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A document the Department of Health and Human Services distributed to members of Congress to justify recent changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations misrepresented scientific research to make unfounded claims about vaccine safety for pregnant people and children.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly announced May 27 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had stopped recommending COVID-19 vaccination for healthy pregnant women or healthy children. He did not work through regular channels for updating the CDC’s vaccine schedule, which normally would include a presentation of the relevant evidence at a meeting open to the public and input from expert advisers.
Rather, Politico reported, in the days before Kennedy’s announcement, HHS circulated a document to lawmakers titled “COVID Recommendation FAQ,” citing seven studies as evidence justifying Kennedy in repealing the recommendations. (The CDC did remove its recommendation that pregnant adults get vaccinated. While Kennedy has said the vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children, the CDC vaccine schedule now lists them as vaccines that may be given under shared clinical decision-making. There’s a full recommendation only for kids who are moderately to severely immunocompromised.)
A closer look at the citations shows that the authors of the document misrepresented the studies’ findings and cited research that itself misused data.
For instance, one study the document claimed showed higher rates of miscarriage in pregnant women who got COVID-19 vaccinations in fact concluded that there was no increased risk after adjusting for other factors that could influence the risk of miscarriage. Another study cited as showing placental blood clots after vaccination did not look at this outcome at all.
Yet another cited study misused data from a vaccine safety surveillance system to exaggerate the risk of myocarditis, a real but rare side effect of COVID-19 vaccination that can also occur following COVID-19. The study, co-authored by people with a history of spreading false and misleading information on vaccines, now carries an “expression of concern” that states the publisher is investigating “potential issues with the research methodology and conclusions and author conflicts of interest.”
The distortion of data is part of a larger pattern. Since taking the helm at HHS, Kennedy has repeatedly misrepresented scientific data on topics ranging from measles to chronic disease, as have HHS spokespeople and reports.
In fact, the safety and effectiveness of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy “have been established in studies undertaken independently by scientists working for governments, healthcare systems and universities all over the world, including in the USA,” Victoria Male, a senior lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London, told us via email.
And while there have been legitimate differences of opinion on whether or how often healthy children need COVID-19 vaccines, the HHS document omits evidence showing safety and effectiveness in this group while overstating risks.
The document “ignores the overwhelming real-world data on vaccine safety and benefit in children and pregnant women,” vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris of the University of Auckland told us in an email. She added that it misuses safety surveillance data and “cherry-picks quotes and studies while ignoring the broader scientific consensus and context.” She subsequently posted a version of her comments in a blog post.
Studies have found COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy is safe and protects both the mother from severe disease and the baby from hospitalization from COVID-19 during the early months of life.
“The data remain clear: getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is still the best way for pregnant people to protect themselves and their pregnancies,” Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement reacting to the FAQ. “It is alarming that HHS is propagating misinformation.”
Going against this extensive record, the HHS document raised unfounded concerns about COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy outcomes.
As we’ve said, the document misrepresented a paper showing no increased risk of miscarriage after COVID-19 vaccination, using it to support the claim that studies “showed higher rates of fetal loss if vaccination was received before 20 weeks of pregnancy.”
Dr. Maria Velez, a reproductive epidemiologist at McGill University who was the lead author of the study, told Politico that her work had been “misinterpreted” and did not find an association between COVID-19 vaccination and miscarriage after adjusting for a variety of factors that could impact both miscarriage risk and the likelihood of getting vaccinated. Adjustment for such factors is necessary before concluding that there may be an association.
Citing the study “as evidence for harm is a clear misrepresentation,” Petousis-Harris said.
We asked HHS if it stood behind its claims or could further explain this and other citations.
“The study cited showed a higher percentage of fetal loss before 20 weeks among pregnant women who received the COVID-19 vaccine compared to those who did not,” Press Secretary Emily Hilliard told us via email. “The underlying data speaks for itself—and it raises legitimate safety concerns. HHS will not ignore that evidence or downplay early pregnancy loss.”
Hilliard went on to call it “disturbing that FactCheck.org appears to dismiss the significance of the underlying data. Every miscarriage is a tragedy. Suggesting otherwise is offensive to the families who have experienced that loss.”
But Male called it “inappropriate” to calculate miscarriage rates without accounting for risk factors, pointing out that “the vaccinated groups were more likely to have comorbidities that put them at risk of miscarriage than the unvaccinated group.”
Furthermore, the larger body of research also has not found an association between COVID-19 vaccination and miscarriage.
This body of work includes a second study the HHS document cited to justify its unfounded claim on fetal loss. The study, which looked at outcomes for patients who underwent in vitro fertilization, again found that getting COVID-19 vaccines was not associated with pregnancy loss.
The HHS document also misleadingly cited a study it said “showed statistically significant increases in preterm birth.” One of the paper’s sub-analyses that looked just at the second trimester did find a statistically significant association between vaccination and increased preterm birth. But overall, there wasn’t an association between vaccination and preterm birth. And another sub-analysis, of the third trimester, found the opposite — an association between vaccination and a reduced risk of preterm birth.
Male pointed out that the study authors themselves said that some factor they did not take into account may have influenced both the preterm birth rate and whether someone got vaccinated in the second trimester.
Preterm births occurred on average 14.3 weeks after the first vaccination, and there were no preterm births within two weeks of vaccination. If the vaccines were in fact causing preterm births, at least some would be expected to occur more quickly after vaccination and at a greater variety of points in pregnancy, Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist and mathematician at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, wrote in a June 18 blog post responding to the HHS document.
The scientific literature in general indicates that COVID-19 vaccines do not cause preterm birth. Male said that “three other studies published almost simultaneously with this one confirmed no increased risk of preterm birth associated with COVID vaccination in the second trimester.”
Kucharski also wrote that studies that do many comparisons are liable to find some associations simply by chance.
“Just like a roulette player having another spin, the more times we compare things in a dataset, the bigger the chance that we might mistake a random coincidence for a genuine, consistent effect,” he said.
Another citation appears unrelated to the point the HHS document was trying to make. The document states that a study “showed an increase in placental blood clotting in pregnant mothers who took the vaccine.” But the cited study looked at a subset of COVID-19 vaccine side effects and did not address placental blood clotting at all.
“Our study does not show an increase in placental blood clotting,” said Petousis-Harris, who was a co-author of the cited study. “This study did not even assess this outcome.”
The study also “did not find safety concerns warranting the removal of vaccine recommendations,” she said. Rather, the study concluded that “the findings support ongoing vaccine safety,” she added.
Male said that three studies did analyze 181 placentas of vaccinated people following delivery. “None of these found any evidence of placental pathology (which would include clotting) associated with COVID vaccination,” she said.
The HHS document also adopted the old anti-vaccine tactic of using context-free language in vaccine prescribing information to stoke fear about vaccines.
The document cited a line from the Pfizer and Moderna package inserts saying that available data on the vaccines “are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”
“It’s true that the safety and efficacy of mRNA
COVID vaccines in pregnancy has not been established by the manufacturers,” Male said. Pregnant people were excluded from the original clinical trials. But subsequent studies from scientists around the world show COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for pregnant people, Male added.
By contrast, package leaflets in the U.K. and Europe do include independent research findings, she said. These conclude that the available data have not shown an increased risk of miscarriage during the first trimester, although data from this trimester is “limited.” They also say that a “large amount” of data on women vaccinated later in pregnancy does not show “negative effects on the pregnancy or the newborn baby.”
The document took a similar tack in justifying the change in COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children, citing statements in prescribing information that safety and efficacy in children under age 12 “have not been established by manufacturers.”
Petousis-Harris said that such cherry-picking of regulatory language is a “common tactic used by people trying to discredit vaccines” and said the language “does not mean the vaccines are unsafe or ineffective.”
An opinion piece by the Vaccine Integrity Project staff and advisers explained that the prescribing information says this because the vaccines in children under 12 are still available under an emergency use authorization rather than full licensure. FDA documents supporting the EUA do have information on the shots’ safety and efficacy. The Vaccine Integrity Project is an initiative “dedicated to safeguarding vaccine use in the U.S.” and is led by volunteer public health and policy experts.
The Vaccine Integrity Project article additionally cited a large meta-analysis that found COVID-19 vaccination in children 5 to 11 years old was associated with reduced rates of infection and severe disease — and that severe side effects were rare.
The HHS document also followed a familiar pattern of exaggerating the risk of myocarditis following vaccination while leaving out key context.
Petousis-Harris said that there is a “known signal for myocarditis, particularly after the second mRNA dose in adolescent males.” However, this side effect is very rare and is “typically mild and self-resolving,” she said.
And, as we have written before, myocarditis can occur following COVID-19 and is generally more severe after infection than after vaccination. Furthermore, “concerns about post-vaccination myocarditis are now largely in the rear-view mirror,” the Vaccine Integrity Project piece said. This side effect tended to occur in adolescent and young adult males getting a primary series of two COVID-19 vaccines close together. “Almost no one other than infants is receiving primary vaccine series doses anymore,” the authors wrote.
The HHS document leaves out this context.
One study in the HHS document — the one authored by researchers with a history of misleading on vaccination — misused safety monitoring data. The HHS document cited this study to claim that data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System showed that myocarditis reports in 2021 were “223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years.”
But as we have explained many times, the VAERS database cannot be used to compare vaccines and any sort of derived math from it is invalid. The early warning system collects reports of health problems following vaccination from anyone, regardless of whether the symptoms were caused by a vaccine.
Because VAERS is largely voluntary, the number of reports is highly dependent on awareness. Given the scale and unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, along with increased reporting requirements at the time, there was a huge surge of reports to VAERS for the COVID-19 vaccines. But that by itself does not mean the vaccines are dangerous. In this case, VAERS successfully flagged myocarditis as a possible concern, which was then confirmed in other systems to be a rare side effect.
“The cited claim that ‘myocarditis reports were 223x higher’ ignores the lack of a denominator and the influence of reporting bias following media attention,” Petousis-Harris said.
The HHS document went on to claim that a preprint looking at COVID-19 vaccination in adolescents and children found that “cases of myo and pericarditis were found exclusively in those that received the COVID-19 vaccine.” But Petousis-Harris called this a “misreading” of the study, pointing out that other studies show myocarditis can occur in unvaccinated children after getting COVID-19.
The same study previously had been misused on social media to make the false claim that only vaccination — and not COVID-19 — causes myocarditis. At the time, an author of the study told USA Today that this was a misinterpretation, as the study compared vaccinated versus unvaccinated people and not vaccinated versus infected people.
Finally, the HHS document correctly described a study using a Japanese adverse events database, which found elevated rates of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination, particularly in younger males. Petousis-Harris said that the findings were in keeping with other global surveillance data on the vaccines and added that “the study does not argue against vaccination.”
Q: Has President Donald Trump issued a rule that VA doctors can refuse treatment to Democrats?
A: No. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs changed the wording in its bylaws to comply with recent executive orders. In making the changes, words including “national origin, politics, marital status” were removed from language prohibiting discrimination. But existing federal law already prohibits discrimination on those grounds, the VA says.
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs updated its bylaws in order to comply with recent executive orders, a department spokesperson told us in an email. “These updates will have no impact whatsoever on who VA treats or employs,” he said.
For instance, a copy of the bylaws for the VA’s Palo Alto Health Care System published in April shows changes compared with an archived 2023 version. In the section describing “acceptable behavior” from VA medical staff, the older document said staff should not discriminate “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status, or disability in any employment matter or in providing benefits under any law administered by VA.” The new version of the document shows that several of those characteristics were removed, including “national origin, politics, marital status,” as well as “age” and “disability,” and instead language about “any legally protected status” was added.
The bylaws now say medical staff should not discriminate “on the basis of any legally protected status, including legally protected status such as race, color, religion, sex, or prior protected activity in any employment matter or in providing benefits under any law administered by VA.” MedPage Today reported on the Palo Alto bylaw changes, noting similar differences in a section on medical staff membership.
We received several questions from readers asking about the changes after the Guardian published a story that initially said, “new rules allow VA doctors to refuse to treat Democrats, unmarried veterans.” The story has since been amended to focus instead on the wording change. “After publication, the VA contacted the Guardian citing a 2013 policy directive that it says will continue to protect patients from discrimination despite the redactions in its bylaws; the VA also cited federal law protecting staff from discrimination,” the publication wrote.
The VA spokesman who told us that the change was made to comply with recent executive orders specifically cited the Jan. 20 order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government.” The VA also cited that order in March when it rescinded its directive specifying “respectful delivery of health care” for transgender veterans, a policy that was last updated in 2018, during the first Trump administration.
“Under no circumstances whatsoever would VA ever deny appropriate care to any eligible Veterans or appropriate employment to any qualified potential employees,” the spokesman said in his email. “Under no circumstances whatsoever would VA ever allow any employees to refuse to provide appropriate care to any eligible Veterans or appropriate employment to any qualified potential employees.”
We asked if there were laws or rules beyond the bylaws that would prohibit the VA from denying care to patients based on their national origin, politics or marital status, and the spokesman cited two sections of federal law that govern veterans’ benefits — Title 38 of the U.S. Code, sections 1705 and 1710, which detail the eligibility and enrollment priority for veterans seeking health care through the VA. The priorities are based largely on the patient’s level of service-connected disabilities.
The spokesman also cited a 2013 VA directive titled “Nondiscrimination in Federally-Conducted and Federally-Assisted (External) Programs,” which prohibits discrimination “in federally-conducted and federally-assisted programs and activities based on race, color, religion, national origin, Limited English Proficiency (LEP), age, sex (includes gender identity and transgender status), sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital and parental status, political affiliation, disability, genetic information, harassment, or retaliation.”
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President Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, appeared to be at odds over whether Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon, but Gabbard said the two leaders were saying “the same thing.” We’ll lay out the facts.
In her opening statement to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 25 about the Intelligence Community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, Gabbard stated, “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
In an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One on June 17, Trump said he believed Iran was “very close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Asked about Gabbard’s statement on the IC assessment in March, Trump responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
Nonetheless, Gabbard subsequently told a CNN reporter that she and the president are “on the same page.”
Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March,” Gabbard said. “Unfortunately too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said.”
Here’s the entirety of Gabbard’s comments related specifically to Iran on March 25 (we bolded the text highlighted above as well as parts of her testimony that Office of the Director of National Intelligence officials say have been ignored by the media):
Gabbard, March 25: Iran continues to seek expansion of its influence in the Middle East, despite the degradation to its proxies and defenses during the Gaza conflict. Iran has developed and maintains ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs, including systems capable of striking U.S. targets and allies in the region. Tehran has shown a willingness to use these weapons, including during a 2020 attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and in attacks against Israel in April and October 2024. Iran’s cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat to U.S. networks and data.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.
Iran will likely continue efforts to counter Israel and press for a U.S. military withdrawal from the region by aiding, arming, and helping to reconstitute its loose consortium of like-minded terrorist and militant actors, which it refers to as its “Axis of Resistance.” Although weakened, this collection of actors still presents a wide range of threats, including to Israel’s population, U.S. forces deployed in Iraq and Syria, and to U.S. and international military and commercial shipping and transit.
An ODNI official highlighted to us Gabbard’s comments in that statement about more open discussions in Iran about nuclear weapons and that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
“Just because Iran is not building a nuclear weapon right now, doesn’t mean they aren’t ‘very close’ as President Trump said on Air Force One,” the ODNI official said, adding that Trump’s and Gabbard’s statements are “congruent.”
“All the points DNI Gabbard made during the ATA hearing outside of the singular statement that ‘Iran is not building’ a nuclear weapon, point to the country being very close to building one,” the official said. “The difference between the two statements is apples to oranges when you take into account her full ATA statement, which many in the media are refusing to acknowledge.”
On X, Vice President JD Vance pushed back when asked if Gabbard’s assessment in March was wrong.
“First off, Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then,” Vance wrote.
Vance also argued that Gabbard’s point about enriched uranium was consistent with his comments that Iran has “enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose.”
“It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium,” Vance wrote.
Trump’s statement that Iran is “very close” to a nuclear weapon is vague, and depends on how this is measured. Experts told us it would take Iran a week or so to produce weapons-grade uranium, if it chose to do so, but it would take several months or more to turn that uranium into a nuclear weapon.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization that provides analysis on arms control and national security issues, explained to us in a phone interview that there are “two or three ways to define how close to a nuclear weapon a country is.”
One is what’s known as the “breakout” time. “There’s broad consensus among experts that Iran’s breakout time — defined as the time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb — is currently at roughly one week or less given its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuge capacity,” Shawn Rostker, research analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told us in an email, noting that there’s uncertainty now about what impact Israel’s attacks have had on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
At the breakout point, Iran wouldn’t yet have a nuclear weapon. “They would have the raw materials,” Kimball said.
U.S. officials have put the breakout time at about one to two weeks since at least July 2024, when then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave that time frame. In a June 10 unclassified statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, cited the International Atomic Energy Agency in giving a minimum one-week estimate.
“The IAEA uses 90% enrichment as the benchmark for weapons-grade uranium, and it considers 25 kg of 90% enriched uranium enough to construct a simple nuclear weapon,” Kurilla’s statement said. “The IAEA estimates current Iranian stockpiles to include over 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium – almost double of what it was just six months ago. This is mere steps from reaching the 90% threshold for weaponization. Should the Regime decide to sprint to a nuclear weapon, it is estimated that current stockpiles and the available centrifuges across several enrichment plants are sufficient to produce its first 25 kg of weapons-grade material in roughly one week and enough for up to ten nuclear weapons in three weeks.”
It would take more time before Iran would have a nuclear weapon.
Kimball said the Intelligence Community and independent experts like his group “generally estimate it would still take Iran several more months to craft a crude nuclear device. It would take longer to assemble a smaller, lighter nuclear device that would be delivered on a ballistic missile.”
Rostker, also drawing from IAEA and other non-proliferation assessments, said that converting the uranium into a “deliverable nuclear device” was “complex” and “could take several months to over a year or longer, depending on Iran’s capabilities, decisions, and whether it chooses to test.”
Kimball noted that the U.S. intelligence assessment, as of last week, has continued to be that Iran “had not made a decision to weaponize its nuclear programs.” Trump was speaking “extremely casually,” and Iran is “very close” in vague terms, he said. But “there was not an immediate threat … that Iran was racing to build nuclear devices,” Kimball said, especially one that could be delivered on missiles.
In a May 31 report released last week, IAEA said it “has no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear programme” to develop nuclear weapons in Iran, and it noted high officials in the country have said that using nuclear weapons was “incompatible with Islamic Law.” But the IAEA said it had concerns about “repeated statements by former high-level officials in Iran related to Iran having all capabilities to manufacture nuclear weapons.”
The agency said, “[T]he fact that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon State in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60% remains a matter of serious concern, which has drawn international attention given the potential proliferation implications.”
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel, claiming it “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.” But there’s no evidence of problematic conflicts of interest or that the group inadequately scrutinizes vaccines.
Kennedy announced the removals in a June 9 Wall Street Journal commentary. In a press release from the same day, Kennedy said that the move was necessary to restore public trust in vaccines. “A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” he said. “The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas.”
The few examples of conflicts of interest that Kennedy provided are either misconstrued or many decades old.
“Allegations of conflicts of interest have no basis in fact,” Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director, said in a video posted to X the day after the announcement.
Dr. Tina Tan, the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, also called the allegations about the advisory panel’s integrity “completely unfounded” in a statement.
“Wholesale dismissal of the committee is unprecedented, and without justification,” Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at University of California Law San Francisco, told us.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, as it’s formally known, is a panel of independent medical and public health professionals with expertise in vaccines that provides guidance on who should get which vaccines, how often and when. Its recommendations are highly influential and determine which vaccines are free to low-income children via the Vaccines for Children program and which vaccines most insurance companies must cover for no additional charge.
Kennedy’s dismissal of the entire panel follows two major policy changes at HHS that work to limit access to COVID-19 vaccines. In both cases, Kennedy circumvented the advisory panels that normally would have weighed in on such issues. Around the same time as the ouster of ACIP members, HHS also removed the career CDC officials that vet potential members and help plan and organize the meetings, according to reporting by CBS News.
On June 11, Kennedy, who is a longtime anti-vaccine activist, announced the names of eight new ACIP members in a post on X. At least two are well-known spreaders of vaccine misinformation, including one who is affiliated with an anti-vaccine group and believes her son was harmed by vaccines. Another has published dubious research suggesting COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe. Three have filed statements in court against vaccine manufacturers, including two who were paid to do so. An analysis by Science has also found that the new members, on average, have significantly less experience in vaccine science, as measured by publications, than the previous roster.
The new roster is set to participate in its first meeting on June 25.
Much of Kennedy’s justification for the removal of the sitting ACIP members rests on his contention that ACIP members have problematic conflicts of interest.
But as we’ve explained before, only those without significant conflicts are eligible, and panelists must file a financial disclosure report, update it annually and declare any conflicts at the beginning of each ACIP meeting.
According to the latest rules, updated in 2022, for example, neither ACIP members nor their immediate family members can be directly employed by a vaccine manufacturer. Members can only hold small amounts of stock in vaccine companies and cannot purchase stock while serving on the panel. Committee members also cannot hold a patent for a vaccine or be eligible for royalties for a vaccine that is expected to come before the panel, and generally cannot consult for or be paid for travel or speaking engagements by vaccine makers, among other requirements.
This does not mean that ACIP members cannot have any ties whatsoever to vaccine companies. Some experts test vaccines by running clinical trials or serve on the independent boards that monitor a trial’s progress and are compensated by vaccine manufacturers for their time. In these cases, an ACIP member would not be allowed to participate in discussions or vote on issues related to that vaccine. With a waiver, they would be able to discuss — but still not vote — on other vaccines made by the same company.
Dr. Sean O’Leary, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told us that as someone who hasn’t worked on a clinical trial, he doesn’t always have the knowledge to ask the right questions when the companies are presenting their data to the committee.
“It is actually valuable to have people that have that expertise on the committee,” he said, adding that those individuals know where mistakes can be made and know how the safety data are collected.
As the policy itself notes, “it is critical that individuals chosen for membership on ACIP have significant vaccine and immunization expertise, including crosscutting knowledge and experience in the various aspects of the immunization field. Some expertise important to the committee can only be developed through working relationships with vaccine manufacturers.”
Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt University vaccinologist who is now retired, told us that prohibiting scientists who have ever received any funding from pharma to study vaccines from serving on ACIP is “really seriously flawed,” since those individuals are the “most skilled” in evaluating vaccines.
In his Wall Street Journal editorial, Kennedy pointed to a 2009 HHS inspector general report to support his concerns about conflicts of interest. “Few committee members completed full conflict-of-interest forms—97% of them had omissions,” he said of the report’s findings. “The CDC took no significant action to remedy the omissions.”
The nearly 16-year-old report analyzed forms for 17 different CDC advisory committees — not just ACIP — for the single year of 2007. It found that the CDC had certified forms with at least one omission for 97% of individuals. But as an NPR investigation reported, the form is notoriously difficult to fill out, and the omissions are largely paperwork errors — not serious ethics violations.
According to the report’s Appendix D, for example, disclosures were often made but did not fully follow the form’s instructions, with items not listed in all the appropriate sections. Some information was only included on CVs or other included documents. In other cases, CDC reviewers did not date or initial changes.
For seven of the 246 individuals, or 3% of cases, members voted when they should not have. All of these cases occurred on the same, unnamed committee.
Contrary to Kennedy’s claim that the CDC took “no significant action,” a CDC response included at the end of the report, written by then-CDC Director Frieden, said the agency had already implemented changes. It also said that the inspector general report “failed to address the severity of the individual filings” and noted that the agency, for example, found it “impractical” to verify form items already included and “made obvious” on supplementary documents the CDC was already reviewing.
On two occasions since the publication of the editorial, Kennedy has gone even further, incorrectly claiming that the report, which he attributed to other groups, found that 97% of ACIP members had undisclosed conflicts or that 97% had conflicts of interest — a false claim he also made during his confirmation testimony.
“Congress said that 97% of the people on ACIP have had undisclosed conflicts,” Kennedy said in a press conference on June 10, misattributing the report. “People have known about this for years.”
O’Leary said Kennedy’s distortion of the 97% statistic is a classic case of him “cherry picking and manipulating data to suit his political agenda.”
Kennedy’s other main support for his conflict of interest claims comes from a 2000 House committee staff majority report. At the time, the committee was led by Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton, who pushed the incorrect notion that vaccines cause autism.
“Four out of eight ACIP members who voted in 1997 on guidelines for the Rotashield vaccine, subsequently withdrawn because of severe adverse events, had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies developing other rotavirus vaccines,” Kennedy said of the committee report in his Wall Street Journal editorial.
The majority staff report did say that of a June 1998 ACIP vote, and a Democratic congressman said in a hearing that his staff had identified the four individuals. But the ACIP rules at that time pertained to licensed vaccines, not those in development. According to the House hearing, it’s not clear whether each ACIP member even knew that the companies were working on a rotavirus vaccine. And as some critics have noted, if ACIP members were truly voting according to their financial interests, it’s not obvious that they would want to vote to recommend a competing product.
In other appearances, Kennedy has also recited this finding, although he has botched it, using the figure of four out of five. He has also incorrectly said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, voted to recommend RotaShield, but Offit told us he was not yet a member of ACIP.
Jason Schwartz, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health who has studied the history of ACIP, said that much of what Kennedy highlights is drawn from reports “that were 15, 20, 25 years ago, where admittedly those policies have evolved and strengthened, but don’t reflect today.”
Schwartz also said that the RotaShield example that Kennedy features is actually held up in public health circles as “a case study for how the vaccine safety system works — how it’s rigorous even after a vaccine is approved — and how these expert advisors responded quickly.”
The vaccine was approved and recommended in 1998. As we’ve explained before, in less than a year, the CDC identified in a vaccine safety monitoring system 10 reports of intussusception, a type of intestinal blockage, in infants who had received RotaShield. After further investigation, the agency temporarily suspended use of the vaccine, the manufacturer voluntarily recalled the vaccine, and ACIP withdrew its recommendation.
Although Kennedy suggests that the committee should have known not to recommend the vaccine in the first place, the serious side effect was so rare that it wasn’t clear there was an issue prior to a larger rollout.
“The signal did not emerge conclusively at the time the vaccine was approved and introduced,” Schwartz said, since not enough children had been vaccinated. Knowing of the potential risk, the Food and Drug Administration required that the trials for other rotavirus vaccines be significantly larger.
Kennedy also stated in his editorial that the conflicts of interest “persist.” But at the last ACIP meeting in April, most members had no conflicts to disclose; two members recused themselves from voting due to past participation in vaccine studies. And according to the CDC’s own online inventory of conflicts announced at each meeting from 2000 through 2024, which Kennedy’s HHS debuted on a website in March, only one person still serving on the committee had conflicts, again due to participation in trials.
Edwards, who is a former ACIP member and has also nominated people and written letters in support of ACIP applications, said the review process to add a new member, which can take a year or even longer, is “very rigorous.”
“There’s a lot of attention to conflicts,” she said, “and those have been thoroughly vetted.”
An investigation by Science of the 13 physician ACIP members Kennedy dismissed found “minimal” recent industry payments and “no sign” that members were compromised.
Edwards said the expelled ACIP members were “top-of-the-line … Cadillacs of vaccinology,” and noted that several did not have any current or past conflicts of any kind with vaccine makers, as they worked in public health. We asked HHS to state the problematic conflicts of interest for the dismissed panel, but did not receive a reply.
In his editorial, Kennedy stated that ACIP is “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine. It has never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons.”
Numerous experts, however, objected to this description.
“No, ‘rubber stamping’ is not a fair characterization and a comment that belittles the time, expertise and integrity of the members and their work. The ACIP has recommended against several vaccines, as a matter of fact,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a public health researcher at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told us.
Klausner had been working with Kennedy to identify new ACIP members, but told us he stopped at the end of March and was not involved in selecting the eight newly announced members.
“It is not true that ACIP is a rubber stamp, and not true that it was a rubber stamp when I was on ACIP back in 2007-11,” Dr. Janet A Englund, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Seattle Children’s Hospital, told us in an email, speaking in a personal capacity and not for her institution. “ACIP has often worked to limit or expand vaccine recommendations beyond that licensed by the FDA.”
Given concerns about effectiveness, ACIP said that in both the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 influenza seasons, the live attenuated flu vaccine, FluMist, should not be used. Due to successful immunization programs, ACIP also rescinded its routine smallpox vaccine recommendation in 1971 and removed its recommendation for a live polio vaccine in 1999.
Of course, the group also voted to remove its recommendation for RotaShield after safety issues came to light. As we said, there wasn’t sufficient evidence beforehand for the group to recommend against the vaccine.
In many other instances, usually after lengthy deliberations, the panel has decided to limit a vaccine to a particular population, or offer a more conditional recommendation that falls short of saying someone “should” get a vaccine, as it has done over the years with vaccines against pertussis, meningitis, HPV, RSV and Lyme disease, several experts told us.
Kennedy’s underlying premise is also misleading. ACIP does very often recommend vaccines because the vaccines have typically already undergone significant vetting by the FDA. The primary role of the committee is not to upvote or downvote the entire vaccine, but to advise on which groups of people should or could get the vaccine, based on which populations will benefit.
“It’s a really high bar to get a vaccine all the way through FDA licensure,” O’Leary said. “And so once that happens, that vaccine has already gone through a lot of hurdles. And so it is to be expected that most of the vaccines that FDA licenses would get some kind of a recommendation.”
Schwartz noted that ACIP has “remarkably rigorous, well-defined, formalized” processes that are transparent and show how the panel interpreted the available evidence to arrive at a decision.
“Folks might disagree with outcomes, but with respect to the process that informed their decision,” he said, “it was formal and rigorous and well structured.”
Staff Writer Kate Yandell contributed to this story.
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In defending his decision to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, President Donald Trump has distorted comments made by Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell.
Trump claimed that the police chief said the situation with immigration protests “had gotten away from them” and that “we really did need this help.” That’s not what McDonnell said.
On the third day of protests, McDonnell did say his city police officers were “overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity and the type of things that they’re doing,” but he also said he didn’t ask for federal assistance. Rather, he said, the protocol is to first reach out for mutual aid assistance from local and state law enforcement officials. The following day, McDonnell said that those partners have handled the situation “effectively.”
The situation never reached a point where national help was needed, he said. Moreover, he said, the National Guard and Marine troops sent to Los Angeles have not been tasked with working with local police “on the streets to maintain order, restore order and keep everybody safe.”
As we’ve written, protests in Los Angeles began in response to the Trump administration ramping up immigration arrests, specifically after federal agents on June 6 rounded up day laborers who were waiting in a Home Depot parking lot to find work and later that day after federal agents served a warrant for “employing illegal aliens” at the headquarters of a clothing company called Ambiance.
That day, demonstrations began to escalate, as some protesters vandalized a building. In addition, the Los Angeles Police Department said that “a small group of violent individuals are throwing large pieces of concrete.” On June 7, Trump issued a memo calling for at least 2,000 California National Guard soldiers to deploy to Los Angeles.
Trump’s decision to federalize National Guard troops has been criticized by some Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who claimed Trump’s move “inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and even our National Guard at risk.”
Trump has responded, in part, by citing comments from McDonnell on June 8, the third day of protests.
“The head of the police in Los Angeles, a good man, I hear a good man,” Trump said in an address to military troops in North Carolina on June 10. “But he was actually saying we really did need this help. It had gotten away from them. It had long gotten away, and we gave it to him.”
McDonnell was appointed police chief in 2024 by Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, though his political affiliation is unknown. McDonnell told the Los Angeles Times in October that he had once been a registered Republican but during his time as the county sheriff — a position he took in 2014 — he was no longer affiliated with a political party.
“Los Angeles was under siege until we got there,” Trump told reporters on June 10. “The police were unable to handle it. You could speak to the chief. He said it on television three nights ago. He said, ‘That’s just … this is more than we can handle.’ They said that.”
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on June 15, Sen. Tom Cotton also cited McDonnell’s comments while defending the president’s decision to send the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles.
“The L.A. police chief said last weekend that his forces were overwhelmed, and they couldn’t manage the situation,” Cotton said.
McDonnell did say late on June 8 in his press conference that police were “overwhelmed” that night. But he never said Los Angeles police couldn’t handle the situation, nor did he ask for federal help. In fact, McDonnell has said Trump’s decision to send federal troops has increased “anxiety” levels at the protests.
Here’s the part of McDonnell’s comments at the June 8 press conference that Trump and Cotton are referring to (emphasis is ours):
McDonnell, June 8: It’s escalated now since the beginning of this incident. What we saw the first night was bad. What we’ve seen subsequent to that is getting increasingly worse and more violent. Tonight we had individuals out there shooting commercial grade fireworks at our officers. That can kill you. And we have adapted our tactics to be able to have a chance to be able to take these people into custody and to be able to hold them accountable. We are overwhelmed as far as the number of people out there engaged in this type of activity and the type of things that they’re doing. They’ll, they’ll take backpacks and the backpack will have a cinder block in it. They have a hammer, and they’ll break up the cinder block and use that, pass it around to throw at officers, to throw at cars and throw at other people. … We’ve had liquid of who knows what description thrown at officers. There’s no, no limit to what they’re doing to our officers.
However, McDonnell went on to say that he did not ask for federal help, and that there were several steps he would have taken to increase law enforcement presence short of seeking federal troops.
Here was McDonnell’s response in the same press conference to a follow-up question about whether the National Guard was needed in Los Angeles.
McDonnell, June 8: Well, you know, it’s an interesting question because I would have said that, you know, we could handle this. I believe that we would have gone through a number of steps before we’d have deployed the National Guard or requested deployment of the National Guard. We would normally go to 50% deployment [of LA police] to handle radio calls and do the business of policing, and everybody else would be focused on the initial problem. Beyond that, then we would request through the sheriff mutual aid, and that would bring in members of the 44 other police departments in LA County, as well as the sheriff’s office. And so that didn’t occur in this case because it wasn’t done through the sheriff or … through the normal chain. It was done from the top down from the president directing that that happen. And then the National Guard was federalized. So they’re working for the US Army, not for the California State National Guard.
Asked again if Los Angeles needed the federal troops, McDonnell said, “Well, looking at tonight, you know, this thing has gotten out of control. … Before I could answer that, I’d have to know more about what their [National Guard] capabilities are, what their, their role is intended to be, to be able to make that determination. But we have great cops in Southern California here that work together all the time. So we have tremendous capability here. To say that we would go to that right away, I’d say we’re not, we wouldn’t have been there yet. Looking at the violence tonight, I think we got to make a reassessment.”
In a press conference the following day, June 9, McDonnell was asked if he was concerned about the mobilization of federal troops in Los Angeles.
McDonnell, June 9: When I look at this — and my assessment may not be accurate based on this thing continuously churning — but I see two parallel tracks that don’t work together, if you will. We’re dealing with the issues on the street that you see every day. We deal with that with LAPD resources. When we need additional resources, then we reach out to the sheriff who brings in mutual aid. We have 14 different agencies working with us for that purpose. And then only if we weren’t able to continue to deal with that, needed additional help, would we reach out to the sheriff who would then request National Guard from the governor. So that’s one line.
The other part then is the National Guard were federalized by the president to support federal agents who are working on behalf of ICE to do their operation. The Marines were brought in then today, evidently, to join the Army National Guard in doing what their main mission has been identified as, which is the protection of federal employees and federal property.
Asked if he believed the federal troops were making a difference on the streets, McDonnell said it was “a very emotional topic” but that it had “certainly heightened everybody’s level of awareness and certainly anxiety.”
That same day, McDonnell released a statement warning that “the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city. The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively.”
McDonnell became more direct in the following days that the federal troops were not requested nor needed to maintain peace on the streets.
“We don’t need the National Guard, and they are not here to help us right now,” McDonnell said on “CBS Mornings” on June 11. “They are here to facilitate what the federal agencies are doing on the immigration front.”
Pushing back on Trump’s characterization of his comments several days prior, McDonnell said on CNN on June 11, “We were not in a position to request the National Guard. We have a protocol that we work up through. First, we bring in all internal resources to bear on the issue, whatever it is. Then we mobilize the department or part of the department to be able to get everybody out there dealing with the issue. If we don’t have the capacity at that point to be able to do that, then through the sheriff, we request mutual aid and we get our law enforcement partners from police departments and sheriff’s departments throughout the Southern California region to assist us in doing what it is we need to do. We’re at that level now. And we’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for National Guard, at this stage. And my hope is that things are going in the right direction now and that we wouldn’t have had to have done that, or we won’t either.”
In a June 14 interview with NBC4 News in Los Angeles, McDonnell continued to maintain that local police, with the aid of other local and state law enforcement agencies, were “ready for whatever comes our way.” In a June 13 press conference, McDonnell said coordination with federal troops was minimal and that the mission of federal troops was to “support and protect federal employees. … Their mission is not to work with us on the streets to maintain order, restore order and keep everybody safe.”
FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellows Sanjana Juvvadi, Andrew Noh and Ashley Wang contributed research to this article.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and others posted unfounded claims on social media about the political affiliation of the gunman arrested in the June 14 fatal shootings of a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and the wounding of another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife.
Lee and Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio referred to the suspect as a Marxist or member of the “extreme left” hours after the shootings, but friends told news outlets he was a supporter of President Donald Trump and held conservative beliefs.
Lee’s posts linking the shooter to Marxism, on his personal X account, were deleted on June 17.
Authorities said that when he was captured on June 15 after an extensive manhunt, the suspect had a list of elected officials he intended to target, all of them Democrats.
Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, Minnesota, has been charged with stalking and murdering state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and shooting state Sen. Mark Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman.
“According to the charges, the defendant had a list of possible targets and went to the homes of public officials to conduct violent attacks,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a June 16 press release. Joe Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for the district of Minnesota, said in the press release that the shootings were “targeted political assassinations.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also said the shootings appeared to be a “politically-motivated assassination.”
At a June 16 press conference, commenting on the list found in Boelter’s car, Thompson said, “They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone that’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”
But in their posts on social media, Lee and others made baseless claims about Boelter’s political loyalties. In a June 15 post on X on his personal account, Lee reshared a post with a photo of Boelter and added the comment, “Marxism is a deadly mental illness.” In another post with an image of Boelter, Lee wrote, “This is what happens. When Marxists don’t get their way.” Those posts and others by Lee about the Minnesota shootings were deleted on June 17, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urged Lee to remove them and Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota spoke to Lee about them.
Hours after the shootings on June 14, Moreno, a Republican, reshared a post referring to the killing of Hortman and a photo of fliers about the “No Kings” demonstrations found in Boelter’s car. Numerous “No Kings” protests were held on June 14 around the U.S. to protest Trump’s policies. Moreno wrote on X, “The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.”
Also on June 14, Elon Musk wrote on X, “The far left is murderously violent.”
But, as we said, Boelter’s victims were all Democrats and the posts provide no evidence that he ascribed to Marxist or left-leaning politics, other than photos of “No Kings” fliers. The “No Kings” events occurred hours after the early morning attacks on the Minnesota lawmakers. Fearing “No Kings” rallies may have been a potential target rather than something Boelter supported, Minnesota State Patrol requested the public not attend any of the protests in the state “out of an abundance of caution.”
Asked by a reporter on June 17 whether he had called Walz about the shootings, Trump responded that he would not be calling the Minnesota governor and, referring to Boelter, said Walz “appointed this guy to a position.”
Boelter was appointed to the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board by then-Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016, the New York Times reported. Boelter was later reappointed by Walz to the board, which has 41 members who work to improve the state’s business development.
Minnesota voters do not reveal their political affiliation when registering to vote, and state reports related to the workforce board listed Boelter’s affiliation as “none or other” in 2016 and “no party preference” in 2020, the Times reported.
Boelter was registered to vote as a Republican while he was living in Oklahoma in 2004, the Associated Press reported.
A close friend of Boelter’s, David Carlson, told the Times that Boelter voted for Trump last year.
Paul Schroeder, a longtime friend of Boelter’s, told the AP that Boelter was conservative and religious. “He was right-leaning politically but never fanatical, from what I saw, just strong beliefs,” Schroeder said.
We reached out to the offices of Lee and Moreno for information supporting their claims on social media, but we did not receive responses.
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President Donald Trump federalized the California National Guard on June 7 and sent troops to Los Angeles to address what he has described as a city “under siege” by protesters opposed to his immigration policy.
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has maintained that local authorities had the situation under control and Trump’s move was “purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
The disagreement is being debated in court.
We’ll explain how the situation developed and answer some common questions.
When and why did the protests start?
Does Trump have authority to send troops to LA?
What have the courts said so far?
How many National Guard and Marine troops are there? What can they do?
What has happened since the guard’s deployment? Since the Marines’ deployment?
In May, Stephen Miller — the White House deputy chief of staff for policy who has largely shaped Trump’s immigration policy — and Kristi Noem — the Homeland Security secretary — began pushing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to increase arrests of people in the country illegally.
“We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,” Miller said in a Fox News appearance on May 29.
As immigration arrests ramped up, small protests cropped up in cities across the country. In Los Angeles on the morning of Friday, June 6, ICE agents rounded up day laborers who were waiting in a Home Depot parking lot to find work. Word spread and some protesters took to the streets of LA.
Later that day, federal agents served a warrant for “employing illegal aliens” at the headquarters of a clothing company called Ambiance. By early afternoon, a few dozen protesters had gathered outside of the gates there. Protesters and agents contended on the sidewalk, and agents arrested David Huerta, a California labor union leader. They charged him with “conspiracy to impede an officer.”
Some officials, including LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Newsom, condemned the raids that afternoon. “These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” Bass said in a statement. “We will not stand for this.”
Miller responded on X, formerly Twitter, writing, “You have no say in this at all. Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”
That afternoon and through the evening, protesters gathered near a federal building in downtown LA, where agents had taken some of those who had been detained. Some protesters vandalized the building, according to video footage, and police reportedly used smoke grenades and less-lethal weapons to clear demonstrators. By 7 p.m. the Los Angeles Police Department had announced an unlawful assembly and, about an hour later, said that “a small group of violent individuals are throwing large pieces of concrete.” By about 11 p.m., police had cleared the area.
Demonstrations continued the next day, with some escalating to involve skirmishes with police and a car fire.
Shortly after 5 p.m., Newsom announced, “The federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers. That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions.”
The president then signed a memo calling for at least 2,000 National Guard soldiers to deploy to Los Angeles.
Trump later posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
State National Guard units are controlled by governors, but they can be called into federal service.
Newsom filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, June 9 alleging that the president lacked the authority to call in the National Guard and violated the Constitution in so doing.
Trump responded, maintaining that he has the power to “call the California National Guard into federal service when he considers it necessary either to quell a ‘rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States’ or when he determines that ‘regular forces’ are ‘unable’ to execute federal law.”
In his June 7 memo, Trump had cited a section of federal law — Title 10 of the U.S. Code, section 12406 — that describes three instances in which the president can federalize National Guard troops, the two that he referenced and also when the U.S. is being invaded.
The last time that section of law was used was in 1970, when then President Richard Nixon invoked it to use the National Guard during a mail strike, as explained in a recent article by William Banks, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law, and Mark P. Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law.
This section of law wasn’t used in 2020, in response to protests in Washington, D.C., following the killing of George Floyd. “It was discussed,” Thomas Lee, a professor at Fordham Law who served as special counsel in the Department of Defense at the time, told us in an interview. Instead, the department used a different law — Title 32 of the U.S. Code, section 502(f) — to bring unfederalized National Guard troops from other states to D.C.
We asked the White House why the president chose to take a different route this time, but we didn’t receive a response.
“Section 12406 allows the president to call the national guard into federal service if needed to enforce federal law. I would think the question whether and how much assistance is needed from the guard is something to be determined by the president,” Michael Ramsey, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, told us in an email. “[I]t seems here that there’s a very plausible case that the efforts to enforce federal law by immigration authorities were being obstructed, and the safety of federal agents and federal facilities was threatened.”
“[T]he only hitch I see on the section 12406 matter is that it says the president shall issue orders through the governor and (I assume) the president hasn’t done that,” Ramsey said.
Indeed, Newsom’s lawsuit alleges that he was not notified or consulted, as required by the statute, in addition to arguing that the situation in LA did not rise to the level of a rebellion or curtail the enforcement of federal laws.
Ramsey also said that the intent of that provision may not be to give governors a veto on the use of the National Guard, which is the argument Trump’s lawyers made in their response.
The administration lawyers argued in their court filing that the statute says “the orders are issued by the President, and they are conveyed through State officials. Nothing in the statute entitles a Governor to veto or impede a valid presidential order” (emphasis is theirs).
The first judge to weigh in was U.S. District Court Senior Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California, who granted the temporary restraining order sought by Newsom to stop the federal deployment of the National Guard. In that opinion on June 12, Breyer wrote that the president had not “followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions” and acted illegally by exceeding the scope of his authority and violating the 10th Amendment, which balances federal and state power.
The Trump administration moved to appeal, and later that evening, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on the lower court’s ruling while the appeal progresses.
So, for now, the National Guard troops can stay in LA under federal control.
In Breyer’s 36-page opinion, he focused on the two provisions of the statute cited in Trump’s memo — that the president could use the National Guard to quell a rebellion and to assist when federal laws can’t be enforced.
On the first provision, Breyer said, “The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion.'”
“[T]here can be no debate that most protesters demonstrated peacefully,” he said, and that those who were violent were not armed with weapons or organized to overthrow the government.
“Moreover,” Breyer wrote, “the Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants’ argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”
On the second provision of the law cited in Trump’s memo — that the federal government was unable to enforce its laws — Breyer noted that Trump’s lawyers conceded that ICE had arrested 44 people on June 6, but that ICE would have arrested more if not for the protests. “[T]he statute does not allow for the federalizing of the National Guard when the President faces obstacles that cause him to underperform in executing the laws,” he wrote. “The statute requires that the President be ‘unable’ to execute the laws of the United States. That did not happen here.”
Breyer contrasted the situation in L.A. with the mail strike — the only other time that a president has relied on this statute, alone, to federalize the National Guard — which had caused the delivery of bills, tax returns and personal mail to grind to a halt.
On the question of whether or not the Trump administration complied with the law’s provision that orders must be issued “through the governor,” Breyer found that it had not complied.
The administration had argued that writing, “THROUGH: THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA,” at the top of the Defense Department memos was sufficient to comply with the statute.
“But an interpretation of § 12406 that permits the President to federalize a state’s National Guard by typing the phrase ‘Through the Governor of [insert state here]’ at the top of a document that the President never sends to the governor strains credibility, especially given that Congress specifically amended the statute to add the requirement that orders ‘shall be issued through the governors,'” Breyer wrote.
The 9th Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments about the temporary restraining order on June 17. It remains to be seen how it — and, very possibly, the U.S. Supreme Court — will interpret the case.
Update, June 20: The circuit court ruled that the president could keep the National Guard troops in LA under federal control. The three-judge panel unanimously said on June 19, “[W]e conclude that it is likely that the President lawfully exercised his statutory authority under § 12406(3), which authorizes federalization of the National Guard when ‘the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.'” The judges — two appointed by Trump and one by Biden — said that the president’s action could be subject to review by the courts, but that the review “must be highly deferential.”
The court also said it was “likely” sufficient for the Defense Department to issue the order to the general overseeing the state National Guard, “who is authorized under California law to ‘issue all orders in the name of the Governor.'” But even if this violated procedural rules, that wasn’t enough to warrant the temporary restraining order.
Close to 5,000 California National Guard troops and U.S. Marines have been authorized for deployment to the Los Angeles area. As of June 10, about 2,100 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines had already arrived in the city or nearby, a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command told us.
As we said, Trump first approved the federal deployment of about 2,000 of the state’s National Guard troops on June 7. Two days later, an additional 2,000 troops were mobilized for duty, as well as the 700 Marines.
In his June 7 memo activating the National Guard, the president said, “To carry out this mission, the deployed military personnel may perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary to ensure the protection and safety of Federal personnel and property.”
Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote that the president’s June 7 order meant that the federalized guard soldiers would not be able “to conduct their own immigration raids; make their own immigration arrests; or otherwise do anything other than” the “protective activities” necessary for “protecting the relevant DHS personnel against attacks.”
In a June 9 statement, U.S Northern Command said that the 700 Marines who were deployed would “seamlessly integrate” with the National Guard troops “who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.” The Command also has said that the troops “can and have accompanied ICE agents on missions,” but they are not allowed to assist in the raids or perform law enforcement functions. “They protect; they don’t participate.”
Troops, the Command said, are only authorized to “temporarily detain an individual in specific circumstances such as to stop an assault, to prevent harm to others, or to prevent interference with federal personnel performing their duties.”
At a June 10 congressional hearing, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, a Pentagon comptroller, told lawmakers that the deployment of the National Guard and Marines would cost the federal government an estimated $134 million.
The first 300 National Guard members arrived in the city early on June 8. Later that day, some demonstrators blocked part of the 101 Freeway, causing a temporary shutdown. In addition, several self-driving cars, while parked, were vandalized and burned. The Associated Press reported that local law enforcement “used tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash bangs to control the crowd.”
In the afternoon, the LAPD issued a “tactical alert” for all officers to remain on duty in anticipation of more protests in the evening. At night, remaining protesters, some positioned on an overpass, threw rocks, fireworks and other objects at police officers, the AP said.
Some protests turned violent again the next day, when there were 1,700 guard troops in the city supporting federal agents. An Apple store and other downtown businesses were looted that night, leading to more than 100 arrests, mostly of people who didn’t leave the area when ordered by police. It was the third straight day that the number of arrests increased, according to the Los Angeles Times, which cited police department figures. There were no arrests on June 6, then 27 on June 7, another 40 on June 8 and 114 on June 9.
More violence, looting and vandalism on June 10 led the mayor to issue a curfew – from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. – for a section of downtown that is about 1 square mile. A press release from Bass’ office said the curfew would be in place “going forward until lifted.” The LAPD said there were more than 200 arrests made by police that day, largely for failure to disperse.
June 10 was also the day when the 700 Marines traveled to the area, although they were stationed at an undisclosed location about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, waiting to be given their assignments, a U.S. official told reporters. Earlier that day, National Guard troops had accompanied ICE agents doing immigration enforcement, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.
The military-focused newspaper Stars and Stripes reported on June 11 that since arriving in the Los Angeles area on June 8, “troops have remained outside of the downtown Edward R. Roybal Federal building in a relatively stationary posture, occasionally moving with law enforcement to hold the line against protesters.”
Bass similarly said at a June 10 press conference that National Guard troops had been “stationary at the federal building,” but she said they had not been “doing crowd control or anything like that.” Responding to Trump, she said local law enforcement, not the soldiers, “saved the day.” In Oval Office remarks on June 10, Trump had said, “If we didn’t send out the National Guard … Los Angeles would be burning right now!”
“We don’t need the National Guard, and they’re not here to help us right now,” the police chief, Jim McDonnell, said in an interview with “CBS Morning News” that aired June 11. “They’re here to facilitate what the federal agencies are doing on the immigration front.”
That same day, the Command put out a statement saying that the Marines, who had been receiving training in “de-escalation, crowd-control, and understanding the Standing Rules for the Use of Force,” would within 48 hours be joining the guard members and “conducting the same missions.”
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The Department of Health and Human Services has defended cuts to vaccine research with statements that mislead on the safety of mRNA technology, despite an extensive history of testing.
HHS recently terminated a $766 million award to Moderna for developing mRNA vaccines against influenza viruses that run a risk of causing a pandemic, in the midst of an ongoing H5N1 bird flu outbreak in poultry and livestock. Top administration officials have been silent on the reasoning, but HHS spokespeople criticized the mRNA platform.
“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement published by multiple news outlets. “This is not simply about efficacy—it’s about safety, integrity, and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public.”
Responding to a request for comment on the ending of funding for projects on mRNA HIV vaccines, HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard gave a similar statement, repeating that the technology is “under-tested,” and again referring to safety concerns that the last administration “concealed.”
A more recent statement from Nixon on the cancellation of the bird flu vaccine funding, given to KFF Health News, cited “mounting evidence of adverse events associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines,” although the statement did not specify what evidence it was referencing.
The safety of approved mRNA vaccines is well-established and, as with other vaccines, continues to be monitored by multiple surveillance systems.
HHS did not respond to our request for more information on what safety concerns were “concealed,” but vaccine safety experts told us they were unaware of evidence that officials hid safety concerns about mRNA vaccines.
“By now, the mRNA vaccines are no longer ‘new’ or ‘experimental,’” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told us. Hundreds of millions of doses of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S., and the vaccines have also been distributed to people around the world. “We know as much about these vaccines as we know about the vaccines we give our babies here and around the world,” Schaffner said. “So these are now extremely well studied vaccines, and we know about their safety.”
The disinvestment in some mRNA-related projects comes amid a climate of anti-mRNA vaccine sentiment within the government. Lawmakers in some states have introduced legislation attempting to ban mRNA technology, and new requirements from the Food and Drug Administration will likely narrow the populations for whom the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are approved.
National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told Politico last month that people “now think that mRNA is a bad platform,” blaming “government pressure” to get vaccinated and breakthrough COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated. This “widespread public skepticism,” he said, made the platform difficult to use.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped feed this mRNA vaccine skepticism by spreading false and misleading information on COVID-19 vaccines for years.
Dr. Jesse Goodman, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University and chief scientist at the FDA between 2009 and 2014, told us that cutting research into mRNA vaccines is counterproductive if the goal is to gain more information on mRNA vaccine safety. He added that the mRNA platform is the only technology currently that “could allow an extremely rapid response” if an influenza pandemic were to occur, and he compared defunding it to “abandoning the lead horse in a race when it’s already shown it can win other races.”
“It just makes no sense to me,” he said.
About a month before ending the Moderna grant, HHS announced funding for an in-house NIH project to develop universal vaccines for coronaviruses and influenza viruses, including bird flu, using an old technology, drawing skepticism and puzzlement from many experts in the vaccine field.
HHS’ claim that mRNA technology is “under-tested” flies in the face of the significant testing the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have undergone.
The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were the first mRNA vaccines to be approved by the FDA. The vaccines were developed in response to the coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions of people globally and would have killed millions more without a vaccine, studies have estimated. The mRNA, or messenger RNA, in the vaccines provides instructions for cells to make small quantities of spike protein from the coronavirus, preparing the immune system to recognize the actual virus in the future.
The “mRNA vaccine technology is not ‘under-tested’ in any meaningful scientific sense,” vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris of the University of Auckland told us in an email. “While it is a relatively new platform in human vaccines, it is now one of the most extensively studied due to the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.” (Petousis-Harris is also co-director of the Global Vaccine Data Network. The group’s funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for work on COVID-19 vaccine safety was recently canceled, according to the GVDN website and an HHS spreadsheet of terminated funding.)
Petousis-Harris explained that the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 were studied in large-scale clinical trials including tens of thousands of participants before they were authorized for use and eventually approved.
Since the vaccines were rolled out beginning in late 2020, the U.S. government, other governments around the world and independent researchers have continued to perform studies and safety surveillance, Petousis-Harris said.
“There may be some serious adverse reactions that occur one in a million doses delivered, and obviously, if you think about it, we cannot expect that they would appear in a clinical trial for us to observe and to study,” Schaffner said.
In the U.S., surveillance systems include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which compiles reports of health events that occur following vaccination, whether caused by the vaccine or not, in order to identify patterns that require further scrutiny. The government increased requirements for health care providers to report possible side effects during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Another system, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, uses records from health care organizations to help further investigate links between vaccination and any health problems.
With the COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC also launched a new system, called v-safe, to ask people about their health after vaccination. There are a number of other U.S. systems, including ones based on data from the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration and Medicare.
“Because it was recognized that the mRNA technology was a new technology and that this vaccine it was anticipated would be recommended broadly to the population because obviously we were in a pandemic circumstance, the vaccine adverse event surveillance system was actually enhanced and made more elaborate once the COVID vaccines started to be used,” Schaffner said. “The mRNA vaccines are actually extraordinarily safe.”
Of course, as we have written previously, no vaccine or other medical product is 100% safe, and experts weigh risks and benefits before deciding whether to recommend vaccines for particular groups of people and at particular times.
“What we know about them is they saved millions of lives from COVID,” Goodman said of the COVID-19 vaccines. “We know they’re not perfect. They have rare significant side effects.” But he said this is a reason to try to improve the vaccines, not “discard them.”
During the vaccine rollout, safety surveillance — internationally and in the U.S. — picked up on a safety signal indicating a rare risk of myocarditis, a form of heart muscle inflammation, and pericarditis, or inflammation of the heart lining, from the two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The side effects occurred particularly in teenage and young adult males following the second vaccine dose, and the CDC continued to judge that benefits of vaccination outweighed risks. Myocarditis can also occur after COVID-19. Cases associated with the disease tend to be more severe than vaccine-associated myocarditis.
Vaccine-associated myocarditis has been associated with “generally mild outcomes and full recovery,” Petousis-Harris said.
Myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination has become even rarer over time and has not shown a significant link in the last three years, according to the most recent data presented to CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in April.
It’s worth noting that myocarditis is not unique to mRNA vaccines, as it’s also a rare side effect of Novavax’s protein-based COVID-19 vaccine.
Furthermore, safety research into mRNA vaccines did not start and end with the COVID-19 vaccines. As we wrote back in 2020, the mRNA platform had been studied prior to the pandemic, including in early-phase clinical trials for diseases other than COVID-19. And any new mRNA vaccine will undergo further testing for safety.
As we’ve said, HHS only vaguely referred to safety concerns the Biden administration allegedly “concealed” and did not answer our message seeking clarification. However, a Senate subcommittee led by Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, on May 21 held a hearing on the “corruption of science and federal health agencies,” which alleged that health officials “downplayed and hid” myocarditis.
Schaffner, Petousis-Harris and Goodman all told us evidence is lacking that the government concealed mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns.
Moreover, as we’ve said, there isn’t reason to believe mRNA vaccines are uniquely risky.
“There is no credible or substantiated evidence that the Biden administration concealed legitimate safety concerns about mRNA vaccines that I am aware of,” Petousis-Harris said.
Goodman said it is fair to look back at judgments made under challenging circumstances and question whether communication could have been improved or sped up. However, “I haven’t heard any convincing evidence that somebody tried to keep it secret,” he said of myocarditis, adding that “certainly information was out there that there was myocarditis in these young people.”
A report released in conjunction with the hearing shows deliberation among officials over how to communicate about myocarditis amid some uncertainty about whether the vaccines were causing the condition. The deliberation does not reveal plans for a cover-up or concealment.
Documents show that representatives from Israel’s Ministry of Health and the CDC exchanged emails on the topic of myocarditis in late February 2021. Reporting showed Israeli health authorities were looking into a possible connection between mRNA vaccination and myocarditis in April 2021, which U.S. and international news outlets covered at the time, and the CDC director told reporters that the agency was looking into reports of myocarditis but had not “seen a signal.”
The subcommittee report particularly highlighted a sequence of events in late May, in which officials drafted and then did not send a message via the CDC’s Health Alert Network. This type of bulletin is intended to communicate to public health workers about “urgent public health incidents,” according to the CDC website. The officials ultimately decided to further communicate about the possible risk by posting on the CDC website about new clinical considerations surrounding myocarditis and pericarditis after vaccination.
It is worth noting that during the period in which officials were discussing whether to issue this specific type of alert, it was not a secret that myocarditis remained a possible safety concern. Outlets including the New York Times, NBC News and Reuters were covering the potential risk of myocarditis, based on information on the topic the CDC was already putting out. A CDC working group confirmed a “likely association” in June 2021 during an ACIP meeting.
“Claims that the administration ‘concealed’ risks often refer to the timing or emphasis of risk communication, not to actual cover-ups,” Petousis-Harris said. “The known risks were not hidden—they were documented in scientific and regulatory disclosures.”
Q: Is there an ad in Craigslist to hire people to riot in L.A.?
A: No, there has been no such ad on Craigslist. Some social media posts cited a Craigslist ad to falsely claim it showed that people protesting the immigration raids in Los Angeles were being paid for their actions. But a pair of podcasters told the Associated Press they placed the ad as a prank for their show, and it had nothing to do with the protests.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
An unfounded claim that people protesting immigration raids in Southern California and elsewhere are being paid for their participation has spread on social media, with posts sharing screenshots of a short-lived Craigslist ad as evidence. The strangely worded ad seeking “BRAVE MEN” for well-paid but unspecified duties makes no mention of protests — and was actually a prank ad placed by podcasters.
Several readers have asked us about the ad and the social media posts.
The posts were aimed at participants in protests that began June 6 in Los Angeles, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stepped up workplace raids and arrests of people in the U.S. illegally. The Trump administration has deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to support federal law enforcement and protect federal buildings during the demonstrations. The protests also have spread to other cities throughout the U.S.
Without providing evidence of his claim, President Donald Trump has called the protesters “Paid Insurrectionists!” and “paid troublemakers” in Truth Social posts. Speaking to reporters on June 10, Trump said of the protesters, “I believe many of them are paid,” adding later, “Let me tell you, when you watch these agitators break up concrete and hand it out to people as they stood on line to get it, these have to be paid troublemakers.”
Social media users seized on a Craigslist ad posted June 5 in the Los Angeles area, and with similar language in Austin, to support the claim that the protesters had been hired. “Looking for the toughest badasses in the city (los angeles),” the ad said. “SEEKING EXTREMELY TOUGH, BRAVE MEN FOR NEW CREW IM BUILDING,” it read, but never mentioned participation in protests or demonstrations — or any specific activity at all. The ad offered $6,500 to $12,500 a week.
One Threads post was captioned: “LA ‘protests’ Craigslist ad searching for members. Follow the money.” The accompanying video, which was shared by conservative commentator David J Harris Jr. on Facebook, tied the ad to the anti-Trump protest group No Kings. Another post on X said, “Craigslist ad hiring protesters in L.A.”
But the ad, which was removed from Craigslist in Los Angeles and Austin on June 9 and 10, according to the fact-checking website Snopes, was not placed by anyone who was “hiring protesters.”
The bogus ad was a prank placed by a pair of podcasters, Joey LaFleur and Logan Quiroz, the Associated Press reported on June 10. The ad was intended as part of their show, “Goofcon1,” and had nothing to do with the anti-ICE protests. “I literally had no idea it was ever going to be connected to the riots. It was a really weird coincidence,” LaFleur told the AP.
On June 6, the podcasters livestreamed their conversations with people who had answered the ad.
The No Kings organization had no ties to the Craigslist ad, contrary to some social media posts.
The No Kings “About” page says, “No Kings is a nationwide day of defiance. From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, we’re taking action to reject authoritarianism — and show the world what democracy looks like.” The site mainly calls for protests around the country on June 14, the day of a military parade in Washington, D.C., marking the Army’s 250th birthday and the president’s 79th, but also provides dates for organizing sessions, “marshal training” and other preparation for protest events.
The website includes a note at the bottom saying, “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.”
The site does not mention financial support for the protests. There is a long list of partners listed on the website, but no information about any funding they might provide for the organization.
We reached out to the No Kings organization for comment on the social media posts and whether the organization funds protest activities, but did not receive a response. We also sought comment from Craigslist about the ads, but did not get a response.
Claims that protesters are paid actors is a familiar social media refrain. Baseless claims that counterprotesters were recruited through a Craigslist ad circulated after the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as we’ve written. Similar false claims about paid participants spread online in 2020 during the social justice protests following the death of George Floyd.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
President Donald Trump recently boasted that the nation’s murder rate has “plummeted by 28%” since he took office. Data supplied by local police departments do show the nation’s murder rate is dropping, as it has been for several years now.
Notably, Trump now seems comfortable with crime data that he criticized repeatedly during the campaign as “fake news.”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump insisted that violent crime and murders were on the rise under then President Joe Biden, despite FBI data and statistics from other sources showing that crime spiked in 2020 and had been trending downward since 2022.
But when Trump said at a roundtable with the Fraternal Order of Police on June 5 that “just a few months into office, the national murder rate has plummeted by 28%,” he was citing homicide data provided by law enforcement agencies.
FBI crime data is based on voluntary reporting from local police agencies. Although there is a lag in FBI reporting — the FBI won’t publish its national estimates for 2025 until the fall of 2026 — several groups aggregate data from law enforcement agencies, the same statistics that are reported to the FBI.
One group that compiles such data is AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that produces its Real-Time Crime Index, an aggregation of crime data collected from 407 law enforcement agencies in the country.
The index shows a sharp spike in murders in 2020, a leveling off and then a steady decline starting in 2022 and continuing through March 2025.
Given the trend, Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics who was once a data analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in a Substack post that it is definitively “plausible” that the murder rate for 2025 could end up being the lowest rate ever recorded. According to AH Datalytics, the number of murders in the first three months of 2025 was 21.6% lower than the same period the year before.
Those statistics served as the basis for a June 3 article from the conservative news outlet the Daily Signal headlined “Murder Rates Plummet Under President Trump.”
The Daily Signal story included a quote from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, saying, “Since President Trump took office, murder rates have plummeted across the entire United States. American families were promised their communities would be safer and President Trump swiftly delivered by vocally being tough on crime, unequivocally backing law enforcement, and standing firm on violent criminals being held to the fullest extent of the law.”
That comment might leave the impression that the trend had reversed since Trump took office. But that’s not what the data show.
“Murder is on the same trajectory it has been on since early 2023,” Asher told us via email. “Murder fell 12% nationally in 2023, probably closer to 15% in 2024, and the early data for 2025 suggests a similarly large (or possibly even larger) drop this year.”
That trend has been echoed by data from other sources. In its data sampling, the Major Cities Chiefs Association showed a 10.4% decline in homicides between 2022 and 2023, and a 16.4% drop between 2023 and 2024. Its data, from nearly 70 law enforcement agencies nationwide, showed a 20.5% drop in homicides in the first three months of 2025 compared with the first three months of 2024.
Similarly, the Council on Criminal Justice found that homicides in 32 study cities dipped 10% between 2022 and 2023, and by another 16% between 2023 and 2024. In its 2024 report, released in January, CCJ reported, “Homicide rates in some high-homicide cities, including Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis, have dropped even further, returning to the levels of 2014, when national homicide rates were at historic lows. Rates in other cities have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels.”
According to information from the Gun Violence Archive, gun-related deaths (not including suicides) have been declining since 2021, with a 4.1% drop in 2022, a 6.7% drop in 2023, and a 12.6% drop in 2024. That trend appears to be continuing to accelerate in early 2025.
We reported on these downward trends when, during the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly insisted that violent crime, including murder, was rising under Biden and that FBI data indicating the opposite was fraudulent.
When a Time reporter in April 2024 presented the president with FBI statistics that showed a drop in homicides in 2023, Trump dismissed the data as “a lie” and “fake news.”
“There is no way that crime went down over the last year,” Trump said.
In other interviews and public speeches, Trump derided the FBI crime statistics as “phony” and “a fraud.”
During the campaign, Trump preferred to cite data from the government’s National Crime Victimization Survey, which estimates levels of various crimes based on a survey of about 240,000 people each year, asking whether they have been victims of various crimes. Those surveys — which notably do not, obviously, include interviews with the victims of homicide — showed an increase in the violent crime victimization rate between 2021 and 2022. However, NCVS data released in September showed the violent crime rate dipped by a percentage point in 2023, the latest year for which such data are available.
But now that he is in office, and the murder statistics are still showing a decline, Trump turned to citing the figures from law enforcement agencies.
“The only way to get current year data is to sample it from available agencies,” Asher said. “It is indeed the same source that showed a historic drop in murder in 2024 with smaller declines in both property and violent crime.”
This isn’t the first time that Trump has dismissed statistical sources that showed positive results under other presidents, but then embraced those same sources while in office. In his first term, he did the same with employment data.