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Quick Take
President Donald Trump said his administration blocked $50 million for condoms to be sent to Gaza through its pause on foreign aid. But it has provided no evidence that $50 million was ever directed toward condoms for Gaza. The contractor identified by the State Department said it has not used U.S. aid “to procure or distribute condoms.”
Full Story
At her first official briefing as White House press secretary on Jan. 28, Karoline Leavitt defended President Donald Trump’s pause on funding for foreign aid.
As an example of why a freeze on aid to other nations was needed, Leavitt told reporters that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and the Office of Management and Budget “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money. So, that’s what this pause is focused on: being good stewards of tax dollars.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt takes questions during a briefing in the White House on Jan. 28. Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images.
Trump repeated the claim the next day.
“We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas,” Trump said. “They’ve used them as a method of making bombs.”
Social media posts widely shared a clip of Leavitt’s press briefing and echoed the claim, “President Trump had to stop $50 million in American dollars from going to Gaza to fund condoms. NO, this is NOT a joke.”
But the Trump administration has not provided any evidence that $50 million was ever directed by the U.S. government for the purchase of condoms for the war-torn Gaza Strip. The contractor identified by the government as the recipient of the funding said it provides hospital services in Gaza and has not used U.S. funds “to procure or distribute condoms.” Other U.S. agencies provide little to no funding for condoms in the Middle East.
Funds for Medical Services, Not Condoms
Pressed for the source of her information by the Washington Post Fact Checker, Leavitt cited a Fox News story, which stated that an unnamed White House official said the State Department had “halted several million dollars going to condoms in Gaza this past weekend,” but not $50 million.
A White House official directed reporters to X posts by State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, who wrote on Jan. 28, “American taxpayer dollars spent overseas should be spent wisely, and for the benefit of Americans. The pause in foreign assistance has allowed the @StateDept to prevent unjustified and non-emergency spending.”
The first example Bruce offered: “Condoms. Prevented $102 million in unjustified funding to a contractor in Gaza, including money for contraception.”
Bruce did not name the contractor in her posts. But the Washington Post reported that Bruce’s office said she was referring to “$102,236,000 to fund the International Medical Corps in Gaza.”
Todd Bernhardt, a spokesperson for the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that responds to emergency medical needs around the world, emailed a statement to us addressing questions about its services.
The organization has received more than $68 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to support IMC’s medical operations in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023, the statement said. That funding has supported the operation of two field hospitals that treat about 33,000 patients each month.
Since January 2024, the statement said, the organization “has provided healthcare to more than 383,000 civilians who had no other access to services or treatment, including performing about 11,000 surgeries, with one-third of those categorized as major or moderate procedures. We have assisted in the delivery of some 5,000 babies, about 20% of them via cesarean section. In addition, International Medical Corps has screened 111,000 people for malnutrition, treated 2,767 for acute malnutrition, distributed micronutrient supplements to 36,000 people, and more.”
“No government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms,” the statement said.
The pause in aid from the U.S. would stop IMC’s work in Gaza’s hospitals, including delivering babies and caring for vulnerable newborns, assistance to malnourished children, surgeries and emergency room services, the statement also said.
Support for Global Contraceptive Aid
The Washington Post noted that the U.S. has a program, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which distributes condoms in other countries to help prevent the spread of HIV infection. But PEPFAR does not work with any nations in the Middle East.
Contraceptives and condoms also are delivered around the world through the support of USAID. The most recent report issued by the agency in April 2024 said the total value of contraceptives and condoms provided internationally in the previous fiscal year amounted to $60.8 million.
The report said 89% of the funding for contraceptives went to Africa, 9% to Asia and 2% to Latin American countries. One country in the Middle East, Jordan, received a shipment valued at $45,681.
So it’s unlikely that a shipment in the amount of $50 million in condoms would be directed to Gaza in 2025, as the Trump administration has claimed. We reached out to the White House press secretary’s office for further comment, but we did not receive a response.
Sources
Bernhardt, Todd. Senior director of global communications, International Medical Corps. Email to FactCheck.org. 29 Jan 2025.
Ingram, Julia. “What we know about Trump’s claim that the U.S. planned to spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza.” CBS News. 29 Jan 2025.
International Medical Corps. “International Medical Corps Operation in Gaza.” Press release. 29 Jan 2025.
Kessler, Glenn. “$50 million for condoms in Gaza? There’s no evidence for the White House claim.” Washington Post. 29 Jan 2025.
Roll Call. “Press Briefing: Karoline Leavitt Holds a Press Briefing at The White House – January 28, 2025.” 28 Jan 2025.
USAID. “Overview of Contraceptive and Condom Shipments. FY 2023.” Apr 2024.
U.S. Department of State. U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Where We Work. Accessed 30 Jan 2025.
Wallace, Danielle. “State Dept pulls millions in funding for ‘condoms in Gaza,’ as Trump admin looks to trim spending.” Fox News. 28 Jan 2025.
White House. Presidential Actions. “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” Executive Order. 20 Jan 2025.
Wong, Edward and Apoorva Mandavilli. “U.S. Halt to Foreign Aid Cripples Programs Worldwide.” New York Times. 28 Jan 2025.
As part of a rash of executive orders completed on his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump began the nation’s exit from the World Health Organization, the U.N agency dedicated to improving the health of all people.
Although it will be a year before the U.S. can formally part ways with the group, experts have roundly criticized the decision, calling it “cataclysmic,” “dangerous” and “an enormous mistake.”
The U.S. helped found the WHO in 1948 and has been its most influential member and largest donor, helping to facilitate some of public health’s biggest successes, such as the eradication of smallpox and the drastic decline in polio.
Trump’s order was not a surprise. In his previous term, Trump initiated a departure during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he had signaled his intent to do so again — even if many in public health had hoped he would change his mind.
Here, we explain how the withdrawal would work and what it would mean, both domestically and abroad. We also fact-check the president on claims about WHO funding.
What did the executive order say?
The executive order, which Trump signed about eight hours into his second term, effectively serves notice that the U.S. intends to depart the WHO. It revoked the letter that former President Joe Biden sent on his first day of office that ended Trump’s earlier effort — started in July 2020 — to leave the WHO.
As part of the withdrawal, the order directed senior officials to halt the transfer of any funds to the WHO, recall government and contract workers assigned to the WHO, and identify “credible and transparent” partners to replace WHO activities.
The rationale for the U.S. exit, the order said, is the WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
The order also alleged that the WHO “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S., “far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.” It went on to note that China has a population of 1.4 billion, “yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.” (As we explain below, the U.S. does contribute far more than China does, but the discrepancy is not always quite that large. Most of the difference is due to much larger voluntary contributions from the U.S.)
What does a withdrawal mean for the U.S. and global public health?
Most immediately, without U.S. funding, the WHO will be more limited in what it can do. The programs most dependent on those funds include preventing, preparing and responding to health emergencies; polio eradication efforts; and programs dedicated to fighting tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis and other sexually transmitted infections, according to information provided to us by the WHO. (For most of the funds the U.S. provides, the government gets to choose which programs the money goes toward.)
As the health policy research organization KFF explains, the WHO is also dependent on the U.S. for technical expertise, and the U.S. is a major player in WHO governance and in advocating for reforms. Thirty CDC staff members are stationed in WHO offices, according to STAT.
Asked what a U.S. withdrawal would mean, a WHO spokesperson said in a Jan. 24 press conference, “It’s the people of the world who will lose out, it’s global health.”
But experts say the U.S. would also be worse off if it severed its ties to the WHO.
“Withdrawing from WHO will harm the US national interests and security,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told us in an email. “It would weaken WHO’s ability to curb outbreaks before they come to our shores. And the US would not have full access to key scientific information needed to innovate for new vaccines and drugs.”
Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images.
In particular, the WHO runs the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness, or PIP, Framework, which encourages countries to share their data and samples during an influenza pandemic. Other member countries can then make vaccines, tests and other supplies, and in return, the sharing country is given access to a portion of those helpful products.
The group also runs a surveillance and alert system for outbreaks around the world, helps monitor and fight drug resistance across the globe, tracks influenza, and makes recommendations on which strains of flu virus should be included in seasonal flu shots. The WHO does work in responding to emergencies, such as Ebola outbreaks, that few, if any, other groups do.
“The WHO is essential for the health of the U.S. and the world. It’s the only organization that makes it possible to track deadly health threats in every single country of the world,” former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a video posted on X, “even if they hate each other or are political rivals.”
“The WHO is not a perfect organization — most aren’t — but leaving like this is not the way to drive change,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health security expert at the University of Maryland, told us in an email. “This ultimately will leave the world more vulnerable to health threats — like emerging infectious diseases — and the U.S. without key resources and partnerships.”
Several experts have noted that departing the WHO is likely to cede power and influence to China.
“If your true concern is that WHO is captured by China, then removing the U.S. from the equation just seals the deal,” Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, told Science.
Although Trump’s executive order instructs officials to find other ways of performing essential WHO functions, experts were skeptical.
“This is fantasy land,” Gostin, who also directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said. “It is impossible to replace the worldwide reach and authority of WHO.”
“I’m curious to see what they mean,” Popescu told us, adding that “one of the benefits of the WHO is having a global network for information sharing, accountability, and response.”
When asked to respond to these concerns and criticisms, the White House pointed to a poll showing Americans’ declining confidence in the medical system.
“President Trump was elected with a resounding mandate to Make America Healthy Again by restoring confidence, competence, and accountability in health care, and the Trump-Vance administration will continue to review current processes and healthcare bodies to implement needed reforms,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told us.
Does the executive order do anything else?
Yes. The order states that the U.S. “will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement,” an accord that has been in the works since 2021 and is intended to help the globe better prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics. A direct response to problems encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agreement is focused on improving global cooperation during a health emergency.
Trump’s order also removes the U.S. from the recently finalized amendments to the International Health Regulations, which are the rules that govern global public health emergencies, such as how quickly a country must report a concerning outbreak and how the WHO defines certain emergencies. They were slated to go into effect in September. (Contrary to the wording of the executive order, the IHR amendments are no longer under negotiation.)
Both instruments have been the target of misinformation, with many on social media falsely claiming that they threaten U.S. sovereignty. They do not give the WHO the power to impose lockdowns or otherwise dictate a particular pandemic response for individual countries, as we’ve written.
Daniela Morich, senior manager and advisor at the Global Health Center at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told us that it’s “likely” that the remaining 193 countries “can still continue to work and achieve a successful outcome.”
But it would mean that the U.S. isn’t a part of what gets decided. “Obviously, you’re losing a voice who’s supporting your views and your shared interests,” she said.
Two sticking points of the negotiations for the agreement, which are set to conclude this May, are related to a pathogen and benefit sharing program and commitments from countries to prevent pandemics under the One Health approach, which recognizes that many novel diseases are passed to humans from animals.
But even from the beginning, Morich said, there was doubt that the U.S. would ratify the accord.
The executive order also revokes a January 2021 Biden executive order that established a COVID-19 response coordinator within the White House and called for increased U.S. leadership in the prevention, detection and response to infectious disease threats, or what is known as global health security.
In addition, Trump’s order stipulates that officials review, rescind and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy, which the Biden administration published in April.
Popescu told us that the strategy “is very new” and did not know why it would be included, except that “it’s a global health security strategy that emphasizes international engagement.” She added, “I’m waiting to see more reason behind this decision.”
Gostin was more blunt, saying that the order’s removal of the strategy “means the US no longer has a concrete plan for pandemic preparedness and response.”
How would a withdrawal work?
The U.S. joined the WHO in 1948 with a joint resolution passed by Congress. The legislation said that if the U.S. wanted to leave the group, it could, but it would have to give “a one-year notice” and fully meet its financial obligations for the fiscal year.
Because of that, Gostin said that he did not think Trump could unilaterally exit the WHO without approval from Congress. (Last time around, only six months had elapsed before Biden ended the potential exit, thereby avoiding the legal issue.)
The executive order, however, does not acknowledge this. Tom Bollyky, director of global health for the Council on Foreign Relations, noted on X that the executive order could be an effort to make withdrawal immediate, since it revokes Biden’s retraction of Trump’s first attempt at leaving the WHO.
Gostin does not believe that would be lawful. “If Trump exits before the required one year period, he will be in violation of a US law,” he told us. “He has no right to say that the clock was already ticking.”
Still, Gostin said these were “highly plausible legal issues” and that he had been “strategizing with a group of top lawyers” over them.
The White House did not respond to a question about how it was interpreting Trump’s authority, but multiple news outlets reported on Jan. 27 that CDC staff had been ordered to immediately stop working with the WHO and “await further guidance.”
That’s despite the fact that the order itself seems to recognize a waiting period, stipulating that certain negotiations should cease “[w]hile withdrawal is in progress.”
In a Jan. 24 U.N. press conference, a WHO spokesperson said that the U.S. had not yet paid its two required contributions of around $130 million each, one due this month and the other due last January. He said the voluntary contributions, however, could be “cut at any time.”
Morich noted that next week, there is a meeting of the WHO’s executive board, of which the U.S. is a member. It’s now unclear if the U.S. will be present. “It’s a very uncertain time,” she said.
Can Trump change his mind?
Yes. Trump could rescind his executive order and send a letter canceling his intent to leave the WHO. That is what the WHO and many people in public health are still advocating.
In a Jan. 21 statement, the WHO emphasized the importance of its work to all people, “including Americans,” and said it “regrets” the decision and hoped the U.S. “will reconsider.”
At the Jan. 24 U.N. press conference, a WHO spokesperson iterated those sentiments, saying the agency is “committed to engaging in constructive dialogue to preserve and strengthen the historic relationship between the WHO and the USA.” Those comments echoed an internal memo the WHO director general had circulated the day before.
Trump “could, and should, do a deal with WHO to exact major reforms in return for the US continuing to be a member and paying our assessed dues,” Gostin told us in an email.
Still, the WHO is already preparing to tighten its belt. In the internal memo, which AFP and Politico obtained, the director general said the group needed to identify its “key priorities” and was “freezing recruitment, except in the most critical areas” and “significantly reducing travel expenditure.”
What has Trump said about the planned exit?
Trump has consistently spoken about leaving the WHO in terms of monetary fairness, even if he sometimes says that is not the motivation.
Just before signing the order, Trump talked exclusively about the cost of being part of the WHO. “So we paid $500 million to World Health when I was here and I terminated it,” he said. Speaking of China and noting its much larger population, he said, “They were paying $39 million. We were paying $500 million. It seemed a little unfair to me. So that wasn’t the reason, but I dropped out.”
He proceeded to say that the WHO “offered me to come back” for $39 million but that Biden did so for $500 million. Trump then hinted that perhaps the current WHO exit is not a done deal, even as he repeated the figures.
“They wanted us back so badly. So we’ll see what happens,” he said. “Pretty sad though. Think of it. China pays $39 million and we pay $500 million, and China’s a bigger country.”
Just after signing the executive order, a reporter asked Trump if he saw the value of a group coordinating a global response to something like a pandemic. “Sure, I do,” he replied, “but not when you’re being ripped off like we are by the World Health.”
On Jan. 25, at a rally in Las Vegas, Trump relayed a nearly identical story, claiming to have rejected a counteroffer from the WHO, while suggesting he might be open to being part of the WHO.
“I turned them down because it became so popular I didn’t know if it would be well received, even at $39 [million],” he said. “But maybe we would consider doing it again, I don’t know. Maybe we would. They have to clean it up a little bit. But China pays $39 million for 1.4 billion and we’re paying $500 million for 325 million. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with these people.”
The WHO did not comment on any kind of attempted negotiation that might have occurred, but Trump’s description of the situation doesn’t fit with how the WHO organizes its funding — and to be clear, the U.S. never left the WHO. His cited figures also aren’t accurate, according to information provided to us by the WHO.
How much does the U.S. actually give to the WHO?
The WHO collects dues, or what it calls assessed contributions, from its more than 190 member countries. These required amounts, which are approved by member states at the World Health Assembly, are based on gross domestic product, so larger countries with larger economies pay more, while poorer countries pay less.
For the two-year period of 2020 and 2021, when Trump first tried to leave the WHO and when Biden canceled the attempt, the United States’ assessed contribution was 22% of the world’s total dues, or $232 million, while China’s was 12%, or $115 million, according to the WHO.
These required payments, however, make up only a fraction of the WHO’s total funding. In addition to donations from nonprofits and other philanthropists, most of the group’s funding comes from voluntary payments that countries make on top of their dues. This is where the U.S. vastly outspends China.
For 2020 and 2021 combined, the U.S. voluntarily contributed some $461 million, for a total of $693 million, or 9% of total WHO revenue, while China voluntarily contributed just under $53 million, for a total of $168 million, or about 2% of total revenue — and about 75% less than the U.S.
In 2022 and 2023, that gap widened, as the United States’ total contributions topped $1.3 billion, accounting for 18% of revenue, while China’s contributions fell to just $132 million, or 2% of revenue — and 90% less than the U.S.
The White House did not respond when asked for the sources of Trump’s figures, but this is a possible source of the executive order’s statement that China contributes “nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.” (According to WHO’s budget portal, which the WHO told us uses different numbers that can include leftover funds from previous years, China’s total contributions were 87% less than the U.S.)
For the current years of 2024 and 2025, the difference between the two nations has narrowed a bit. China has contributed a total of $184 million, nearly all of it in dues, which accounts for 5% of all revenue. The U.S., which has not yet paid for either year, is again set to give 18% of revenue, or $706 million, of which $264 million are in dues. That’s a total of about $350 million each year.
Trump is therefore broadly correct that the U.S. gives significantly more than China, and particularly so per capita. On this point, Gostin agreed with Trump, saying that China “should pay its fair share” and increase its overall payments “considerably.”
But China is paying more than $39 million — and the discrepancy is not always quite as extreme as Trump claims. Critically, the difference is largely not due to a requirement, but rather comes down to a difference in voluntary payments.
In 2024 and 2025, China’s dues, which are the second highest after the U.S., increased to 15%. Since 2001, the WHO has capped the United States’ assessed contribution at 22%.
The U.S. nevertheless remains the single largest funder, typically contributing close to a fifth of the WHO’s entire budget. (A notable exception was in 2020 and 2021, when Germany — a nation about a quarter the size of the U.S. — was the top funder.) This is a key reason why the United States’ exit from the WHO could be so damaging to the group.
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In his first Senate confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated claims we have written about before on vaccines and chronic disease.
Known for spreading misinformation about vaccines, including the debunked idea that they cause autism, Kennedy said in his opening remarks, “News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. I am neither. I am pro-safety.”
He has made similar statements recently. On Nov. 6, he told NPR that he wouldn’t take vaccines away, but wanted to “make sure that Americans have good information. Right now, the science on vaccine safety, particularly, has huge deficits in it, and we’re going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children’s vaccinations.”
But, as we’ve explained, vaccine safety studies have been done and Americans do have access to that information. Multiple independent panels of scientists help review the data on each vaccine to make sure the benefits outweigh the risks. Several vaccine safety monitoring systems then watch for subsequent issues.
In December, Kennedy stepped down as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit he founded that has pushed false claims about vaccines.
If confirmed, Kennedy would oversee 13 agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
His Jan. 29 hearing was before the Senate Finance Committee. He will answer questions before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on Jan. 30.
(For more on Kennedy’s past claims, see our 2023 three-part series.)
COVID-19 Vaccines and Transmission
When asked by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina if he was a conspiracy theorist, Kennedy said he has been labeled with the “pejorative” term “mainly to keep me from asking difficult questions of powerful interest.”
“That label was applied to me because I said that the vaccines, the COVID vaccine, didn’t prevent transmission and it wouldn’t prevent infection when the government was telling people, Americans, that it would,” Kennedy said. “Now everybody admits it.”
Vaccines do not have to prevent infection to be effective — and many do not. The primary goal of many vaccines is to prevent disease, including severe disease, which is the main function of the COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use based on their ability to reduce the risk of symptomatic disease in clinical trials. When the vaccines were authorized, the Food and Drug Administration warned that there was no “evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”
Yet, as we’ve explained, data showed that vaccination did reduce the spread of the disease, either because vaccinated people were protected against infection or because they were less contagious if infected. The emergence of more transmissible variants reduced the capacity of the vaccines to stop transmission, but they still provided some protection against infection and reduced the risk of severe disease.
Kennedy often cites monkey studies published in 2020 when raising this issue, and he did so again during his confirmation hearing. But several early studies showed that vaccinated animals infected with the virus had lower levels of virus than infected unvaccinated animals.
“I was called a conspiracy theorist because I said red dye caused cancer and now FDA has acknowledged that and banned it,” Kennedy continued at the hearing. “I was called a conspiracy theorist because I said fluoride lowered IQ. Last week JAMA published a meta review of 87 studies saying that there’s a direct inverse correlation between IQ lost.”
On Jan. 15, the FDA did revoke the authorization for the use of red dye No. 3, which is present in many foods and certain medications. But in doing so, the agency said claims that the use of the dye “puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information.” The agency noted that the way that red dye causes cancer in rats “does not occur in humans.”
As for fluoride and IQ, as we’ve explained before, the data on water fluoridation and neurotoxicity is not 100% clear. Some research suggests that higher levels of fluoride are linked to decreases in children’s IQ but the evidence that this occurs at lower levels similar to what the U.S. recommends using in drinking water is much weaker and inconsistent.
The paper mentioned by Kennedy, a meta analysis of 74 studies published in JAMA Pediatrics on Jan. 6, has been described as controversial. Many of the included studies had a “high risk of bias,” the paper said, and none had been conducted in the U.S.
In September, a federal District Court judge ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate fluoride in drinking water, saying that it “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” The ruling added that “this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health.”
Overestimate of Chronic Disease in Children
As expected, Kennedy spoke repeatedly about the increase in chronic disease and his intention of ending what he describes as an “epidemic.” But he exaggerated the number of children affected by it.
“I was raised in a time where we did not have a chronic disease epidemic. When my uncle was president, 2% of American kids had chronic disease. Today, 66% have chronic disease,” he said.
Some chronic health conditions such as obesity, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism and food allergies have been more commonly reported among children in the U.S. in recent decades. But as we’ve explained, experts say that Kennedy’s number of the percentage of kids with chronic disease, which he typically puts at 60%, is an overestimate.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing data from the 2018 National Survey of Children’s Health, “more than 40% of school-aged children and adolescents have at least one chronic health condition such as asthma, obesity, other physical conditions, and behavior/learning problems.”
It is worth noting that there’s no data to compare today’s prevalence of chronic disease with that in the early 1960s, given changes in how chronic conditions are diagnosed, tracked and defined. And there is no standard definition today of what counts as a chronic condition. See our August story on this topic for more.
False Claim About Previous Podcast Remarks
Early in the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the committee, pushed back against Kennedy’s insistence in the hearing that he is not anti-vaccine by noting that in a podcast interview with Lex Fridman in July 2023, Kennedy said “no vaccine” is safe and effective.
Kennedy responded by telling Wyden that his description of what happened had been “repeatedly debunked” — and that Kennedy’s comment about vaccines “was a fragment of a statement” that occurred, because he had been cut off in the interview.
“He asked me,” Kennedy said of Fridman, “‘Are there vaccines that are safe and effective?’ And I said to him, ‘Some of the live virus vaccines are.’ Then I said, ‘There are no vaccines that are safe and effective.’ And I was going to continue, ‘for every person.’”
“Every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines,” Kennedy continued. “He interrupted me at that point. I have corrected it many times, including on national TV. You know about this, Sen. Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.”
But it hasn’t been debunked. And in fact, we’ve fact-checked Kennedy before on this very issue, when he falsely denied in a November 2023 “PBS NewsHour” interview that he ever said “no vaccine” is safe and effective during the podcast. In the PBS interview, he accused the interviewer of “making something up” and avoided answering whether he still thought there were no safe and effective vaccines.
In the hearing, Kennedy’s story about his podcast remarks has now shifted, but it’s difficult to reconcile his claim with what else was said on the podcast.
Fridman had asked Kennedy, “Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?”
“I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing,” Kennedy replied. “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”
Kennedy finished the latter sentence in full. He then was about to say something else — perhaps an “in fact” — when Fridman stopped him to say that those were “big words — what about polio?”
Given this additional time to expand on his comment, Kennedy proceeded to explain why, in his view, even the polio vaccine may have “caused more death than [it] averted.” (For that, Kennedy cited concerns about SV40 contamination of some polio vaccines in the 1960s possibly causing cancer. But there isn’t evidence that people receiving those vaccines were more likely to develop cancer.)
Comments on COVID-19 Ethnic Targeting
In a heated exchange, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado quizzed Kennedy on some of his past controversial and unsupported statements, including remarks during a press dinner in 2023, when he said, “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” His comments were made public by the New York Post.
At the time, Kennedy said on the platform now known as X that he “never, ever suggested” that the virus “was targeted to spare Jews,” but that he had “accurately pointed out” that “governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons” and a study “shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races.” He also iterated that he did not think “the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
During the hearing, when asked about those comments, Kennedy echoed this defense.
“I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted,” Kennedy replied. “I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH-published study.”
The study Kennedy cited, which did receive some NIH funding, was conducted by scientists at the Cleveland Clinic and published in BMC Medicine in 2020. As we have explained before, the results only “suggested possible associations” between certain gene variants and COVID-19 susceptibility, the study said. Even if validated, the effects would be small. An author of the paper also said the study’s findings “never supported” Kennedy’s claim. Racial disparities in COVID-19 cases and deaths have not been shown to be explained by genetic differences.
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Quick Take
President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order issued by former President Joe Biden aimed at finding new models for lowering drug costs. Trump’s action didn’t affect the caps on seniors’ drug costs or Medicare price negotiations that Biden signed into law. But social media posts have wrongly claimed otherwise.
Full Story
As we’ve written, in August 2022 then-President Joe Biden signed the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included several measures aimed at reducing prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries. The law required the federal government to negotiate the price of some Medicare drugs, capped monthly insulin copays at $35, capped seniors’ out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare’s prescription drugs and made vaccines free.
To further curb medical costs, in October 2022 Biden issued executive order 14087, “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans,” which directed the secretary of Health and Human Services to “consider whether to select for testing by the [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation] new health care payment and delivery models that would lower drug costs and promote access to innovative drug therapies for beneficiaries enrolled in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
Then-President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act with (from left) then-Sen. Joe Manchin, then-Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, then-House Majority Whip James Clyburn, Rep. Frank Pallone and Rep. Kathy Castor in the White House on Aug. 16, 2022. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump, in an effort to reverse health care policies supported by his predecessor, revoked Biden’s executive order.
Trump’s revocation of Biden’s 2022 order ends the testing of three new models to lower drug costs. But it doesn’t reverse the Inflation Reduction Act provisions, contrary to some social media posts. Experts also told us there isn’t much of a direct impact from Trump’s action, since the new models hadn’t been implemented yet. But social media posts have exaggerated the impact.
A Jan. 21 Facebook post wrongly claimed Trump “just reversed all the cost caps Biden negotiated for anyone on Medicare or Medicaid, over 120 MILLION Americans.”
An Instagram post claimed, “Trump has rolled back a Biden order that mandated negotiations to the lower cost of drugs for people using Medicare and Medicaid,” wrongly linking Trump’s action to price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act. “Medicare had just announced 15 more drugs whose prices they were going to bring down in negotiations with Big Pharma,” the post said.
Rescinding Biden’s order has not “reversed all the cost caps Biden negotiated” through the IRA. In fact, Trump’s action “is unlikely to change anything directly,” Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told us.
What Biden’s EO Did
Biden’s executive order in 2022 included several ways to possibly lower prescription drug costs beyond what was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, explained Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF, a nonpartisan healthy policy research organization.
“There were three ideas that were floated in that executive order,” Cubanski told us in a phone interview.
One idea was to create a list, referred to as the “$2 drug model,” which would give beneficiaries access to a set of low-cost generic drugs for common conditions at a flat copay of $2 available through Medicare Part B plans. “The idea was basically to encourage more utilization of these lower-cost medications,” Cubanski said.
A second model was “designed to facilitate greater access through Medicaid programs to expensive cell and gene therapies” through multistate purchasing agreements, Cubanski said. “They are right now really difficult to purchase on an individual need because of the expense of these medications.”
The third model was called the “accelerating clinical evidence model. It was engineered I think to encourage pharmaceutical companies who had had their drugs approved by the FDA … to move more quickly through the confirmatory clinical trials that are needed in order to get full approval from the FDA,” Cubanski explained. The accelerated approvals would make some drugs available to patients faster and at a lower price.
“The bottom line is that none of these models were actually in the implementation stage. They were in development,” she said. “So they weren’t off and running.”
Impact of Trump’s Action
On the one hand, Cubanski said, “you can look at Trump’s action to rescind Biden’s executive order as not really being all that meaningful, because they’re not pulling back on much that actively happened to lower drug costs under these three models. Savings haven’t yet materialized for people on Medicare or for states or for others who may have been able to benefit from these models.”
But, Cubanski added, “if President Trump is abandoning these efforts, I think that signals that he’s walking away from these specific efforts to reduce prescription drug prices.”
The president’s action, however, is “not so broad as to cancel out other provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that are part of laws and have already been implemented,” Cubanski said.
Dusetzina, the Vanderbilt health policy professor, said Trump’s revocation of Biden’s order may indicate Trump’s interest in “more efforts to roll back these policies in the future. But the changes to date aren’t likely to directly impact patients.”
Sources
Congress.gov. “H.R. 5376 — Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”
Cubanski, Juliette. Deputy director, Program on Medicare Policy, KFF. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 27 Jan 2025.
Dusetzina, Stacie B. Professor of health policy, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Email to FactCheck.org. 27 Jan 2025.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. Executive Order 14087. “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans.” Federal Register. 14 Oct 2022.
Lovelace, Berkeley Jr. “Trump reverses Biden policies on drug pricing and Obamacare.” NBC News. 21 Jan 2025.
Robertson, Lori. “Medicare Prescription Drug Provisions of Inflation Reduction Act.” FactCheck.org. Updated 18 Aug 2022.
White House. “Initial Rescissons of Harmful Executive Order and Actions.” Executive Order. 20 Jan 2025.
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In recent remarks to the press, President Donald Trump restated his intention to impose 25% tariffs on U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada as early as Feb. 1. His reasoning: “vast” illegal immigration and “massive” amounts of fentanyl coming to the U.S. from those countries.
But Trump drew a false equivalence between the two countries. In fact, the magnitude of the difference is enormous.
While illegal immigration through Canada has increased in recent years, it still is nowhere near the level of illegal immigration at the border with Mexico. Likewise, the amount of fentanyl seized by federal authorities at the northern border is tiny compared with the amount seized by officials along the southwest border.
“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people … to come in and fentanyl to come in,” Trump told a reporter who asked about the tariffs while Trump was signing executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 20.
The following day, in a press conference from the White House, Trump again explained why he may move forward with the tariffs.
“They’ve allowed, both of them, Canada very much so, they’ve allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn’t be here,” Trump said. “They could’ve stopped them and they didn’t. And they’ve killed 300,000 people last year, my opinion, have been destroyed by drugs, by fentanyl. The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”
Trump is exaggerating the number of fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S., and his Canada and Mexico comparison is off-base, too.
In this post, we take a quick look at the numbers to give some relative perspective.
Illegal Immigration
In fiscal year 2024, which ended on Sept. 30, there were more than 1.5 million Border Patrol apprehensions of people who illegally entered the U.S. through the border with Mexico, according to data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That figure was down from about 2 million apprehensions in fiscal year 2023 and more than 2.2 million in fiscal 2022. But the FY 2024 figure was still up significantly from the 400,651 apprehensions in FY 2020, the last full fiscal year before the end of Trump’s first term as president. (The figures include repeat border-crossers.)
Those figures also do not include an unknown number of so-called “gotaway” migrants who crossed the southwest border illegally and managed not to be captured by authorities.
However, at the northern border with Canada, the number of apprehensions of people making illegal border crossings has been much, much lower.
In FY 2024, Border Patrol apprehended 23,721 people who illegally crossed the northern border into the U.S. That’s about 1.5% of Border Patrol apprehensions nationwide. The northern border apprehensions were lower in 2023 (10,021) and lower still in 2022 (2,238), according to the most recent data available on the CBP website.
Throughout all of Trump’s first term as president, Border Patrol made about 14,000 total apprehensions of people crossing the northern border between legal ports of entry.
In a December 2022 analysis, the Bipartisan Policy Center said that increasing encounters at the border with Canada, including migrants crossing at legal ports of entry and between those ports, “indicate that migrants are seeking alternative routes to enter the U.S.” The growing numbers also have inspired lawmakers in the House and Senate to introduce legislation to strengthen security at the northern border.
But unlike the situation with Mexico, there have not been close to “millions,” as Trump suggested, illegally migrating through Canada, according to the CBP figures.
Fentanyl
The fentanyl numbers – at least the ones available – tell a similar story.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is many times stronger than morphine and heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The legal version of the drug is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a pain reliever and anesthetic, but the drug also is illegally manufactured and trafficked into the U.S.
A Border Patrol agent walks onto a frozen lake during a patrol on the lake that is split between Canadian territory and the U.S. on March 22, 2006, near Norton, Vermont. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
Illicit fentanyl coming into the U.S. has contributed to an increase in the annual number of overdose deaths, as the drug can be lethal in very small doses. In 2023, there were 72,776 deaths involving non-methadone synthetic opioids, which includes fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were not 300,000 fentanyl-related overdose deaths, as Trump suggested in his remarks.
While we don’t know the total amount of fentanyl that is smuggled into the country each year, because comprehensive data do not exist, the federal government does track how much of the drug gets seized from people entering the country at or between legal entry ports. Like illegal immigration, the seizing is overwhelmingly happening at the southwest – not northern – border.
CBP data show that in FY 2024 there were 21,148 pounds of fentanyl seized by officials at the southwest border – the vast majority of which was intercepted from people, largely American citizens, coming through legal ports of entry. That figure was down from the 26,718 pounds seized in FY 2023. The figures for both years are higher than the 14,104 pounds seized in FY 2022.
Meanwhile, there were 43 pounds seized from people crossing the northern border in FY 2024 — and most of it was captured by Border Patrol, not at legal ports. That was up from just 2 pounds confiscated in FY 2023 and 14 pounds seized in FY 2022.
For at least the last three full fiscal years, the amount of fentanyl captured coming from Canada has made up less than 1% of all fentanyl seized nationwide by the Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations.
“There is no indication at all that any significant amount of fentanyl is coming to the United States from Canada,” Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told us in an email.
“Seizures at the northern border found only very small amounts trafficked, essentially for personal use,” she said. “The fentanyl producing networks in Canada — atomized producers not belonging to Mexican or other large cartels, even though sometimes operating very large labs — are not connected to drug trafficking networks into the United States.”
During a December 2024 event in which she and other panelists discussed the results of a year-long Brookings research project on synthetic opioids in the U.S. and abroad, Felbab-Brown said that “Mexico is the predominant source of fentanyl for the United States.”
The Congressional Research Service, in a report updated in December, also said, “At present, most U.S.-destined illicit fentanyl appears to be produced clandestinely in Mexico, using chemical precursors from China.”
That doesn’t mean that fentanyl coming across the northern border could not become a larger problem in the future.
In a report last year, Canada’s foreign ministry said that “seizures of Canada-sourced fentanyl in places like the U.S. and Australia suggest that domestic production is likely exceeding domestic demand,” making Canada a “source (and transit) country for fentanyl to some markets.”
Jonathan Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, told us in an email that it is also his understanding that criminal organizations have increased their production capacity in Canada. And, he said, “there is no logical or physical reason” why they would not be able to produce and transport enough fentanyl to meet demand in the U.S.
“[B]ut I don’t know anyone serious who thinks it is happening at any such scale,” he told us.
The fact is, both migrants and fentanyl are crossing the northern border with Canada at significantly lower levels than at the southwest border with Mexico.
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With the stroke of a pen, President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 granted clemency — either a pardon or commuted sentence — to all of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But at an Oval Office signing event and in a Fox News interview, Trump made several misleading or false claims while explaining the reason for his decision.
Trump referred to those jailed for criminal offenses on Jan. 6 as “hostages,” but the roughly 400 people who were still incarcerated at the time of Trump’s inauguration had either pleaded guilty or were found guilty by a jury or judge of crimes on Jan. 6, many for violent felonies.
He said there were “very minor incidents” against law enforcement officers on Jan. 6. Whether the attacks on police were “minor” is a matter of opinion, but more than 140 police officers were assaulted, according to the Justice Department. We’ll lay out the facts.
Trump made the unfounded claim that “outside agitators” were responsible for the violence that day and said “obviously the FBI was involved.” A Department of Justice inspector general report found the FBI had no undercover agents embedded in the protest crowds that day, and while there were some FBI informants there, none of them were “directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts.”
He also dubiously claimed that in contrast to Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom received long prison sentences, “I see murderers in this country get two years, one year, and maybe no time.” On Fox News, Trump added, “You have murderers in Philadelphia, you have murderers in Los Angeles that don’t even get any time.” Pennsylvania and California have mandatory minimum sentences for first- and second-degree murder that exceed 15 years.
During the campaign and again in the weeks before his inauguration, Trump made clear that he intended to pardon many or even most of those charged in connection with Jan. 6 crimes. But in an interview with Time magazine in December, Trump said he was going to do a case-by-case assessment, and he drew a distinction between those who “were nonviolent” and those “that really were out of control.” That mirrors a comment Trump made during a CNN town hall in May 2023, when he said, “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.”
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images.
In a Fox News interview just a week before the inauguration, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, also drew a line for those who acted violently that day. “If you committed violence on that day,” Vance said, “obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
But in his proclamation, Trump granted clemency to everyone who was accused of committing a crime related to the Capitol riot, including the hundreds who had been convicted of violently assaulting law enforcement officials. He also directed the attorney general to dismiss any pending cases.
Trump’s clemency included a commutation of sentences for 14 people linked to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, extremist groups charged with planning the attack, many of whom had received yearslong prison sentences. While those convictions will remain, the commutation means they were released from prison.
Trump extended a blanket pardon to all of the other people — more than 1,500 in all — who were charged with offenses related to the riots, including for those whose indictments were pending. For any still being held in prison, Trump ordered their immediate release.
‘Hostages’ Were Convicted in Court
As he has on numerous occasions in the past, Trump referred to those incarcerated for their role in the Capitol riots as “hostages.” While the moniker is no doubt intended to suggest unfair treatment of those incarcerated for offenses related to Jan. 6, the fact is that among those who were still in prison, most either pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury or judge of various crimes related to the riots.
In its latest update, on the four-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riots, the Department of Justice reported that approximately 1,583 people had been charged criminally in federal court.
Most of them pleaded guilty to crimes related to Jan. 6., including 327 who pleaded guilty to felonies and 682 who pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, the Justice Department report said. Among those who pleaded guilty to felonies, 172 pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement, 69 pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon, and four pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy — conspiring to use force against the United States.
Another 221 of the Jan. 6 defendants were found guilty at trial, and 40 more were convicted “following an agreed-upon set of facts presented to and accepted by the Court.”
Of the 1,100 people convicted and sentenced, 667 were sentenced to some period of incarceration and an additional 145 received prison sentences but were permitted to serve their sentence in home detention. According to the Washington Post, about 400 of the Jan. 6 defendants were still incarcerated at the time Trump issued his clemency proclamation.
The Justice Department said that more than 140 police officers were assaulted and about $2.8 million worth of government property at the Capitol was damaged or stolen during the Capitol riots.
On CNN on Jan. 22, retired U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin called Trump’s “hostage” claim “nonsense.”
“These people are not hostages,” Scheindlin said. “They’re not heroes, they’re not political prisoners. They are criminals. They attacked people. They assaulted people. They committed property damage. They committed so many crimes, of course, the seditious conspiracy that you mentioned, and they were convicted and sentenced.”
Trump Dismisses Attacks on Police
In the Jan. 22 Fox News interview, when asked why people who committed violence against police officers got a pardon, Trump said they were in prison for a “long time” already and “some of those people with the police, true, but they were very minor incidents, OK.”
Trump said: “You know, they get built up by that a couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. … They were very minor incidents. And it was time.”
What constitutes “minor” is a matter of opinion. We’ll lay out of the facts, and readers can judge for themselves.
Trump supporters clash with police as people try to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images.
As we said, the Justice Department reported this month that 172 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement on Jan. 6, and 69 pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon. Those figures don’t include those who were convicted but hadn’t pleaded guilty. “During the siege of the Capitol that day, over 140 police officers were assaulted—including over 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and over 60 from the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department,” the DOJ said.
Injuries to the officers included cuts, bruises and sprains; concussions; rib fractures; irritated lungs; and a mild heart attack, according to statements by the police departments to media at the time. Several officers were hospitalized. “One officer lost the tip of his right index finger. Others were smashed in the head with baseball bats, flag poles and pipes. Another lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her into stairs as they tried to reach the Capitol steps during the assault on Jan. 6,” the New York Times wrote in a Feb. 11, 2021, story based on court documents, video footage and accounts from law enforcement officials.
“If you’re a cop and get into a fight, it may last five minutes, but these guys were in battle for four to five hours,” Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum, told the Times. “You would be hard-pressed to find another day in history like this,” he said, “when the police encountered this level of violence in one event.”
In a Jan. 21 story, NPR detailed some of the convictions for assault on law enforcement and other charges, linking to the court documents. One man, sentenced to 20 years in prison, had assaulted police officers for more than an hour, federal prosecutors said, “fighting with his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on, as weapons against the police.” Another, sentenced to 12 years, was convicted of “viciously assaulting police officers for hours” and “chok[ing] one officer to the ground,” prosecutors said.
Another man sentenced to 12 years in prison pleaded guilty and “admitted to assaulting MPD Officer Michael Fanone with a taser,” according to a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. Fanone testified to Congress that he thought he was going to be killed. “Because I was among a vastly outnumbered group of law enforcement officers protecting the Capitol and the people in it, I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of, and killed with, my own firearm as I heard chants of, ‘Kill him with his own gun!’” Fanone said in July 2021 testimony.
In another well-known incident, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges was crushed in a doorway in the Capitol by a man using a police shield to do so.
The DOJ said that among the weapons used or carried on the grounds of the Capitol, as proved in court cases, were: “firearms; OC spray; tasers; edged weapons, including a sword, axes, hatchets, and knives; and makeshift weapons, such as destroyed office furniture, fencing, bike racks, stolen riot shields, baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC piping, and reinforced knuckle gloves.”
As we’ve written, no police officers died at the scene on Jan. 6. However, USCP Officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes nearly eight hours after being sprayed with a chemical irritant during the riot. The Washington, D.C., medical examiner told the Washington Post that Sicknick died of natural causes, but “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”
Four other police officers committed suicide in the days and months after the riot. One of them, D.C. Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, was injured in the riot, and “wasn’t the same” in the days after, according to his wife. Smith shot himself on the way to work eight days after Jan. 6. His suicide was declared a “line-of-duty death” by the D.C. Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board.
In a Jan. 21 statement, the DC Police Union said it “wishes to express its dismay over the recent pardons granted to individuals convicted of assaulting police officers during the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol Building. As an organization that represents the interests of the 3,000 brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities, our stance is clear — anyone who assaults a law enforcement officer should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, without exception.”
No Evidence of ‘Outside Agitators’
At the signing ceremony, Trump suggested “outside agitators” were responsible for instigating some of the “aggressive behavior,” though there’s no evidence of that. And he distorted the facts in claiming that the “FBI was involved.”
“These people have been destroyed,” Trump said of those charged with offenses related to Jan. 6. “What they’ve done to these people is outrageous. There’s rarely been anything like it in history, in the history of our country. And even people that were aggressive, and in many cases, I believe they happen to be outside agitators. What do I know? But I think they were, I think there were outside agitators. There were outside agitators. And obviously the FBI was involved, because [FBI Director Christopher] Wray admitted the FBI was. Didn’t he say 23 people, indirectly or directly were involved? And it was then 26? That’s a lot of people.”
Trump is referring to an investigation report released in December by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office that found there were 26 “confidential human sources” used by the FBI who were in Washington, D.C., in connection with the events of Jan. 6. Those are people who provide the FBI with “information and insights about the inner workings of criminal, terrorist, and espionage networks that otherwise would be unavailable.” They are not FBI employees.
Furthermore, the report said, “Our review found that no FBI CHS [confidential human source] was authorized to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
Of the 26 FBI informants who were there that day, the investigation found four entered the Capitol and 13 entered the restricted area outside the Capitol but did not go inside the building. None of them were prosecuted. According to a footnote in the report, the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office said it “generally has not charged those individuals whose only crime on January 6, 2021 was to enter the restricted grounds surrounding the Capitol, which has resulted in the Office declining to charge hundreds of individuals; and we have treated the CHSs consistent with this approach.”
Only three of the FBI informants were actually tasked by the FBI to be in Washington, D.C., that day, and the rest were there “on their own initiative,” the report said. Ten of them had not even let their FBI contacts know they would be there that day.
Also, contrary to Trump’s claim that “the FBI was involved” — either directly or indirectly — with the events of Jan. 6, the report stated, “We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6.”
Steven D’Antuono, then FBI Washington field office head, told the inspector general’s office that FBI policy does not allow undercover FBI employees at “First Amendment-protected events absent some investigative authority,” and the assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office’s counterterrorism division told investigators that he “denied a request from an FBI office to have an undercover employee engage in investigative activity on January 6.”
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12, 2023, Wray, then the FBI director, forcefully denied the FBI had played any role in instigating protesters that day.
“I will say this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hard working, dedicated men and women,” Wray said.
Trump has not provided any evidence to contradict that, and his comments echo unfounded claims pushed by other conservatives.
False Comparison with Murder Charges
At the signing ceremony, Trump made the dubious claim that while many Jan. 6 defendants have “been in jail for a long time already … I see murderers in this country get two years, one year, and maybe no time.” In his Fox News interview, Trump added, “You have murderers in Philadelphia. You have murderers in Los Angeles that don’t even get any time. They don’t even collect them and they know they’re there to be collected.”
According to the Justice Department, people convicted of murder in 2018 were sentenced to an average of about 50 years in state prisons.
In terms of time served, on average, people convicted of murder had spent about 18 years in prison before they were released in 2018, also according to Department of Justice data. That year, a little less than 6% of people convicted of murder served two or fewer years in prison before they were released (less than 2% served less than six months in prison). But those statistics come with some caveats.
The figures include inmates who died in prison. Specifically, 9% of those who served less than a year had died in prison. Moreover, while the statistics include prison time served, they do not include the time spent in jail awaiting trial.
“My guess is most of those who serve very short sentences in prison had already served a large amount of time in jail prior to their conviction and got credit for that,” John Pfaff, a professor at Fordam Law School and an expert in sentencing law, told us via email. In other words, he said, “if the trial takes 8 years, and the person gets 10, they may be released after two years in prison, on the grounds that they served the first 8 during their pre-trial lockup in jail.”
Trump’s claim is also dubious given that most states have mandatory minimum sentences for murder that far exceed two years in prison. Consider Pennsylvania and California, since Trump claimed that in Philadelphia and Los Angeles “you have murderers … that don’t even get any time.”
According to state law in California, first-degree murder carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. For second-degree murder, the minimum prison sentence is 15 years.
In Pennsylvania, the minimum sentence for first- and second-degree murder is life in prison. State law sets no statutory minimum prison sentence for third-degree murder, saying only that it cannot be more than 40 years. Third-degree murder is defined as: “All other kinds of murder” that aren’t first or second degree and amounts to “a killing committed with malice aforethought but without the specific intent to kill,” according to the Pennsylvania law firm Latoison Law.
“So Trump’s claim of no-time is conceptually true [in cases of third degree murder in Pennsylvania], but the guideline minimum is 6 years, which means no parole until that 6-yr mark is hit (and no guarantee at that),” Pfaff said.
A searchable online tool provided by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing suggests that just two people convicted of third-degree murder between 2015 and 2018 received a sentence of probation, less than 1% of the cases.
In other words, Pfaff said, it is “vanishingly rare.”
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Quick Take
In his final hours as president, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for House committee members who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the police officers who testified before that committee. Online posts make an unfounded claim that Biden pardoned the officer who shot and killed protester Ashli Babbitt. The officer, who was cleared of wrongdoing, wasn’t among those who testified.
Full Story
As the presidential transition took place this week, both former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump issued pardons concerning the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Biden issued an Executive Grant of Clemency on Jan. 19 to preemptively pardon the members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, the committee’s staff, and the officers of the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Capitol Police who testified before the committee.
In a statement, Biden said he granted the unconditional pardon for the committee members, staff and witnesses because “those who perpetrated the January 6th attack” have tried to “seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions.”
Biden said: “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
Among the police officers who testified before the committee were Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, according to news reports at the time and the committee’s report. Biden’s pardon doesn’t give specific names, but says that the pardon is for “the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee.”
But social media posts that went up the day after Biden issued the preemptive pardonsclaim with no evidence that Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed protester Ashli Babbitt, was pardoned by Biden. Byrd shot Babbitt when protesters “were forcing their way toward the House Chamber where Members of Congress were sheltering in place,” according to a Jan. 7 statement from then-U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund.
A Jan. 20 Facebook post by commentator Christina Aguayo claimed, “#BreakingNews Biden Has pardoned Michael Byrd, Byrd Shot & KILLED Ashli Babbitt…. The pardon applies to every police officer interviewed by the J6 Committee for ALL crimes committed before, on, or after J6.” The post shows photos of Babbitt and Byrd.
A similar post on X on Jan. 20 said, “Ashli Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who served this country for 12+ years and won awards for her Iraq service. Ashli was 5’2″, 115 pounds, unarmed. Lt. MICHAEL BYRD shot her in the neck. Biden just pardoned him.”
Contrary to the claims on social media, there is no evidence that Biden pardoned Byrd or that Byrd testified before the House committee on the Jan. 6 attack. Byrd is not mentioned in the select committee’s final report, and he isn’t among those in the report’s “full list” of committee witnesses.
The Shooting of Ashli Babbitt
On Jan. 6, 2021, rioters descended on the U.S. Capitol with the intention of disrupting a joint session of Congress that was certifying the 2020 election results. During the attack on the Capitol, more than 140 police officers were assaulted, and government property was destroyed. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 1,583 people were charged with crimes associated with the attack, including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement,” entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon, theft of government property, and seditious activity.
In an August 2021 interview with NBC News, Byrd described his actions during the Jan. 6 attack. He was an officer in charge of defending the House of Representatives chamber, where 60 to 80 representatives were taking cover. When rioters broke through the glass door outside the Speaker’s Lobby, which leads to the House chamber, Babbitt attempted to climb through the door before Byrd shot her in the shoulder. Babbitt, a Trump supporter, died from her injuries.
In April 2021, the Department of Justice said it would not pursue criminal charges against Byrd and closed its investigation into Babbitt’s death. The DOJ said, “Specifically, the investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber.”
People place flowers and candles for Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot and killed in the U.S Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
The U.S. Capitol Police released a statement on Aug. 23, 2021, following an internal investigation that found Byrd’s “conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.”
But Trump has claimed Babbitt’s shooting was unwarranted, and he has been critical of Byrd’s actions. Trump said on Truth Social in 2023 that Byrd “was not a hero but a COWARD, who wanted to show how tough he was,” adding, “ASHLI BABBITT WAS MURDERED!!!”
During his first day in office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of individuals convicted of offenses “related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to time served as of January 20, 2025.” The pardons he issued on Jan. 20 apply to more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged, and he commuted the sentences of 14 individuals.
In January 2024, Babbitt’s family filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California seeking $30 million over her death, which the government has moved to dismiss.
Sources
Biden, Joseph R., Jr. “Executive Grant of Clemency.” 19 Jan 2025.
Cooper, Jonathan J. “Who does Trump see as ‘enemies from within’?” Associated Press. 26 Oct 2024.
Dixon, Matt, Henry J. Gomez and Garrett Hakke. “Trump’s last-minute decision to go big on Jan. 6 pardons took many allies by surprise.” NBC News. 22 Jan 2024.
Feldman, Brian. “4 Officers Who Responded to Capitol Riot Will Deliver 1st Testimonies to New Panel.” NPR. 27 July 2021.
Lee, Ella. “Trial in Ashli Babbitt family’s lawsuit over Jan. 6 death set for 2026.” The Hill. 20 Sep 2024.
Lee, Jazmin. “Trump’s Expansive Jan. 6 Pardons a Last-Minute Decision.” NBC News. 19 Jan 2025.
“Donald Trump Press Conference Announcement Transcript: Sues Facebook, Twitter, Google Over Censorship Claims.” Rev. 7 Jul 2021.
Schapiro, Rich, Anna Schecter and Chelsea Damberg. “Officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during Capitol riot breaks silence: ‘I saved countless lives.’” NBC News. 26 Aug 2021.
Shabad, Rebecca. “Biden issues pre-emptive pardons for Jan. 6 committee and witnesses, Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley.” NBC News. 20 Jan 2025.
Sonmez, Felicia. “Trump says ‘there was no reason’ for officer to shoot rioter who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.” Washington Post. 7 Jul 2021.
Stark, Matt. “Ashli Babbitt’s Mother Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit Over Capitol Shooting.” CBS News. 19 Jan 2025.
U.S. Capitol Police. “Statement of Steven Sund, Chief of Police, Regarding the Events of January 6, 2021.” Press release. 7 Jan 2021.
U.S. Capitol Police. “USCP Completes Internal Investigation of January 6 Officer-Involved Shooting.” 23 Aug 2021.
U.S. Department of Justice. “Department of Justice Closes Investigation into Death of Ashli Babbitt.” United States Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia. 14 Apr 2023.
U.S. Department of Justice. “Pardons Granted by President Joe Biden (2021-Present).” Office of the Pardon Attorney. Accessed 23 Jan 2025.
White House. “Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” 20 Jan 2025.
Wise, Alana. “What You Need To Know About The Officers Testifying Before Jan. 6 Committee.” NPR. 27 Jul 2021.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Summary
In a half-hour inaugural address, newly sworn-in President Donald Trump twisted some facts while painting the last few years under his predecessor, Joe Biden, as a time of “decline” and promising that “the golden age of America begins right now.”
We also flagged a few falsehoods in Trump’s subsequent remarks to supporters in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol.
Trump said “we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” But Trump’s proposed tariffs would be paid by U.S. importers — not foreign nations — who often pass such costs on to U.S. consumers through higher prices on products.
He falsely stated that the U.S. recently experienced “record inflation” under the Biden administration. Consumer prices have increased at faster rates during multiple other periods in U.S. history.
Trump wrongly claimed that 38,000 American lives were lost during construction of the Panama Canal and that China now operates the canal. A Hong Kong-based company manages ports at either end of the canal.
Citing North Carolina and other states post-Hurricane Helene, Trump misleadingly claimed that the federal government “can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency.” FEMA was actively involved in providing food, water and other supplies, offering more than $344 million in assistance within weeks of the disaster.
He said the U.S. has “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth,” but several other countries have larger estimated oil and natural gas reserves than the U.S.
Trump blamed high inflation on “massive overspending and escalating energy prices.” But his claim oversimplifies the causes of inflation, which increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The president said he will “revoke the electric vehicle mandate” and allow people “to buy the car of your choice.” But there is no “mandate” on electric vehicles. The Biden administration finalized rules that require automakers to reduce tailpipe emissions and raise fuel efficiency standards beginning in 2027, but carmakers are free to decide how to comply.
Trump said, “We are going to bring law and order back to our cities.” It’s worth noting that violent crime has gone down slightly since he left office, according to data from the FBI and other sources.
Trump referred to his well-worn claim that many immigrants crossing the border illegally are from “prisons and mental institutions.” And in remarks after his address, he suggested that “the jails of every country in the world, virtually, [are] being deposited into the United States.” There is no evidence to support that.
In his post-address remarks, the president continued to insist the 2020 election was “totally rigged.” But as we have written repeatedly, there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump also falsely claimed that the House select committee that looked into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack “destroyed all the evidence” from its investigation. The committee released an 800-plus page report and additional documentation presenting and analyzing the evidence about what happened that day.
He made the false claim that he “offered 10,000 [National Guard] soldiers” to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrongly adding that she “admitted it on tape.”
Analysis
Tariffs
After promising to “immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries,” Trump then said “we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
But, as we’ve written, Trump’s proposals to increase tariffs on foreign products imported into the U.S. would not be a tax on other nations. Instead, importers in the U.S. would pay the tariffs in the form of customs duties, which are collected at ports of entry by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
And then those increased costs, according to economists, are often passed on to U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices.
No ‘Record Inflation’ Under Biden
Trump incorrectly claimed that the U.S. recently experienced “what was record inflation” under the Biden administration. As we’ve written before, the largest 12-month increase in the Consumer Price Index occurred from June 1919 to June 1920, when the CPI rose 23.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in a 2014 publication marking the 100th anniversary of the agency’s tracking price changes.
Trump speaks after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20. Photo by Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images.
Under Biden, the biggest price increase occurred during the 12-month period ending in June 2022, when the CPI rose 9.1%. The BLS said it was the biggest increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.
Inflation has slowed since then. According to the BLS, the CPI has increased by 2.9% in the last 12 months ending in December.
Overall, the CPI increased by 21% under the Biden administration — an average of 5.3% in each of his four years in office.
This is nowhere close to the largest increase in consumer prices under a single presidential term. For example, the CPI increased by 47.2%, or 11.8% per year, under the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981.
By comparison, the CPI rose 7.5% under Trump in his first term — an average of 1.9% per year in office.
Panama Canal
As he has numerous times in recent months, Trump repeated his intent for the U.S. to take back control of the Panama Canal, which he said was “foolishly given” to Panama. But in making his case for the move, Trump manipulated some facts.
“The United States, I mean think of this, spent more money than ever spent on a project before, and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal,” Trump said. “We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made. And Panama’s promise to us has been broken. The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form, and that includes the United States Navy. And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal, and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
To start, Trump severely overstated the number of American lives lost building the canal. About 7,600 people died during the more than decade-long American phase of the construction of the Panama Canal, which started in 1904, according to Noel Maurer, an associate professor of international affairs and international business at George Washington University, and co-author of the book, “The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal.”
Most of those deaths weren’t Americans, Maurer told us via email. “Rather, about two-thirds of them were either West Indian (mostly from Barbados), and a smaller unknown share of Spanish laborers who were hired at the start of construction.” In total, fewer than 1,000 Americans died due to accident or infectious disease during the canal’s construction phase, he said.
As for whether the U.S. is being overcharged, the Panama Canal Treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 — in which the U.S. relinquished control of the canal to Panama in 2000 and guaranteed its neutrality — states: “Tolls and other charges for transit and ancillary services shall be just, reasonable, equitable and consistent with the principles of international law.”
According to Maurer, tolls are now running around 2.5 times higher than when the U.S. operated the canal, after adjusting for inflation.
“Is that exorbitant?” Maurer said. “It’s not crazy to think so, especially given how much revenue is generated by American exports.”
Based on Panamanian-provided statistics, American exporters and domestic users paid Panama about $2 billion in 2023, or 59% of all canal revenue, Maurer said. Trump’s comment about American ships being “severely overcharged and not treated fairly” could leave the false impression that U.S. vessels are charged higher prices than those from other countries.
“The U.S. gets no special deal,” Maurer said, though the Panama Canal treaty “allows U.S. government vessels to jump the queue to pass through the Canal, meaning that the U.S. Navy can go through whenever it wants, pushing commercial traffic out of the way. But Navy ships have to pay tolls just like everyone else.”
The leader of the Panama Canal Authority says there are no preferential rates for any country. “Rules are rules and there are no exceptions,” Ricaurte Vásquez Morales told the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 8. “We cannot discriminate for the Chinese, or the Americans, or anyone else. This will violate the neutrality treaty, international law and it will lead to chaos.”
As for Trump’s claim that “China is operating the Panama Canal,” that’s not accurate. But a Hong Kong-based company manages ports at either end of the canal, which has raised concerns among some in the U.S., including the head of U.S. Southern Command who last year warned Congress the ports could be used by the Chinese military as “points of future multi-domain access.”
Ryan C. Berg, the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times earlier this month that China could use shipping data and maritime operations to gather intelligence on the U.S.
“China exercises, or could exercise, a certain element of control even absent some military conflagration,” Berg said. “I think there is reason to be worried.”
Nonetheless, Maurer told us, Panama continues to operate the Panama Canal.
“I understand why this might worry some Americans, but as long as Panama remains allied to the United States it means nothing,” Maurer said. “Chinese investments in Panama are subject to Panamanian law.” And, he said, “none of this has anything to do with the management of the Panama Canal itself.”
“The accusations that China is running the Canal are unfounded,” Vásquez Morales, leader of the Panama Canal Authority, told the Wall Street Journal. “China has no involvement whatsoever in our operations.”
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, also disputed Trump’s claim saying, “There is absolutely no Chinese interference or participation in anything that has to do with the Panama Canal.”
Hurricane Relief
Echoing false and misleading claims he has previously made, Trump misleadingly suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had taken little or no action following Hurricane Helene’s devastation of many southeastern states at the end of September.
“Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina,” he said. “They’ve been treated so badly. And other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago.”
“Or more recently, Los Angeles, where we’re watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense,” Trump continued. “Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change.”
FEMA, however, did respond to both disasters — and in December, Biden signed a spending bill that avoided a government shutdown and provides $100 billion in disaster aid, including $29 billion for FEMA (Biden had requested $40 billion).
In the case of Hurricane Helene, more than 1,000 FEMA staff were on the ground in North Carolina alone. Within about two weeks, the agency had shipped some 17 million meals and 14 million liters of water and delivered more than $344 million in disaster assistance for 375,000 households across the South.
As of mid-October, FEMA had approved $441 million to storm survivors and more than $349 million for community rebuilding projects. And as of Nov. 7, the agency’s National Flood Insurance Program had paid out about $830 million to policyholders. Last month, FEMA issued $292 million in grants to reimburse local governments and others in North Carolina for recovery efforts.
For the L.A. wildfires, FEMA is providing housing and other disaster aid assistance, with some $31 million approved as of Jan. 20, according to an agency website.
A week ago, an X account managed by Trump’s campaign may have left the impression that victims of the L.A. wildfires would be eligible for just a single $770 government payment. As before, when Trump made a similar claim about $750 for Hurricane Helene survivors, the emergency payment is just one form of aid available — not the totality of the government’s help.
During the campaign, Trump falsely alleged that following Hurricane Helene, the Biden administration did not send help or helicopters for days — despite abundant evidence to the contrary. He also incorrectly claimed that the Biden administration “stole” hurricane recovery funds and spent the money on housing for people in the U.S. illegally. There’s no evidence any disaster relief money went “missing.”
Oil and Gas Drilling
Trump claimed that the U.S. has “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth,” adding that “we are going to use it.” But as we’ve written, several other countries rank above the U.S. when it comes to their estimated oil and natural gas reserves.
An article by energy experts at the Brookings Institution notes that while “estimating reserves is an inexact science and methodologies differ,” the U.S. generally ranks between ninth and 11th in the world in the size of its crude oil reserves. The U.S. ranks higher when it comes to natural gas, with the fourth or fifth largest reserves of any nation.
For context on the nation’s production, 2023 was the sixth straight year the U.S. has led the world in crude oil production, according to the Energy Information Administration. Crude oil production increased from an average of 9.36 million barrels a day in 2017 to 11.3 million barrels in 2020, during Trump’s first term. Under Biden, crude oil production hit a record 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average in 2024, and EIA expects 2025 production to be another record. The U.S. is also the largest producer of natural gas.
Causes of Inflation
Trump said, “The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill.”
Trump and congressional Republicans have blamed the stimulus spending by the Biden administration in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic for the high inflation earlier in Biden’s term. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which became law in March 2021 and included $1,400 checks to most Americans, contributed to inflation, economists say. That injection of cash into the economy came after two other pandemic-related stimulus laws enacted under Trump.
But the pandemic relief spending was not the primary factor leading to inflation, as we’ve written. The root of the problem was the pandemic itself, which led to economic shutdowns, supply shortages, and increased consumer spending and bank lending — all of which contributed to the high inflation rate during Biden’s administration. Also, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resulting in western sanctions on Russian oil, pushed up oil prices, exacerbating high inflation, experts say.
In addition, Trump’s plan to “drill, baby, drill” may not bring down prices as much as he has claimed. During the campaign, Trump promised to “cut energy prices in half within 12 months.”
Experts told us that increasing the domestic supply of oil and natural gas could lower prices at least for a short time. But oil and gas companies would have to agree to increasing the supply, and they wouldn’t be inclined to produce more for lower profits.
Another expert told NPR that even if U.S. companies heeded Trump’s wish to produce more energy, oil producers in other countries would respond to that increased supply, and prices wouldn’t decline very much.
EVs and ‘Green New Deal’
Trump said he “will end the Green New Deal” and “revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry” and allowing people “to buy the car of your choice.”
Yet, as we’ve written before, there is no “mandate” for electric vehicles and no regulation is forcing people to buy EVs over conventional gas-powered cars.
In 2024, the Biden administration finalized environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions and other pollutants from cars and trucks, beginning with model year 2027 vehicles. These strong regulations are expected to significantly boost the number of EVs on the road. However, automakers retain flexibility in how they meet these standards and are not mandated to exclusively produce EVs.
The Environmental Protection Agency projected that new EV sales could be 30% to 56% of car sales in 2032 following the new regulations. As we’ve mentioned, after the EPA moderated the pace of the implementation of the standards, automakers’ reactions have been positive.
As for the Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution introduced by Democrats in 2019 to tackle climate change, it is not clear what Trump means when claiming he will end it.
The resolution, which was blocked by Republicans in the Senate, has become a catchall phrase to refer to climate action. As we wrote, during the campaign, Trump rebranded the Inflation Reduction Act and other efforts to fight climate change as the “green new scam.” The IRA includes several climate-related provisions, such as funding for renewable energy projects and tax credits that could reduce emissions from several sectors, as we’ve explained.
‘Law and Order’
Trump said, “We are going to bring law and order back to our cities,” an echo of his frequent campaign claims about violent crime. It’s worth noting that violent crime has gone down slightly since he left office, according to data from the FBI and other sources.
As we wrote in “What Trump Inherits, Part 2,” FBI crime statistics released in September showed declines in 2023 compared with the previous year and compared with 2020, Trump’s last year in office, in the number and rate per 100,000 population for violent crime, murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
The number of violent crimes declined 4.3% from 2020 to 2023, and the number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughter went down 14.5%. (See table 1 after downloading CIUS Estimations for FBI data for 2004 through 2023.)
In most major cities, the drop in homicides, rape, robbery and aggravated assault continued through September, according to the most recent preliminary data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Homicides went down 17.8% in 69 cities in the first nine months of 2024, compared with the same time period in 2023. Declines occurred in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, four of the five largest cities. Murders also went down in New York, the largest U.S. city, which wasn’t included in that report, by 3.6% for the full year in 2024 compared with 2023, according to the city’s police department.
As we’ve reported, in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a spike in violent crime, due to increases in murders and aggravated assaults. Experts have said that the economic impact of the pandemic was one factor behind the increase.
‘Prisons and Mental Institutions’
Trump claimed that the outgoing administration “provide[s] sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.” Shortly after his inaugural address, in remarks to supporters, Trump said that he had eschewed a focus on the economy during his campaign in favor of a focus on immigration, saying, “We don’t want the jails of every country in the world, virtually, being deposited into the United States.”
These comments are similar to Trump’s frequent unsupported claim that countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions and sending those people to the U.S. We’ve written several times about it, and we included the claim in our list of whoppers for 2023.
“It’s hard to prove a negative — nobody’s writing a report saying ‘Ecuador is not opening its mental institutions’ — but what I can say is that I work full-time on migration, am on many coalition mailing lists, correspond constantly with partners in the region, and scan 300+ RSS feeds and Twitter lists of press outlets and activists region wide, and I have not seen a single report indicating that this is happening,” Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, told us in March 2023 when we wrote about these claims.
“As far as I can tell, it’s a total fabrication,” Isacson said.
To give a sense of how many individuals with criminal histories have been recorded trying to enter the country illegally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered about 17,000 criminal non-citizens in fiscal year 2024 trying to enter between legal ports of entry compared with a total of about 1.6 million apprehensions in the same time period.
But there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim or suggestion of countries emptying their jails. “We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,” Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told us when we specifically looked at Venezuela, a country Trump often mentions.
2020 Election
In his remarks in Emancipation Hall following his inaugural address, Trump continued to make the baseless claim that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was “totally rigged.”
Trump delivers remarks in Emancipation Hall during inauguration ceremonies at the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Bonnie Cash/pool/AFP via Getty Images.
In comments since the 2020 election, Trump has wrongly made accusations of voting machines changing votes in favor of Biden, vote tampering by election officials and dead people voting, among other instances of voter fraud that he insists swung the election against him.
And on Inauguration Day, 2025, Trump again raised the issue.
“2020, by the way, that election was totally rigged,” Trump said. “It was a rigged election.”
But as we have written, numerous state and federal judges rejected Trump’s claims, saying the Trump legal team provided no evidence of fraud, and election security officials labeled it “the most secure in American history.”
William Barr, who served as the attorney general under Trump, told a House committee in testimony released June 13, 2022: “In my opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud, and I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that.”
Testimony collected by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol also revealed that after the election, top White House aides and other Justice Department officials repeatedly told Trump there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
Jan. 6 Committee Evidence
In his remarks to supporters, Trump again claimed without evidence that the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol “destroyed all the evidence” and “deleted everything.” “There’s virtually nothing left,” Trump falsely said.
We’ve previously written about claims, first made by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, that the Jan. 6 committee failed to adequately preserve some documents, data and video depositions. But unlike Trump, Loudermilk did not claim that all, or most, evidence from the investigation was deleted or not preserved.
In fact, much of the committee’s work was published in its nearly 850-page report that was made public. The documentation included more than 140 publicly released transcripts and documents.
In addition, in a letter to Loudermilk on July 7, 2023, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, reported that more than a million records had been prepared for publication and archiving in coordination with several governmental offices, including the National Archives and Records Administration and the Committee on House Administration. But, in a footnote to that letter, Thompson did explain that “the Select Committee did not archive temporary committee records that were not elevated by the Committee’s actions, such as use in hearings or official publications, or those that did not further its investigative activities.”
National Guard Troops
Trump repeated his false claim that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, rebuffed his offer of thousands of National Guard soldiers to defend the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I offered her 10,000 soldiers,” Trump said of Pelosi in his remarks to supporters. “She knows it. She admitted it on tape that her daughter made.”
We’ve written before that the House Jan. 6 committee found “no evidence” of Trump making any such offer to Pelosi. In fact, the committee noted that then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller said there was “no direct … order from the president” to have 10,000 National Guard troops on standby.
Furthermore, Pelosi never “admitted … on tape” that Trump offered any number of National Guard soldiers. In a video that her daughter recorded on Jan. 6, 2021, Pelosi, who was in a car at the time, can be seen questioning the security plans and taking some responsibility for the inadequate security. But she didn’t say anything about Trump offering 10,000 National Guard troops for the Capitol.
In early 2021, a spokesperson for Pelosi told the Washington Post that Trump’s initial claim that she rejected 10,000 troops was “completely made up.”
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This is what President Donald Trump inherits as he reclaims control of the White House:
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.
Inflation-adjusted wages that have been slowly rising in recent months, but are still below their high point in May 2020, early in the pandemic, when Trump was president.
Violent crime that is on the decline and slightly lower than in 2020, his last year in office.
Two consecutive years of record-setting crude oil production that continues to outpace all other nations.
A southern border where apprehensions of immigrants crossing illegally have plummeted in recent months, dropping from historical highs to levels below the final months of Trump’s first term.
An ever-rising federal debt and annual deficits that haven’t been south of $1 trillion since 2019 – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic — with no relief in sight.
A stock market that has made huge gains since he was last president.
A nation with a larger percentage of its people covered by health insurance than when he left office.
Economic Growth
During the campaign, Trump declared the U.S. economy “a total disaster,” promising to “save our economy.” To the contrary, Trump takes over a country that has rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and experienced economic growth every year since he left office.
Despite persistent concerns that high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s policy of raising interest rates to slow inflation would trigger a recession, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew 2.9% in 2023, 2.5% in 2022 and 6.5% in 2021, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Most recently, the BEA estimated that the economy grew at an annual rate of 3.1% in the third quarter of 2024. The BEA will release its first estimate for the fourth quarter and the full year on Jan. 30.
Jobs and Unemployment
As Trump takes office the economy is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month, and the unemployment rate is well below the historical norm. There are more job openings than there are unemployed job seekers.
Employment — Although the exact size of recent job gains is uncertain, Trump inherits an economy with roughly 16 million more jobs than when he left. The total is more than 6 million above the high point of his first term, before the pandemic.
The uncertainty won’t be cleared up until February, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be making unusually large adjustments to the monthly job figures for 2024 and earlier as part of its annual “benchmarking” process. That’s the BLS practice of refining data from its monthly surveys, using additional information that comes in more slowly or less often, including records of unemployment insurance coverage.
That said, the most recent BLS monthly report put nonfarm employment at 159,536,000 as of December, roughly one month before Trump is taking office. That’s 16.6 million more than when he left, and 7.2 million above the peak of employment under Trump in February 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic forced mass layoffs. BLS said the gain in December alone was 256,000, a report the Wall Street Journal said “blew past expectations.”
Again, job totals will be reduced with next month’s BLS report. How much? All we can say for now is that a preliminary estimate that the BLS issued in August said its March 2024 figure for total nonfarm employment will eventually be reduced by 818,000 or about 0.5%, a large adjustment. If we subtract the same amount from the December job level — the best we can do for now — we get a job gain since Trump’s first term ended of 15.8 million jobs, and a gain of 6.4 million since the pre-pandemic peak.
Unemployment — The unemployment rate stood at 4.1% last month — well below the historical norm of 5.5%, which is the median rate for all months since 1948. It is also very close to the 3.9% median rate for all the months of Trump’s first term prior to the pandemic.
The number of people officially listed as unemployed stood at just under 6.9 million in December. That’s less than the 8.1 million job openings that existed on the last day of November, according to the most recent BLS report.
Wages and Inflation
CPI – Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce inflation, which has come down significantly since its peak under outgoing President Joe Biden in June 2022. But it has been on the rise again in recent months.
Biden shakes hands with Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 13. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.
For the 12-month period ending in June 2022, the Consumer Price Index increased 9.1% – “the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981,” the BLS said at the time.
The annual CPI has been below 3% for the past six months, reaching a low during that time of 2.4% in September.
But for the most recent 12 months, ending in December, the CPI rose 2.9%, the BLS announced Jan. 15. That’s the highest it has been since the 12-month period ending in July. The December increase was driven by high energy prices, BLS said.
Jason Furman, a Harvard economic policy professor and former Obama administration economist, said in an X thread that the December figure was “somewhat reassuring” because it “came in below expectations.” But he also noted that inflation is “still a touch on the high side” and that the latest figure “continues to flag concern about the underlying persistence.”
Wages – While inflation has moderated over the past two years, inflation-adjusted wages have slowly started to rise again.
The average weekly earnings of all private workers, adjusted for inflation, rose less than 1% during the 12 months ending in December. But real wages are still down 4.4% from their peak under Trump in May 2020, although economists told us last year that the pandemic distorted real wage data because many low-wage workers temporarily left the workforce in 2020, artificially driving measures of real wages upward.
Poverty — Trump inherits a country with tens of millions of people living in poverty, regardless of how it is measured.
By the official poverty measure, which was released by the Census Bureau in September, there were 36.8 million Americans below the poverty line in 2023 – 11.1% of the U.S. population. The number of people living in poverty in 2023 was “not statistically different from 2022,” the bureau said.
Poverty is even higher when measured by the Census Bureau’s alternative estimate known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM. By that measure, which is favored by some economists, 42.8 million Americans were living in poverty in 2023. The supplemental poverty rate was 12.9% in 2023 — up from 9.2% in 2020, when government assistance programs were temporarily expanded in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The SPM was designed “to more accurately assess the needs and resources of families,” according to a 2022 report by the Congressional Research Service.
The official measure sets income thresholds for poverty based on “a minimum food diet in 1963” multiplied by three and updated annually for inflation, while the SPM sets thresholds based on recent costs of “food, clothing, shelter, utilities, telephone and internet,” according to the Census Bureau. And, unlike the SPM, the official poverty measure does not consider differences in the cost of living based on location.
As for resources, the Census Bureau said the official poverty measure includes pre-tax cash, but “does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps).” In contrast, the SPM uses after-tax income and noncash government benefits, the CRS report said.
In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, the Census Bureau’s official poverty rate was 11.5% with an estimated 37.5 million people living below the poverty line.
Poverty figures for 2024 won’t be available until September.
Crime
Contrary to his false campaign claims about rising crime, Trump reassumes control at a time when violent crime is on the decline and slightly lower than when he left office.
FBI crime statistics released in September showed declines in 2023 compared with the previous year and compared with 2020, when Trump was in office, in the number and rate per 100,000 population for violent crime, murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Overall, the number of violent crimes declined 3% in 2023 compared with 2022 and 4.3% since 2020. The violent crime rate was 363.8 per 100,000 in 2023 — down from 386.3 in 2020.
The number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2023 declined 11.6% from 2022 and 14.5% compared with 2020. The murder rate declined from 6.8% in 2020 to 5.7% in 2023. (See table 1 after downloading CIUS Estimations for FBI data for 2004 through 2023.)
The decline in homicides, rape, robbery and aggravated assault continued through September in most major cities, according to the most recent preliminary data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
For example, there had been a 17.8% decline in homicides in 69 cities in the first nine months of last year, compared with the same time period in 2023 – including decreases in four of the five largest cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia). New York, the largest U.S. city, wasn’t included in that report, but the city’s police department said there was a 3.6% decline in murders for the full year in 2024 compared with the year prior.
As we’ve reported, there was a spike in violent crime in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to increases in murders and aggravated assaults. Experts told us that economic disruptions caused by the pandemic were partly to blame.
Oil Production
Trump inherits a country that, as he left it, outpaces all other nations in crude oil production.
In 2023, the U.S. produced a record high of more than 12.9 million barrels of crude oil per day — “more crude oil than any country, ever,” according to the Energy Information Administration. It was the sixth straight year that the U.S. led all countries in crude oil production, the EIA said.
The U.S. set a record again last year, producing 13.2 million barrels per day, and is expected to break that record this year, the EIA said.
“After reaching an annual record of 13.2 million b/d in 2024, we forecast U.S. crude oil production will increase to 13.5 million b/d this year,” the EIA said in its January Short-Term Energy Outlook report, which was released Jan. 14.
Despite rising domestic oil production, Trump often said during last year’s campaign that the U.S. was “energy independent” when he was president and, if elected, the U.S. will “quickly become energy independent” again. But, as we have written, the U.S. was “energy independent” — as Trump defines it — under both Trump and Biden.
Trump also pledged during the campaign to “cut your energy prices in half within 12 months,” promising to “drill, baby, drill” in his second term. But, as we’ve written, the price of crude oil is set on the global market and based largely on worldwide supply and demand, as the EIA explains on its website. In that story, experts told us that Trump would be unlikely to cut energy prices by 50%.
Immigration
Speaking at a campaign event in Philadelphia in mid-October, Biden pushed back against Trump’s repeated claims that Biden had essentially opened the southern border to illegal immigration.
“Despite what all Trump’s friends say, there are fewer border crossings today than the day he left office,” Biden said.
It’s true that apprehensions of immigrants crossing the southern border illegally between designated ports of entry have been significantly lower since Biden in June enacted emergency measures to restrict asylum eligibility for those illegal border-crossers. And those apprehensions have been lower than in Trump’s last months in office.
Since July, such apprehensions have averaged about 53,000 a month, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s lower than the 58,000 per month average over the final six months under Trump. We should note that despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, illegal immigration was not at the lowest point in history when he left office.
But focusing on illegal immigration only over the last six months doesn’t tell the whole story. For most of Biden’s presidency, illegal immigration was at historic highs. Through December under Biden, Border Patrol agents apprehended about 7.3 million migrants attempting to cross the border illegally, though many were repeat offenders. That’s 253% higher than the roughly 2.1 million such apprehensions under Trump.
There is another piece worth noting. While Biden’s emergency measures cracked down on illegal border crossings, he has also encouraged migrants to select a more orderly method of immigration — applying for asylum status through CBP One, an app that in January 2023 began accepting appointments for a limited number of migrants who want to request asylum or parole. As a result, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of encounters of migrants at the Office of Field Operations — essentially at designated ports of entry — where many of those migrants are then released into the U.S. pending an asylum or parole hearing. Under Biden, those kinds of encounters have nearly quadrupled. They averaged just under 50,000 per month over the last year. By comparison, they averaged just under 3,300 per month in Trump’s last year. Trump has vowed to end CBP One.
Meanwhile, the backlog of asylum cases has soared. According to a Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General report last July, the number of pending affirmative asylum claims rose to over 1 million by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. That’s more than triple the number at the start of 2018 when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “announced it was facing a ‘crisis-level’ backlog.”
As we explained in a story last January, less than 15% of those seeking asylum were ultimately granted it in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, according to Justice Department statistics. But it is taking four to five years for asylum cases to get to court.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to begin “the largest deportation program in American history.” Although Trump puts the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally at more than 20 million (without providing backup), the Pew Research Center estimates the number at 11 million as of mid-2022, based on the latest Census data, a number that has “likely grown” in the ensuing year and a half. Trump has occasionally said that all of them will have to leave and apply to legally get back in. At other times, Trump has said he will initially target immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes and the estimated 1.3 million immigrants whose asylum bids were denied by the courts, but who have still not left the country.
Trade
Trump, who has vowed to increase tariffs across the board on foreign goods by 10% or 20%, inherits a stubbornly high trade deficit.
In 2020, Trump’s last year in office, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services was $653.7 billion — the highest since 2008, according to the BEA. The deficit continued to increase under Biden, hitting a record high $944.8 billion in 2022.
For the most recent 12 months ending in November, the U.S. imported about $878.8 billion more in goods and services than it exported.
The BEA will release trade data next month for December and the full year of 2024.
Federal Debt and Deficits
Trump’s costly campaign promises to cut a variety of taxes come at a time when the nation’s debt and deficits continue to pile up.
Debt — Since Trump was last in office, the debt held by the public, which excludes money the government owes itself, has ballooned to$28.8 trillion, as of Jan. 16.That’s $7.2 trillion, or 33.3%, more than it was when Trump left office in January 2021.
Deficits — The U.S. hasn’t had a deficit less than $1 trillion since 2019 – the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to the pandemic, the deficit jumped to a record $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020, declining ever so slightly the following year to nearly $2.8 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. There was a significant drop in FY 2022, when the deficit fell to about $1.4 trillion, but the decline was short-lived.
The U.S. deficit was $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023 and more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits will remain well above $1 trillion for the foreseeable future, exceeding $2 trillion in fiscal years 2029 through 2035 — the last year of the agency’s 10-year forecast.
Although the new president has created a government efficiency department to cut costs, Trump’s tax plans could cost between $8 trillion and $10 trillion over a decade, as we’ve previously reported.
Stock Market
The stock market has made huge gains since Trump was last in office. Investors will be fortunate indeed if the next four years bring similar results.
Since the last full day of Trump’s first term, Jan. 19, 2021, the S&P 500, an index made up of 500 large companies, has gained 57.9%, as of the market closing on Jan. 17.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which includes 30 large corporations, has increased 40.6%during the same period. And the Nasdaq composite index, which is made up of more than 2,500 companies, is up 48.7%.
Health Insurance Coverage
In his return to power, Trump will find that the percentage of people without health insurance has fallen somewhat significantly in the United States.
The percentage of uninsured declined from 9.7% in 2020, Trump’s last year in office, to 7.6% in 2023, according to the National Health Interview Survey, which measures the uninsured at the time people were interviewed. For the first six months of 2024, the NHIS reported that 7.9% were uninsured — which was “not significantly different from 2023.”
The drop was less pronounced in the Census Bureau’s annual reports, which measure those who lacked insurance for the entire year. In a report released in September, the Census Bureau estimated the uninsured at 8% in 2023 – down from 8.6% in 2020.
The Affordable Care Act – which Trump tried, but failed, to repeal and replace in his first term – has helped reduce the uninsured rate.
A record 24.2 million people enrolled in the ACA’s marketplace for 2025, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported on Jan. 17. The 24.2 million figure for 2025 marks the fourth consecutive year that ACA enrollment has set a record, and it is more than double the enrollment for the 2020 plan year, according to KFF.
ACA enrollment increases have been driven by expanded subsidies for ACA plans enacted by the Biden administration that are set to expire at the end of 2025. In announcing the 2025 plan year enrollment figures, Biden urged Congress to extend the “enhanced premium tax credits that make ACA coverage more affordable.” In a Sept. 10 debate, Trump said he would only change the ACA “if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive.”
FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow Ben Cohen contributed to this article.
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