The chief justice put a temporary hold on a lower court ruling that Elon Musk’s government efficiency team and the Office of Management and Budget turn over internal records.

The New York Times reviewed a guest list and social media posts to identify who was invited to President Trump’s private event for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday and a White House tour on Friday. Here are some of them.

President Trump’s statement appeared to approve a deal linking the U.S. and Japanese steel makers that had been blocked on national security grounds.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Since regaining power, the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed with false certainty that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a lab.

In late January, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that a lab leak is “the confirmable truth.” 

In mid-April, covid.gov and covidtests.gov, websites the government previously used to educate the public about the disease and allow people to place orders for free tests, redirected to a new, splashy White House webpage that declared a lab leak the “true origins” of COVID-19. 

This month, in explaining a nearly $18 billion proposed cut to the National Institutes of Health, President Donald Trump’s budget request for the next fiscal year stated that a lab origin “is now confirmed by several intelligence agencies.”

But there has been no such confirmation. In late January, the CIA joined the FBI and the Department of Energy in concluding a lab origin is “most likely.” But those determinations were each made with low or moderate confidence, and the agencies don’t agree on the source lab. As many as five other intelligence bodies lean toward a natural origin or are undecided.

Joel Wertheim, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego who has published research on how the pandemic began, told us the website is “untrue.”

As we’ve explained before, the origin of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is unknown. Multiple lines of scientific evidence, however, point to a natural origin, with the virus spilling over into humans from animals through the illegal wildlife trade in China. That is similar to what has happened in the past, including in the early 2000s with SARS, when a similar coronavirus caused a respiratory disease outbreak that began in China.

“There’s overwhelming scientific evidence that COVID emerged from an animal market in Wuhan, which was miles away from a virology lab,” Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, told us.

While for many scientists the evidence for a natural origin is convincing, no intermediate animal has been found harboring a virus highly similar to SARS-CoV-2, so the theory remains unproved. Some scientists are uncertain and some favor a lab leak.

It is unclear on what specific information the intelligence agencies are basing their determinations. Scientists who have studied the origins question closely have encouraged more transparency, but note that the scientific aspect of the investigation is highly technical. Michael Worobey, an expert in virus evolution at the University of Arizona who is an author of several of the major COVID-19 origins papers, told the Associated Press in 2023 that he doubted the individuals making the assessments “have the scientific expertise … to really understand the most important evidence.”

Other Trump officials have also recently endorsed a lab leak, even if they do not always frame it as definitive. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, for example, said the pandemic was “probably the result of some scientists messing with Mother Nature” and that a lab leak “is now the leading theory among scientists.” In congressional testimony on May 15, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated that multiple agencies “have all agreed that NIH research almost certainly led to the pandemic.”

Those statements are unsupported or contradicted by available evidence. As we said, there is neither a consensus nor strong confidence among the different U.S. intelligence agencies that there was a lab leak. But one thing nearly all did agree on, according to a declassified 2023 report, is that the coronavirus “was not genetically engineered.”

Scientists have also previously told us that it’s virtually impossible that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered.

“SARS-CoV-2 shows no evidence of being manipulated or passage[d] in a laboratory prior to its emergence,” Wertheim said. “The scientific literature is emphatic on this point, with broad consensus even among scientists who disagree regarding the particulars of the location and timing of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.”

There is also little to suggest that scientists now prefer the lab leak theory, as Makary said. In 2023, 156 scientists penned a commentary in the Journal of Virology that said that the zoonosis hypothesis, or the idea that the virus spilled over to humans from an animal, “has the strongest supporting evidence,” while lab leak scenarios have “no compelling evidence.” Subsequently, another 120 scientists with the Australasian Virology Society wrote to the journal to agree. A 2024 survey by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute also found scientists overwhelmingly favored a natural origin.

Wertheim objected to Makary’s characterization, noting that the “peer-reviewed literature is dominated by articles supporting a zoonotic origin” while lab leak papers “are rare, fringe, and mutually incompatible with each other.”

Claims that the NIH funded work that led to the pandemic have been promoted for years. But as we’ve repeatedly explained, the small amount of NIH grant money that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded experiments using viruses that are very different from SARS-CoV-2 and could not have led to the creation of the coronavirus.

When asked what the Trump administration’s certainty about a lab leak was based on, and why it discounted the published research that supports a natural origin, White House spokesman Kush Desai pointed to the Intelligence Community assessments.

“Multiple intelligence agency assessments have now substantiated that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak – an idea that the mainstream media once completely wrote off as a lunatic fringe conspiracy theory,” he told us in an email. “While the media continues to decimate what’s left of its record-low credibility, the Trump administration remains committed to transparency for the American people.”

HHS did not respond to a similar inquiry about Kennedy’s and Makary’s statements.

Factually Inaccurate Website

In addition to incorrectly presenting a lab leak as an established fact, the White House webpage lists five numbered statements purporting to bolster its case. Each is either incorrect or misleading. We’ll address them one by one (the italic emphasis in each statement is the White House’s).

A screenshot of the new White House webpage.

“The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.” False. This is presumably a reference to SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site, or FCS, a short sequence that helps the virus enter cells. Much of the speculation about the coronavirus being lab-generated has stemmed from this site, since no other SARS-related coronavirus is known to have a FCS. But as we’ve explained before, the sites do exist in other, more distant coronaviruses. As a result, while unusual, the FCS is not inherently suspicious.

“It is most certainly found in nature,” Wertheim said. 

“Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.” Data do not show this. A Science paper published in 2022, which analyzed genomic data from early COVID-19 cases, concluded that there were likely at least two spillovers from animals to humans.

Wertheim, who was a co-author of that paper, said he took “particular umbrage” with this claim because “it was an uphill battle to convince other scientists that not only did multiple introductions occur, but that multiple introductions would be expected.”

“Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.” Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which worked on bat coronaviruses and genetically manipulated some of them. But there’s no evidence the WIV worked on any viruses remotely similar enough to have given rise to SARS-CoV-2 (whether the experiments qualified as gain-of-function is also subject to debate). 

The intense focus on such issues is in many ways irrelevant, since the scientific literature is “unified” in concluding that the coronavirus “was not subject to manipulation or ‘gain-of-function’ experiments prior to its emergence,” Wertheim said.

The presence of the institute can seem too unlikely to be a coincidence, but as we’ve explained before, Wuhan is a hub for the wildlife trade and is home to some 11 million people. The population density is key, since a spillover in rural China would likely have simply fizzled out, Wertheim said.

Much is often made about the long distance between Wuhan and where SARS-CoV-2’s closest ancestors were identified in bats. But the coronavirus behind the 2002 SARS epidemic, which everyone agrees was a natural spillover, also traveled a similar distance to Guangdong. A paper published in May in Cell, co-authored by Wertheim, documents the similarities between the two cases and implicates travel via the wildlife trade for both.

“Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.” Rumors of sick WIV workers — with various details shifting over time — have circulated since 2020, as we’ve explained before. But the U.S. Intelligence Community has already said that the information is not relevant to the question of how the pandemic began. 

Because “the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19,” the 2023 declassified report explains, the IC “continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins.”

“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.” There is evidence of a natural origin; it’s just not conclusive. The lack of an intermediate animal — which might prove a natural origin, and is presumably what this is referencing — does not mean that the coronavirus must have originated in a lab.

As we have written, the wet market where the first COVID-19 cases were recognized was quickly shut down. While some animal testing occurred early on, it was primarily in species that would not be expected to be the animals that transferred the virus to humans. China has also demonstrated little to no interest in looking any further for an intermediate animal, insisting instead that the virus came from abroad, including from the U.S.

“Evidence of zoonosis has surfaced,” Wertheim said, noting that there is now genetic evidence that animals known to transmit SARS-like viruses were in the same part of the market where the first cases were found, with remnants of SARS-CoV-2 where the animals were kept. “This evidence is exactly what you would expect to find had a zoonotic virus emerged.”

That’s in addition to the epidemiology data, which show the earliest COVID-19 cases cluster around the market, even those without a known connection to the market.

Again, all of this doesn’t formally rule out a lab leak. But it’s incorrect to claim that the lack of an intermediate animal is strong evidence of a lab leak.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The post Trump Administration Incorrectly Claims Certainty About Origin of Coronavirus appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The revenue estimates it and the JCT churn out ignore the real effects of tax policy.

The House and Senate are about to start a tug-of-war over taxes and Medicaid cuts.

Republicans want to investigate former President Joe Biden's use of the autopen. Did he personally grant broad (and possibly unconstitutional) pardons for family members, members of the January 6 Committee and Anthony Fauci, or did someone else make the decision? Was he responsible for all the executive orders issued under his name, or did White House personnel make those decisions?

When I joined the race for Democratic National Committee chair a few months ago, there was one area of consensus among all the candidates-including the eventual victor, Ken Martin. One of the big lessons of the loss from the last election cycle was that we collectively spent too much money on TV and digital ads, driven in large part by decisions of well-placed and well-heeled Democratic consultants.

The governor was the only supporter of vaccines among five others who claimed the government lied and covered up vaccine risks in a hearing titled The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies.

Among a flurry of executive actions, Mr. Trump directed the nation’s nuclear safety regulator to speed up approvals for new reactors.

'Five years after the global COVID pandemic was declared, there is widespread agreement that closing classrooms was devastating for children, read a March 16 article in the New York Times

How violence like this became thinkable - and what it means for the future of Palestine.

It is fascinating to see how the musician's political opinions diverge so greatly from the art that made him rich and famous.

The G.O.P. chairmen of the House and Senate agriculture committees said they were “troubled” by the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s findings and urged it to use sounder science.

In their fiscal package, Republicans have slipped in a hodgepodge of tweaks that are, at times, only tangentially related to the rest of the bill.

When Michael Bloomberg ran for president in 2020, his employees were told they would be paid through November. They were not, several sued, and one just won his demand for the back pay.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

A House-passed reconciliation bill would reduce federal funding to states that provide state-funded health insurance to people in the U.S. illegally, resulting in 1.4 million people losing coverage, according to a preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis. But President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have wrongly cast the bill as removing these immigrants from Medicaid.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state government program that provides health coverage for low-income individuals and families. People living in the U.S. illegally are not eligible to receive Medicaid benefits other than for emergency medical services.

“A state funded program is by definition not Medicaid,” Leonardo Cuello, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families, told us in an email.

But in a May 16 Truth Social post encouraging Republican lawmakers to support the wide-ranging House budget bill, which makes changes to Medicaid and extends expiring income tax cuts, among other things, Trump said the legislation would remove from Medicaid “millions” of people illegally residing in the country.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks during a press conference celebrating the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on May 22. Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

“Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!,'” Trump’s post reads. “Not only does it cut Taxes for ALL Americans, but it will kick millions of Illegal Aliens off of Medicaid to PROTECT it for those who are the ones in real need.”

As for the tax cuts, about 80% of U.S. households – not 100% – would receive them under the bill, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

To support his Medicaid claim, the White House sent us a May 13 social media post from the Republican-led House Committee on Energy and Commerce. That post on X about “strengthening Medicaid” by “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse” suggested that “1.4 million illegal immigrants” would lose Medicaid coverage as a result of the bill, according to a “preliminary CBO estimate on coverage changes.”

The CBO estimated that overall, the Medicaid provisions in the Republican bill would reduce the number of people with Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage by 10.3 million by 2034, though some would retain or acquire other insurance. A net 7.6 million people would become uninsured, CBO said.

But the agency did not say that 1.4 million people in the U.S. illegally would lose Medicaid benefits.

The Senate Republicans account on X wrongly claimed in a May 20 post that the bill “protects Medicaid for eligible Americans by removing 1.4 million illegals.” That was a day after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also inaccurately claimed that, under the bill, “the 1.4 million illegal aliens who are currently improperly receiving Medicaid benefits will be kicked off the program to preserve it for hardworking American citizens who need it.”

And after the House narrowly passed the bill early on May 22 with only Republican votes, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that Democrats voting against the bill showed they wanted “Medicaid for illegal immigrants.”

CBO, which analyzed provisions in an early draft of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s portion of the House budget bill, said that, in 2034, 1.4 million people would lose “other coverage” — specifically health insurance through “state-only funded programs” under current law.

The 1.4 million “includes people without verified citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status,” the CBO said.

Those individuals are presumed to lose their state-provided health benefits because the House bill includes language penalizing states that provide “any form of financial assistance” for health coverage or “any form of comprehensive health benefits” to immigrants living in the country illegally “regardless of the source of funding.”

For those states, the bill proposes reducing from 90% to 80% the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage rate that the federal government is required to pay to states that expanded Medicaid for eligible individuals under the Affordable Care Act.

The CBO analysis assumes that at least some states, deterred by reduced federal payments for their Medicaid programs, would stop offering their state-funded health programs to immigrants without lawful immigration status, leaving more than 1 million of them uninsured.

But those individuals would not come from the Medicaid program.

“Medicaid is when a state is accepting federal Medicaid dollars in compliance with federal Medicaid coverage rules,” Cuello, the Georgetown University professor, told us. So the bill’s provisions aren’t about Medicaid, he said. “And of course, undocumented immigrants are also not eligible for comprehensive coverage in Medicaid.”

The health policy research group KFF said that, as of April, there were 14 states, plus the District of Columbia, that use state taxpayer money, not federal funds, to cover children regardless of immigration status, including seven states and D.C. that also cover some adults regardless of immigration status.

“So there are not millions of undocumented people losing [Medicaid] coverage because of this bill, since they don’t have comprehensive coverage under Medicaid to begin with, and the very limited emergency Medicaid coverage provided to immigrants is not changed under the bill,” Cuello said.

Cuello told us that hospitals can request reimbursement for providing emergency medical assistance, such as emergency labor and delivery, to people in the country illegally who would otherwise be eligible for Medicaid if not for their immigration status. Those reimbursements are paid using state and federal money known as Emergency Medicaid funding.

KFF has said that less than 1% of all Medicaid spending is used for covering emergency care for immigrants who are not U.S. citizens. That information comes from a CBO report on fiscal years 2017 to 2023.

Since House Republicans have passed their bill, it now goes to the Senate for consideration.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The post A False Claim About Illegal Immigration and Medicaid appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Courts are serving as a rare check on President Trump, but judicial orders to unwind his actions can be easier said than done.