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Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. An attack ad by a super PAC called MAGA Kentucky targets Republican Rep. Thomas Massie — a longtime conservative foil of President Donald Trump — with claims that distort the congressman’s votes on some of Trump’s policy goals. The 30-second broadcast and digital ad, the first phase in a $1 million ad buy, according to Axios, began airing in late June in the northern Kentucky district where Massie is seeking reelection in 2026. The ad is titled “RADICAL DEMOCRATS,” and its narrator asks, “What happened to Thomas Massie? When did he decide to start voting with the radical Democrats? Massie voted against President Trump’s tax cuts. Massie voted against finishing Trump’s wall. Massie even voted against Trump’s ban on taxpayer-funded sex changes for minors.” The ad is referring to Massie’s votes against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Massie was one of only two Republicans to vote against the initial House version of the bill on May 22, and the final Senate version of the bill on July 3. Although the bill contained elements of all three issues highlighted in the ad, Massie’s opposition was based on the bill’s impact on the national debt. The ad singles out aspects of the bill that Massie has generally supported. During Trump’s first term, Massie voted for Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, and he has said repeatedly that he supports extending tax cuts in it that were scheduled to expire at the end of this year. “Look, I’m for the tax cuts, extending those tax cuts. I voted for those in 2017,” Massie said in a May 20 interview on Newsmax2. “Here’s the problem: we’re cutting more taxes, and we’re increasing spending. And to the extent they say we’re cutting spending, that doesn’t happen in these first few years. They’re saying, ‘We’ll do that in the later years.’ The problem is the later years never come.” “There are a lot of good things in this bill,” Massie said in a Newsmax interview on June 11. “We do need to deport the people who’ve come to this country illegally. I do support renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that I voted for.  But let me tell you what they’re not talking about … Number one issue, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the tax break for seniors, that all expires in three years. And that’s because they’re using a budget gimmick where they’re trying to say this thing balances five years from now. But it doesn’t balance now.” As for voting against “finishing Trump’s wall,” Massie has been a staunch supporter of building more border wall, though he has not always agreed with Trump’s method for funding it. In 2019, for example, Massie voted with Democrats to upend Trump’s attempt to fund the wall by declaring a national emergency. Massie argued that Congress, not the president, should decide on funding for construction of the border wall. But he also supported and voted to provide more than $5 billion to fund Trump’s border wall in fiscal year 2019. And in 2023, Massie co-sponsored H.R. 164, the Close Biden’s Open Border Act, which sought to provide $15 billion for border wall construction. As for the ad’s claim that Massie “even voted against Trump’s ban on taxpayer-funded sex changes for minors,” Massie has opposed gender-affirming surgery for children. Massie said in post on X after his vote: “Although there were some conservative wins in the budget reconciliation bill (OBBBA), I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates.” As we’ve written, multiple independent analyses have found that the legislation, which Trump signed into law on July 4, will add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit over 10 years. Massie had sought to amend the reconciliation bill to address federal jurisdiction in various cases of gender-affirming surgery. When the bill made its way through the Senate, according to Massie, the legislation allowed for funding of such medical procedures. Alluding to the MAGA Kentucky ad, Massie said on X, “What’s ironic is the senate stripped the ban on sex changes for minors from the BBB (referenced in the ad), so now everyone supporting the current BBB is for sex change for minors, using their logic?” Long History of Animosity The political friction between Trump and Massie goes back years. In March 2020, the Kentucky lawmaker tried to block Trump’s $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus package by forcing Congress to return to Washington for a vote on the bill, leading Trump to call Massie a “third rate Grandstander.” In 2024, Massie was critical of Trump for not fighting to ensure funding to complete the southern border wall during the president’s first term. Massie also endorsed one of Trump’s early challengers in 2024, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the Republican presidential primary. Massie and Trump clashed again in June, after the U.S. bombed the uranium enrichment facilities in Iran. Massie posted support for a War Powers Resolution vote in Congress to rein in Trump’s actions. “This is not our war,” Massie said on X. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.” After Massie registered opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump lambasted Massie on Truth Social as “a LOSER” and as “weak, ineffective,” and Trump has vowed in speeches to endorse a Republican primary opponent to Massie in the 2026 election. “I think he should be voted out of office,” Trump said. Massie’s War Chest Massie has held his office in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2012, and he easily defeated primary challengers in the last three election cycles, winning 75% of the vote in 2024, 75% in 2022 and 81% in 2020. Trump advisers are looking for a viable challenger in 2026, and Fox News posted a July 1 video of Trump saying Massie will have “a good opponent.” Massie has been gearing up for the fight. He has $1.7 million in his war chest, the

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. The Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, has been repeating the misleading claim that there are “over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation.” That number includes legal immigrants, not just those who entered the country illegally; about a third of them have only been charged, not convicted; and it’s unclear how many of them have been, or currently are, incarcerated. The figure also includes people who entered the country over the last several decades. Homan made the claim on July 12, at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida, and twice on July 7, including in an appearance on Fox News, which reported that new funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will enable the current force of 5,000 agents to triple to 15,000. There, Homan said, “This is going to make this community safer. … We’ve got over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation. With this plus up, we can take them into custody and remove them quicker.” The White House told us that Homan’s claim was based on data from a 2024 letter from then Department of Homeland Security Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas who had requested information on the number of noncitizens on the ICE docket who had been convicted or charged with a crime. The data showed that, as of July 21, 2024, “nearly 650,000 criminal aliens were on the [Non-Detained Docket],” a White House spokeswoman told us, referring to the list of noncitizens who have been charged with a crime but are not in ICE custody. But there are important caveats missing from Homan’s claim. Of the total 647,572 noncitizens with criminal histories who were listed as being “non-detained” as of July 2024, 126,343 — or, about 20% — had “traffic offenses.” Another 92,075 had “immigration” offenses. So, at least a third of the total did not have violent criminal histories. In comparison, 14,944 were listed as having “homicide” charges; 20,061 were listed as having “sexual assault” charges; 105,146 had “assault” charges; 30,631 had “larceny” charges; and 21,106 had “fraudulent activities” charges. Not all of those listed in the 2024 data had been convicted, though. Of the 647,572 total, 222,141 — or 33% — had been only charged. It’s unclear how many of those pending cases ended in convictions. It’s also important to note that the data doesn’t distinguish between immigrants who crossed the border illegally, immigrants who overstayed their visas, and immigrants who are in the country with documentation. “The non-detained docket includes not just unauthorized immigrants but green-card holders and noncitizens on long-term non-immigrant visas who have made themselves removable by virtue of a criminal conviction,” Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told us when we wrote about this data last year. Lechleitner’s letter was sent in September, and President Donald Trump, who was campaigning at the time, distorted the data, falsely claiming that then Vice President Kamala Harris “let in 13,099 convicted murderers.” More recently, Trump has repeatedly used the figure “11,888 murderers,” though he appears to be citing the same data. We asked the White House why the number is different, but we didn’t get a response to that question. Instead, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told us in an emailed statement, “Joe Biden let thousands upon thousands of violent criminal illegal aliens into American communities including murderers, rapists, gang members, and other violent criminals. President Trump will deport them all.” When we wrote about Trump’s claims in September, DHS told us that the figures weren’t just for recent immigrants, but included people who entered the country over the last 40 years or more. And DHS said in a statement at the time that the data “also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.” So, the 647,572 people on the list were not being detained by ICE, but some number of them were in the custody of state, local, or other federal authorities. We asked DHS last year, and again this week, how many were in the custody of other agencies, but we didn’t receive a response. Also, given that the data cover several decades, “[i]t would be worth noting that people with criminal convictions who are not in custody have, for the most part presumably, served whatever sentence was imposed on them,” Mittelstadt told us in an email last week. It’s also possible that some of them have been deported. Since the Trump administration has put an emphasis on deporting immigrants with criminal backgrounds, we asked DHS for updated figures. The department didn’t respond to our request for that data, but a spokesperson provided a statement that said Secretary Kristi Noem was using ICE to “target the worst of the worst.” Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.  The post Border Czar Makes Misleading Claim About Immigrants With Criminal Records appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Unfounded rumors linking an extreme weather event to human efforts to control the weather are again spreading on social media. It’s not plausible that available weather modification techniques caused or influenced the July 4 flash flooding along the Guadalupe River in Texas. The flooding, which is known to have killed at least 134 people, including at least 37 children, as of July 15, occurred after remnants of a tropical storm moved north and stalled over a region known as “Flash Flood Alley” that is prone to flash flooding due to its terrain. Experts have said that climate change likely played a role in worsening the rain. However, popular social media posts implied without evidence that the Texas flooding resulted from attempts to modify the weather. Some posts, including ones amplified by former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, made an unfounded suggestion that cloud seeding by a particular company may have caused the flooding. “This isn’t just bad weather,” read one post. “It looks a hell of a lot like weather warfare.” Cloud seeding is a real weather modification method, often used in an attempt to alleviate drought, that can sometimes nudge clouds to produce small amounts of rain or snow. It does not cause rain at the scale seen in the Texas flooding. Cloud seeding “had no influence on the outcome of the July 4th flooding,” Katja Friedrich of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences told us in an email, basing her comments on her own past research on the subject. “I love how confident people are in science but if cloud seeding would work as they often think, we would probably be able to solve the water crisis in the western US or in other arid regions but we are not able to do so,” she added. In contrast, climate change caused by heat-trapping pollution, in large part due to the burning of fossil fuels, is known to increase extreme rainfall events. “It is pretty clear that climate change increased rainfall” in Texas, Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told us via email. It’s more difficult, he said, to say what role climate change played in how high or how quickly the water levels rose, since this requires modeling taking into account complex local factors. We previously wrote about conspiracy theories — fueled by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia — that someone deliberately caused or steered Hurricane Helene in 2024 via weather modification. It is not possible to cause or steer a hurricane. On July 5, Greene announced new legislation to restrict weather modification. Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana have enacted or are set to enact laws curtailing weather modification. In July 5 posts on X and Substack, Kandiss Taylor, a Republican candidate for Congress from Georgia, also pushed the idea of “fake” and “manufactured” extreme weather. Taylor suggested that Hurricane Helene, which she said personally cost her family $57,000 in damages, was the result of weather modification, or “targeted destruction,” as she put it, and other disasters might be as well. “If storms are being manipulated, and people die because of it, that’s not just tragedy,” she wrote. “That’s murder.” Taylor told us via email that her posts were “in response to proposed new legislation in congress not about Texas. The media twisted what I posted.” But in her Substack and elsewhere, she suggested the Texas flooding could be due to weather manipulation. “Now, I’m watching in nonstop prayer what’s happening in Texas. And let me tell you, the patterns, the timing, the scale raises serious questions,” she wrote on Substack. Unfounded Claims About Cloud Seeding Cloud seeding relies on releasing small particles, most often silver iodide crystals, into clouds, which can help raindrops or ice crystals form from existing moisture and fall from the sky. As of July 2024, there were active cloud seeding projects in nine states, including Texas, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. Many social media posts have suggested that Rainmaker Technology Corporation may have caused the flooding. The company performed cloud seeding on July 2 in Karnes County, Texas, several counties southeast from where the flooding took place. But it’s not plausible the company’s activities played a role in the Texas flooding, experts told us and other news outlets. For one thing, the cloud seeding in Karnes County happened too far in advance of the storm to be relevant at all, Friedrich told us, explaining that her team’s research has shown that “cloud seeding material usually stays in the atmosphere for 2-4 hours depending on wind speed and conditions.” If the cloud seeding happened on July 2, there was “no way that material was still in the atmosphere” by the time of the storm, Friedrich said. Thunderstorms, of course, are also able to produce large amounts of rainfall on their own, she said, adding that there is “no need for cloud seeding.” Indeed, Rainmaker’s CEO, Augustus Doricko, responded to Flynn on X, writing that the two “clouds that were seeded on July 2nd dissipated over 24 hours prior to the developing storm complex that would produce the flooding rainfall.” But even if cloud seeding had happened closer to the relevant storm, experts said, it would not have caused the extreme amount of rain that fell. Friedrich said that her team’s past work showed that “cloud seeding produces rather small amounts of precipitation” — on the order of fractions of a millimeter of snow. In fact, a challenge in quantifying the results of cloud seeding, she said, has been that the amount of precipitation “is so small and often much smaller than natural precipitation.” The aftermath of flooding in Kerrville, Texas, on July 5. Photo by Eric Vryn/Getty Images. During the Texas flooding, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes at Hunt, Texas, and 2 to 3 inches of rain fell each hour at times, a National Weather Service spokesperson previously told us. “The amount of energy involved in making storms like that

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would reduce Medicaid enrollment and cause millions of people to become uninsured by 2034. It didn’t say that “5 million” of the people who are “going to lose insurance” would have “other insurance” so “they’re still insured,” as National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett misleadingly claimed. Hassett was talking about some of the estimated changes to Medicaid coverage and access to other types of health insurance. But he exaggerated the number who the CBO said would still retain some coverage, and his remark may leave the mistaken impression that he was addressing the CBO’s estimate of the increase in the uninsured. Some who are expected to lose Medicaid coverage will not be left entirely uninsured. For example, the figure that Hassett cited includes individuals the CBO said would lose Medicaid but keep their Medicare benefits. And Hassett’s figure includes people expected to be unenrolled from Medicaid in one state but remain enrolled in another state – meaning they wouldn’t actually lose Medicaid. But Hassett also counted individuals the CBO said would lose Medicaid and not obtain other coverage for which they were eligible. That group wouldn’t still be insured, as Hassett claimed. Experts told us there are several reasons, such as affordability, why an uninsured person may not enroll in a health plan available to them. Hassett, who directs the NEC for the Trump administration, made his claim during a July 6 “Face the Nation” interview, in which he criticized the CBO’s analysis of the legislation backed by congressional Republicans. The GOP-led House passed a Senate-approved version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and President Donald Trump signed it into law on July 4. Weijia Jiang, who was hosting the CBS show, asked Hassett to comment on “the CBO’s projections that as many as 12 million Americans could lose Medicaid coverage because of this law.” In response, Hassett said: “[I]f you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the big numbers, they say that people are going to lose insurance, about 5 million of those are people who have other insurance. They’re people who have two types of insurance. And so, therefore, if they lose one, they’re still insured.” Jiang may have been referring to a CBO estimate that, under a Senate version of the bill, 11.8 million people would become uninsured in 2034 — although not all of them would be people who lost Medicaid. But Hassett’s response to her question also isn’t what the CBO reported. What the CBO Said About Medicaid A White House official told us that Hassett was referring to the CBO’s analysis of a House version of the bill. Under that proposed bill — which was different from the Senate version that became law — the CBO estimated that Medicaid enrollment would decrease by 10.5 million in 2034, and that 7.8 million people would be left wholly uninsured because of Medicaid-related provisions in the bill. The 10.5 million figure included 1.3 million individuals who have both Medicaid and Medicare, but are projected to lose their Medicaid coverage. “They would retain Medicare coverage and not become uninsured,” the CBO said. Meanwhile, the agency said the “10.5 million figure also reflects a reduction of 1.6 million people enrolled in Medicaid in more than one state; those enrollees would maintain Medicaid coverage in their home state.” In addition, the CBO said that 1.6 million of the 7.8 million people estimated to become uninsured due to the bill’s Medicaid policies “would have access to, but would not take up, other forms of subsidized coverage,” such as employer-sponsored health insurance or a health plan available through insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. That 1.6 million “also includes people who would remain eligible for Medicaid but would not enroll,” the CBO said. Why Hassett’s Claim Is Misleading Adding those three figures together produces a total of 4.5 million, which is close to the 5 million that Hassett cited. But his figure is misleading. For one, the 1.6 million people that the CBO said would lose Medicaid and not obtain alternative coverage means they wouldn’t “have other insurance,” as Hassett said.  The White House official we contacted argued that these are people who “will voluntarily forgo insurance coverage available to them,” but the CBO didn’t elaborate on why those people wouldn’t “take up” other insurance. There are multiple reasons why an uninsured person who qualifies for a health plan may not enroll. “Surveys of Americans without insurance show that most either don’t think coverage is affordable or don’t know what programs they’re eligible for,” Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a Harvard University professor of health care economics and medicine, told us in an email. Sommers used an example of an employee making $20,000 annually who loses free Medicaid coverage but can’t afford to pay a $300 monthly premium for an insurance plan offered by an employer. He also emphasized that some people “will be losing Medicaid – even though they’re still eligible – because this law creates a lot more red tape” in the form of paperwork that has to be filed twice a year to document that beneficiaries meet new work requirements. “This law makes getting into and keeping Medicaid much harder, even for those who are already working and should still be eligible,” he said. Also, the CBO didn’t say that the 1.6 million people who would be unenrolled from Medicaid in one state, but still have it in another, are “going to lose insurance.” Those people are essentially being double-counted on the Medicaid rolls, which is why unenrolling them in one of the states only appears to reduce the number of people on Medicaid. “This number is about Medicaid enrollment and has nothing to do with the increase in the uninsured under the Medicaid and [Children’s Health Insurance Program] provisions under the law,” Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for

Q: Is it true that if President Donald Trump hadn’t defunded the National Weather Service, the death toll in the Texas flooding would have been far lower or nonexistent? A: The Trump administration did not defund the NWS but did reduce the staff by 600 people. Those staffing cuts did not cause the high number of deaths in the flash floods on July 4, experts said. Local forecasting offices were sufficiently staffed and issued timely warnings. But experts raised concerns about key positions being vacant, which could have affected coordination with local communities. FULL ANSWER Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. As search efforts continued after the July 4 flooding along the Guadalupe River — which killed at least 120 people, including 46 children, and left more than 170 missing as of July 10 — experts said that the National Weather Service forecasting offices in south central Texas had a sufficient number of staff members on duty and that they issued timely warnings to the local communities. We received emails from several readers asking about false claims on social media that Trump had “defunded” the NWS earlier this year and that those purported cuts contributed to the impact of the flooding and the death toll. The Trump administration has not “defunded” the NWS and has proposed a 7.6% increase in its budget for fiscal year 2026. However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the NWS, has proposed significant budget cuts in FY 2026. The proposed cuts include closing the National Severe Storms Laboratory that has developed key tools in predicting flash floods. This year, the administration did cut “roughly 600” positions in the NWS workforce, which had about 4,200 people, through layoffs, buyouts and retirements by the spring, Tom Fahy, legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union representing government workers, told us. A search and recovery unit paddles along the Guadalupe River on July 7 in Hunt, Texas. Heavy rainfall caused severe flash flooding, leaving more than 120 people dead, including children attending a camp. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images. But Fahy told NBC News that the weather forecasting offices “had adequate staffing and resources as they issued timely forecasts and warnings leading up to the storm” in Texas. Pat Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, told NPR, “State officials followed proper pre-storm and ongoing storm-protocols. The National Weather Service also followed their proper protocols of warnings and a flood emergency statement,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate, tragic event.” Alan Gerard, former director of the analysis and understanding branch at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, wrote in a July 5 Substack post that the Texas flooding was “truly a low probability, worst case scenario.” The deluge of rain that fell in the early morning hours of July 4 in the Hill Country caused the Guadalupe River to rise 26 feet in 45 minutes at Hunt, Texas, NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei told us. “Rainfall rates were 2 to 3 inches per hour at times,” she said. Gerard also wrote, “A common refrain in the emergency management and disaster community is that a disaster is rarely the result of one failure or event, it typically is the end result of a cascade of multiple things that go wrong. For this tragedy, the obvious overarching contributing factors are that the flash flood event occurred in the middle of the night when people are typically asleep and less likely to be able to take protective action, and that it occurred at the start of a long summer holiday weekend when campgrounds and resorts such as the ones that cluster along the Guadalupe River are most likely to be full.” Gerard wrote that “just as what I have been able to see about this event shows me the NWS did a solid job, similarly there is little evidence that any of the recent cuts to NOAA/NWS negatively impacted services for this event, regardless of what may be being said on social media.” Asked by a reporter on July 6 whether staffing cuts resulted in key personnel gaps at the NWS, Trump said, “No, they didn’t. If you look at that, what a situation that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn’t blame [former President Joe] Biden for it either. I would just say, this is a 100-year catastrophe and it’s just so horrible to watch.” A spokesperson for the Commerce Department, which includes the NWS, told the New York Times, “The timely and accurate forecasts and alerts for Texas this weekend prove that the NWS remains fully capable of carrying out its critical mission.” A timeline compiled by NPR said the Texas Division of Emergency Management activated state emergency response resources on July 2 due to the flood threat in west and central Texas. The NWS office in Austin/San Antonio posted on X at 3:41 p.m. that day that moderate to heavy showers were developing in the Hill Country. On July 3 at 1:18 p.m., the Austin/San Antonio office issued a flood watch. At 6:10 p.m. the NWS posted a report saying “flash flooding likely.” At 11:41 p.m., the Austin/San Antonio office posted a flash flood warning. On July 4 at 1:14 a.m., the Austin/San Antonio office issued another flash flood warning. At 3:06 a.m., the Austin/San Antonio office posted, “A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing across south-central Kerr County into northwest Bandera County, where 3-7 inches of rainfall has occurred the last 2-3 hours. … Turn Around, Don’t Drown!” Key Positions Empty at NWS Offices Some Democratic leaders have called for an investigation into whether staff vacancies at the NWS offices in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo affected the warning system and resulted in lives lost in the area known as “Flash Flood Alley.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the Commerce Department’s acting inspector general on July 7 asking him to “open an investigation

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel vote to recommend against use of seasonal influenza vaccines containing small amounts of thimerosal followed a presentation that misled on the risks of the rarely used preservative. There isn’t evidence that thimerosal in vaccines is harmful, and studies assessing a variety of health problems, including neurological conditions, have supported its safety. Despite this, a June 26 presentation by longtime anti-vaccine advocate Lyn Redwood, given before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, made unfounded or misleading claims, including that thimerosal is ineffective and a neurotoxin. (ACIP, which has been guiding the CDC’s vaccine recommendations since 1964, was recently completely reconstituted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in an unprecedented move.) Thimerosal, which is mercury-based, has long been a focus of anti-vaccine groups, including Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit founded and formerly chaired by Kennedy. He has credited Redwood, a retired nurse practitioner who was also involved in the founding and past leadership of the nonprofit, as one of the people who introduced him 20 years ago to the thoroughly debunked claim that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism.  Thimerosal has been used in vaccines since the 1930s but in the U.S. today is only present in flu shots taken from multidose vials, as the preservative is needed to prevent the growth of germs that could be introduced each time a needle enters the vial. In 1999, the Food and Drug Administration asked that vaccine manufacturers stop offering thimerosal-containing versions of vaccines routinely given in infancy as a precautionary measure, even though there wasn’t evidence of harm. Since 2001, no vaccines for children have included thimerosal, except for some flu vaccines. Subsequent evidence continued to support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines, and when flu vaccines were recommended annually for all children in 2004, ACIP endorsed them regardless of whether they contained the preservative. However, over the years Americans increasingly have gotten their flu vaccines in single-dose versions, which do not need preservatives. Flu vaccines with thimerosal made up less than 5% of vaccines given during the last flu season in the U.S., the FDA representative on the committee reported during the meeting.  Ordinarily, work groups prepare for months preceding an ACIP vote, and someone — often a CDC expert — publicly presents evidence on the topic at hand to the panel. These presentations contain not only information on benefits and harms but also on practical implications of the decision for public health. None of this happened prior to the thimerosal vote. “There were many studies on the other side of the question that documented the safety of thimerosal that were not included, so it was a highly opinionated, data-sparse, incomplete presentation,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told us, speaking of Redwood’s presentation. “And certainly in recent years, it would not have been permitted in that form.” Before ACIP convened, a CDC evidence review on thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes that did include many of the studies demonstrating thimerosal’s safety was posted to the agency’s website for the meeting, but then removed. Dr. Robert Malone, a new member of the committee who has a history of misleading on vaccines, said during the meeting that the document “was not authorized by the Office of the Secretary.” The “document by the CDC vaccine safety office did not go through the appropriate process to be posted,” an HHS spokesperson told us via email. “Nevertheless, our commitment remains the same: to evaluate the data and that’s what the new members did.” The spokesperson added that the “document was included in the ACIP member briefing packets.” The newly reconstituted ACIP “used absolutely none of the usual aspects of deliberation or evidence” before making a recommendation, Dr. Paul Hunter, a family physician in Madison, Wisconsin, and an ACIP member between 2016 and 2020, told us. “It’s settled science that the benefits of the thimerosal-containing flu vaccines far outweigh the risks,” he added. Misleading and One-Sided Presentation Redwood, who has stated that she believes her son’s autism was caused by thimerosal in vaccines and helped originate the idea that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, misleadingly cast thimerosal as a dangerous neurotoxin. “Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable populations is a good place to start with Making America Healthy Again,” Redwood said, reading from her slides at the end of her presentation. While at higher doses thimerosal can be harmful, there isn’t evidence that in the small amounts in vaccines thimerosal poses any safety risk, other than rare allergic reactions or temporary redness, swelling or itchiness around the injection site in some individuals. The type of mercury in thimerosal is ethylmercury, which is substantially different and less toxic than methylmercury, which is what accumulates in fish from the environment. The 1999 decision to phase out thimerosal in children’s vaccines in the U.S. was based on calculations using guidelines on methylmercury exposure from the Environmental Protection Agency, but it’s clear the substances have different effects. As a 2006 review noted, a patient who consumed a massive dose of thimerosal became very ill, but completely recovered, in contrast to a methylmercury poisoning, which occurred at a much lower dose and left the individual with permanent brain damage. Similar findings have been reported in experiments on animals. Numerous studies have evaluated the effects of thimerosal in vaccines and have not identified any neurological harms. (There are a few studies that link thimerosal-containing vaccines to tics, but only weakly. Other studies have not identified these associations, or have observed them inconsistently.) Moreover, the amount of mercury in a flu shot is about the same as what is in a 3 ounce portion of tuna, according to the FDA. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine — an independent nonprofit now known as the National Academy of Medicine — concluded that “the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.” Credible studies conducted since then have also not identified any link, and indeed, as thimerosal has been removed from vaccines, autism diagnoses have gone up — not down. Redwood avoided making direct claims about autism, but selectively presented evidence to paint thimerosal