommended.”

“Budesonide is generally used as an inhaled steroid for things like asthma and is not a recommended treatment for measles,” O’Leary said.

Mina said it’s possible that the steroid could be used in a nebulizer for a hospitalized patient who’s in respiratory distress. But again, the drug would be treating the symptoms, not the measles disease.

“I just don’t know where that came from,” he said of Kennedy’s comment on use of the steroid.

Budesonide, notably, can suppress the immune system. Patients taking the drug are sometimes told to be particularly careful to avoid measles exposures, as they could be more susceptible to a serious measles infection.

The editing of the longest Fox segment suggests that Kennedy was saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was providing the alternative treatments, but a review of the full interview shows Kennedy was speaking of two Texas physicians. 

One, Dr. Richard Bartlett, previously claimed that budesonide was a “silver bullet” for COVID-19 and suggested it worked so well that there was no need for a COVID-19 vaccine. He also gave COVID-19 patients clarithromycin. In 2003, he was subject to disciplinary action by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners for allegations of inappropriate prescribing of medically unnecessary tests and medicines, including antibiotics and steroids.

The other doctor, Dr. Ben Edwards (Kennedy referred to him as “Ed Benjamin”), has been featured in an article on the website of Children’s Health Defense, the antivaccine nonprofit that Kennedy founded and directed prior to becoming health secretary.

In the full interview, Kennedy said the two doctors were “seeing what they describe as almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery” using the alternative therapies, adding that “we haven’t done a clinical trial on those and we should have, but we haven’t. And we’re going to.”

When we asked whether the CDC endorses the use of the therapies Kennedy mentioned, a spokesperson said the agency “continues to recommend the MMR vaccine as the best way to prevent measles” and that medical care for measles is supportive, “to help relieve symptoms and address complications.” Vitamin A “may be appropriate under the direction of a physician,” the spokesperson added, sharing the agency’s webpage that includes usage recommendations for the vitamin. The webpage does not include any mention of cod liver oil.

Update, March 11: On March 7, the CDC issued a health alert that emphasized that MMR vaccination “remains the most important tool for preventing measles.” The alert noted that vitamin A “may” be given to children with measles, and that those with severe measles “should” receive the vitamin. The alert stated that vitamin A “should be administered under the supervision of a healthcare provider and is not a substitute for vaccination,” adding that overuse of the vitamin can be toxic and that pregnant women shouldn’t take high doses due to a risk of birth defects. 

A spokesperson for Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, which has treated many of the measles patients in the Texas outbreak, said the hospital “can’t comment specifically about the care of our patients” but that its doctors “have followed recommended treatment protocols for patients with measles.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services directed us to HHS, but said that it “has not recommended any of those treatments.” HHS did not reply to a request for comment.

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In arguing for more tariffs on goods imported to the United States, President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was its “richest” or “wealthiest” during the late 1800s and early 1900s because of tariffs. In multiple ways, his claim is wrong or misleading.

In terms of the overall U.S. economy, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product per capita is many times higher today than it was during the so-called Gilded Age, which was a post-Civil War period of economic prosperity – largely for the wealthy – amid the nation’s industrial expansion.

In addition, several economists have said that Trump and others have given too much credit to tariffs for the economic growth that did occur in America more than 100 years ago. For example, in a 2000 paper, Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, wrote: “That tariffs coincided with rapid growth in the late nineteenth century does not imply a causal relationship.” Irwin and other economists and historians have said that other factors, such as immigration and increased labor productivity, contributed more to the growth in that era.

But the way Trump tells it, the U.S. was at its best economically many, many years ago, because tariffs, otherwise known as customs duties, were a significant source of federal revenue.

“Our country is going to become rich again, very rich,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, when talking about new tariffs that he announced this year on imports from China and imports of steel and aluminum from all foreign countries.

He continued, “The word tariff is my favorite word in the dictionary. You know, we were richest, the richest, relatively, from, think of this, from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest because we collected tariffs from foreign countries that came in and took our jobs and took our money, took our everything, but they charged tariffs.”

Trump has even made the dubious suggestion that tariffs could be used to replace the federal income tax, which became law in 1913, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Federal income taxes account for about half of federal revenue each year.

“But you could wipe out your income tax. You could maybe not even have an income tax system when this thing works out,” Trump said while discussing tariffs at a dinner with Republican governors on Feb. 20.

“Because in the old days that’s what happened. Our country was the richest ever from 1870 to 1913. That’s when we were actually the richest and we were a full tariff country.”

Tariff revenue accounted for no more than about 60% of federal receipts during that period, according to a 2024 analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. And more importantly, economists have said that it’s highly unlikely that the U.S. could raise enough money from tariffs on imported goods to match current income tax revenues.

In fiscal year 2024, just 1.7% of the more than $4.9 trillion in federal receipts came from customs duties on imports.

The ‘Richest’ Claim

We don’t know exactly how Trump defines the terms “richest” or “wealthiest.” We contacted the White House press office, but have not received a response.

When the New York Times wrote about Trump’s tariff remarks at this year’s CPAC, the newspaper said, “A White House spokeswoman noted [to the Times] that wages and the economy grew rapidly during the Gilded Age, but did not provide evidence of unparalleled prosperity in that era.”

In addition, based on real GDP per capita, Trump’s claim is false – because it is much higher now than it was more than a century ago.

As of 2022, it was $58,487 – nearly six times higher than $10,108 in 1913 and more than 12 times higher than $4,803 in 1870. That’s according to inflation-adjusted data from the Oxford University-based project Our World in Data, which calculated historical real GDP per capita based on international prices in 2011.

Trump has said that, because of tariffs, the U.S. had “so much money” at that time that “we didn’t know what to do.” In that context, he may have been alluding to the fact that in many of the years between 1870 and 1913, the federal government had budget surpluses, which occur when federal receipts exceed outlays.

The president has also falsely claimed that the U.S. had “no debt” during that period, and he has often mentioned a legitimate debate that occurred in 1888 over what to do about excess federal revenue due to high tariffs. Democrats wanted to cut tariff rates to lower revenue while Republicans wanted to raise tariffs more to discourage imports and reduce revenue.

But the U.S. also has had surpluses in years when tariffs were a significantly smaller share of federal revenues — such as in the 1920s, which was after the federal income tax was enacted in 1913 and became the primary source of funding for the government by far.

“This is just a function of government revenue growing faster than government spending,” Jeremy Horpedahl, associate professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas, wrote about the surpluses in a February blog post about Trump’s “richest” claims. “And the growth of revenue during the 1870s and 1880s was largely driven by a rise in internal revenue — specifically, excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco (these taxes largely didn’t exist before the Civil War).”

Most recently, the U.S. had four consecutive budget surpluses in fiscal years 1998 to 2001. At that time, tariffs made up about 1% of annual federal receipts.

‘Other, Bigger’ Economic Factors

In general, some economists have said that supporters of tariffs, including Trump, have left the inaccurate impression that tariffs alone were the reason for the wider economic growth that occurred after the Civil War.

For example, in 2018, during Trump’s first term in office, Dartmouth’s Irwin did a podcast interview with American Enterprise Institute senior fellow James Pethokoukis, in which Irwin said said it was a “simplistic argument” to say that tariffs were responsible for rapid growth in the late 1800s:

Irwin, Aug. 31, 2018: But when you look at that era actually in the late 19th century the U.S. was very open. We were open for immigration and we indeed had massive immigration. We were open to capital from the rest of the world and were able to borrow and purchase a lot of technology. So, it’s not as though we were an isolationist country with big barriers. Yes, we did have fairly stiff tariffs on imported manufactured goods, but otherwise we were very open to what was going on in the world economy.

In fact immigration, as I point out in the book [“Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy“], was actually a key instigator in terms of the development of many manufacturing industries in the United States. …

In addition, it’s become very hard actually to attribute U.S. economic growth in the late 19th century to those higher tariffs. A lot of the key improvements in technology and a lot of the growth was in the service sector: telecommunications, railroads, and things of that sort. Manufacturing really didn’t grow much as a share of GDP in the late 19th century. A lot of that grew actually in the pre-Civil War period when tariffs were actually much lower — only in the range of 20% or so.

So, there is the simplistic argument that one encounters a lot — that tariffs allowed us to grow rapidly in the late 19th century — but the more you look into it you see it’s a really tough case to make. A lot of other factors were involved and the tariffs were probably third or fourth order. And it’s not even clear they had a positive impact as opposed to a negative impact.

In his 2000 paper, Irwin said he found “that growth then was driven largely by labor force expansion and capital accumulation, while productivity growth was undistinguished when put in a comparative perspective.” He ultimately concluded that tariffs were “probably not a key factor.”

Likewise, in a 2024 commentary piece, in which he cited work by Irwin and other economists, Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade policy studies at the Cato Institute, wrote: “In sum, U.S. tariffs imposed after the Civil War likely helped some American manufacturers and harmed others, but they were generally neither a major driver of nor drag on the sector’s and economy’s growth, which was instead driven by other, bigger factors, such as increasing productivity and an expanding labor force.”

Lincicome said that “no one should expect tariffs – whether back then or today – to drive the U.S. economy given all the other, bigger factors at play and the fact that trade just is a relatively small share of economic output.”

Tariffs vs. Income Taxes

Economists have been just as critical of Trump’s suggestion that the revenue from higher tariffs could be a substitute for federal income tax collections.

In October, after Trump had suggested on a number of occasions that tariffs could replace the federal income tax, Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy for the Tax Foundation, wrote a column explaining why the math wouldn’t work.

“Donald Trump has floated a proposal to replace the U.S. income tax system with a new system of tariffs, moving the United States back to the tax mix of the late 19th century. The plan, simply put, is a mathematical impossibility,” she wrote.

York noted that, in fiscal year 2023, the government collected $2.2 trillion from the individual income tax and only about $80 billion from tariffs. To make up the difference, Trump would have to impose an across-the-board tariff of 70% on all imported goods, she said.

What Trump suggested “is unworkable because of the sharp difference in the size of the respective tax bases,” York wrote, noting that projected adjusted gross income was $15.6 trillion and goods imports were $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2023.

Substantially higher tariffs would also likely lead to a reduction in imports. “Trump’s calculation ignores the precipitous drop in imports a tax increase of this magnitude would cause,” she said.

Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld, both senior fellows at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, made similar points in a June post that asked, “Can tariffs replace the income tax?”

“Simply put, no,” was their answer. “It is literally impossible for tariffs to fully replace income taxes. Tariff rates would have to be implausibly high on such a small base of imports to replace the income tax, and as tax rates rose, the base itself would shrink as imports fall, making Trump’s $2 trillion goal unattainable.”

Clausing and Obstfeld said that scrapping the income tax in favor of higher tariffs would cause job losses, higher inflation, larger federal deficits and a recession.

“It would also shift the tax burden away from the well off, substantially increasing the tax burden on the poor and middle class,” they argued.

The income tax is considered to be progressive because higher-income households have a higher tax burden. On the other hand, tariffs are considered to be regressive taxes because they affect lower-income households more than others as a percentage of income. U.S. importers pay the tariff, but the costs are usually passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

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With the Republican-controlled Congress moving forward with President Donald Trump’s call to extend the 2017 individual tax cuts, Democrats and Republicans are spinning the facts about who would benefit. Several Democrats have framed the tax cuts as exclusively benefiting billionaires, while Trump has suggested everyone in America would see a tax cut.

On average, taxpayers in every income group would get some tax relief. But not everyone. In all, about two-thirds to three-quarters of taxpayers would get a tax cut, according to independent analyses. Also, the cuts skew in favor of wealthy Americans, who would see more tax relief not only in the dollar amount but as a percentage of income, on average. But again, the wealthy wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit.

(For clarity, people would experience an extension not as a tax cut but as the absence of a tax increase if the provisions were allowed to expire.)

Some economists also warn that if the GOP plan includes spending cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (or food stamps), lower-income Americans would, on net, fare worse, even with the tax cuts.

In order to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with a simple majority in the Senate, Republicans had to use a process called reconciliation — which means the law could not add to the deficit after 10 years. To meet that requirement, most of the individual tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025.

The 2017 law lowered marginal tax rates, increased the standard deduction and eliminated the personal exemption, increased the child tax credit, limited deductions for state and local taxes as well as mortgages and home equity lines of credit, and increased the threshold for estate taxes, among other measures.

Republicans are turning to reconciliation again to extend the tax cuts beyond this year. On Feb. 25, House Republicans took the first step in doing that. They narrowly passed a budget resolution that would allow for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years and $2 trillion in spending reductions over the same time period.

The resolution didn’t specify what spending cuts would be made, but there’s little doubt Medicaid would face cuts under the framework, as we’ve explained. Both houses of Congress need to agree on a budget resolution before any specific spending reductions would be proposed.  

Who Benefits from Tax Cut Extension?

When the TCJA passed in 2017, the expiring nature of some of the tax cuts led to the oft-repeated, but misleading talking point from Democrats that the top 1% would get 83% of the tax cuts under the new law. As we wrote, that was only true when or if the individual tax provisions expired. (The top 1% would still benefit from the remaining provisions, such as a reduction in the corporate tax rate.)

Now, some Democrats are claiming or suggesting that if the individual tax cuts are extended — as the Republican budget blueprint seeks to do — mostly or only the wealthiest Americans would benefit.

In her response to Trump’s address to Congress on March 4, Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin said, “President Trump is trying to deliver an unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends. He’s on the hunt to find trillions of dollars to pass along to the wealthiest in America.”

In an interview on CNBC on Feb. 25, Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone went further, wrongly claiming that the “average person” would not benefit from the tax cuts included in the Republican budget plan.

Pallone said the Republican tax plan “basically, you know, just helps the very wealthy and large corporate interests.” Advocating allowing the tax cuts to expire, Pallone added, “I don’t think that the average person benefits from this tax cut.”

“The bottom line is the Republicans are doing nothing to try to provide any kind of tax cut or help for the average American,” Pallone said. “It’s all about corporate interests, large corporate interests, billionaires. That’s what this is all about.”

Trump framed the tax cuts much differently in his address to Congress on March 4.

“The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody,” Trump said. “They’re in there, they’re waiting for you to vote.”

An Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center analysis of extending all of the TCJA tax cuts concluded that “on average, all income groups would get a tax cut.”

Contrary to Pallone’s claim about the “average person” not benefiting from the extension of TCJA tax cuts, the average taxpayer — defined as the middle 20% of income earners (those earning between $65,100 and $116,400) — would see an average tax cut of $1,030 in 2027, or about 1.3% of after-tax income.

A spokesman for Pallone noted that the average tax cut for someone making under $50,000 would be $273, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, while the average tax cut for a taxpayer making over $1 million would be $78,717. That wealthy taxpayers would derive more benefit is clear, but most “average” taxpayers would derive some benefit from the tax cuts. The spokesman noted that the tax cuts would not be enough to offset the impact of potential spending cuts to Medicaid and other programs.

That taxpayers in every income category would see tax cuts was echoed in an analysis by the Tax Foundation.

“Making all the expiring provisions permanent, including the estate and business provisions, would increase after-tax incomes by 2.9 percent on average in 2026,” Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy with the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy, told us via email. “The top quintile would see a 3.3 percent increase on average, while the bottom quintile would see a 2.8 percent increase on average. So while the policies would provide a larger increase in after-tax income to higher income taxpayers, they also provide tax cuts to taxpayers across the income spectrum.”

And contrary to Trump’s statement, his tax plans would not result in tax cuts for everybody.

Overall, about three-quarters of households would get a tax cut, while about 10% would get a tax increase, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis. The percentage of winners and losers would vary by income category, TPC found: “About 86% of middle-income households would get a tax cut” while “about 13% would see their taxes rise.” Among the top 1%, “taxes would fall for about 81%, while they’d rise for 19%.”

That’s only for an extension of the TCJA tax cuts, and Trump has also proposed eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits. But as Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told us via email, “almost nobody benefits from tax-free tips” and “tax free Social Security benefits go almost entirely to high-income retirees (since those with low-incomes already pay no tax on their benefits).”

The Tax Foundation estimates that making the expiring individual provisions of the TCJA permanent would translate a tax cut for 62% of tax filers, including for 84% of middle income Americans.

Addressing the House GOP Issues Conference on Jan. 27, Trump said that “we want to keep people’s taxes low and actually make them lower. And that’s not just rich people, that’s everybody. It’s frankly proportionately the lower scale much more so than a higher scale.”

However, wealthy earners would get an outsized share of tax benefits. TPC estimated that households making over $450,000 (the top 5% of households) would be the income group getting the largest percentage of benefits from extending the tax cuts: just over 45%. Moreover, higher earners would see a higher percentage tax cut than middle- and lower-income Americans. The tax cuts would average 3.2% of after-tax income for the top 1% of households, compared with 1.3% for the middle 20% of households.

In that same address, Trump falsely claimed that if the TCJA tax cuts were not permanently extended, “you’re going to have about a 60% tax increase.” The TPC estimates that an extension of the tax cuts would reduce the average tax rate by about 1.4 percentage points in 2027.

In the weekly House Democrats’ press conference on Feb. 25, Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle said the deep spending cuts proposed in the Republican resolution were being made “to partially pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts, most of which go to the richest 1% of Americans.”

His point about the share of benefits going to the top 1% is a bit exaggerated. While the tax cuts are tilted toward the wealthy, the richest 1% — households earning over $1 million — would get 23.5% of the benefits from the tax cuts in 2027 — so not most, according to the TPC. Nonetheless, more than half of the benefits would go to the top 10% that year.

In its analysis of the House Republican plan, the Penn Wharton Budget Model reached similar conclusions on the distributional effects of the tax cuts on a conventional basis (before the economic impact of the tax cuts are factored in).

“On a conventional basis in 2026, the first 80 percent of the income distribution receives about 29 percent of the total value of the proposed tax cuts while the top 10 percent of the income distribution receives about 56 percent of the value,” Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told us via email. He noted that, “under current law, the top 10% of the income distribution pays about 70% of all federal taxes.”

PWBM also considered the results if the tax cuts are paid partially through cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

If cuts are made to those programs, “then lower income households are worse off,” Smetters said, though he noted that “those decisions have not been made yet.”

As we said, it’s unknown whether the House budget resolution will move forward and what specific spending cuts lawmakers will ultimately propose.

Given the disproportionate effect Medicaid and SNAP cuts would have on lower-income households, “Even with economic growth, lower income households are worse off if mandatory spending cuts, still to be decided under budget reconciliation, are allocated to programs like Medicaid and SNAP,” the PWBM analysis concluded.

Many Democrats — including former President Joe Biden — had also hoped to extend the tax cuts, but only for those making under $400,000 a year. In a House Rules Committee hearing on Feb. 24, Rep. Jim McGovern, the ranking Democrat on the committee, offered several amendments to cap the extension of tax cuts at various income levels — first for those making under $400,000 per year, then at $1 million, then at $100 million, then $1 billion per year. All were rejected along party lines.

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As we reported in January, President Donald Trump inherited a resilient economy experiencing continued growth in jobs, including an increase in full-time workers. But Republican Sen. Rick Scott recently painted a much different picture, calling the pre-Trump economy “crappy” and falsely claiming that full-time employment was “dropping almost the entire Biden administration.”

The U.S. senator from Florida made the claim during a March 9 interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” After the show’s host, Jake Tapper, asked Scott about Trump’s recent admission that the president’s economic policies may cause “a little disturbance” for Americans, Scott began his response by first blaming former President Joe Biden.

“Well, first off, Donald Trump walked in with a crappy economy,” Scott said. “The number of full-time jobs has been dropping almost the entire Biden administration. This is a lot of work.”

We asked Scott’s Senate office for the source of his claim, but we did not receive a response.

He’s wrong about full-time employment, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

When Biden left office in January, the number of people usually working full time — meaning 35 hours or more a week — was almost 135.9 million. That was up 8.5% from about 125.2 million full-time workers when Biden became president in January 2021, during the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. In February, that figure dropped to about 134.7 million.

Notably, the January 2025 total is higher than the February 2020 pre-pandemic level of almost 130.9 million usual full-time employees. (The monthly job figures come from a survey based on the pay period that includes the 12th of the month.)

If Scott was thinking of monthly job losses, there were 17 months under Biden in which the number of full-time workers declined on a month-to-month basis. But full-time employment grew the other 31 months of Biden’s term, resulting in a net increase.

For additional context, the share of workers usually working full time was 80.7% in 2023, the most recent annual BLS data available. In 2022, it was 81.9%; in 2021, Biden’s first year in office, it was 81.8%; in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, it was 80.9%; and in 2019, prior to the pandemic, it was 80.8%.

As for Scott’s claim that Trump took over a “crappy economy,” that is part of a GOP narrative suggesting that Trump has to repair an economy in poor condition.

In a March 11 House Republicans’ press briefing that touched on Trump’s tariff policies, Speaker Mike Johnson said that Trump has “to reshape and shape things because it’s in a real mess” after “four years” of “a disaster in economic policy and every other measurement of public policy.”

During his March 4 address to Congress, Trump made the exaggerated claim that he “inherited, from the last administration, an economic catastrophe.”

To be sure, the state of the economy wasn’t perfect when Trump began his second term. But it wasn’t “crappy” or a “catastrophe,” either. In our January article “What Trump Inherits, Part 2,” we mentioned a number of economic indicators that could be interpreted as positive.

We reported that Trump was reclaiming “a resilient economy that has grown by at least 2.5% every year since he left office in early 2021”; “a post-pandemic jobs boom that has driven the unemployment rate well below the historical norm”; “inflation that has come down significantly in the past two years, but has been creeping up as of late”; and “a stock market that has made huge gains since he was last president.”

In a March 12 interview with NewsNation, Maryland University professor and economist Peter Morici also noted that “inflation has come down quite a bit” — from 9.1% in the 12-month period ending in June 2022 to 2.8% in February — and “the economy was growing well” under Biden.

And back in December, IBM Vice Chair Gary Cohn, who was the director of the White House National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Trump was inheriting a “very stable economy” with “real solid economic growth,” “real job growth” and “real wage growth.”

“This notion that he inherited a bad economy is just silly,” Morici said, referring to Trump.

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Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

The Department of Agriculture announced the cancellation of a $600,000 grant to study the development of feminine hygiene products made of natural fibers. The USDA, Department of Government Efficiency and social media posts misleadingly claimed the study was of “menstrual cycles in transgender men.” The university behind the study said it was focused on making safer products to “benefit all biological women.”

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Full Story

Southern University in Baton Rouge was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2024 to research and develop feminine hygiene products made of natural, healthy and safe materials grown in Louisiana, as opposed to synthetic products. The project completion date was scheduled for April 14, 2027.

But on March 7, newly sworn-in Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the government had revoked the grant, posting on X, “CANCELLED: $600,000 grant to study ‘menstrual cycles in transgender men’ Keep sending us tips. THANK YOU, @approject! The insanity is ending and the restoration of America is underway.” Rollins’ announcement was reposted by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which had cancelled the grant, CBS News reported.

In her post, Rollins thanked the American Principles Project, a “pro-family” organization, for bringing the Southern University grant to the USDA’s attention. APP spokesperson Cailey Myers told CBS News, “This grant clearly denies biological reality — men don’t menstruate.”

A USDA spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News that the grant “prioritized women identifying as men who might menstruate” and that “certainly does not align with the priorities and policies of the Trump Administration, which maintains that there are two sexes: male and female.”

President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders affecting transgender people, including an order that states, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” In response to Trump’s executive orders, many government websites have removed references to transgender people, NBC News reported. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. A transgender man is someone who is assigned female at birth and identifies as male.

But the American Principles Project and the USDA mischaracterized the reference to transgender men in the Southern University grant.

That misrepresentation of the study also has been shared across social media, including in an Instagram post of a Fox News headline. A Threads post said, “DOGE has cancelled a $600,000 grant to Southern University and A&M College. The money was going to fund a study on the menstrual cycles of transgender men.” The caption on another Threads post said, “You literally can’t make this sh*t up.”

A Study of Products, Not Menstrual Cycles

The claims about the study are based on one reference to transgender men in the grant proposal and misrepresent the purpose and focus of the project.

In response to the cancellation of the grant, Southern University issued a statement on March 9 saying, “Recently, the Secretary of Agriculture announced the cancellation of a $600,000 grant titled, ‘Project Farm to Feminine Hygiene: Enhancing the Textiles Lab for Research, Extension, a Scientific Instrumentation for Teaching at Southern University.’ The purpose of this grant was to research, process, and utilize three alternative natural fibers — regenerative cotton, regenerative wool, and industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa) — in the development of sustainable, reusable, and disposable feminine hygiene products (FHP) including pads, liners, and underwear for women and girls that can be grown in Louisiana.

“This grant, which was reviewed by researchers from throughout the country, is not a study on or including research on menstrual cycles. The term ‘transgender men’ was only used once to state that this project, through the development of safer and healthier FHPs, would benefit all biological women,” the university said.

The single reference to “transgender men” occurred at the beginning of the summary of the project proposal, which said: “Menarche, the first occurrence of menstruation, occurs at approximately 12 years of age and ends with menopause at roughly 51 years of age. … A woman will have a monthly menstrual cycle for about 40 years of her life averaging to about 450 periods over the course of her lifetime. … It is also important to recognize that transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons may also menstruate.”

So the Southern University project was not a study of the “menstrual cycles in transgender men,” as the USDA secretary and others claimed, but an attempt to develop healthier products for “all biological women.”

We’ve written about other examples in which DOGE, in its purported efforts to reduce government spending, has misrepresented the scale of improper Social Security payments, made unsupported claims about corruption at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and made baseless claims about funds diverted to New York City for immigration-related services.

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Sources

American Principles Project. “About.” Americanprinciplesproject.org. Accessed 12 Mar 2025.

Associated Press. “Things to know about how Trump’s policies target transgender people.” NBC News. 3 Feb 2025.

Cohen, Ben. “Trump, Musk Exaggerate Scale of Improper Social Security Payments to the Dead.” 21 Feb 2025.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Musk Misleads on FEMA’s Migrant-Related Payments to New York City.” 13 Feb 2025.

Hale Spencer, Saranac. “No Basis for Corruption Accusations About USAID Administrator.” 21 Feb 2025.

Ruetenik, Dan. “DOGE mischaracterizes a study as transgender, and USDA cancels it.” CBS News. 10 Mar 2025.

Southern University Agricultural Research & Extension Center. “SU Ag Center’s Statement on the Project Farm to Feminine Hygiene Grant.” 9 Mar 2025.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Research, Education & Economics Information System. “Project Farm to Feminine Hygiene: Enhancing the Textiles Lab for Research, Extension and Scientific Instrumentation for Teaching at Southern Univeristy.” Apr 2024.

White House. Presidential Actions. “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government.” 20 Jan 2025.

Yurcaba, Jo. “Government agencies scrub LGBTQ web pages and remove info about trans and intersex people.” NBC News. 3 Feb 2025.

Source: FactCheck

SciCheck Digest

Measles is an extremely contagious vaccine-preventable disease that can lead to death or disability. It also wipes out immune memory for several years after an infection. As an outbreak in Texas continues to expand, social media posts have claimed without sufficient support that measles infections are beneficial later in life against cancer and other diseases, an idea health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has echoed.

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Measles is one of the most contagious diseases and can be safely prevented with two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. 

The viral disease causes a high fever, rash and other symptoms. Although most cases aren’t serious, even patients with mild disease are miserable, and there is a relatively high rate of complications and death. 

For every 1,000 children who contract measles, around 1 to 3 will die, often from pneumonia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 1 in 1,000 will develop encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, which can lead to permanent hearing loss or intellectual disability. About a fifth of unvaccinated patients require hospitalization.

Even if someone appears to recover unscathed, research shows the infection has negative effects on the immune system that can make people more susceptible to other illnesses for several years afterward.

There isn’t good evidence that a measles infection provides protection against various chronic illnesses when a person is older. But as a measles outbreak in Texas that began in January continues to grow, social media posts have been touting alleged benefits of the infection while failing to mention the clear and established harms.

“There are notable long-term health benefits associated with having had the measles,” declared one Instagram post last month. 

“When you realize wild measles will protect you against cancer, you understand why the industry wants to prevent that,” another Instagram post, from March 11, reads.

As of March 14, the measles outbreak in Texas, which is centered on undervaccinated communities in the western part of the state, has grown to 259 cases, including 34 hospitalizations and one death. Neighboring New Mexico has reported 35 cases, including two hospitalizations and one individual who tested positive after death.

In a video clip posted to X on Feb. 24, Mary Holland, the CEO of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, said, “There are some real benefits from training your immune system against measles, and they’re very well documented. People who have had measles have lower rates of certain types of cancers, they have lower rates of other kinds of illnesses going forward in life.”

Holland cited an article her organization had recently republished by Sayer Ji. Ji, the founder of an alternative medicine website, has previously spread false and misleading health claims online. In 2021, he was listed as number eight on the Center for Countering Digital Hate‘s “Disinformation Dozen,” a roster of the 12 most influential spreaders of anti-vaccine content on social media.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense who is now the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, has made similar comments.

“There’s a lot of studies out there that show that if you actually do get the wild infection, you’re protected later. It boosts your immune system later in life against cancers, atopic diseases, cardiac disease, et cetera,” he said of measles in a Fox News interview earlier this month. 

Kennedy acknowledged that it’s “not well studied,” but said it should be “because we ought to understand those relationships.”

In a 2023 interview with the libertarian magazine Reason, Kennedy also claimed there were “lots and lots” of studies showing measles infection in childhood provides “heightened immunity against certain kinds of cancers, against ectopic disease, against cardiac disease and allergic disease when you get older.”

Speaking of childhood infections such as measles, he added, “It immunizes you and it builds your immune response in the future against all kinds of really bad diseases that actually kill you.”

HHS hasn’t responded to our inquiry about Kennedy’s comments. 

Measles Harms the Immune System

“There is no good data to demonstrate that measles improved health,” Dr. Michael Mina, a former professor at Harvard School of Public Health who has studied measles and its effects on the immune system, told us. “We’ve shown precisely the opposite.”

In a series of papers first published a decade ago, Mina and colleagues found that in addition to a short period of profound immunosuppression immediately after a measles infection, there is a longer-term harmful effect on the immune system. 

According to this work, the measles virus can kill off many of the body’s memory immune cells, causing the immune system to “forget” past infections and erasing much of a person’s preexisting immunity. This so-called immunological amnesia makes measles survivors susceptible to infections they previously would have been protected against. The effects can last for as many as five years after a bout of measles as individuals slowly reacquire the immunity they lost.

The findings help explain why the introduction of the measles vaccine has reduced overall childhood mortality from infectious diseases by as much as 50% or more — far more than by preventing measles deaths alone.

“We only see adversity as a result of measles,” Mina said.

Measles, then, hardly “boosts” the immune system, as Kennedy said.

There are a few observational studies that suggest measles infections could be associated with fewer allergic diseases. But these studies, which are often small or rely on self reports of past measles infection, demonstrate associations, not causal relationships. 

Mina said it was “hard to make much” of that data, given the other differences that might exist in the people who did versus didn’t report a previous measles infection.

Notably, there are also studies that contradict these findings — or suggest that the MMR vaccination might also be linked to fewer allergic diseases. A study published in JAMA in 2000, for example, which included more than 500,000 children in Finland, found that children who experienced measles infections were more likely to have eczema, rhinitis or asthma. 

Contrary to suggestions that vaccination might increase allergic conditions by removing measles as an exposure, a 2021 systematic review found “no evidence” of an association between the MMR vaccine and asthma, dermatitis/eczema or hay fever.

As other fact-checkers have detailed, there are some papers that claim to find a link between measles infection or other childhood diseases and fewer cancers. But these findings are at best preliminary — and have not been consistent. One 2013 paper concluded that “further studies are required to confirm the specific associations identified, particularly given the current lack [of] consensus within the literature.” 

One of the papers cited in one of the Instagram posts used a questionnaire to determine past childhood infections and did not control for any other factors that might have influenced whether a person develops cancer. It was published in a dubious journal by anthroposophic doctors, who use alternative medical treatments, and was not peer-reviewed.

As for heart disease, there is a 2015 paper from Japan that reported finding an association between measles and mumps infections and a lower risk of death from atherosclerotic heart disease. The study, however, relied on participants to recall those infections and was conducted in a pre-vaccine population that was not vaccinated. It’s unclear how reliable the results are, as virtually all children of that era would have contracted measles.

Many of these studies propose that the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which contends that children need exposures to microbes early in life to train the immune system how to respond, could explain these associations. But Mina said that doesn’t make sense.

“We get exposed and infected with things that drive those same responses all the time,” he said. “Measles is literally the smallest drop in the bucket of our antigenic exposures.”

Not only is the measles virus just one of trillions of microbes a person would encounter, but because the measles vaccine is a weakened form of the virus, people who are vaccinated would still be receiving that exposure.

“You’re literally giving people all of the exposures to the proteins that they would get if they got an actual viral infection, only it’s much more controlled,” Mina said. “The hygiene hypothesis just really doesn’t fit.” 

Precisely because of measles’ unique ability to damage the immune system, it’s possible a measles infection could wipe out cancer- or autoimmune-causing cells, resolving those conditions. There are rare case reports of such occurrences. But that is different from a measles infection preventing those diseases later in life.

“That’s really, really remote,” Mina said, adding that even in those cases, the benefit would never outweigh the risk of getting measles.

Indeed, even if there are a few potential benefits to a measles infection, the downsides of the infection are abundantly clear and well established. Claims that suggest people would be better off getting a measles infection rather than a vaccine are incorrect.

Correction, March 14: We mistakenly wrote that Mina had said the risk of getting measles would never outweigh the benefit, instead of the other way around. We fixed the error.

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Sources

“About Measles.” CDC. Updated 24 May 2024. 

“Frequently Asked Questions about Measles.” National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Updated Mar 2025.

“Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR): The Diseases & Vaccines.” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Reviewed 2 Jan 2024.

“Measles Symptoms and Complications.” CDC. Updated 9 May 2024.

Mina, Michael J. et al. “Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality.” Science. 8 May 2015.

Mina, Michael J. et al. “Measles virus infection diminishes preexisting antibodies that offer protection from other pathogens.” Science. 1 Nov 2019.

Gadroen, Kartini et al. “Impact and longevity of measles-associated immune suppression: a matched cohort study using data from the THIN general practice database in the UK.” BMJ Open. 18 Nov 2018.

“State health officials urge vigilance as additional measles cases are identified.” Press release. Texas Department of State Health Services. 30 Jan 2025.

“Measles Outbreak – March 14, 2025.” Press release. Texas Department of State Health Services. 14 Mar 2025.

“2025 Measles Outbreak Guidance.” New Mexico Department of Health. Updated 14 Mar 2025.

“The Disinformation Dozen.” Center for Countering Digital Hate. 24 Mar 2021.

“A Dr. Siegel Interview with RFK Jr.” Fox Nation. 4 Mar 2025.

“RFK Jr.: The Reason Interview.” 29 Jun 2023. Available on YouTube.

Mina, Michael J. Phone interviews with FactCheck.org. 26 Feb and 13 Mar 2025

Xia, Siyang et al. “Assessing the Effects of Measles Virus Infections on Childhood Infectious Disease Mortality in Brazil.” Journal of Infectious Diseases. 29 Jun 2022.

Doucleff, Michaeleen. “Scientists Crack A 50-Year-Old Mystery About The Measles Vaccine.” NPR. 7 May 2015.

Shaheen, S.O. et al. “Measles and atopy in Guinea-Bissau.” Lancet. 29 Jun 1996.

Kucukosmanoglu, E. et al. “Frequency of allergic diseases following measles.” Allergologia et Immunopathologia. July 2006.

Rosenlund, Helen et al. “Allergic disease and atopic sensitization in children in relation to measles vaccination and measles infection.” Pediatrics. 1 Mar 2009.

Nagel, Gabriele et al. “Association of pertussis and measles infections and immunizations with asthma and allergic sensitization in ISAAC Phase Two.” Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. 24 Sep 2012.

Timmermann, Clara Amalie Gade et al. “Asthma and allergy in children with and without prior measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination.” Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. 3 Apr 2015.

Paunio, Mikko et al. “Measles History and Atopic Diseases: A Population-Based Cross-sectional Study.” JAMA. 19 Jan 2000.

Di Pietrantonj, Carlo et al. “Vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella in children.” Cochrane Database of Systematic reviews. 22 Nov 2021. 

Christiansen, Siri. “No, catching measles doesn’t protect children against cancer and heart disease in adulthood.” Logically Facts. 2 Feb 2025.

“No evidence that measles prevents cancer or heart disease, can lead to long-term health problems instead.” Science Feedback. 20 Feb 2025.

Crislip, Mark. “Infectious Diseases and Cancer.” Science-Based Medicine. 30 Sep 2016.

Tennant, Peter W. G. et al. “Childhood infectious disease and premature death from cancer: a prospective cohort study.” European Journal of Epidemiology. 15 Feb 2013.

Albonico, H.U. et al. “Febrile infectious childhood diseases in the history of cancer patients and matched control.” Medical Hypotheses. Oct 2018.

Simpson, Michael. “Measles does not prevent cancer – debunking another anti-vaccine trope.” Skeptical Raptor. 26 Feb 2025.

Kubota, Yasuhiko. “Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) study.” Atherosclerosis. 18 Jun 2015.

“Factsheet about measles.” European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Updated 28 Nov 2023.

Mota, H.C. et al. “Infantile Hodgkin’s disease: remission after measles.” British Medical Journal. 19 May 1973.

Bonjean, M. and A. Prime. “Suspensive effect of measles on psoriasic erythroderma of 12 years’ duration.” Lyon Med. 9 Nov 1969. 

Thiers, H. et al. “Suspensive effect of measles on chronic psoriasis in children: 2 cases.” Lyon Med. 9 Nov 1969.

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have been tasked by President Donald Trump with slashing federal spending. But social media posts falsely claim that as part of that effort, DOGE stopped “royalties” to former President Barack Obama related to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. The claim came from a satirical website.

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On Jan. 20, his first day in office, President Donald Trump established by executive order the new Department of Government Efficiency “to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda,” which has included efforts led by billionaire Elon Musk to reduce government spending and cut the federal payroll.

But as we’ve written, some of the claims made by DOGE and the Trump administration about overpayments in the Social Security system have been exaggerated, and some claims about spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development have been inaccurate or unsupported.

In recent days, some social media posts have repeated a fabricated claim that DOGE had halted millions in supposed royalty payments to former President Barack Obama.

A Feb. 27 Threads post falsely claimed, “DOGE stopped an annual payment to Barack Obama for $2.6 million for ‘royalties associated with Obamacare.’ He’s been collecting it since 2010, for a total of $39 million in taxpayer dollars.”

The posts are referring to the Affordable Care Act, the health care law enacted in 2010 under Obama that became known as Obamacare.

But the claim that the former president had been receiving royalty payments for the health care law he championed was the invention of America’s Last Line of Defense, or ALLOD, which publishes fabricated political stories and claims on its websites and social media pages that it describes as satirical. ALLOD posted the claim about Obama this month, and the image shared on social media included a stamp labeling the claim as satire.

The ALLOD website says, “Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”

The other social media posts sharing the claim did not identify the content as satire.

We could find no evidence that DOGE had stopped any payments to Obama, who as a former president does receive an annual pension payment from the government. Obama has received about $10.5 million from his presidential pension and other government benefits, such as travel and office space, since leaving the White House, The Hill reported. Since he left office at the end of his first term, Trump had received more than $3 million.

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Sources

America’s Last Line of Defense. The Dunning-Kruger Times. “About Us.” Accessed 28 Feb 2025.

Cohen, Ben. “Trump, Musk Exaggerate Scale of Improper Social Security Payments to the Dead.” FactCheck.org. 22 Feb 2025.

Hale Spencer, Saranac. “Sorting Out the Facts on ‘Waste and Abuse’ at USAID.” FactCheck.org. 8 Feb 2025.

Jaffe, Alan. “Trump Administration Makes Unsupported Claim About $50 Million for Condoms to Gaza.” FactCheck.org. 30 Jan 2025.

Johnson, Rich. “Here are the benefits all US presidents get when they retire.” The Hill. 19 Nov 2024.

Pichi, Aimee. “What is DOGE? Here’s what to know about Elon Musk’s latest cost-cutting efforts.” 12 Feb 2025.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “About the Affordable Care Act.” Accessed 28 Feb 2025.

U.S. General Services Administration. “Allowances and Office State for Former Presidents.” Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification. Accessed 28 Feb 2025.

White House. Executive Order. “Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency.’” 20 Jan 2025.

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

President Donald Trump made the exaggerated claim that federal office space is “occupied by 4%” of federal workers to bolster his argument for dramatically downsizing the federal workforce and demanding that most workers return to the office full time.

In fact, more than half of the nearly 2.3 million federal workers are not even eligible to work from home at all, according to an Office of Management and Budget report released in August 2024. As of May of that year, among those eligible to telework for a portion of their hours, 61% of their working hours were spent in-person at assigned job sites. Only 228,000 — about 10% of the federal workforce — were entirely remote.

Since taking office, Trump has taken a hard line on the need for federal workers to return full time to the office, and he has criticized former President Joe Biden’s post-pandemic efforts to push federal workers back to the office. As with the private sector, many employees began working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden vowed, “The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.” A year later, the OMB issued new guidance that called on agencies to “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at Federal offices, particularly at headquarters and equivalents, while still using flexible operational policies as an important tool in talent recruitment and retention.”

There was a modest decrease in the percentage of federal employees who worked remotely on a “routine or situational” basis between the fiscal years of 2022 and 2023 (from 46% to 43%), according to the Office of Personnel Management. Biden’s chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients, acknowledged in an April 2024 speech at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., “We don’t yet have the return-to-work levels that we should have across the federal government. We’re headed in the right direction, but that’s an – that’s an area we need to continue to focus on.”

Meanwhile, a 2023 review by the Government Accountability Office of 24 federal agency headquarters buildings in and around Washington, D.C., found that from January to March of 2023, 17 of them were at 25% capacity or less earlier that year. (The vast majority of federal workers don’t work in the Washington, D.C., area.)

In November, Biden’s then-Social Security Administration commissioner, Martin O’Malley, reached a deal with the American Federation of Government Employees that would permit 42,000 Social Security Administration employees to continue to work a hybrid schedule that allows them to work at least some time from home until 2029.

Trump referred to that deal in his remarks to the press while signing executive orders on Feb. 11.

“What we’re trying to do is reduce government,” Trump said. “We have too many people. We have office space, it’s occupied by 4%. Nobody’s showing up to work because they were told not to. And then Biden gave them a five-year pass, some of them, 48,000 of them gave them a five-year pass, that for five years, you don’t have to show up to work.”

It’s not true that all of those workers in the bargaining agreement “don’t have to show up to work,” if Trump meant they don’t have to show up at the office at all. The deal was for hybrid work schedules.

On his first day in office, Trump issued a memo instructing the heads of all federal departments and agencies to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”

White House Cites Nonscientific Survey 

We reached out to the White House for clarification and backup for Trump’s claim that federal buildings were only occupied by 4% of federal workers, but we did not get a response. However, a White House fact sheet on Trump’s efforts to “Remake America’s Federal Workforce,” states, “According to a recent congressional report, only 6% of federal workers report to work in-person on a full-time basis.”

That refers to a nonscientific, opt-in survey by the Federal News Network of federal employees in April 2024 that found that among the 6,338 respondents to the survey, “about 30% said they work entirely remotely, 6% work entirely in-person and 64% were working on a hybrid schedule — a mix of in-person work and telework.”

Sen. Joni Ernst, chair of the Senate caucus of the Department of Government Efficiency, used the survey when accusing federal workers of abusing telework. Senate Majority Leader John Thune also cited the statistic on Fox News on Feb. 14, saying, “There is an enormous amount of room for reduction in force and the fact borne out by a study that was done not all that long ago, it was actually reported on by the New York Times that only 6% of the federal workforce is back in the office full time. I mean, think about that.”

But the survey, it turns out, was not reflective of the actual situation. An editor’s note was added to the Federal News Network story on Dec. 6 “to clarify that the survey was a non-scientific survey of respondents who self-reported that they are current federal employees, and who were self-selected.”

The story was also updated to include data from the OMB that contradicts the findings of the survey.

The August OMB report noted that 1.2 million of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees — 54% — “worked fully on-site, as their jobs require them to be physically present during all working hours.” About 10% of federal workers (228,000) worked fully from home.

According to OMB, “Among all federal employees, excluding remote workers that do not have a work-site to report to, 79.4% of regular, working hours were spent in-person.”

“Among the subset of federal workers that are telework-eligible, excluding remote workers, 61.2% of regular, working hours were spent in-person,” the report states. Going into the office three out of five days of the workweek would be 60%.

A Congressional Budget Office report published in April 2024 found that “[f]ederal employees and their private-sector counterparts teleworked at roughly similar rates in 2022.”

In November, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the effect of teleworking at four federal agencies and agency officials told them that limiting work-from-home opportunities hurt recruitment and retention of employees. An OPM report issued in December 2023 also concluded that when “[i]mplemented intentionally and balanced with meaningful in-person work” telework can lead to “increased productivity” and “lower employee attrition.”

But encouraging some of those resistant to full-time in-person work to quit is part of the Trump administration’s goal.

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” Elon Musk, head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in November, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is no longer with DOGE.

Whether to downsize the federal workforce is a matter of opinion, and we take no position on that. But it is grossly exaggerated to say that only 4% of federal workers occupy federal office spaces.

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Quick Take

Both the Biden and Trump administrations subscribed to Politico and other news services. But President Donald Trump and online posts have misleadingly claimed the media outlets were being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The payments from USAID and other federal departments or agencies were for subscriptions.

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Full Story

The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and other government departments has fueled misleading and unsupported claims about the recipients of the assistance, the funding sources and the amounts of federal aid spent, as we’ve written.

Now, claims by President Donald Trump and social media posts have spread misinformation about money spent by the government on media resources, misrepresenting subscriptions to news services as a “payoff” or as “funding” for media outlets. An examination of government spending records shows that media subscription services targeted by Trump also were used and paid for by his administration during his first term in office.

In a Feb. 6 post on X, Trump misleadingly said, “LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS. THE LEFT WING ‘RAG,’ KNOWN AS ‘POLITICO,’ SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!”

Trump amplified his misleading claims about the government payments to media outlets on his platform Truth Social on Feb. 13, saying, “Why was Politico paid Millions of Dollars for NOTHING.”

Other social media posts have made similar claims. Conservative commentator Benny Johnson said in an Instagram post: “Now we learn Politico — ‘a news company’ — which spent the last 10 years trying to destroy the MAGA Movement was being massively funded by USAID.” The post received more than 100,000 likes. Another post claimed, “And now we find out the regime was funneling tens of millions of dollars of our money to Politico?”

Rob Smith, who identifies himself as “The OG Black Gay Republican Icon,” posted an Instagram video citing Johnson’s post and claiming, Politico is “COMPLETELY FUNDED BY USAID!”

Rather than being “completely” or “massively funded” by USAID, Politico received two payments specifically through that government agency in 2023 and 2024 totaling $44,000, according to USA Spending, a U.S. government website that tracks federal spending.

Politico did receive more than $8 million in fiscal year 2024 from other federal departments and agencies, USA Spending records show. Whether that amounts to wasteful spending is a matter of opinion, and we take no position on that. The money, however, was to pay for Politico subscriptions and access to Politico Pro, which provides “non-partisan news, real-time intelligence, in-depth analysis, government directories, stakeholder management solutions, policy monitoring tools” and other customized services, according to its website.

In total, the USA Spending database reported 646 transactions between the federal government and Politico since fiscal year 2015. The transactions are classified as contracts, not as grants, loans or direct payments, which are types of government spending categories on the site.

Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and Editor-in-Chief John F. Harris responded to the claims on social media with a statement on Feb. 6, saying, “POLITICO is a privately owned company. We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years. … It is supported by advertising and sponsorships.”

“POLITICO Pro is different,” the statement continued. “It is a professional subscription service used by companies, organizations, and, yes, some government agencies. They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence and a suite of data products.”

The federal government constitutes a small portion of Politico Pro’s subscriber base. In a Feb. 6 interview, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer, told CNN that Politico Pro currently has about 5,000 subscribers, about 6% of whom work in government.

Politico does not report the cost of each Politico Pro subscription. We asked Politico for the range of subscription costs, but did not get a response.

Some transactions listed on USA Spending include the number of subscriptions purchased, allowing us to estimate the cost of single subscriptions. For example, the Federal Trade Commission spent $45,378 to renew 14 annual subscriptions to Politico Pro Plus in October 2024, at a cost of about $3,200 per person for an annual subscription. The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, spent $143,203 in June 2024 to renew 49 annual subscriptions to Politico Pro, at a cost of about $2,900 per person per year.

In recent days, the Trump administration has terminated multiple contracts between the federal government and Politico initiated by the Biden administration. The subscriptions purchased by HHS were terminated on Feb. 5. The New York Times reported on Feb. 6 that the Department of Agriculture canceled its Politico Pro subscriptions, and Fox News reported on Feb. 10 that the Department of Veterans Affairs also canceled its Politico Pro subscriptions.

Payments During Trump’s First Term

Subscriptions to Politico Pro were not unique to the Biden administration. The government also paid for subscriptions in fiscal years 2017 through 2020, when Trump was in office. (The government’s fiscal year is from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, so FY 2017 included nearly four months under the Obama administration.)

According to USA Spending, during Trump’s first term, the federal government agreed to $10.2 million in contract obligations to Politico.

While total spending on Politico by USAID was relatively minuscule under the Biden administration and nonexistent under Trump’s, both presidents’ executive offices agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Politico during their respective terms. The Executive Office of the President includes the set of offices and agencies that support the agenda of the executive branch, such as the Council of Economic Advisors, the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget.

Under the first Trump administration, the Executive Office of the President accrued $880,000 in obligations to Politico. The other government agencies spending the most on Politico subscriptions in fiscal years 2017 through 2020 were HHS, whose obligations to Politico totaled about $3.2 million, followed by the Department of Energy, which spent more than $710,000.

Payments During Biden’s Term

By comparison, total federal obligations to Politico were more than twice as high during President Joe Biden’s administration as compared with Trump’s first administration. In FY 2021 through 2024, the federal government accrued $22.8 million in total financial obligations to Politico. (FY 2021 included nearly four months under the Trump administration.)

HHS also spent the most money among all government departments on Politico during the Biden administration, with obligations totaling $3.5 million in FY 2021 through 2024. The next highest spending agencies during this period were the Department of the Interior ($3.4 million), the Department of Energy ($2.9 million) and the Department of Agriculture ($2 million). The Executive Office of the President’s total obligations reached $1.3 million during the Biden years.

As we said, USAID’s spending on Politico during the Biden administration was small by comparison. In total, the agency purchased $44,000 in subscriptions to E&E News, a subsidiary of Politico focused on energy and environmental issues, in FY 2023 and 2024.

To analyze total federal spending on media organizations during the Biden and first Trump administrations, we collated total financial obligations for transactions reported on USA Spending. To classify the date of each transaction, we used the fiscal year of each transaction’s base action date, defined by USA Spending as “the date the action being reported was issued / signed by the Government or a binding agreement was reached.”

This classification means that contracts initiated under the Trump administration that extended into the beginning of the Biden administration count as spending under the Trump years, and contracts initiated during the Biden administration that continue to the present count as obligations under the Biden years.

We also collated federal spending on the New York Times, Associated Press and Reuters using the same methodology.

In total, the federal government’s obligations to the Times totaled $1.3 million under the Biden administration, as compared with $610,000 under the Trump administration. Obligations to the Associated Press totaled $6.8 million under Biden and $24 million under Trump. Obligations to Reuters totaled $9.7 million under Biden and $1.5 million under Trump.

Subscription Contracts, Not Grants

As opposed to funding or a financial award, the federal government’s payments to Politico under the Trump and Biden administrations constituted a contractual agreement to provide a service in exchange for a subscription fee.

Politico’s statement explains, “Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction — just as the government buys research, equipment, software and industry reports. Some online voices are deliberately spreading falsehoods. Let’s be clear: POLITICO has no financial dependence on the government and no hidden agenda.”

Similarly, the $2 million in obligations to the New York Times accrued by the federal government since FY 2017 were also contracts in exchange for subscriptions, and not funding. A Feb. 6 statement posted on X by the Times said, “Federal funds received by The Times are payments for subscriptions that government offices and agencies have purchased to better understand the world.” The statement also said, “There are no federal grants made to The Times.”

Associated Press spokesperson Lauren Easton said on Feb. 6 that “the U.S. government has long been an AP customer — through both Democratic and Republican administrations. It licenses AP’s nonpartisan journalism, just like thousands of news outlets and customers around the world. It’s quite common for governments to have contracts with news organizations for their content.”

Subscriptions to news media are valuable tools for government employees, Steven Kelman, a professor of public management at Harvard University, told us in an email. “These are ways for government officials to learn more about things going on in the government in general, which helps them do their jobs better,” Kelman said.

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Sources

Hale Spencer, Saranac. “Sorting Out the Facts on ‘Waste and Abuse’ at USAID.” FactCheck.org. 8 Feb 2025.

Jaffe, Alan. “Trump Administration Makes Unsupported Claim About $50 Million for Condoms to Gaza.” FactCheck.org. 30 Jan 2025.

Sheikholeslami, Goli and John F. Harris. “Note to Our Readers.” Politico. 6 Feb 2025.

USASpending.gov. Payments from U.S. Agency for International Development. Recipient: Politico. Accessed 10 Feb 2025.

USASpending.gov. Definitive Contract, PIID 29FTC122C0002. Accessed 10 Feb 2025.

USASpending.gov. Purchase Order, PIID 75F40120P00453. Accessed 10 Feb 2025.

Mullin, Benjamin and Flavelle, Christopher. “White House Cracks Down on News Subscriptions.” New York Times. 6 Feb 2025.

Hagstrom, Anders. “Department of Veterans Affairs cancels $178K in subscriptions to Politico Pro”. Fox News. 10 Feb 2025.

USASpending.gov. Prime Award Results, Politico, LLC. Accessed 7 Feb 2025.

USASpending.gov. Prime Award Results, Politico, The New York Times, Reuters, AP. Accessed 7 Feb 2025.

“Executive Office of the President.” White House Archives, President Barack Obama. Accessed 11 Feb 2025.

NY Times Communications. X. 6 Feb 2025.

Bauder, David. “Trump promotes misleading claims about federal government’s media subscriptions.” AP News. 6 Feb 2025.

Kelman, Steven. Professor of public management, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Email to FactCheck.org. 10 Feb 2025.

Forbes. Mathias Doepfner. Accessed 12 Feb 2025.

Reilly, Liam. “CEO of Politico’s parent company to Trump: ‘It’s not subsidies; it’s capitalism.’” CNN. 6 Feb 2025.

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

This week, New York City officials said the city had received two payments from the federal government as reimbursement for expenses the city incurred while providing services to migrants who arrived in New York, including $19 million for hotel expenses. But Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, claimed, without evidence, that $59 million “meant for American disaster relief” was sent to “luxury hotels.”

Musk’s claims, posted on X, the social media platform he owns, echoed false claims made by President Donald Trump and others last year that Federal Emergency Management Agency money for hurricane relief had been used to house people in the country illegally. As we reported then, Congress had appropriated money for the Department of Homeland Security’s Shelter and Services Program, which awards money to nonfederal entities to provide housing and other services for migrants awaiting an immigration hearing. FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund is funded by Congress separately.

But in an early morning post on Feb. 10, Musk wrote, “The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.” His post went on to say, “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!”

The White House has not provided evidence that the funds were originally “meant for American disaster relief,” as Musk said. The White House press office did not respond to our inquiry about this.

The Associated Press and the New York Times reported that the money that FEMA paid to the city — not directly to hotels — came from the Shelter and Services Program. The money for that program comes from the budget for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and FEMA and CBP, both DHS agencies, coordinate to administer the grants.

However, a DHS official previously told reporters that the money is “completely separate” from funding that Congress allocates to FEMA to help U.S. residents affected by natural disasters.

In addition, a city spokesperson, Liz Garcia, told the AP that only some of the $59 million was for hotel costs.

She said that the mayor’s office recently received two payments from the federal government totaling about $81 million for immigration-related services. One of the payments was for roughly $59 million, of which $19 million was for hotel stays, as the city has had to accommodate more than 200,000 migrants who arrived there since the spring of 2022.

“The payments of $81 million, Garcia said, covered reimbursements for November 2023 to October 2024, including hotel, security, food, and other costs,” the AP reported. “She said the city applied in April, the money was appropriated last year by Congress, and FEMA allocated it last year.”

Garcia also told the AP that the city did not pay “luxury” rates for the hotels.

A July report from the New York City Comptroller’s Office said that during fiscal year 2024, the city spent an average of $156 per night on hotel rooms for migrants. That average rate, negotiated with the Hotel Association of New York City, was “$1.50 more expensive than the market economy rate, and $27 less expensive than the upscale rate,” the report said. Most of the hotels were in city boroughs outside of Manhattan.

We contacted the city about the payments, but have not received a response. FEMA also did not answer our specific questions about the funds, but a DHS spokesperson emailed us a statement saying that DHS has “clawed back the full payment” from the city and fired four FEMA employees responsible for making the payments.

In a statement posted on Feb. 12, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander called the revocation of over $80 million in congressionally appropriated funds illegal, and advised Eric Adams, the city’s mayor, to pursue legal action.

“This is money that the federal government previously disbursed for shelter and services and is now missing,” he said. “This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”

Adams said in a Feb. 12 post on X that his office had already been in contact with the White House about recouping the money.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

Source: FactCheck