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Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Millions spent by Biden on COVID 'vaccine hesitancy' campaign slashed by Trump NIH: report
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reportedly gearing up to cancel dozens of research grants about vaccine hesitancy by the end of the month, just four years after the Biden administration poured millions of dollars into combating COVID-19 vaccine skepticism. According to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post this week with the subject line "required terminations — 3/10/25," the agency had "received a new list… of awards that need to be terminated, today. It has been determined they do not align with NIH funding priorities related to vaccine hesitancy and/or uptake." More than 40 grants are on the chopping block, according to the Post's report, and when notifying researchers of the NIH's termination, they should be told "not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment." Fda Chief Counsel Who Defended Abortion Pill Access Under Biden Resigns Two Days Into Job Fox News Digital has reached out to NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment. The report comes four years after the previous Biden administration spent millions to combat "misinformation," particularly related to the COVID-19 vaccine, in 2021. A November report by Open the Books, a government watchdog group, found that at least $267 million was spent on research grants and contracts related to "misinformation" or "disinformation." Read On The Fox News App The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allocated more than $17 million over three weeks in February 2021, CBS News reported at the time, to 15 organizations advocating for Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American populations. Progressive groups UnidosUS and National Urban League were granted $3.2 million and $2 million, respectively. First State To Ban Fluoride In Drinking Water Will Heed Maha Movement's Call To Action In a now-archived CDC page titled "Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity" in December 2022, the department reported that Black people are more likely to contract COVID-19 than White people. "Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of 'misinformation' — or to help people 'overcome' it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with COVID-related public health recommendations and mandates," the Open the Books report said. It's unclear if the cancelation of grants came from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but the Trump administration has been highly critical of the previous administration's spending. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has also been taking a scalpel to DEI-related funding amid President Donald Trump's effort to downsize the government workforce. Covid Vaccine Distrust Growing Among Americans, Survey Finds: 'Should Be A Personal Choice' Kennedy has been focusing on reforming food policies, expanding healthcare coverage and holding big pharmaceutical companies accountable since his controversial Senate confirmation last article source: Millions spent by Biden on COVID 'vaccine hesitancy' campaign slashed by Trump NIH: report
Fox News
14-03-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Millions spent by Biden on COVID 'vaccine hesitancy' campaign slashed by Trump NIH: report
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reportedly gearing up to cancel dozens of research grants about vaccine hesitancy by the end of the month, just four years after the Biden administration poured millions of dollars into combating COVID-19 vaccine skepticism. According to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post this week with the subject line "required terminations — 3/10/25," the agency had "received a new list… of awards that need to be terminated, today. It has been determined they do not align with NIH funding priorities related to vaccine hesitancy and/or uptake." More than 40 grants are on the chopping block, according to the Post's report, and when notifying researchers of the NIH's termination, they should be told "not to prioritize research activities that focuses gaining scientific knowledge on why individuals are hesitant to be vaccinated and/or explore ways to improve vaccine interest and commitment." Fox News Digital has reached out to NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for comment. The report comes four years after the previous Biden administration spent millions to combat "misinformation," particularly related to the COVID-19 vaccine, in 2021. A November report by Open the Books, a government watchdog group, found that at least $267 million was spent on research grants and contracts related to "misinformation" or "disinformation." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allocated more than $17 million over three weeks in February 2021, CBS News reported at the time, to 15 organizations advocating for Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American populations. Progressive groups UnidosUS and National Urban League were granted $3.2 million and $2 million, respectively. In a now-archived CDC page titled "Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death By Race/Ethnicity" in December 2022, the department reported that Black people are more likely to contract COVID-19 than White people. "Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of 'misinformation' — or to help people 'overcome' it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with COVID-related public health recommendations and mandates," the Open the Books report said. It's unclear if the cancelation of grants came from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but the Trump administration has been highly critical of the previous administration's spending. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has also been taking a scalpel to DEI-related funding amid President Donald Trump's effort to downsize the government workforce. Kennedy has been focusing on reforming food policies, expanding healthcare coverage and holding big pharmaceutical companies accountable since his controversial Senate confirmation last month.
AFP
07-03-2025
- Business
- AFP
Fact-checking Trump's claims on DOGE spending cuts
"Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified," Trump said during his March 4, 2025 address to a joint session of Congress, as he thanked billionaire Elon Musk for his cost-cutting efforts at the administration's new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Trump rattled off a list of 19 grants, contracts and other expenditures he said Musk's team had identified and terminated, calling them "scams." "We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud," he concluded. The president's as the DOGE website has touted what it claims are $105 billion in savings (archived here). US media has reported that the itemized contract, grant and lease cancellations on the site's so-called "Wall of Receipts" fall short of that total and include errors and double-counted entries. Some of the expenditures Trump highlighted were real -- federal records show the US did direct $1.5 million toward improving voter confidence in Liberia, for example -- but in other cases, it was unclear what Trump was referencing (archived here). Trump's descriptions of some contracts and programs, meanwhile, were misleading or missing context. And he offered no evidence that any of the expenditures he singled out were fraudulent. AFP reached out to the White House for clarification on Trump's claims, but no response was forthcoming. contracts AFP found to be misrepresented: '$22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens.' His number echoes a February blog post from the nonprofit Open the Books about the agency's Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR (archived here). The article said: "ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building credit, help with home and auto loans and cash assistance." AFP could not independently verify that total, and Open the Books did not respond to a request for comment. But the Open the Books report says the program assisting with housing and car purchases -- the Individual Development Accounts program -- is just one of ORR's initiatives. The program was projected to receive $2 million in 2025, a government website shows (archived here). The program serves refugees and other eligible persons, not "illegal aliens," according to its website (archived here). Its aim is to help save toward paying for a business, car, home or higher education. In addition to financial literacy training, the program offers a $1 match for every $1 a participant sets aside. Its website does not say it provides free housing or vehicles. "We are unaware of any federal program that provides free housing or cars to unauthorized immigrants," Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, told AFP in a March 7 email. ORR separately operates hundreds of shelters nationwide for unaccompanied migrant children (archived here). '$8 million for making mice transgender -- this is real.' Trump's wording was inaccurate. As evidence for his claim, the White House issued a press release pointing to six studies they said added up to $8 million in spending (archived here). The experiments involved mice receiving hormone therapies that can be used in gender-affirming health care. But the purpose of the research was not to turn mice transgender, as the president claimed. The studies were geared toward approximating the impact of such treatments on humans. One project the White House cited, for example, used mice to study the impact of testosterone therapy on breast cancer risk and treatment (archived here). Another used them to evaluate whether y of HIV vaccination is changed by receipt of estrogen hormone therapy (archived here). A third sought to understand hormonal triggers of asthma in all humans, including transgender people (archived here). '$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique.' Trump was correct that a four-year contract started in 2023 with a local organization was funding voluntary medical circumcision in Mozambique, but his summary is missing context (archived here). Public health officials have identified male circumcision as a critical tool in reducing the transmission of HIV and combatting AIDS epidemics (archived here). According to UNAIDS, Mozambique has the world's third highest number of people living with HIV and second highest number of new infections (archived here). '$20 million for the Arab 'Sesame Street' in the Middle East. It's a program. $20 million for a program.' Trump appears to have conflated an Arabic version of the iconic children's TV show "Sesame Street" with a broader educational program by the same name that has received funding from the US Agency for International Development, or USAID (archived here). Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind "Sesame Street," funds the Arabic-language television program aired in the Middle East and North Africa through donations from the MacArthur Foundation and the LEGO Foundation, among others (archived here, here and here). The $20 million USAID put toward partnering with Sesame Workshop, according to an archived agency webpage, was "to produce Ahlan Simsim Iraq, a program designed to promote inclusion, mutual respect, and understanding across ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups." The webpage says the program produces "culturally tailored and age-appropriate original educational media content for young children." A Sesame Workshop spokesperson told AFP in a March 6 email: "The USAID-funded 'Ahlan Simsim Iraq' program supports the creation of local content and The funding went to provide items including "storybooks, activity books, classroom materials and training and facilitators guides for teachers for use in early childhood development centers to improve children's learning," the spokesperson said. The Arabic-language TV show "is funded through separate philanthropic funding," the spokesperson said. '$1.9 billion to recently created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up... by a woman named Stacey Abrams.' Trump's comments about Abrams, a two-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Georgia, were misleading. The voting rights activist served as senior counsel from 2023 until the end of 2024 at Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification. The organization was part of a five-group coalition called Power Forward Communities that received a $2 billion grant from the Environmental Protection Agency as part of former president Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (archived here and here). The chief executive at Power Forward Communities told Politico in February 2025 that Abrams "has no relationship" with the coalition and "has not received a penny of this EPA grant" (archived here). Abrams responded on CNN to Trump's suggestion of irregularity in the program (archived here). "I led a project in southwest Georgia that has lowered the cost of energy for struggling families, and I'm extraordinarily proud of that work," Abrams said. "And because of that work, because of the work of five major organizations around this country who have done more than 250 years of service combined, the Biden administration authorized a grant. I did not work for the entity that received the grant, ultimately. I worked for one of the partner organizations." 'A $3.5 million consulting contract for lavish fish monitoring.' Trump appears to have misspoken. The DOGE website lists a contract "larval fish monitoring," which can help assess ecosystem health and water quality. The contract was between the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation and a research company called Asir LLC. The federal procurement record posted to the DOGE website places the total value of the contract above $6.6 million (archived here). data for the same contract says $6.6 million was the "potential award amount," however, and that only $1.1 million had already been paid (archived here). More of AFP's reporting on US politics misinformation is available here.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fact-checking Trump's claims on DOGE spending cuts
"Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified," Trump said during his March 4, 2025 address to a joint session of Congress, as he thanked billionaire Elon Musk for his cost-cutting efforts at the administration's new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Trump rattled off a list of 19 grants, contracts and other expenditures he said Musk's team had identified and terminated, calling them "scams." "We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud," he concluded. The president's comments came as the DOGE website has touted what it claims are $105 billion in savings (archived here). US media has reported that the itemized contract, grant and lease cancellations on the site's so-called "Wall of Receipts" fall short of that total and include errors and double-counted entries. Some of the expenditures Trump highlighted were real -- federal records show the US did direct $1.5 million toward improving voter confidence in Liberia, for example -- but in other cases, it was unclear what Trump was referencing (archived here). Trump's descriptions of some contracts and programs, meanwhile, were misleading or missing context. And he offered no evidence that any of the expenditures he singled out were fraudulent. AFP reached out to the White House for clarification on Trump's claims, but no response was forthcoming. Here are several contracts AFP found to be misrepresented: '$22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens.' Trump's claim about the Department of Health and Human Services is unsubstantiated. His number echoes a February blog post from the nonprofit Open the Books about the agency's Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR (archived here). The article said: "ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building credit, help with home and auto loans and cash assistance." AFP could not independently verify that total, and Open the Books did not respond to a request for comment. But the Open the Books report says the program assisting with housing and car purchases -- the Individual Development Accounts program -- is just one of ORR's initiatives. The program was projected to receive $2 million in 2025, a government website shows (archived here). The program serves refugees and other eligible persons, not "illegal aliens," according to its website (archived here). Its aim is to help the new arrivals including asylum seekers save toward paying for a business, car, home or higher education. In addition to financial literacy training, the program offers a $1 match for every $1 a participant sets aside. Its website does not say it provides free housing or vehicles. "We are unaware of any federal program that provides free housing or cars to unauthorized immigrants," Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the Migration Policy Institute, told AFP in a March 7 email. ORR separately operates hundreds of shelters nationwide for unaccompanied migrant children (archived here). '$8 million for making mice transgender -- this is real.' Trump's wording was inaccurate. As evidence for his claim, the White House issued a press release pointing to six studies they said added up to $8 million in spending (archived here). The experiments involved mice receiving hormone therapies that can be used in gender-affirming health care. But the purpose of the research was not to turn mice transgender, as the president claimed. The studies were geared toward approximating the impact of such treatments on humans. One project the White House cited, for example, used mice to study the impact of testosterone therapy on breast cancer risk and treatment (archived here). Another used them to evaluate whether the efficacy of HIV vaccination is changed by receipt of estrogen hormone therapy (archived here). A third sought to understand hormonal triggers of asthma in all humans, including transgender people (archived here). '$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique.' Trump was correct that a four-year contract started in 2023 with a local organization was funding voluntary medical circumcision in Mozambique, but his summary is missing context (archived here). Public health officials have identified male circumcision as a critical tool in reducing the transmission of HIV and combatting AIDS epidemics (archived here). According to UNAIDS, Mozambique has the world's third highest number of people living with HIV and second highest number of new infections (archived here). '$20 million for the Arab 'Sesame Street' in the Middle East. It's a program. $20 million for a program.' Trump appears to have conflated an Arabic version of the iconic children's TV show "Sesame Street" with a broader educational program by the same name that has received funding from the US Agency for International Development, or USAID (archived here). Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind "Sesame Street," funds the Arabic-language television program aired in the Middle East and North Africa through donations from the MacArthur Foundation and the LEGO Foundation, among others (archived here, here and here). The $20 million USAID put toward partnering with Sesame Workshop, according to an archived agency webpage, was "to produce Ahlan Simsim Iraq, a program designed to promote inclusion, mutual respect, and understanding across ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups." The webpage says the program produces "culturally tailored and age-appropriate original educational media content for young children." A Sesame Workshop spokesperson told AFP in a March 6 email: "The USAID-funded 'Ahlan Simsim Iraq' program supports the creation of local content and materials." The funding went to provide items including "storybooks, activity books, classroom materials and training and facilitators guides for teachers for use in early childhood development centers to improve children's learning," the spokesperson said. The Arabic-language TV show "is funded through separate philanthropic funding," the spokesperson said. '$1.9 billion to recently created decarbonization of homes committee, headed up... by a woman named Stacey Abrams.' Trump's comments about Abrams, a two-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Georgia, were misleading. The voting rights activist served as senior counsel from 2023 until the end of 2024 at Rewiring America, a nonprofit focused on electrification. The organization was part of a five-group coalition called Power Forward Communities that received a $2 billion grant from the Environmental Protection Agency as part of former president Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (archived here and here). The chief executive at Power Forward Communities told Politico in February 2025 that Abrams "has no relationship" with the coalition and "has not received a penny of this EPA grant" (archived here). Abrams responded on CNN to Trump's suggestion of irregularity in the program (archived here). "I led a project in southwest Georgia that has lowered the cost of energy for struggling families, and I'm extraordinarily proud of that work," Abrams said. "And because of that work, because of the work of five major organizations around this country who have done more than 250 years of service combined, the Biden administration authorized a grant. I did not work for the entity that received the grant, ultimately. I worked for one of the partner organizations." 'A $3.5 million consulting contract for lavish fish monitoring.' Trump appears to have misspoken. The DOGE website lists a contract "larval fish monitoring," which can help assess ecosystem health and water quality. The contract was between the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation and a research company called Asir LLC. The federal procurement record posted to the DOGE website places the total value of the contract above $6.6 million (archived here). data for the same contract says $6.6 million was the "potential award amount," however, and that only $1.1 million had already been paid (archived here). More of AFP's reporting on US politics misinformation is available here.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Top federal agency exposed for spending billions on migrants in a single year
The Biden administration spent tens of billions of dollars on grants to migrants and refugees through one of its government agencies, including over $10 billion in just one year, according to a new watchdog report. The watchdog group Open the Books looked at grants to nonprofits awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. Its responsibilities include caring for unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the southern border illegally and refugees entering legally. The watchdog found that in FY 2021, it distributed $2.4 billion in grants to nonprofits. In FY 2022, it distributed $3.4 billion, then that number skyrocketed up to $10 billion in FY 2023 before being reduced to $4.2 billion in FY 2024. 'Clawed Back': Dhs Chief Noem Secures Eye-popping Sum Sent To Nyc For Migrant Hotels The numbers surged amid a historic migrant crisis at the southern border which plagued the Biden administration between 2021 and 2024. According to the watchdog, the money included spending to help migrants save for car and home purchases, while another gave out business and personal loans, along with other programs for legal aid and cultural orientation. Read On The Fox News App "We're hurting American taxpayers. People in places like North Carolina, Los Angeles that have lost everything," Open the Books CEO John Hart told Fox News. "How is it moral to ask them to pay the bill for someone who wants to come to this country illegally? That's outrageous." Doge Puts Dei On Chopping Block With Termination Of Over $370M In Education Department Grants The revelation comes amid a government-wide scrutiny of funding, including funding for migrants, by the Trump administration and led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Click Here For More Immigration Coverage The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week that it had taken back $59 million in FEMA funds earmarked for hotels housing migrants in New York City and had fired four FEMA employees involved in the payments being distributed. "There will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people," a DHS spokesperson said. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been ramping up border security and cracking down on releases into the interior. It has suspended refugee resettlement, taken off limits imposed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and declared a national emergency at the southern article source: Top federal agency exposed for spending billions on migrants in a single year
