Category: Fact Check

At a campaign reception in Denver, President Joe Biden distorted some of the facts and the position of his predecessor:

• Biden claimed that the U.S. has the “lowest inflation rate of any major country in the world right now.” As of October, at least Italy and Canada reported lower inflation rates than the U.S.

• The president claimed to have “cut the federal deficit” by making some corporations pay higher taxes. But the deficit in fiscal year 2023, when the tax went into effect, still increased.

• He said that former President Donald Trump “is proposing …. cutting Social Security and Medicare.” But in January, Trump advised Republicans against cutting funding for the Social Security and Medicare programs.

• Biden said Trump’s “plan” was to end the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing health insurance for 40 million people. But that worst-case-scenario figure is based on Trump not replacing the ACA with anything. He says he would replace it with something — though he has given no details on what that would be.

• The president claimed that 100 million people with preexisting conditions have protections “only” because of the ACA. That’s the case only for those buying insurance on their own; before the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny a policy based on health conditions.

Biden made his remarks at a private residence on Nov. 28. He repeated some of the same claims in a speech the next day in Pueblo, Colorado. The president has stepped up his campaign appearances recently and has three fundraisers in Massachusetts on Dec. 5.

Inflation

At the Nov. 28 campaign event, Biden said that the U.S. has the “lowest inflation rate of any major country in the world right now.” But that’s not accurate, at least not according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — or the White House’s own calculations.

OECD data as of October 2023 show that Italy and Canada — which are also members of the G7, a group of seven of the world’s most advanced economies — had lower year-over-year inflation rates than the U.S. While the U.S. inflation rate was 3.2% that month, Italy’s was 1.7% and Canada’s was 3.1%.

If the list were expanded to include other “advanced economies,” Denmark (0.1%), Belgium (0.4%), Latvia (2.1%) and Lithuania (2.8%) also had lower rates than the U.S., according to OECD figures as of October.

Even by the White House’s latest figures, Biden’s claim was not exactly right.

Because of differences in how countries calculate inflation rates, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said it “assembles and constructs harmonized inflation data for G7 countries, allowing for more apples-to-apples inflation comparisons.”

But last month the CEA reported that inflation in the U.S. was “among the lowest” of major economies – not the lowest.

“Measured on an apples-to-apples HICP basis to allow global comparisons, both core & headline U.S. inflation were among the lowest in the G7 in September, the latest month with complete G7 data,” the CEA wrote in a Nov. 14 thread on X, the platform once known as Twitter. HICP stands for Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices.

The language is notable because in June, the CEA had said “the U.S. now has the lowest 12-month harmonized inflation in the G7, both for overall and core inflation.”

In his Nov. 29 remarks, Biden also labeled some companies greedy for not lowering prices since inflation has been declining in the U.S.

“Let me be clear: Any corporation that is not passing these savings on to the consumers needs to stop the … price gouging,” Biden said, noting that Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania calls it “Greedflation.”

But a decline in the year-over-year inflation rate doesn’t automatically mean lower prices, as Biden suggested.

As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis wrote in August, inflation is the increase in the prices of goods and services over time, and deflation occurs when those prices start to go down.

What the U.S. has been experiencing for the last year is known as disinflation, which is when the rate of inflation decreases but prices still go up – just at a slower pace. Prices wouldn’t be expected to go down until the year-over-year inflation rate is below zero, or negative, which has not happened.

Deficits

In his Nov. 28 campaign speech, Biden continued to misleadingly claim that he reduced the deficit, which he attributed to raising taxes on corporations.

“But by making sure they pay that 15% minimum tax, we paid for everything that we’ve proposed,” the president said. “We didn’t increase the debt. We cut the federal deficit. And we have more work to do.”

Biden was referring to the 15% corporate alternative minimum tax that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act that he signed into law in August 2022. As the Congressional Research Service explains, the CAMT “applies to firms with an average of $1 billion or more in profits in any three-year period and to foreign-parented U.S. firms with profits of over $100 million if the aggregated foreign group has over $1 billion in profits.”

The Joint Committee on Taxation did estimate that the tax, which went into effect in January of this year, would reduce federal deficits by more than $222 billion over 10 fiscal years, including by roughly $35 billion in 2023.

But the national debt has continued to increase under Biden, and the final deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, increased to roughly $1.7 trillion, or about $320 billion more than the almost $1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2022.

In his Nov. 29 remarks, Biden claimed to have reduced the deficit by “over $7 billion,” when he meant to say “over $1 trillion,” according to a White House transcript that corrected the president’s statement.

Deficits have declined from the record of $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2020, before Biden took office. But as we’ve explained, the primary reason that deficits went down by about $350 billion in Biden’s first year, and by another $1.3 trillion in his second, is because of emergency COVID-19 funding that expired in those years.

Budget experts said that if not for more pandemic and infrastructure spending championed by Biden, deficits would have been even lower than they were in fiscal 2021 and 2022.

Social Security and Medicare

Biden also claimed that Trump is pushing to cut Social Security and Medicare, which is the opposite of what Trump has said publicly.

On Nov. 28, Biden said, “Trump is proposing — and the MAGA Republicans — of cutting Social Security and Medicare.” In remarks the next day, the president said making sure that billionaires “pay their taxes” would allow the U.S. “to strengthen the Social Security and Medicare system instead of cutting them” like “Trump and Boebert want to do,” a reference to Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

However, in January, when lawmakers were negotiating an increase in the federal debt limit, Trump, in a video message, warned Republicans not to make cuts to those two entitlement programs.

“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree,” he said. “While we absolutely need to stop Biden’s out of control spending, the pain should be borne by Washington bureaucrats, not by hard-working American families and American seniors.”

Some critics argue that Trump’s words cannot be trusted because of his past budget proposals. But on Medicare, those budgets included bipartisan ideas to reduce the growth of spending.

For example, in 2020 we wrote about Democratic claims that Trump’s budget for fiscal 2021 included cuts to Medicare and Social Security. While the proposal called for reductions in future Medicare spending, budget experts said that would not mean cuts in benefits. As for Social Security, we wrote that the budget proposed reductions to the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, but not to the Social Security retirement program.

We also wrote in 2019 about Democratic claims that Trump was “once again trying to ransack Medicare” with his budget for fiscal 2020.

In that case, Trump’s budget again called for reducing Medicare spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, largely by lowering payments to providers. In fact, some of Trump’s Medicare proposals were similar to cost-cutting measures that had been proposed by former President Barack Obama.

But Trump’s 2020 budget did propose changing out-of-pocket costs for Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage, which we said would increase costs for some beneficiaries and decrease costs for others.

Scrapping/Replacing Obamacare?

The Affordable Care Act — once again — has become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

After former President Donald Trump posted on social media that Republicans “should never give up” on terminating the ACA, or Obamacare, Biden resurrected talking points about what would happen to insurance coverage and preexisting condition protections if the ACA were repealed. The problem is, Trump claims he would replace the ACA with something else. The problem for Trump is that he hasn’t provided a plan, and he never released one while in office, either.

There’s support for the idea that whatever Trump might advocate wouldn’t be as comprehensive as the ACA and would lead to an increase in the uninsured and fewer protections for those with health conditions. But at the same time, Biden takes advantage of Trump’s vagueness to claim the former president wouldn’t replace the ACA with anything at all.

We’ll go through Biden’s statements and explain what Trump has supported in the past.

In Truth Social posts on Nov. 25 and 29, Trump said he was “seriously looking at alternatives” and would replace the ACA with something “MUCH BETTER.” (He made similar claims as president.) We asked his campaign for more details on what Trump’s health care plan might be, but we haven’t received a response.

Biden broached the subject at his Nov. 28 campaign reception. “Let’s be clear about what the Affordable Care Act means. There are 40 million people in America today who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act,” Biden said. “His plan is to throw every one of them off that — that legislation. It would mean the number of uninsured African Americans would go up by 20 percent. Latinos would go up by 15 percent.”

He made the same claims in his speech the next day in Pueblo, Colorado.

The 40 million figure is the number of people who were enrolled, as of early 2023, in insurance plans on the ACA marketplace, or exchanges — where people buy their own coverage, mostly with the help of premium tax credits — and those with Medicaid coverage thanks to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion policies, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. For marketplace plans, the law, which Obama signed in 2010, provides tax credits to those earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level. As of February, 91% of the 15.7 million people with marketplace plans qualified for tax credits.

The Medicaid expansion allows adults earning up to 138% of the poverty level to obtain coverage in states that have chosen to participate. Forty states, plus the District of Columbia, have implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, the most recent being North Carolina.

If the ACA were eliminated, the number and rate of the uninsured would increase significantly. Some who would lose coverage could get insurance through another means, but the jump in the uninsured would likely be tens of millions of people. Most of those who got coverage under the Medicaid expansion would likely become uninsured without the law, according to the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF. A 2020 report by the Urban Institute estimated that a net 21.1 million people would become uninsured in 2022 if the ACA were scrapped. At the time, there were fewer Americans with coverage either on the ACA marketplace or through Medicaid expansion, so such an estimate would likely be higher today.

As for Biden’s figures for the increase in the number of the uninsured by race, his campaign pointed to that same Urban Institute report. It found much larger percentage increases for the uninsured rates. If the ACA were eliminated, the report said, the uninsured rate for Black Americans would increase from 11% to 20%, and for Hispanic people from 21% to 30%.

As we said, Trump claims he would replace the ACA, but he hasn’t said with what. He hasn’t released his own health care plan, but Republican bills he supported in 2017 would have increased the number of people without health insurance by millions, as we’ve explained before. One GOP House bill would have led to 24 million more uninsured by 2026, according to an analysis at the time by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation. The House passed that bill, but it failed in the Senate, despite both chambers being controlled by Republicans then.

In 2017, Trump also supported a so-called “skinny” repeal bill in the Senate, which would have sent a placeholder bill, with only some changes to the ACA, to a conference committee with the House. The House and Senate would have had to agree upon final legislation. But that bill, which also would have increased the number of people without insurance, failed, too.

In a court case challenging the constitutionality of the ACA, the Trump administration argued the entire law should be nullified. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 2021 that the plaintiffs lacked standing.

In a June 2019 interview with ABC News, while that lawsuit was working its way through the courts, Trump said he would be releasing a health care plan to replace Obamacare “in about two months.” But that didn’t happen.

Trump’s record indicates he would likely support a replacement that would lead to fewer Americans having health insurance, and it raises questions about whether Trump will release a health care plan. But the Biden campaign fills in the blanks to claim Trump has a “plan” to get rid of the ACA without anything in its place.

Protections for Those with Preexisting Conditions

Biden repeated a misleading talking point about the ACA’s preexisting condition protections.

“There are over 100 million people today who have — who have protections against preexisting conditions only for one reason: because of the Affordable Care Act. Trump wants to get rid of it,” Biden said at the campaign reception.

As we explained a few times during the 2020 campaign, the 100 million figure is an estimate of how many Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid have preexisting conditions. The ACA instituted sweeping protections for those with preexisting conditions, prohibiting insurers in all markets from denying coverage or charging more based on health status. But only those buying their own plans on the individual or nongroup market would immediately be at risk of being denied insurance.

Even without the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny issuing a policy — and could only decline coverage for some preexisting conditions for a limited period if a new employee had a lapse in coverage.

As of 2022, 20 million people, or about 6.3% of the U.S. population, got coverage on the individual market. It is the case that the ACA’s broad protections would benefit people who lost their jobs or retired early and found themselves seeking insurance on their own.

As for Trump, he has said he supports preexisting condition protections, but while in office, he worked to reduce the protections under the ACA in several ways, as we’ve written before. In the lawsuit mentioned above, the Trump administration initially argued that the ACA’s preexisting condition provisions would have to go if the suit were successful. The administration later backed the full invalidation of the law.

The 2017 GOP bill Trump supported would have included some, but not all, of the ACA’s protections. Trump also pushed the expansion of cheaper short-term health plans that wouldn’t have to abide by the ACA’s protections, including prohibitions against denying or pricing coverage based on health status.

In late September 2020, less than two months before Election Day, Trump signed an executive order that said “[i]t has been and will continue to be the policy of the United States … to ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions can obtain the insurance of their choice at affordable rates.” He said the order put the issue of preexisting conditions “to rest.”

But it didn’t. At the time, Karen Pollitz, who was then a senior fellow at KFF, told us the order was “aspirational” and had “no force of law.”

With this issue, too, Trump doesn’t have a plan that can be evaluated — and his record indicates he could support a plan that weakens the preexisting condition protections in the ACA. But Biden’s talking point suggests no plan means no protections, and it glosses over the fact that even without the ACA, employer policies still wouldn’t be able to deny insurance.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — who head two of the largest states in the country — squared off in a debate on Nov. 30 on Fox News. The governors spun, mangled and exaggerated some of the facts on issues including COVID-19, migration, abortion, book bans and gasoline prices.

The debate, which was moderated by Sean Hannity, was billed as “The Great Red State vs. Blue State Debate.” But it wasn’t a preview of the 2024 presidential election. DeSantis is currently trailing former President Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, while Newsom has ruled out challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.

Florida’s COVID-19 Restrictions

In a lively exchange on COVID-19 mitigation measures in Florida, Newsom accused DeSantis of initially supporting restrictions “until he decided to fall prey to the fringe of his party.” During that exchange, DeSantis claimed that Newsom was wrong about DeSantis closing beaches and imposing quarantines — but in both instances the California governor was right.

Newsom: You closed down your beaches, your bars, your restaurants.

DeSantis: False.

Newsom: It’s a fact.

DeSantis: The beaches were not closed.

Newsom: You had quarantines.

DeSantis: False.

Newsom: You had quarantines. You had checkpoints all over the state of Florida. By the way, I didn’t say that. Donald Trump laid you out on this. Dead to rights. You did that. You followed science, you followed [Dr. Anthony] Fauci.

DeSantis: That’s not true.

It’s true that DeSantis resisted closing beaches and issuing stay-at-home orders, but he did both in orders that were crafted in a limited way. He also directed the Florida Department of Transportation, or FDOT, to set up checkpoints in an attempt to enforce an order requiring travelers entering Florida from the New York state area to isolate for 14 days. 

Here’s a brief timeline of events that shows how DeSantis issued a series of increasingly restrictive executive orders to slow the spread of COVID-19.  

The Florida governor issued executive order 20-68 on March 17, 2020, directing public beaches to restrict “gatherings to no more than 10 persons” and urging beachgoers to “support beach closures at the discretion of local authorities.”

On March 30, 2020, DeSantis signed an executive order (20-89) directing four counties in South Florida to restrict public access to “non-essential” businesses. Over the following two days, he issued two executive orders: The first (20-90) ordered beaches to be closed in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and the second (20-91) ordered senior citizens and those with a “significant underlying medical condition” statewide to stay at home. The Tampa Bay Times said that DeSantis had – up until that point — resisted issuing a statewide stay-at-home order.

The April 1, 2020, order, the Tampa Bay Times wrote, “does not mandate any business shut down,” but “it severely restricts the movement of employees and customers and many non-essential stores and offices will likely chose to temporarily close. Businesses are encouraged to telework and restaurants to provide food via drive-thru, take out or delivery.”

As for checkpoints, DeSantis issued an executive order (20-82) on March 24, 2020, ordering people entering Florida from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York “to isolate or quarantine for a period of 14 days.” He followed that up three days later with another executive order (20-86) directing FDOT to set up “appropriate checkpoints, including at welcome centers and rest stops,” and requiring travelers from those states and others areas “with substantial community spread” to fill out forms at the checkpoints disclosing “the address of their location of isolation or quarantine for a period of 14 days.”

Californians Moving to Florida

Both governors sought to portray their states as a more desirable place to live. DeSantis emphasized Florida’s relative low overall crime rate and taxes, while Newsom countered by touting the state’s low murder rate and a progressive tax system that benefits low- and moderate-income taxpayers.

Asked by Hannity to explain why California residents are moving to Florida, Newsom said: “You mean the last two years, more Floridians going to California than Californians going to Florida?” Newsom added, “That’s going to be fun to fact-check.”

The facts, however, show that Newsom is wrong to suggest that California has seen a two-year net increase in migration of residents moving between the two states.

According to Census Bureau migration data for 2022, 50,701 Florida residents had been living in California the year prior, and 28,557 Californians had been living in Florida – a net gain for Florida and a net loss for California of 22,144 residents.

In 2021, 37,464 Florida residents had been living in California the year prior, and 24,692 California residents had been living in Florida – a net gain for Florida and a net loss for California of 12,772, Census data show.

That’s a two-year net gain for Florida of 34,916 new residents.

California Gasoline Prices

For a variety of reasons, including higher state taxes and clean fuel mandates, California typically has among the highest gasoline prices in the United States. But DeSantis left the misleading impression that the state’s gasoline prices are currently $7 per gallon.

The issue of gasoline prices came up when Newsom was making a point about California’s progressive tax rate. DeSantis interjected, “How does paying $7 a gallon gas help working people?”

Gasoline prices fluctuate, and prices have reportedly topped $7 a gallon at some individual stations in the state, from time to time. But currently, the statewide average for regular gasoline in California is less than $5.

As of Dec. 1, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $4.83 in California, which is the highest in the country, according to AAA. The least expensive gasoline is in Texas, where the average is $2.75 a gallon. In addition to Texas, 27 other states have lower gasoline prices than Florida ($3.16 a gallon).

Book Bans in Florida

As governor, DeSantis signed laws that, according to PEN America, “bar instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade (HB 1557), prohibit educators from discussing advantages or disadvantages based on race (HB 7), and mandate that schools must catalog every book on their shelves, including those found in classroom libraries (HB 1467). Due to the lack of clear guidance, these three laws have each led teachers, media specialists, and school administrators to proactively remove books from shelves, in the absence of any specific challenges.” 

During the debate, Newsom said “1,406 books have been banned just last year under Ron DeSantis’ leadership” – which is not quite right. PEN America reported that during the 2022–23 school year, there were 1,406 “instances of books banned” in Florida schools. Some of the books on the list are duplicates, such as Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first book, “Bluest Eye,” which is listed as being banned in 12 Florida schools or school districts.

Newsom also asked, “What’s wrong with Amanda Gorman’s [poem]?” – referring to “The Hill We Climb,” which Gorman read at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Newsom suggested that her poem was banned, and it is true that it is on PEN America’s list of banned books.

But, as we wrote, Gorman’s poem was not banned. In one K-8 school in Miami-Dade County, the book was moved to a shelf for upper-grade students. The school said, “The book is available in the media center as part of the middle grades collection,” meaning sixth through eighth grades.

Florida’s Abortion Ban

In April, DeSantis signed legislation, known as the Heartbeat Protection Act, that banned abortion in Florida after six weeks of gestation. A year earlier, DeSantis signed a bill that banned most abortions after 15 weeks.

During a discussion on abortion, Hannity asked DeSantis about his reason for signing legislation instituting a six-week ban after he had already signed similar legislation prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks. In his response, DeSantis said of the six-week ban: “That bill attaches when there is a detectable heartbeat for the child.”

That is inaccurate for a couple of reasons. For the first 10 weeks, the correct medical term is “embryo,” not fetus or, as DeSantis said, “child.” Also, as we have written before, a heartbeat isn’t audible at six weeks.

“What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically-induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said in a statement to us in 2019. “Thus, ACOG does not use the term ‘heartbeat’ to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy.”

For more, read our Ask SciCheck “When Are Heartbeats Audible During Pregnancy?”

Abortion Ban, Again

Newsom repeatedly claimed that the six-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis in Florida “criminalizes women” who seek abortions. Although he did not respond to that point in the debate, DeSantis has made repeated public statements that that is not the meaning or intent of the law he signed in April.

Newsom and other Democrats have seized on the language of the new law, which would make it a felony for “[a]ny person who willfully performs, or actively participates in, a termination of pregnancy” after six weeks of gestation. They say the inclusion of anyone who “actively participates” might subject women getting an abortion to criminal charges.

As we wrote last month when this issue was raised in an ad from a political action committee tied to Newsom, DeSantis has repeatedly said he does not support penalties against women who get abortions. In an interview with Norah O’Donnell on “CBS Evening News” on Sept. 13, DeSantis said the law he signed — which includes an exception for mothers whose lives are at risk, and delays the abortion ban to 15 weeks for pregnancy caused by rape, incest or human trafficking — only includes criminal penalties for medical providers who perform abortions beyond the deadlines in the law, not the women who get abortions. “We’ve litigated this,” DeSantis said.

In the case of Florida v. Ashley, an unwed Florida teenager was prosecuted for manslaughter and third-degree murder after she shot herself in the abdomen while in the third trimester of pregnancy. She survived, but the fetus did not. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that she could not be criminally prosecuted.

The court noted that the penalty section of a 1993 Florida law limiting abortions in the third trimester stated, “Any person who willfully performs, or participates in, a termination of a pregnancy in violation of the requirements of this section is guilty of a felony of the third degree․” In its opinion, the state Supreme Court noted that “in order to overturn a long standing common law principle,” the state Legislature would have had to enact a statute that explicitly criminalized women who got an abortion in violation of the state statute. “Florida has not done so,” the court wrote.

So, since 1997, Florida has had similar language in its abortion laws, and no women getting abortions in violation of those state laws have been criminally prosecuted.

Nonetheless, on Sept. 15, Florida Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book filed a bill citing ambiguity in the wording of the new law and proposing changes to it to make clear that women getting an abortion cannot be criminally charged. The DeSantis campaign did not respond when we asked if the governor would support Book’s bill.

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A TV ad from a super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary uses out-of-context quotes from Nikki Haley to misleadingly claim that Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee, is Haley’s “role model.”

The ad also says in words on the screen, “Nikki’s not who she says,” but the comments it refers to are no secret. In numerous interviews over the years, Haley — a former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — has told the story of how something Clinton said long ago about not listening to naysayers convinced Haley to first run for public office in South Carolina. She did not make the decision because she shared Clinton’s politics, as the ad may lead viewers to believe.

In fact, the ad uses clips that were edited to omit parts of those interviews where Haley said she does not agree with Clinton on “anything” or “a lot.”

Fight Right Inc., a group recently formed to support DeSantis, has spent more than $200,000 to air the anti-Haley ad in Iowa since Nov. 23, according to AdImpact, a service that tracks political advertising. The Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest in the Republican presidential primary, will be held Jan. 15.

2020 Interview

The ad begins with a narrator saying of Clinton, “We know her as ‘Crooked Hillary,’ but to Nikki Haley she’s her role model, the reason she ran for office.”

It then plays several clips of Haley talking about how Clinton motivated Haley’s first campaign nearly two decades ago. But the clips have been edited to exclude the context in which Haley made those remarks.

To start, the ad shows Haley stating in choppy fashion, “I often say that the reason I got into politics … was because of Hillary Clinton.” That comes from a July 2020 interview in which Haley recalled how she was considering running for South Carolina’s House of Representatives in 2003, when something Clinton told the audience at a Furman University-sponsored event that Haley attended that fall helped her make up her mind.

But the ad cuts out the part where Haley indicated that she and Clinton “don’t agree” politically. Here are Haley’s fuller remarks, which were made in the context of encouraging more women to seek political office (emphasis is ours):

Haley, July 2020: You know I often say that the reason I got into politics, believe it or not — I don’t agree with anything that she has to say — but was because of Hillary Clinton. I was at a Furman Institute event for women and she was the one that said for all the reasons people tell you, you shouldn’t run, those are the reasons you should. And I walked out of there and decided to run for the statehouse.

2012 Interview

Haley had previously talked about this in a 2012 interview with David Gregory, who was then the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Clips of that interview, in which Haley was promoting her book “Can’t Is Not an Option: My American Story,” also are shown in the ad.

When prompted by Gregory, who said that Haley had written about Clinton being a “big inspiration” to her, Haley mentioned how Clinton’s 2003 remarks had convinced her to start her political career despite others who had advised against it.

But the ad ignores the fuller explanation, including Gregory suggesting that Clinton had not inspired Haley “ideologically.”

Here’s more of the exchange between Haley and Gregory:

Haley, April 2012: I decided to run for the statehouse. Everybody immediately told me I shouldn’t do it. I was too young, you can’t do it with two small kids, you should start at the school board level. And one day I went with my friend Eleanor Kitzman to a Furman leadership program where Hillary Clinton was speaking and she said to a few hundred people, there are going to be tons of reasons why people tell you, you can’t do something, and she said and that’s the reason you absolutely have to. And I walked out of there and I said I’m running for office.

Gregory: So she was an inspiration, maybe not ideologically, but certainly in terms of a leader.

Haley: A strong woman that understood that people are quick to say no you can’t and that’s all the more reason why you have to push through it. I needed to show that moms can do this. I needed to show that wives can do this. I needed to show that age was not a limitation, or gender, or being Indian. And so it was proving as much to myself as it was everyone else. So, I appreciate her saying it. She said it at a time that was very important in my life.

2019 Interview

Haley told the story again in November 2019, when promoting another one of her books, at an event moderated by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.

That’s when Haley said of Clinton, “she is actually the reason that I made the jump” — which is another clip shown in the ad.

But the ad excludes Haley also saying she “may not agree with her on a lot of things,” which she said just prior to the line the ad highlighted.

Haley brought up Clinton in response to an audience member’s question on “what led you to conservatism.” 

Haley said when she decided to run for South Carolina’s House of Representatives in 2003, she was considering if she would do so as a Republican or Democrat. It was after a conversation with a friend about the role of government that she realized she was a Republican, she said.

But in linking Haley to Clinton, the ad could mislead viewers about Haley’s politics.

“Nikki Haley credited Hillary Clinton with saying young women shouldn’t listen to critics who tell them not to run for office, but that’s where the praise ended,” Haley presidential campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas told NBC News for a story about the ad.

“Haley has long said she doesn’t agree with Clinton on anything, and she’d be a disastrous president,” Perez-Cubas was quoted saying.

Fight Right leaves out the parts of Haley’s past interviews that would make her stance on Clinton’s politics clear to those who watch the ad.

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Quick Take

At least 260 people were killed by Hamas during the militant group’s surprise attacks at an outdoor music festival in Israel on Oct. 7. A video clip on social media falsely claims to show Israel Defense Forces helicopters firing on festival-goers that day. The clip is from a video of IDF aircraft shooting at Hamas militants a day later at sites in the Gaza Strip.

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Full Story

During the Oct. 7 surprise attacks on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, at least 260 people were killed at an outdoor concert, the Tribe of Nova music festival near Kibbutz Reim, as we’ve written.

About 240 Israelis and other nationals were taken hostage during the attacks at the festival and other locations in southern Israel.

Since war broke out between Israel and Gaza, about 1,200 Israelis and more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed as of Nov. 20, the United Nations said, citing Israeli official sources and the Gaza Ministry of Health, respectively. The majority of Israeli casualties occurred during Hamas’ initial attacks on Oct. 7.

News reports about the attacks have included video of the aftermath of the violence at the festival and interviews with survivors.

As rockets fell on the festival crowd, the attackers converged on the site in trucks and on motorcycles, firing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at the fleeing revelers, according to reporting by the Associated Press based on survivors’ accounts.

But posts on social media, including a Nov. 9 post from conspiracy theorist Stew Peters, falsely claim that a video shows many of the festival-goers were killed by Israeli helicopter fire, not the Hamas attackers.

“VIDEO PROVES and ISRAEL ADMITS it slaughtered its own people on Oct. 7th,” Peters falsely claims in the post on X, the platform formerly called Twitter. “Footage from Israeli helicopter shows the IDF killing many people at October 7 concert in Israel.”

Peters, a conservative radio host, also has spread misinformation about COVID-19 and other topics, as we’ve previously written.

The 14-second video clip in Peters’ post appears to be green-tinted, infrared aerial footage of explosions on the ground and people running from the assault. The text on the post claims, “IDF helicopters fired on civilians fleeing the PsyTrance Music Festival.”

In addition to the video, the post includes a link to an Oct. 30 article in the Middle East Monitor, a website that says it supports the “Palestinian cause.” That article includes a quote that reads: “Israeli commanders made ‘difficult decisions’ including ‘shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.’” The quote is attributed to a security coordinator at Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the settlements attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. 

But the aerial footage shown in the post comes from a longer compilation video shared by the IDF on Oct. 9 on X. The video shows aerial bombings at several sites in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 8 — the day after the Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. The text on the IDF post, translated from Hebrew, reads: “Forces @idfonline Throughout the last day, Air Force planes have been carrying out extensive attacks along the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip, wreaking havoc on Hamas terrorists. In just the last three hours, about 130 targets were attacked using dozens of planes. The focus of the attack: Beit Hanon, Sajaya, Al Furkan and Rimal.”

Those locations are in the northern Gaza Strip; two are neighborhoods in Gaza City.

In response to the social media posts, the IDF told Newsweek in a story published Nov. 13: “On October 9, a video was published on the IDF’s official Twitter account describing IDF attacks in the Gaza Strip. The purpose of the strikes was to stop the murderous terrorists from penetrating into Israel to commit brutal and inhumane crimes. The viral post of an airstrike on the Nova festival is fake.”

The French television network France 24 debunked the claims about the video shared on social media in a Nov. 14 broadcast. An analysis cited in that report found that the infrared footage of the helicopter assault was taken at a location 10 kilometers, or six miles, away from the site of the music festival.

News Reports of Possible Friendly Fire

News reports have noted the possibility that Israeli forces fired on Israelis during their response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.

In its Nov. 14 report, France 24 cited media reports that Israeli helicopter pilots had difficulty distinguishing militants from civilians on Oct. 7.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Nov. 18 that “according to a police source, an investigation into [the attack on the festival] also revealed that an IDF helicopter that arrived on the scene from the Ramat David base fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers who were there.” (The Haaretz article was translated from Hebrew by Google.)

Responding to that report, the Israeli police issued a statement saying its investigation did not focus on IDF operations at the concert site and did not provide “any indication about the harm of civilians due to aerial activity there,” the Times of Israel reported on Nov. 19.

We emailed the media offices of the Israel Defense Forces for an explanation of the video footage shared on social media and a response to the Haaretz report that a helicopter fired at Israelis.

A spokesperson for the IDF North American media desk told us in a Nov. 23 email, “The Israel Police clarifies that the investigation carried out by the Southern District focused on the heroism of the police officers who acted to stop the massacre committed by Hamas.

“Contrary to the misleading publication, the police investigation does not refer to the activity of the IDF forces, and therefore no indication was given of any harm to civilians caused by any aerial activity at the site.

“The preliminary findings of the ongoing national inquiry, spearheaded by law enforcement and communicated to the international media, cast a spotlight on the profound and reprehensible acts committed by Hamas terrorists during the Nova music festival. Any effort to downplay the severity of these atrocities, as depicted in the misleading Haaretz newspaper publication, deserves unequivocal rejection,” the IDF spokesperson said.

We cannot say whether there were any cases of friendly fire by Israeli forces responding to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. But the social media posts that claim the IDF video proves “many people” were killed by the IDF at the music festival are false.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

ABC News. “Hundreds killed at music festival in Israel | GMA.” YouTube. 7 Oct 2023.

Bohannon, Molly. “At Least 260 Killed At Israeli Music Festival In Hamas Attack — Attendees Describe ‘Horror Movie.’” Forbes. 8 Oct 2023.

Breiner, Joshua. “Assessment in the security establishment: Hamas did not know in advance about the Nova festival, and recognized it from the air.” Haaretz. 18 Nov 2023.

Debre, Isabel and Michael Biesecker. “Israeli survivors recount terror at music festival, where Hamas militants killed at least 260.” Associated Press. 9 Oct 2023.

Gal, Shi. “‘Save us’: The Apache pilots who arrived first on the battlefield speak.” N12. 21 Oct 2023.

Gillet, Francesca, and Alice Cuddy. “Israeli music festival: 260 bodies recovered from site where people fled in hail of bullets.” BBC. 9 Oct 2023.

Israel Defense Forces, North American Media Desk. Spokesperson. Email to FactCheck.org. 23 Nov 2023.

Marchant de Abreu, Catalina. “Truth or Fake: Israeli army did not fire on own civilians at Nova music festival.” France 24. 14 Nov 2023.

Media Line (@themedialine). “Survivors From the South: Victims of Hamas’ Terror Speak From Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.” YouTube. 9 Oct 2023.

Middle East Monitor. “Report: 7 October testimonies strike major blow to Israeli narrative.” 30 Oct 2023.

Norton, Tom. “Fact Check: Does Video Show Israeli Helicopter Shoot Festival Goers?” Newsweek. 13 Nov 2023.

Picheta, Rob. “Shani Louk, 23-year-old kidnapped by Hamas from music festival, declared dead, Israel says.” CNN. 31 Oct 2023.

Spencer, Saranac Hale, and D’Angelo Gore. “What We Know About Three Widespread Israel-Hamas War Claims.” FactCheck.org. Updated 14 Nov 2023.

Times of Israel. “Israel Police slams ‘Haaretz’ claim IDF helicopter may have harmed civilians on Oct. 7.” 19 Nov 2023.

United Nations. “Gaza: ‘Thousands of children killed’ within a few weeks, says UN’s Guterres.” UN News. 20 Nov 2023.

Zeyton, Yoav. “Hamas deception of IDF helicopters and directing pilots on WhatsApp | Air Force on the 1st.” Ynet. 15 Oct 2023.

SciCheck Digest

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — like many other vaccines — can contain small amounts of DNA left over from the manufacturing process. There’s no evidence this residual DNA causes “turbo cancer,” or very aggressive cancer. Nor did Moderna admit that “mRNA Jabs Cause Turbo-Cancer,” contrary to an online article that misconstrues a line from a patent application.

How safe are the COVID-19 vaccines?

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Vaccines can contain trace amounts of materials left over from their manufacturing process. One of these materials is DNA, which can remain in both mRNA vaccines and a variety of older vaccines. This DNA is expected and considered safe, and there are purification and quality control steps meant to ensure it is present within regulatory limits.

We have covered unsubstantiated claims that residual DNA in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is considered “adulteration” or integrates into people’s DNA and causes cancer. Representatives from regulatory agencies and various academic experts told us there isn’t reason to believe the small amounts of residual DNA in the mRNA vaccines would integrate into a person’s cellular DNA and cause cancer. And legal experts told us that the residual DNA would not be considered adulteration.

(For more about residual DNA in mRNA vaccines, read our article “COVID-19 Vaccines Have Not Been Shown to Alter DNA, Cause Cancer.”)

In a twist on these claims, recent social media posts shared a headline falsely stating that “Moderna Admits mRNA Jabs Cause Turbo-Cancer” and referencing the residual DNA found in vaccine vials. The headline is from an article published by the People’s Voice, a website with a history of spreading misinformation and publishing false headlines.

As we also have written previously, there isn’t reason to believe the mRNA vaccines cause very aggressive cancer, or “turbo cancer.”

The new false claim, that Moderna has admitted the mRNA vaccines cause turbo cancer, stems from misleading statements made by Dr. Robert Malone, who has spread COVID-19 misinformation in the past. Malone made his remarks during a Nov. 13 event held and livestreamed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

Malone referred to a short section in a Moderna patent application, published in 2019. The patent application is related to RNA vaccines, but the comments Malone highlighted are about DNA vaccines, which remain experimental in the U.S.

In its description of DNA vaccines, the Moderna patent application mentioned some theoretical cancer-related concerns as an example of a drawback of the technology: “With this technique, however, comes potential problems, including the possibility of insertional mutagenesis, which could lead to the activation of oncogenes or the inhibition of tumor suppressor genes.” 

Insertional mutagenesis is a phenomenon in which foreign DNA integrates into a genome, causing changes. The concern the patent application references is that the DNA could integrate in precisely the wrong place in a cell’s DNA and turn on a gene that could contribute to cancer or turn off a gene that helps protect cells from becoming cancerous.

“FDA says they’re not aware of any concerns, but Moderna in its own patent lays out exactly the same concerns that exist about DNA and insertional mutagenesis and genotoxicity,” Malone said. 

But the concerns mentioned in the patent application were about vaccines using DNA as their main ingredient, not residual DNA left over in other types of vaccines. DNA vaccines rely on getting DNA into the nucleus of a cell, where it is transcribed into mRNA, which is used to make protein. The messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines work by introducing mRNA into the body of a cell, where it serves as instructions for making protein. 

With residual DNA, scientists from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have written that they consider the primary cancer-related concern to be the introduction of DNA encoding an activated cancer-causing gene. There is no residual DNA encoding cancer-causing genes in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

The patent application also makes clear that even for DNA vaccines, the concern is theoretical. What the line quoted from the patent application does not spell out is that this “potential” concern has not been demonstrated to be a real safety problem, even for DNA vaccines.

In a 2020 review paper on mRNA vaccines, FDA scientists nodded to the theoretical concerns about insertional mutagenesis from DNA vaccines, while making clear they did not consider this risk to have been borne out.

In listing advantages of mRNA vaccines over DNA vaccines, they referred to the absence of the “perceived” risk of DNA integrating into a person’s own DNA. They went on to explain that this was a concern with DNA vaccines in the past, but experiments have shown that the rate of integration was low, “thus lessening the concern for integration.”

In a response sent to us for our prior article on residual DNA in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, an FDA spokesperson did in fact make reference to past concerns about DNA integration and cancer, while expressing confidence in the mRNA vaccines.

The FDA email said that “with regard to the mRNA vaccines, while concerns have been raised previously as theoretical issues, available scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the minute amounts of residual DNA do not cause cancer or changes to a person’s genetic code.”

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Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

Sources

“What Ingredients Are in Vaccines?” FactCheck.org. 30 Oct 2023.

McDonald, Jessica. “Posts Falsely Claim FDA ‘Required’ to Take mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Off Market Due to Adulteration.” FactCheck.org. 3 Nov 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “COVID-19 Vaccines Have Not Been Shown to Alter DNA, Cause Cancer.” FactCheck.org. 26 Oct. 2023.

Amanda (@the_barefoot_truther). “Imagine, cancer from a concoction of poison that was never intended to be injected into your body 🤦🏻‍♀️…” Instagram. 21 Nov 2023.

The Unity Project (@theunityprojectonline and @theunityproject2.0). “Pay attention, the truth is being exposed. Comment the word “truth” if you’d like to read the full article. …” Instagram. 21 Nov 2023.

Adl-Tabatabai, Sean. “Moderna Admits mRNA Jabs Cause Turbo-Cancer; Investigators Find Billions of DNA Fragments in Vials.” The People’s Voice. 18 Nov 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “Posts Share Fabricated Quote on ‘Permanent Climate Lockdowns.’” FactCheck.org. 4 Aug 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “COVID-19 Vaccines Save Lives, Are Not More Lethal Than COVID-19.” FactCheck.org. 6 Nov 2023.

McDonald, Jessica. “Posts Falsely Push Bill Gates-Connected ‘Air’ Vaccine Conspiracy.” FactCheck.org. 13 Oct 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “Ventilators Save Lives, Did Not Cause ‘Nearly All’ COVID-19 Deaths.” FactCheck.org. 1 Jun 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “Posts Share Fake Chelsea Clinton Quote About Global Childhood Vaccination Effort.” FactCheck.org. 10 May 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “COVID-19 Vaccines Have Not Been Shown to Cause ‘Turbo Cancer.’” FactCheck.org. 31 Aug 2023.

“Injuries Caused By COVID-19 Vaccines LIVE Stream.” Marjorie Taylor Greene’s website. Accessed 21 Nov 2023.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Congresswoman MTG Holds Hearing on Injuries Caused by COVID-19 Vaccines with Special Witnesses.” YouTube livestream. 13 Nov 2023.

ModernaTx, Inc. “HPIV3 RNA Vaccines.” United States Patent Application Publication US 2019/0240317 A1. 8 Aug 2019.

Sheng-Fowler, Li et al. “Issues Associated with Residual Cell-Substrate DNA in Viral Vaccines.” Biologicals. 14 Mar 2009.

Naik, Ramachandra, and Peden, Keith. “Regulatory Considerations on the Development of mRNA Vaccines.” mRNA Vaccines, edited by Dong Yu and Benjamin Petsch, Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 187–205.

Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.

In a Fox News interview about the Israel-Hamas war, Sen. Ted Cruz said “literally from within minutes of when this horrific attack began on Oct. 7, the Biden White House has been telling Israel, do not retaliate, cease-fire, stop, do not kill the terrorists.” But the Texas Republican has thin support for his claim.

The senator’s office referred us to an Oct. 7 post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs that urged “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” The State Department told the Washington Free Beacon that it removed the post the same day because it “was not approved and does not represent U.S. policy.”

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. State Department Middle East negotiator, told us Cruz is “wrong.” President Joe Biden and top administration officials “have been nothing other than completely supportive” of Israel, even as they have tried more recently to pressure Israel to limit civilian casualties in Gaza, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and consider how Gaza will be governed after the war, Miller said.

Biden’s Reaction to Hamas Attack

On Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, the White House issued a statement from President Joe Biden about his phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people,” Biden said, adding that he pledged to Netanyahu that the U.S. would provide Israel “all appropriate means of support.”

That same day, the White House held a background briefing with a “senior administration official” to “flesh out” Biden’s phone call with Netanyahu. That official said, “We have made it absolutely clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu, but to Israeli officials up and down, across the political spectrum and their national security spectrum, that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the government and people of Israel. And Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. Full stop.”

But on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Cruz had a different take. In a Nov. 12 interview, the Texas Republican said “the White House and the State Department have been undermining Israel” since Oct. 7.

“At every stage, the White House and the State Department have been undermining Israel,” Cruz said. “They have been urging Israel — literally from within minutes of when this horrific attack began on Oct. 7, the Biden White House has been telling Israel, do not retaliate, cease-fire, stop, do not kill the terrorists.”

As we said earlier, the senator’s office referred us to the Oct. 7 deleted post by the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs. We also found that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s X account posted a tweet on Oct. 8 — the day of Blinken’s phone call with the Turkish foreign minister. In that post, which was also deleted, Blinken said he “encouraged Türkiye’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately.”

In an Oct. 10 press conference, State spokesperson Matthew Miller said the Oct. 8 tweet was deleted because it was “unfortunately worded” and “did not capture” Blinken’s phone call a day earlier with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

The same day as the tweet, the State Department had released a statement on Blinken’s call with Fidan that was worded in a slightly different way that was meaningfully significant. It said, “The Secretary encouraged Türkiye’s continued engagement and highlighted the United States’ unwavering focus on halting the attacks by Hamas and securing the release of all hostages.”

“I think you would have to be intentionally misunderstanding what our position is, given the number of statements that we have made about supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, about supporting Israel taking direct action against Hamas,” Miller said. “The secretary spoke to that publicly on Sunday, on the Sunday shows. The president has spoken to it forcefully and we’ve issued a number of statements making that clear.”

Experts we spoke with agreed.

“The U.S. has been quite clear that it will not seek a cease-fire – at least right now – and I think that has been demonstrated most clearly on Secretary Blinken’s multiple visits to the region, and Biden’s own visit, and of course in U.S. actions, including voting against a U.N. resolution calling for cease-fire,” Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program, told us in a phone interview.

Aaron David Miller, who served in the State Department under Democratic and Republican administrations between 1978 and 2003, said the Biden administration’s position on the Israel-Hamas war is framed by two public pronouncements — one early in the war and one a few days ago: Biden’s Oct. 10 speech to the nation about the Israel-Hamas war and his Nov. 18 op-ed in the Washington Post.

In his Oct. 10 speech, Biden spoke extensively about the brutality of the Oct. 7 attack against Israeli civilians. “So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear,” Biden said. “We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”

“His speech was incredibly powerful, perhaps one of the best of his presidency,” said Miller, who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In that speech, the president sent an unmistakable signal that it will give Israel the time, the space and the support it needed to destroy Hamas as a military organization.”

A day after that speech, Biden reiterated his “unshakeable” support for Israel’s right to defend itself in remarks at the White House to Jewish community leaders.

“In the days ahead, we’re going to continue to work closely with our partners in Israel and around the world to ensure Israel has what it needs to defend its citizens, its cities, and to respond to these attacks,” Biden said. “As I said yesterday, my commitment to Israel’s security and the safety of the Jewish people is unshakeable.”

Biden Rejects Cease-Fire

In recent weeks, liberals have spoken out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and some have criticized Biden for what they see as unconditional support for Israel. Some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have called for a cease-fire.

Biden, however, has rejected calls for a cease-fire, including most recently in his Nov. 18 op-ed in the Washington Post.

“As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace,” Biden said in his opinion piece. “To Hamas’s members, every cease-fire is time they exploit to rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza would once more perpetuate its hate and deny Palestinian civilians the chance to build something better for themselves.”

Biden and administrative officials have called for “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid to flow into Gaza — but not a cease-fire. (Asked on Oct. 24 about the difference between “humanitarian pauses” and a cease-fire, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said it’s “a question of duration and scope and size.”)

“The U.S. is seeking humanitarian pauses – you are talking about hours or maybe a few days – to allow food, water, energy supplies, medical aid for humanitarian purposes,” Panikoff of the Atlantic Council told us. “Those pauses are far different than a cease-fire. They allow Israel to resume military operations.”

On Oct. 18, the U.S. voted no on a U.N. resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza, because it “made no mention of Israel’s right of self-defense,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in a statement. Six days later, Blinken for the first time publicly called for “humanitarian pauses” at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Oct. 24 to allow “essential humanitarian assistance … to flow into Gaza.”

Miller, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Biden has been pressing Israel to consider three things. The first is to determine “how to prosecute the common objective that the administration and Israelis have – which is destroying Hamas’ capacity and to end its sovereignty in Gaza,” he said. “Second, how do you surge humanitarian assistance in the middle of a conflict and, third, what should be done after the military campaign.”

What the administration has not done is tell Israel to stop killing terrorists, as Cruz claimed, Miller said, adding that Cruz deserves “four or even five Pinocchios,” referring to the Washington Post Fact Checker’s rating system. (Four Pinocchios, the Post’s highest rating, is reserved for “whoppers.”)

“I don’t see the administration even telling Israel – you need to wrap this up,” Miller said. “They may reach that at some point” but not now.

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SciCheck Digest

A recent federal report shows a 3% increase in the U.S. infant mortality rate between 2021 and 2022, which is the first statistically significant rise in 20 years. The cause of the uptick is unknown, but there’s no evidence that it’s due to COVID-19 vaccination, as some social media posts baselessly suggest.

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A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that in 2022, 5.6 infants out of every 1,000 live births died before they turned 1 in the U.S., a 3% increase over 2021. This returns the infant mortality rate, which has steadily fallen over the decades, to the 2019 level.

The data in the report, which compared birth and death records collected through the National Vital Statistics System, are provisional. The last time the infant mortality rate had a statistically significant year-to-year increase was from 2001 to 2002, when it also rose by 3%.

The rise in 2022 was driven by significant increases in mortality for several categories measured in the report — in infants born to women ages 25 to 29; in infants born in four states (Georgia, Iowa, Missouri and Texas); in infants of American Indian and Alaska Native and white women; in infants born preterm; and in male babies. Mortality rates also increased in cases of maternal complications and bacterial sepsis, two of the 10 leading causes of infant death.

But Danielle Ely, a co-author of the study and a health statistician at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told us that other than the increase in infant mortality itself, the data didn’t show “any specific trends or narratives to note at this point.”

“This could potentially be a single year increase and in 2023 the rate could remain at this level or decline, however the rate could also increase again in 2023. We will not know for sure until we have complete provisional data for 2023,” she said in an email.

But some social media users took advantage of the uncertainty to push their own narratives.

“So the CDC is reporting the largest increase in infant mortality in the past 20 years. And apparently experts are baffled. You’re baffled? Really? Gosh it’s so weird that experts are baffled but those of us who have been non-compliant for the past three years know exactly why this has happened,” a woman suggestively said in a popular Nov. 8 Instagram post. 

Another viral post published on Facebook the same day shows a collage of CNN headlines with boxes and lines linking encouraging news about COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant women to a last headline about the rise in infant mortality. “I wonder when we’ll see the actual data in its totality,” the caption reads. 

There is no evidence that the infant mortality increase is caused by COVID-19 vaccination, as the social media posts imply.

As we recently explained, multiple studies show COVID-19 vaccines are safe and beneficial for pregnant people and their newborns. According to the CDC, people who are pregnant are more susceptible to severe COVID-19, which can harm the mother and the baby. Infection with the coronavirus during pregnancy can also increase the risk of stillbirth. Vaccination during pregnancy can also protect babies from COVID-19 after birth, thanks to protective antibodies that are passed through the placenta.

There is no indication that breast milk after vaccination is unsafe either, as we’ve reported.

“We have extensive evidence that COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy does not increase the risk that babies will die and may even decrease it,” Victoria Male, a lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London, told us in an email.

According to an online explainer created and updated by Male, 39 studies, across 10 countries, have tracked the safety of COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy. Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses that include many of those studies found “COVID vaccination reduces the risk of stillbirth and babies needing intensive care, presumably because these can occur as a result of COVID infection,” she wrote. 

Eight of the 39 studies, which followed infants from birth to up to 1 year, found babies in the vaccinated groups didn’t show an increased risk for serious illness or death, Male added in the explainer. 

“Of these, seven found no effect of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy on infant deaths,” she told us, and one “found COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy associated with a reduced risk of babies dying in their first 28 days of life.”

According to the CDC, COVID-19 vaccination is safe for people who are pregnant and does not increase the risk for pregnancy complications including miscarriage, preterm delivery, birth defects and stillbirth, as we’ve reported. For older babies who get them, COVID-19 vaccines may cause some temporary side effects, such as irritability and crying, injection site pain, sleepiness, fever, and loss of appetite, but serious adverse events are rare. Vaccination is recommended for babies beginning at 6 months old. 

“Extensive data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccination to pregnant women and their infants has shown no evidence of increased infant death after COVID-19 vaccination,” a spokesperson for the CDC told us in an email.

In 2021, when vaccines started being widely administered, the infant mortality rate was practically the same as 2020. A separate CDC report published in November shows that the fetal mortality, or stillborn, rate declined 5% from 2021 to 2022 in the U.S.

Possible Reasons for the Rise in Infant Mortality

The data do not point to a clear cause or causes for the one-year rise in infant mortality. But, experts told us, COVID-19 might partly explain the increase.

“Over time, we’ve learned that getting COVID-19 during pregnancy raises the chances of problems for both the pregnant person and the baby. This includes a higher risk of having a baby too early or having a stillborn baby,” a CDC spokesperson told us. 

Male told us data in the U.K. showed an increase in deaths of babies under 28 days old in 2021. 

“4.8% of these deaths were in babies whose mothers were infected with COVID at the time they gave birth, although it’s important to be clear that the data does not tell us whether COVID was a cause of death in these babies,” she told us.

Experts speculate the pandemic may also have impacted infant mortality in other ways. Dr. Patricia Gabbe, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told NBC that pregnancy outcomes could have been affected by reduced access to proper prenatal care during the pandemic. 

The increase in pediatric RSV and flu infections seen after pandemic precautions eased “could potentially account for some of it,” too, Dr. Eric C. Eichenwald, chief of the neonatology division at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Associated Press.

The highest infant mortality rates continue to exist among infants of Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander people, according to the latest report.

“We do know that families in poverty face many challenges including access to nutritious food and affordable healthcare,” Dr. Sandy L. Chung, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement about the CDC’s report. “Racial and ethnic disparities related to accessible healthcare — including prenatal health services — are just one of the many possible reasons for lower birth weights of babies and sometimes, infant deaths.”

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Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

Sources

Hagen, Christy. “Infant Mortality Rate Sees First Rise in 20 Years.” NCHS blog. 1 Nov 2023. 

Ely, Danielle M., and Anne K. Driscoll. “Infant Mortality in the United States: Provisional Data From the 2022 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death File.” Vital Statistics Rapid Release. 1 Nov 2023. 

Ely, Danielle M. Health statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics. Email to FactCheck.org. 13 Nov 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy Is Safe, Has Multiple Benefits.” FactCheck.org. 16 Nov 2023. 

McDonald, Jessica, and Catalina Jaramillo. “No Indication Breast Milk After Vaccination Unsafe, Despite Posts About New Study.” FactCheck.org. Updated 25 Sep 2023. 

McDonald, Jessica. “A Guide to COVID-19 Vaccines for the Youngest Kids.” FactCheck.org. Updated 22 Sep 2023.

Goddard, Kristin, et al. “Safety of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination Among Young Children in the Vaccine Safety Datalink.” Pediatrics. 6 Jun 2023. 

Hause, Anne M., et al. “Safety Monitoring of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Third Doses Among Children Aged 6 Months–5 Years — United States, June 17, 2022–May 7, 2023.” MMWR. 9 Jun 2023. 

Hause, Anne M., et al.“COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Safety Among Children Aged 6 Months–5 Years — United States, June 18, 2022–August 21, 2022.” MMWR. 2 Sep 2022. 

COVID-19 Vaccines While Pregnant or Breastfeeding. CDC. Updated 3 Nov 2023. 

Male, Victoria. Lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London. Email to FactCheck.org. 13 Nov 2023. 

Male, Victoria. “Explainer on COVID vaccination, fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding.” Updated 15 Nov 2023.

Fleming-Dutra, Katherine E., et al. “Safety and Effectiveness of Maternal COVID-19 Vaccines Among Pregnant People and Infants.” Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America. Jun 2023.

McDonald, Jessica. “COVID-19 Vaccines Reduce, Not Increase, Risk of Stillbirth.” FactCheck.org. 9 Nov 2022.

McDonald, Jessica. “COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat.” FactCheck.org. 24 Aug 2022.

Ely, Danielle M., and Anne K. Driscoll. “Infant Mortality in the United States: Provisional Data Infant Mortality in the United States, 2021: Data From the Period Linked Birth/Infant Death File.” Vital Statistics Rapid Release. 12 Sep 2023. 

Gregory, Elizabeth C.W., et al. “Fetal Mortality in the United States: Final 2020–2021 and 2021–Provisional 2022.” Vital Statistics Rapid Release. Nov 2023. 

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SciCheck Digest

Being vaccinated against COVID-19 helps protect pregnant people from severe COVID-19. When given during pregnancy, the vaccines can also reduce the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 early in a baby’s life. A new study adds to the evidence that vaccination during pregnancy is safe for babies, contrary to social media and online claims.

How do we know vaccines are safe?

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Full Story

Pregnancy puts people at elevated risk of severe COVID-19. Young babies also are particularly vulnerable to hospitalization from COVID-19. Maternal vaccination reduces these risks.

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines come with similar side effects regardless of whether a person is pregnant. Research does not show increased risk of miscarriage, birth defects or other pregnancy complications after vaccination, and it indicates vaccination may reduce the risk of preterm birth and stillbirth. A study published Oct. 23 in JAMA Pediatrics adds to the evidence that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are safe and do not lead to problems for newborn babies and infants when given to their mothers during pregnancy.

Going against the now-extensive record on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy, a recent Instagram post claimed that there is “No Discernable Benefit of COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy.” The post was quoting a Substack newsletter from Dr. Peter McCullough, a prolific spreader of vaccine misinformation. The newsletter focused on the new JAMA Pediatrics study on vaccine safety, also claiming that it found “No Assurances on Safety.”

“Surely there was no benefit of COVID-19 vaccination, so why expose mothers and infants to any risk at all?” the newsletter misleadingly concluded. We reached out to McCullough with questions but did not receive a response.

This contradicts the conclusions of the authors of the paper, who wrote, “Maternal mRNA COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy was not associated with increased adverse newborn and early infant outcomes and may be protective against adverse newborn outcomes.”

The study was a safety study and was not meant to assess vaccine effectiveness in pregnant women, co-author Sarah C. J. Jorgensen, a pharmacist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, told us. The researchers aimed to measure whether the babies of mothers vaccinated during pregnancy had any elevated risks of health problems. Jorgensen said the study “does provide more reassuring data on the safety of these vaccines for the newborns and infants.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people 6 months and older, including people who are pregnant, receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine. Other medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, endorse this recommendation.

Study Bolsters Evidence for Safety of Maternal COVID-19 Vaccines

McCullough misused two pieces of raw data from the JAMA Pediatrics study to incorrectly imply that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy is unsafe and ineffective. He ignored the primary results of the paper supporting the safety of maternal COVID-19 vaccination for babies, as well as the larger body of data showing maternal COVID-19 vaccination is safe and effective.

The study used a database, called MOMBABY, that links health records of mothers and babies born in hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Jorgensen and her co-authors based their findings on data from more than 142,000 babies with due dates between May 2021 and early September 2022. 

The researchers compared babies born to mothers who received at least one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose during pregnancy with babies whose mothers had never been vaccinated against COVID-19 at all prior to giving birth.

McCullough misleadingly referenced unadjusted, or “crude,” data suggesting a very small increased risk of hospital readmission for all causes in newborns up to 4 weeks old born to vaccinated mothers. But the correct statistic to use to determine whether there is a difference in readmissions is the adjusted figure, Victoria Male, a senior lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London, told us via email. Male was not involved in the study.

There are many differences between people who do or do not take COVID-19 vaccines. Well-done studies track characteristics of people in the groups they are comparing so they can adjust for differences, such as whether they live in high-income areas or have a tendency to engage in healthy behaviors.

“The adjusted results, after accounting for differences in the characteristics of the different groups, show no increased risk for neonatal readmission between the two groups,” pediatrics and internal medicine specialist Dr. Malini DeSilva and statistician Gabriela Vazquez-Benitez told us in an email. Both researchers, who were not involved in the study, are affiliated with HealthPartners Institute and study vaccine safety in pregnant people.

DeSilva and Vazquez-Benitez added that the study did not show an increased risk for neonatal readmission with additional COVID-19 vaccine doses received during pregnancy. The study also followed babies through 6 months of age and found a similar rate of hospital readmission regardless of maternal vaccination status.

Jorgensen and her co-authors wrote that the slight increased risk of newborn readmission in the crude data could be explained by the elevated rates of death and severe health problems in newborns born to unvaccinated mothers. The sickest babies had either died or had not left the hospital by the age of 4 weeks and therefore could not be readmitted, so these babies were excluded from the hospital readmission analysis.

McCullough’s post also fails to highlight the study’s other findings, which indicate no association between the vaccines and negative effects on newborns. 

“The study finds that outcomes at birth are actually better for babies born following vaccination in pregnancy, and this finding is unchanged when the authors do additional analyses to take account of the fact that vaccinated families tend to have better healthcare in general,” Male said. The improvements for newborns included lower risk of severe problems such as hemorrhage or seizures, neonatal intensive care unit stays, and death.

It’s unclear how great of a role vaccines played in causing these lower risks. Maternal vaccination may have helped improve newborn outcomes by mitigating the risks associated with getting COVID-19 during pregnancy. But the authors of the paper wrote this was unlikely to fully explain the risk reductions they saw.

DeSilva and Vazquez-Benitez said that “healthy vaccinee bias,” in which people who get vaccines tend to be healthier and more likely to engage in healthy behaviors, could help explain the reduced risks of poor newborn health outcomes — despite attempts to adjust for these factors. They also pointed out that people who give birth earlier in their pregnancies will have less opportunity to get vaccinated. Being born too early can lead to health problems for babies.

Regardless, the reduced risk means it’s unlikely vaccination increased the risk of NICU stays, severe health problems or deaths in newborns, the researchers concluded. “It is at least reassuring that they are not elevated,” Jorgensen said.

McCullough had other critiques of the data used in the study. But he “misunderstands how the MOMBABY database works,” Male said. McCullough incorrectly wrote in his Substack post that if a mother delivered at one hospital and later took her baby to another hospital or clinic “for seizures, hemorrhage, etc.,” the pair wouldn’t be linked. 

The MOMBABY database captures all hospitalizations in Ontario, Jorgensen said, so admission to any hospital in the province would be recorded and linked to the mother. The study was not meant to capture visits to clinics, which likely would be routine or for more minor issues.

Finally, McCullough pointed out that the study did not report on miscarriage or stillbirth. “That’s true: this study was not designed to look into that,” Male said. But other studies have shown no effect of COVID-19 vaccination on the rate of miscarriage. And as we’ve said, vaccination may reduce the risk of stillbirth.

COVID-19 Vaccination Benefits Mothers and Babies

McCullough also highlighted data showing similar rates of positive COVID-19 PCR test results during pregnancy among vaccinated and unvaccinated women, seemingly to back up his statement that the vaccines have no benefit during pregnancy.

However, the work “wasn’t designed as a study to look at vaccine effectiveness for pregnant women,” Jorgensen said. The data on COVID-19 testing were provided in a table describing characteristics of vaccinated versus unvaccinated pregnant women, which were used to adjust for differences between the groups.

Jorgensen, Male, DeSilva and Vazquez-Benitez all pointed out that in this study, there wasn’t information on whether the vaccinated women who tested positive for COVID-19 got vaccinated before or after getting sick. “We therefore can’t use this data to tell us anything about the effectiveness of COVID vaccination at preventing infection,” Male said.

Studies designed to look at COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness have found that it is similar whether the vaccines are given to pregnant or non-pregnant individuals. In the omicron era, vaccination has provided significant protection against severe disease and more limited protection against symptomatic illness — with booster doses improving effectiveness.

Furthermore, people who get vaccinated during pregnancy can pass on antibodies to their babies via the umbilical cord and subsequently via breast milk, although the level of protection provided by the breast milk antibodies is unclear. Maternal vaccination during pregnancy is associated with reduced risk of infection and hospitalization from COVID-19 during the first six months of a baby’s life, and particularly during the newborn period, according to multiple studies. 

For instance, Jorgensen and her colleagues did a different study using the MOMBABY registry on the effects of maternal COVID-19 vaccination on babies during the first six months of life. Babies whose mothers had gotten the original primary vaccine series, including at least one dose during pregnancy, had a 45% lower risk of infection and 53% lower risk of hospitalization with omicron than babies of unvaccinated mothers. Protection was better if the mothers got at least one dose during the third trimester. With a booster dose during pregnancy, protection also increased, with babies having a 73% lower risk of infection and an 80% lower risk of hospitalization with omicron.

“Regardless of pregnancy status, COVID-19 vaccination remains the best protection against COVID-19-related hospitalization and death,” DeSilva and Vazquez-Benitez said. “In addition to reducing the risks of severe illness from COVID-19 in pregnant persons, COVID-19 vaccines administered during pregnancy can provide infants with antibodies against COVID before they are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines.”

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Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

Sources

“Pregnant and Recently Pregnant People.” CDC website. Updated 25 Oct 2022.

“Updated COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations are Now Available.” Respiratory viruses update on CDC website. 12 Sep 2023.

“COVID-19 Vaccines While Pregnant or Breastfeeding.” CDC website. accessed 15 Nov 2023.

Male, Victoria. “COVID-19 vaccine safety in pregancy – table of studies.” Google Docs. Updated 24 Oct 2023.

McDonald, Jessica. “COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat.” FactCheck.org. 24 Aug 2022.

Fleming-Dutra, Katherine E. et al. “Safety and Effectiveness of Maternal COVID-19 Vaccines Among Pregnant People and Infants.” Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinics of North America. 21 Feb 2023.

McDonald, Jessica. “COVID-19 Vaccines Reduce, Not Increase, Risk of Stillbirth.” FactCheck.org. 9 Nov 2022.

Jorgensen, Sarah C. J. et al. “Newborn and Early Infant Outcomes Following Maternal COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy.” JAMA Pediatrics. 23 Oct 2023.

Kristen Ludwig (@kristensludwig). “‘We know the vaccines have a dangerous mechanism of action causing uncontrolled production of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein in the mother’s body…’” Instagram. 5 Nov 2023.

McCullough, Peter. “No Discernable Benefit of COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy.” Courageous Discourse. Substack. 5 Nov 2023.

Jaramillo, Catalina and Lori Robertson. “Q&A on the Updated COVID-19 Vaccines.” FactCheck.org. Updated 5 Oct 2023.

Jorgensen, Sarah C. J. Interview with FactCheck.org. 7 Nov 2023.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Immunization, Infectious Disease, and Public Health Preparedness Expert Work Group. “COVID-19 Vaccination Considerations for Obstetric–Gynecologic Care.” ACOG website. Updated 25 Sep 2023.

“COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy.” Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. 14 Sep 2023.

Male, Victoria. Email with FactCheck.org. 8 Nov 2023.

DeSilva, Malini and Vazquez-Benitez, Gabriela. Email with FactCheck.org. 9 Nov 2023.

Male, Victoria. “Explainer on COVID vaccination, fertility, pregnancy and breastfeeding.” Google docs. Updated 15 Nov 2023.

Goh, Orlanda et al. “mRNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Before vs During Pregnancy and Omicron Infection Among Infants.” JAMA Network Open. 10 Nov 2023.

Jorgensen, Sarah C. J. et al. “Maternal mRNA Covid-19 Vaccination during Pregnancy and Delta or Omicron Infection or Hospital Admission in Infants: Test Negative Design Study.” BMJ. 8 Feb 2023.

Former President Donald Trump has a new talking point in his rally speeches, claiming that the Biden administration is moving the military to all-electric-powered tanks. For Trump, the attack line is a trifecta: He’s making President Joe Biden seem weak on defense and the military seem “woke,” while mocking Biden’s green energy efforts.

It’s also false. The military currently has no plans for all-electric tanks.

The military is moving toward the electrification of its vehicle fleets, starting with light-duty, non-tactical vehicles, citing not only environmental benefits but cost savings and operational advantages. As part of the military’s Climate Strategy released in 2022, the military also aspires to move to fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050. But even that doesn’t include combat vehicles such as tanks.

Nonetheless, Trump has misleadingly seized on the military’s effort by falsely focusing on the claim that a push to convert most military vehicles to electric would include tanks.

“And now we are a nation that wants to make our great Army tanks all-electric so that despite the fact that they will not be able to go very far, fewer pollutants will be released into the air of the territory that we are trying to conquer,” Trump said at a campaign rally near Miami on Nov. 8 — the same night as a GOP presidential primary debate that he did not attend.

At a campaign event in Houston on Nov. 2, Trump made a similar claim.

“Army tanks have to go electric … because the tanks, if they’re electric, they’re going into a country blasting the hell out of it. But at least we’re doing it in an environmentally friendly way,” Trump told the crowd.

“The problem with the tanks, though — it’s really a problem — that the battery source capacity, it’s so big that the tank would have to pull something behind it that’s much bigger than the tank. So, that’s a little bit of a problem,” Trump continued. “They can’t seem to work that out. … They want to make our Army tanks all-electric for the environment.”

But again, Trump’s premise is inaccurate.

“While it may be true that an electric tank would have limited range, the Army is not planning on fielding or deploying an electric tank, though there have been prototypes of hybrid tanks,” Fabian Villalobos, an associate engineer at the RAND Corporation and an expert in emerging technologies and the defense industrial base, told us in a phone interview.

But the military is moving toward electric vehicles. The Army’s 2022 Climate Strategy talks about reducing national security risks posed by climate change, and sets as an objective an all-electric, light-duty, non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027 and an all-electric, non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035.

The plan also outlines the Army’s goal of switching to “purpose-built hybrid-drive tactical vehicles by 2035 and fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.” Alongside that goal, the Army says it would “develop the charging capability to meet the needs of fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.”

Let’s break that down and explain the different types of vehicles affected — none of which include tanks.

The Department of Defense had about 170,000 non-tactical vehicles in 2022, according to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. These are generally vehicles driven on military bases. And they are purchased not by the military, but the government’s General Services Administration.

Light-duty, non-tactical vehicles — which the Climate Strategy said would be all-electric by 2027 — includes cars and sport utility vehicles.

“They are the vehicles you would drive around a military installation or base to get from one building to another,” Villalobos said. They are not for use on the battlefield.

The rest of the non-tactical vehicles — which the plan calls for moving to all-electric by 2035 — includes things such as dump trucks, smaller trucks, and Class 3, 4 and 5 vehicles, such as some vans and pickup trucks, Villalobos said. They are also for use on base and not on the battlefield.

Switching to electric tactical vehicles will be more of a challenge, which is why the Climate Strategy calls for longer-term conversion of those fleets to hybrids by 2035 and all-electric by 2050. Tactical vehicles are used on the battlefield, typically in support roles. Those are different than combat vehicles, which are the ones that shoot at the enemy, Villalobos said.

“Tactical definitely does not mean tanks,” he said.

According to an article written by Walker Mills and Ryan Wiechens, and published in December by the Modern War Institute at West Point, “the technology is not ready for tactical vehicles because it requires incredibly heavy and bulky infrastructure for power generation and charging,” except for some “niche roles.”

Mills is a nonresident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future War and a nonresident fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Wiechens is a member of the technical staff in the energy systems group at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and he leads the laboratory’s development of modular and scalable tactical microgrids, hybrid power systems and vehicle electrification.

In their article, they argue that conversion of the military’s vehicles to electric has “obvious tactical and financial benefits.”

“Shifting the military to electric and hybrid vehicles shouldn’t be controversial; it will help make our forces more lethal and save the military money,” they wrote. “Yes, it will also help address the climate crisis, but that is just one of the advantages, which also extend to helping wean US forces off their dependence on foreign oil.”

Moving to electric fleets “absolutely does have its advantages” in military conflict, Villalobos said.

For example, he said, they are “more stealthy and harder to detect.” They are particularly well-suited for “silent watch,” those high-risk missions that are used to gather intelligence about an enemy without being detected. Electric vehicles are quieter than internal combustion engines and they don’t emit smoke from a tailpipe.

Nonetheless, the military’s plan to move to electric has raised concerns, particularly among some Republicans.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 26, Sen. Joni Ernst said Biden’s “cheerleading for green tech … has harmed the DOD’s operational energy approach.”

As the military transitions its non-tactical fleet to electric, Ernst noted that “China controls mining and production for electric vehicle components.”

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the administration had taken steps to jump start “responsible extraction here,” as well as to boost domestic battery pack manufacturing.

Granholm said she supported the move to electric non-tactical vehicles.

“I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels, where we know that global events, such as the war in Ukraine, can jack up prices for people back home … does not contribute to energy security,” she said. “I think energy security is achieved when we have homegrown, clean energy that is abundant.”

Ernst, who also raised concerns about cost and reliability, was not alone in her criticism of the move toward electric vehicles.

In an interview on Fox Business on April 28, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin warned that “one simple electric magnetic pulse” could “take out a whole unit of vehicles, of tanks, of up-armored vehicles.”

“Besides that, we’re going to be out on battlefields where they don’t really have what you consider charging stations,” Mullin said. “So, to charge the fleet, we’re going to be pulling these huge diesel generators to charge the fleets. And when they go down, instead of just simply running up there and pouring fuel in them, we’re going to have to sit there for hours while these batteries charge. And then one of our largest adversaries called China is the one that we’re going to be reliant on to make our batteries. This makes zero sense. But in a woke president that you have in President Biden and his woke Cabinet, this is the kind of results and ridiculous comments that you have.”

In an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner on June 22, Republican Rep. Mike Waltz warned that Biden’s climate plan would “cripple the military’s readiness for our next conflict.” Of the plan to convert the non-tactical fleet to electric, Waltz said U.S. supply chains “aren’t suited to sustain such an overwhelming transition.”

And, he wrote, “How would we possibly be able to maintain an electric vehicle fleet in, say, the mountains of Afghanistan or deserts of Iraq? Last I checked, there aren’t charging stations in the middle of battlefields.”

Villalobos said the military is well aware of the need to develop field charging capabilities before electric vehicles could be used on the battlefield. He noted that the goal for electric tactical vehicles by 2050 also calls for developing “the charging capability to meet the needs of fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.”

“It’s not like they are putting electric charging stations in the battlefield,” said Villalobos, who noted, “there are no gas stations on the battlefield either.”

As for the threat from electric magnetic pulses, Villalobos said petroleum-powered military vehicles already rely on electric devices and microchips. “It wouldn’t increase or reduce the risk either way,” he said.

In their article for the Modern War Institute, Mills and Wiechens acknowledge that “there are real challenges to electrification and hybridization of the military’s ground vehicles.”

“Batteries are obviously a critical component, and they are overwhelmingly manufactured outside the United States and rely on lithium, cobalt and other raw materials that are also largely sourced and refined outside the United States,” they wrote. “This creates a weak and brittle supply chain in peacetime and could cut off the defense industrial base from critical supplies completely in a major conflict. Increasing production of consumer electric vehicles will reinforce the critical battery sector but could also compete with production for the military. Several new domestic battery manufacturing plants are projected to open over the next few years, which will be critical for supporting domestic electrification. Similarly, expanding sources of lithium and other key materials are crucial for supporting the electrification of the military’s vehicles. The government needs to aggressively support these two essential industries to make electrification viable for the military.”

We take no position on the ability of the U.S. to ramp up supply chains to accommodate the electrification of military vehicle fleets, or whether moving to electric vehicles is a good or bad idea. Trump doesn’t address those points at all. Instead, he asserts that Biden is mandating the move to all-electric tanks for environmental reasons, and he mocks the feasibility of such a move. But that’s not what the Army is planning to do.

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