Category: Fact Checking

Claim:

FIFA revoked U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace prize after board members launched an investigation into the award selection process.

Rating:

In December 2025, soon after FIFA awarded U.S. President Donald Trump the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize,” rumors spread that the international soccer governing body was revoking the award. 

Readers asked us to confirm whether the award had actually been rescinded. Several Facebook posts making the claim used identical language: “FIFA Orders Donald Trump’s Peace Prize Revoked and Returned After Board Members and Top Executives Launch Official Investigation Into Award Process, Claiming Award Was Unilaterally Approved by President Gianni Infantino Without Board Consent.”

(Facebook user “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce fans”)

The posts linked to an article on an advertisement-filled website that had the same caption as the headline and read:

The decision follows an internal investigation that reportedly uncovered serious procedural violations in the approval process.

According to senior officials, the award was never reviewed or voted on by FIFA’s executive board.

Instead, investigators allege that FIFA President Gianni Infantino unilaterally approved and announced the prize, bypassing established governance protocols and blindsiding multiple top executives.

In a brief statement, FIFA confirmed that the prize had been officially rescinded pending the conclusion of the inquiry.

Sources inside the organization described the atmosphere as “tense” and “deeply fractured,” with several board members calling the situation an unprecedented breach of internal policy. 

The text in the above posts and article was not a factual recounting of real-life events. While FIFA President Gianni Infantino did give Trump an award on Dec. 5, the organization has not announced it was rescinding the prize. As such, we rate this claim as false.

We previously reached out to FIFA to learn about the process behind creating the award, Trump’s selection, whether it was in line with FIFA’s code of ethics and whether Infantino’s conduct would result in his removal. We have not received a response as of this writing. 

GPTZero, a tool for detecting text generated with artificial intelligence, rated the language in the above article as having a 100% likelihood of being AI-generated. (Research shows AI-detection software is imperfect, and readers should consider the tools’ results with skepticism.) 

Regardless of whether the story was the product of AI, FIFA has made no announcement calling for the return of the award. We looked through FIFA’s social media and news releases and found no evidence the organization had rescinded the award. 

As we’ve reported previously, Infantino has not faced censure from FIFA for his actions, although FairSquare, a nonprofit group, filed an official complaint against him with the soccer body, requesting an investigation into the selection process for the peace prize. At the time of this writing, FIFA had not confirmed that such an inquiry was taking place. FIFA’s code of ethics states that officials are expected to maintain political neutrality. 

The above article appeared to repeat actual Associated Press reporting that other FIFA officials were surprised by the announcement and learned about it through the media. Three anonymous sources also told Politico that Infantino bypassed the FIFA Council to create and award the prize to Trump, with vice presidents who were given advance notice about the award reportedly saying they were told only after the decision was made.

FIFA told ESPN that its ethics committee does not comment on potential ongoing cases and could not confirm receiving the complaint.

Such posts that are likely AI-generated can be characterized as “AI slop,” or just “slop” — low-quality content that’s easy to create thanks to artificial intelligence tools. For further reading, Snopes wrote a detailed explanation of AI slop.

Sources

A rumor circulating online in December 2025 claimed that throughout 2025, and specifically on Dec. 8, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration sent $45 million in weekly cash payments to the Taliban — the political and religious faction ruling Afghanistan.

For example, on Dec. 9, Newsweek published an article (archived) with the headline “Trump admin sending Taliban $45M sparks Republican backlash.” The outlet posted (archived) the same story on Reddit’s popular r/politics subreddit, as well as on Facebook (archived) with an image displaying the headline.

(Newsweek/Facebook)

The Newsweek article cited U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., for his campaigning against various funding — including the cash payments — benefiting the Taliban. Burchett sponsored a bill called the “No Tax Dollars For Terrorists Act” that passed the House in June 2025. Newsweek also cited Amrullah Saleh, the former first vice president of Afghanistan and founder of the anti-Taliban Afghanistan Green Trend party.

On Dec. 8, Saleh posted on X (archived) that a chartered flight delivered $45 million in U.S. currency to the Taliban in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. He tagged Burchett, who then created content for his social media pages about the matter. (One of Burchett’s posts included a video that is no longer available on his social media pages, in which he made specific allegations about why his bill had not yet passed the Senate. Saleh also commented about that clip.)

Other users shared the same Newsweek headline and article, or the claim itself, on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), LinkedIn (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).

In short, this matter pertained to the fact that, since December 2021, the United Nations facilitated shipments of U.S. currency — with much of the money donated by the U.S., among other donors — intended for Afghanistan’s humanitarian and development assistance. The funding began during former President Joe Biden’s administration and continued into Trump’s second term, including for example $120 million provided in March 2025 alone. In separate reports filed during Biden’s and Trump’s administrations, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted that the Taliban benefited from the cash payments.

The Newsweek article briefly mentioned the Biden administration’s role in the matter — a detail not appearing in the vast majority of users’ comments under the outlet’s social media posts.

Snopes did not yet locate credible evidence to confirm the specific claim regarding a Dec. 8 shipment of $45 million in cash, nor any documentation regarding U.N.-facilitated flights occurring in the latter months of 2025. A dollar figure similar to the $45 million claim appeared in an August SIGAR report, documenting that in 2022 and 2023, the U.N. flew at least $3.6 billion in U.S. currency to Afghanistan — amounting “to roughly $40 million in cash per week.”

State Department statement, other outreach

We contacted the State Department via email to ask about the $45 million rumor and the U.N.’s history of facilitating payments of U.S. cash to Afghanistan. A spokesperson not identified in the response said:

The Biden administration sent billions of dollars to places where aid diversion to terrorist groups like the Taliban has been well documented. By contrast, President Trump directed the Department to suspend all direct assistance that could reach the hands of the Taliban. The Trump Administration will not allow U.S. taxpayer dollars to be used to enable the Taliban’s heinous behavior. We condemn the United Nations for failing to implement adequate safeguards and for allowing international aid flows that risk falling into the hands of terrorists.

We also emailed SIGAR, the White House, the U.N. and Burchett, and privately messaged Saleh, to ask questions about the cash payments to Afghanistan — a country torn by two decades of war following the Sept. 11 attacks.

In an email to Newsweek, we inquired about why its article failed to mention the U.N. as the facilitator of the payments, as well whether its reporter contacted Saleh, one of the primary sources, for comment. We will update this story if we receive any further information.

Below we outline the U.S. military’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the history of the U.N.’s cash payment flights and the ways the Taliban benefited from the funds:

U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

On Feb. 29, 2020, Trump’s first administration signed an agreement with the Taliban, committing to withdraw U.S. troops by May 1, 2021 — ending America’s longest war. The agreement included the freeing of 5,000 Taliban soldiers. FactCheck.org reported that, in the months that followed, the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaida terrorists into Taliban leadership.

After taking office in January 2021, Biden’s administration delayed the May 1 withdrawal date to Aug. 31. In mid-August, the Taliban gained control of nearly the entire country, including most major cities.

On Aug. 26, a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members and 60 Afghans at the Kabul airport. As the last U.S. military plane departed the airport on Aug. 30, a video showed a chaotic scene as hundreds of people ran alongside the aircraft, including some clinging to the its side as it took off. The BBC cited local reports that at least two people fell to their deaths after the plane took off, and that officials later discovered human remains in the landing gear.

In April 2023, a U.S. government review of the Afghanistan withdrawal — which was not independent and included input from Biden’s administration — blamed Trump for the withdrawal. The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee released a report in September 2024, largely blaming Biden’s administration for “the failures of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.”

Post-withdrawal cash deliveries to Afghanistan

Between September 2021 and February 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control — an agency operating under the Treasury Department  — published seven general licenses related to assisting post-withdrawal Afghanistan. The agency’s website, referencing four of the general licenses, confirmed humanitarian organizations can “ship cash into Afghanistan for use in delivering humanitarian assistance.”

A January 2024 SIGAR report cited the reasoning behind sending regular cash payments, as opposed to digital transactions, as follows:

The UN anticipates needing to purchase and transport cash into Afghanistan for the foreseeable future because humanitarian operations in Afghanistan will still rely on large amounts of cash until the country improves its banking sector, including implementing measures to counter and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, complying with international banking laws, alleviating ongoing cash shortages, and developing sufficient internal controls and infrastructure to allow for digital transactions.

The U.N. website hosts a fact sheet (archived) about the cash payments, claiming “all cash brought in to Afghanistan is placed in designated U.N. accounts in a private bank for use by the United Nations” and that “none of the cash brought in to Afghanistan is deposited in the Central Bank of Afghanistan nor provided to the Taliban de facto authorities by the U.N.”

In April 2023, John Sopko, then serving as inspector general for Afghanistan, told House Committee on Oversight and Accountability members that “the Taliban is using various methods to divert U.S. aid dollars.” In Sopko’s testimony, he specifically cited his wanting to “ensure safe stewardship of tax dollars.” Days after Trump assumed office for his second term, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous source, that the administration had fired Sopko, among other firings of inspectors general. On LinkedIn, Sopko posted (archived) he had retired.

As ProPublica reported, the authors of the January 2024 SIGAR report found some cash from U.N. shipments ultimately ended up in the hands of a Taliban-controlled bank:

We found that multiple parties are required to secure and control the cash until it reaches its destination at a private bank in Afghanistan.

Lastly, we found some cash that the U.N. purchases and transfers to Afghanistan ultimately end up in the Taliban-controlled central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), through the currency conversion process. Because private Afghan banks and money exchangers typically do not hold large amounts of afghanis (Afghanistan’s national currency), which are needed to purchase goods and services in some parts of the country, the banks and money exchangers often use U.N.-provided U.S. dollars to purchase afghanis from the Taliban-controlled DAB at currency auctions. Consequently, the Taliban have a large supply of U.S. dollars due to DAB exchanging cash for international aid organizations. 

A World Bank Group report (archived) said that, in 2022 and 2023, the U.N. facilitated a total of more than $2.9 billion in U.S. currency payments to Afghanistan for the purpose of development and humanitarian assistance. SIGAR reported the U.S. provided roughly $2.6 billion of that total.

How the Taliban benefits from cash payments

A July 2024 SIGAR report highlighted benefits of the cash payments but also said the money — $3.8 billion in U.S. currency provided between December 2021 and January 2024 — aided the Taliban. Unlike the January report, the July report did not specify the amount specifically donated by the U.S.

The report said a reduction or cessation of the U.N.’s U.S. currency cash shipments “would exacerbate Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crises,” and listed several ways the Taliban stood to benefit from the shipments:

Taliban policies and attempts at interference complicate the deployment of direct cash assistance. For example, SIGAR found that Taliban attempts to misuse or divert direct cash assistance have led to the suspension of humanitarian activities, and Taliban polices often prevent the aid from reaching women and other vulnerable groups. In addition, under the guise of income taxation, the Taliban have targeted and extorted money from some recipients of direct cash assistance as a way of accessing international assistance.

However, SIGAR found that U.S. agencies and aid organizations have policies and procedures intended to prevent the Taliban from misusing and diverting direct cash assistance. For example, SIGAR has previously reported that the Department of State (State) and USAID maintain vetting processes intended to ensure that direct cash assistance is not provided to prohibited organizations, including the Taliban. Additionally, the UN addresses any purported attempts to misuse or divert direct cash assistance by suspending activities or engaging with the Taliban directly to discuss and investigate any misuse or diversion. Nonetheless, even with these controls in place, it is not possible to eliminate the benefits the Taliban garner from the cash transfers.

Finally, SIGAR found that U.S. currency shipments provide indirect benefits to the Taliban because the operating costs associated with humanitarian programming generate tax revenue and other fees. Additionally, the humanitarian assistance facilitated by the shipments provide indirect benefits to the Taliban by stabilizing and legitimizing them, because the funds allow the Taliban to focus on their priorities and policies instead of providing essential services to the Afghan people. For example, the Taliban take credit for the essential services provided by international donors, including the provision of food and healthcare, which can contribute to Afghans’ perception of the Taliban as a legitimate authority. U.S. currency shipments also risk legitimizing and stabilizing the Taliban by allowing them to reallocate financial resources to other priorities and policies, including to the security ministries responsible for enforcing Taliban policies and disciplining and policing the Afghan population. Moreover, because U.S. currency is difficult to trace and can be used internationally as a means of exchange, the Taliban now have a greater ability to circumvent the controls of the international banking system that are intended to limit the Taliban’s ability to conduct money laundering and fund terrorism.

In August 2025, SIGAR reported: “In 2022 and 2023, the U.N. flew at least $3.6 billion in cash into the country. This amounted to roughly $40 million in cash per week, money intended to fund the work of 19 U.N. entities, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and 49 NGOs.” A footnote said SIGAR had not been able to obtain the amount of money flown into the country for 2024.

The report also noted the U.S. government had ended most of its aid to Afghanistan by April 2025.

The final SIGAR report from December 2025 documented that, after August 2021, the U.S. alone — via U.N.-facilitated shipments — disbursed $3.83 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to Afghanistan, including for example $120 million in disbursements in March 2025. Those March 2025 cash disbursements fell during Trump’s 90-day pause on foreign aid, which began after he assumed office on Jan. 20.

For further reading, we previously reported about the time Trump said he planned to host Taliban leaders at Camp David.

Sources

In a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, President Donald Trump honed a message of “lower prices, bigger paychecks” ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Some of his talking points on the economy missed the mark.

• The president falsely claimed he had “inherited the worst inflation” in U.S. history and that it “stopped” since he returned to the White House. The worst inflation period occurred after World War I, and inflation was up 3% for the 12-month period ending in September.

• Trump was right to say that oil prices had declined, but the data are mixed for “energy prices,” a phrase he also used.

• The national average for a regular gallon of gasoline is $2.94. Trump claimed it was at $1.99 in three or four states, but no state average is that low. Some individual gas stations advertised such prices in four states.

• He exaggerated when he said he had attracted about $18 trillion in new investments in the U.S. since January. A White House webpage says the total is $9.6 trillion as of Dec. 10, and experts say many of those “investments” are only promises that shouldn’t be counted yet.

• Trump took credit for the creation of 4,000 new manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania, but Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that in the U.S. overall, manufacturing jobs are down 49,000 since January.

• The president repeated an old claim that “more Americans are working today” than ever before, but that’s largely due to population growth. The employment-population ratio is down slightly since January.

Inflation

Trump said during his remarks in Pennsylvania that his administration “inherited the highest prices ever and we’re bringing them down. We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country.” He later claimed that “inflation is stopped.”

He has made similar claims many times before — but they’re still false.

Trump did not inherit “the worst inflation” in American history. The worst inflation occurred after World War I, when the largest 12-month price increase was 23.7% from June 1919 to June 1920. Also, from March 1979 to March 1980, overall inflation rose 14.8%.

Inflation had climbed substantially during the first half of former President Joe Biden’s term, mainly due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as we’ve written before. For the 12-month period ending in June 2022, the Consumer Price Index increased 9.1%. That was “the largest 12-month increase since the period ending November 1981,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. 

In the six months before Trump began his second term, however, the annual CPI was below 3%. For the 12 months ending in January, it was 3%. 

Contrary to Trump’s claims, not all prices are now “down” and inflation hasn’t “stopped.”

Based on the CPI, the inflation rate ticked up 3% for the 12 months ending in September — the last month for which data are available because of the 43-day government shutdown — and was up 1.7% from January to September. Core inflation, which doesn’t include the categories of food and energy, also rose 3% from September 2024. From January to September, core inflation was up 1.8%.

While announcing the year’s third interest rate cut on Dec. 10, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell also noted that “inflation remains somewhat elevated,” contradicting the president’s claim that “inflation is stopped.”

“Although important federal government data for the past couple of months have yet to be released, available public and private-sector data suggests that the outlook for employment and inflation has not changed as much since our meeting in October. Conditions in the labor market appear to be gradually cooling and inflation remains somewhat elevated,” Powell said.

Oil, Gasoline and Energy Prices

The president correctly said that oil prices had come down since he took office, but “energy prices” are mixed. He exaggerated in saying that the price of gasoline was at $1.99 in three or four states.

“Our oil prices are coming down very substantially, energy prices,” Trump said.

The price for West Texas Intermediate crude, which is the U.S. oil benchmark, was $59.04 per barrel as of Dec. 8, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s down 24.8% from $78.56 on Jan. 17, the most up-to-date price before Trump’s inauguration.

As for energy overall, the picture isn’t so clear. BLS’ measure for energy inflation shows a decrease of 0.5% from January to September, the latest data available. BLS’ measure for household energy, which considers the overall cost of services used for heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, and running appliances and household equipment, shows an increase of 4.3%.

The president attributed lower oil prices to more drilling, saying “the greatest amount of drilling, the greatest amount of fuel being produced right now in our country than ever before by far. It’s not even a contest.” Monthly production of crude oil in the U.S. in September was up 5.4% from January, according to EIA. The annual per day average is certain to be higher this year than last, when the U.S. hit a record of 13.2 million barrels on average per day. However, the EIA has said that a decrease in crude oil prices has been “driven by increasing global crude oil supply,” not only oil produced in the U.S.

Retail gasoline prices have remained low since January. The national average for a regular gallon of gasoline was $3.11 when Trump took office, and it was $2.94 as of Dec. 8, according to EIA. It dipped below $3 this month for the first time since May 2021.

But Trump exaggerated in saying that three or four states had it at “$1.99 a gallon.” No statewide average is that low, according to figures published by AAA. The lowest statewide average was Oklahoma, $2.37 per gallon. It is possible to find some individual gas stations in some states charging that amount. In looking at the 10 states with the lowest average price, we found gas stations in four states advertising a price of $1.99 or lower, using GasBuddy, a site that lists prices for more than 150,000 stations.

Investments in U.S.

Trump also told his audience in Pennsylvania, “In four years under Biden, Democrats secured less than $1 trillion in new investments in our country.” Trump said he had brought in “right around $18 trillion” in investments to the U.S. If Biden had been reelected, he said, “it would have been negative because companies were pouring out of our country.”

The president’s estimate of how much new investment he has attracted to the U.S. has grown dramatically over the course of the year and is exaggerated, according to experts and a White House webpage.

On the day after his inauguration, Trump said, “Before the end of my first full business day in Washington in the White House, we’ve already secured nearly $3 trillion of new investments in the United States.” The number grew by trillions in the months that followed, according to Trump, and by May he said, “I think we can say that we’ll be close to $10 trillion of investment” because of his policies on trade and tariffs. On Dec. 9, Trump’s estimate had grown to “around $18 trillion.”

Yet a webpage curated by the White House that keeps a running tab of “Total U.S. and Foreign Investments” shows a total of $9.6 trillion as of Dec. 10.

Even that number is questionable because it includes pledges and plans for investment that may not be realized, experts have said, as we reported in May.

“There’s no guarantee that any of the investments that are announced actually come to fruition,” Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said. Economists “wouldn’t count them until they’re actually in the ground,” Hersh said about the listed projects.

“[T]hey’re just promises — and often vague ones at that,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in an April analysis of Trump’s claims.

Trump’s claim that “companies were pouring out of our country” during Biden’s presidency also lacks evidence to support it.

Harry C. Moser, the founder and president of Reshoring Initiative, which works to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., told us in an email that his nonprofit organization measures reshoring and foreign direct investment in the U.S. “‘Pouring out’ sounds like offshoring, which no one measures,” Moser said.

According to BLS data, the U.S. added 610,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s presidency, a 5% increase. (The total jobs added under Biden will be adjusted in February, when BLS completes its benchmarking process, as we’ve written.)

The Biden administration announced in November 2024 that “datapoints show” that private-sector investments in the U.S. during Biden’s term “now total over $1 trillion.”

Biden “‘bought’ most of the increase in his term via grants,” Moser said, referring to the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, Biden’s initiatives aimed at creating jobs in clean energy and the manufacturing of semiconductors, among other incentives.

Trump “is using tariffs to motivate companies. So far 2025 is just slightly below 2024 [in reshoring jobs and foreign investment] due to delays in tariff agreements,” Moser said. Trump “claims about $20 trillion in [manufacturing] project announcements. Bloomberg reduced that to $7T. Much of that amount is still not firm, waiting for tariffs to become solid and long-term. When/if the tariffs are solidified, we expect a surge way above the level under” Biden, he said.

We reached out to the White House for data to support Trump’s claims regarding the amount of investment he has attracted to the U.S. so far and the loss of companies during Biden’s term, but we didn’t receive a response.

Manufacturing Jobs

Regarding manufacturing jobs, Trump also said, “Since my inauguration, we’ve created nearly 60,000 new Pennsylvania jobs, including 4,000 Pennsylvania manufacturing jobs that the Democrats gave up on.” 

Since Trump took office in January, the number of new manufacturing jobs in Pennsylvania had grown by 4,000 jobs by August, according to BLS data.

But manufacturing jobs in the U.S. overall declined by 49,000 jobs, or 0.4%, from January to September, BLS data show.

Jobs

The president also said, “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”

Trump has made such statements before. In 2018, he said the same thing at a rally in Elko, Nevada. It’s not wrong, but it doesn’t mean much.

According to the BLS, there were nearly 160 million total nonfarm employees as of September, the last month for which data are available, and the United States reached the highest total number of workers in history in that month. But the nation also has its largest population in history.

Considering population growth, the president’s claim doesn’t carry much weight.

“The labor force participation rate, at 62.4 percent, changed little … over the year,” the BLS reported on Nov. 20. It was 62.6% in January. (The labor force participation rate is the number of people age 16 and older who are working or seeking work, as a share of the working-age population.)

“The employment-population ratio, at 59.7 percent, also changed little in September,” the BLS reported. In fact, the employment-population ratio — the portion of the population that was employed — was “down by 0.4 percentage point over the year,” according to the BLS. It was 60.1% in January, when Trump took office.

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Nearly eight years ago, President Donald Trump denied using the word “shitholes” to describe African countries during an Oval Office meeting on immigration. 

But now he has fessed up.   

In a speech Tuesday night in Pennsylvania, Trump boasted about pausing migration from what he called “Third World” countries, when he was interrupted by an audience member who yelled out “shithole.” That triggered Trump to recall a White House meeting during his first term that caused a stir over whether the president used a vulgar term to describe African countries. 

Trump, Dec. 9: I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries. 

Audience member: Shithole. 

Trump: I didn’t say shithole, you did. [Laughter.] Remember, I said that to the senators. They came in, the Democrats. They wanted to be bipartisan. So, they came in, and they said this is totally off the record. Nothing mentioned here. We wanted to be honest, because our country was going to hell, and we had a meeting and I say, “why is it we only take people from shithole countries,” right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few — let us have a few, from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people, do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.

Trump’s new account of the Jan. 11, 2018, meeting confirms what Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said at the time.

A day after the meeting, Durbin – who was at that meeting — said the president was commenting on immigration from Africa when he said, “‘Those shitholes send us the people that they don’t want.’” Durbin added, “He repeated that. He didn’t say that just one time.” 

Durbin also quoted Trump as saying, “‘We don’t need more Haitians.’”

As we wrote at the time, Trump repeatedly denied Durbin’s account. 

In social media posts on Jan. 12, 2018, Trump said his words at the meeting were “tough,” but “this was not the language used,” and he claimed that he “[n]ever said anything derogatory about Haitians.” Two days later, the president told reporters that the remarks attributed to him “weren’t made,” and he tweeted that Durbin “totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting,” referring to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

(DACA prevents the deportation of more than 500,000 U.S. residents who were illegally brought to the United States as children. At the 2018 meeting, Durbin and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham met with Trump to discuss their bipartisan plan to save DACA, which Trump was trying to phase out.)

In our Jan. 16, 2018, article, we were unable to definitively state what was said at the immigration meeting. There was no recording of the private meeting. Instead, we provided firsthand accounts from some of those who attended.

There were at least seven members of Congress at the meeting and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. In addition to Durbin, four other members of Congress and Nielsen made public statements about the meeting, which we included in our 2018 article and summarize here:

• Like Trump, Nielsen said there was an “impassioned conversation” on immigration at the meeting, but she did not hear “that specific phrase being used.”

• Sen. Tom Cotton and then-Sen. David Perdue, both Republicans, initially also said in a joint statement that they “do not recall the President saying these comments specifically.” Perdue said days later that Trump “did not use that word,” calling Durbin’s account a “gross misrepresentation.” (The Washington Post reported, based on accounts from anonymous White House officials, that Perdue and Cotton told the White House that they heard “shithouse” rather than “shithole,” which the Post wrote allowed both men to deny Durbin’s account of the president’s comments.)

• In a statement at the time, Graham initially did not confirm or deny the allegations about Trump’s language. But days later, he appeared to criticize Cotton and Perdue for their selective memories of the meeting. “My memory hasn’t evolved,” he told reporters in South Carolina on Jan. 15. “I know what was said and I know what I said.”

• Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, would neither confirm nor deny whether Trump used the obscenity at the meeting to describe African nations.

As fact-checkers, we must rely on irrefutable evidence, such as memos, emails and recordings, to render a judgment when trying to settle a dispute like this between two parties. All we can do – and what we did in this case – is lay out what we know and let readers draw their own views of what may have happened.

But now there is no disagreement. Trump admitted that he said, “why is it we only take people from shithole countries?”

Asked for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson told us the controversy over Trump’s language at the 2018 meeting is “another Fake News narrative peddled by Democrats.”

“Instead of digging up another Fake News narrative peddled by Democrats almost 10 years ago, the media should focus on the substance of what President Trump correctly pointed out: Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here,” Jackson said in an email.

But based on Trump’s own account, this wasn’t “another Fake News narrative.” Instead, his denials at the time were false. 

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In a disparaging attack on Somalia in which he said he didn’t want people of Somali descent in the United States, President Donald Trump said Somalis “ripped off” Minnesota “every year” for “billions of dollars,” an apparent reference to a fraud investigation, and suggested that “like 88%” of Somalis receive “welfare” benefits. But the White House didn’t provide us with evidence for either of those figures.

Trump was at least partly referring to a recent news report that said the vast majority of people federal prosecutors have charged since 2022 with committing three fraud schemes targeting social service programs in Minnesota are members of the state’s Somali community.

Joseph H. Thompson, then the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, told a local Minnesota news station in July that the amount of fraud could total over $1 billion when government investigations are complete. He then told another local outlet in September that the amount is “in the billions of dollars,” when counting fraud in other state programs that are under investigation.

However, when we asked that U.S. Attorney’s Office how Thompson came up with his figures, we didn’t receive a response.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in a Dec. 7 story that its review of court documents “shows the alleged fraud uncovered to date is closer to $152 million,” although the newspaper said that figure “is expected to grow” as federal and state investigations continue.

In this story, we’ll explain what happened in the fraud cases and what we know about Somalis and welfare.

Fraud Cases

Trump went on a rant against people of Somali heritage at the end of a Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting at the White House, calling them “garbage” and accusing them of stealing large sums of money from Minnesota taxpayers.

“I hear they ripped off, Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions,” Trump said. “Every year, billions of dollars. And they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88%.”

“I don’t want them in our country,” the president said, adding that he didn’t care that some people would call his remarks “not politically correct.”

There are at least three separate fraud cases in Minnesota that are being investigated by federal and state authorities, and there is a connection to the state’s Somali population.

In a Nov. 29 story, the New York Times reported that 78 of the 86 people charged so far for defrauding Minnesota programs are of Somali descent. 

First, the Department of Justice began charging dozens of people in 2022 for their roles in a plot exploiting a federally funded nutrition program for children during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a DOJ press release about the charges, employees of Feeding Our Future, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization, enlisted individuals and entities in the scheme to defraud the Department of Agriculture’s Federal Child Nutrition Program, which was administered in the state by the Minnesota Department of Education.

Federal prosecutors said Feeding Our Future was a sponsor participating in the nutrition program when it recruited others to open shell companies to act as program sites feeding children throughout the state. Those fake food sites allegedly produced fabricated paperwork, including invoices and attendance logs, showing millions of meals provided to kids, and Feeding Our Future submitted bogus claims for reimbursement through the federal program.

The Justice Department said that Feeding Our Future opened more than 250 sites statewide and “fraudulently obtained and disbursed more than $240 million” in program funds, some of which officials said was used for personal purchases, such as cars, jewelry and property. (The Star Tribune said that prosecutors “have not produced evidence indicating all of that money was fraudulent.”)

As of November, prosecutors said that 78 individuals had been charged in the scheme, including Feeding Our Future’s founder, Aimee Bock, who denied any wrongdoing but was convicted on wire fraud and bribery charges by a federal jury in March. 

Then, in September, federal prosecutors brought wire fraud charges against eight individuals for a scheme to defraud Minnesota’s federally funded Housing Stabilization Services Program, which began in 2020 to help seniors and other people with disabilities find and maintain housing. State officials ended the program in October because of fraud concerns.

Prosecutors said the perpetrators enrolled in the program, which was financed through Medicaid, as providers of various housing services. “Rather than provide such help, the defendants obtained and misappropriated millions of dollars in program funds that were intended as reimbursements for services provided to those people,” prosecutors said in a press release about the charges.

The program’s cost, initially expected to be about $2.6 million annually, ballooned from $21 million in 2021 to $104 million in 2024 — much of it attributed to fraud, according to a federal investigation. Prosecutors said the program’s “low barriers to entry and minimal records requirements for reimbursement” made it “susceptible to fraud.”

Also in September, one person, Asha Farhan Hassan, who is reportedly of Somali ancestry, was federally charged for her alleged participation in a five-year scheme that cheated a Minnesota health care program out of at least $14 million, prosecutors said. That program, the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Benefit, is also funded through Medicaid, and provides medically necessary services to children and some young adults with autism spectrum disorder or related conditions. 

Prosecutors said that through that program a company formed by Hassan, Smart Therapy, filed claims for Medicaid reimbursement that “were fraudulently inflated, were billed without providers’ knowledge, and were for services that were not actually provided.” Hassan allegedly then split the money her company received with her partners, including payments to parents who received kickbacks of up to $1,500 per month for each child they allowed to be enrolled in Smart Therapy for services as part of the scheme. 

Hassan, who was also charged in the Feeding Our Future fraud plot, recruited Somali parents and their children for participation, prosecutors said.

Somalis and Welfare

As we said, in addition to not providing support for the claim that Somali people stole “billions” from Minnesota “every year,” the White House also did not provide evidence that “like 88%” of Somalis receive “welfare,” as Trump suggested.

Instead, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said: “President Trump is absolutely right to highlight the problems caused by the radical Somali migrants that the Democrats let invade our country and steal from American taxpayers. For example, Tim Walz has allowed Somali refugees to turn Minnesota into a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity to fund lavish lifestyles overseas at the expense of American taxpayers. While the media feigns outrage, Americans who have suffered at the hands of these schemes will celebrate the President’s comments and strong support for AMERICAN citizens.”

We were not able to find information showing the percentage of Somali residents in Minnesota, or the U.S., who benefit from social programs that might be considered “welfare,” which has no universal definition. In 2024, there were nearly 260,000 people of Somali descent living in the U.S. and more than 108,000 of them resided in Minnesota, according to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey estimates.

Susan Brower, Minnesota’s state demographer, told us in an email that, while not representative of all types of welfare, from 2019 to 2023, an estimated 8% of people with Somali ancestry living in Minnesota reported receiving certain forms of “public assistance income,” according to the 2019-2023 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

She said the public assistance category specifically includes payments from state and federal programs like the Minnesota Family Investment Program, formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children; General Assistance, for low-income individuals and married couples without children; and Supplemental Security Income, which is paid to elderly, blind or disabled persons with low incomes.

Benefits from other programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, were not included.

Due to sampling error, Brower said, the actual percentage of Somali people receiving those forms of income assistance could range from 6.3% to 10.1%.

But she said because Somalis do have a higher poverty rate than other groups, “it would make sense that they are eligible for more public programs.” She noted that an upcoming report from the Minnesota State Demographic Center estimates that 38% of Somalis in the state live in poverty. A 2023 state report showed that the median income of Somali households in Minnesota was $28,500, in 2020 dollars, the lowest of any cultural group.

Trump suggested last month that, in general, most immigrants in the U.S. rely on public assistance, writing in a Nov. 27 Truth Social post, “The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”

A 2023 report from the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that favors low immigration levels, did find that, in 2022, 54% of households headed by immigrants — including naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents and people without legal status — “used one or more major welfare program.” 

CIS said it counted the following “means-tested anti-poverty programs” as welfare: the Earned Income Tax Credit; Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; free or reduced-price school meals; the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; Medicaid; and subsidized and public housing. 

Meanwhile, a February report from the libertarian Cato Institute, using a different methodology, found that “immigrants consumed 21 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits than native-born Americans on a per capita basis in 2022.” That report looked at the percentage of the total dollar amount of spending on benefits for immigrants and U.S.-born residents, and it counted fewer means-tested programs as welfare and also included Social Security and Medicare, which are considered entitlement programs.

But it’s worth noting, Brower said, that 95% of Somalis in Minnesota are citizens of the U.S. and 58% of them were born in the U.S.

Correction, Dec. 9: We originally referred to the Minnesota Star Tribune as the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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Vice President JD Vance has exaggerated the increase in home prices during President Joe Biden’s time in office and has misleadingly pointed to illegal immigration as a primary cause of a rise in prices.

In a Fox News interview on Nov. 13, Vance said that “the price of a new home literally doubled” under Biden. But home sales price measures show at most a 37% increase. Vance appears to be referring to an increase in the monthly cost of new homes, an increase that factors in a rise in mortgage rates.  

In that interview and in a Dec. 2 Cabinet meeting, Vance pointed to illegal immigration as a primary cause. “Why did homes get so unaffordable?” he said in the Cabinet meeting. “Because we had 20 million illegal aliens in this country taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens,” he said, using an exaggerated figure.

While immigration overall does affect housing costs by increasing demand, economists say the primary drivers in recent years were low mortgage interest rates that sparked demand, a subsequent rise in interest rates and a problem with low housing supply that dates back to the Great Recession in 2007 to 2009. Immigrants in the country illegally are also more likely to rent, not buy, experts say.

Jacob Vigdor, a University of Washington public policy and governance professor who has written about immigration and housing, told us that “there is a link but I would not say that immigration, illegal or otherwise, has been a ‘driving factor’ in escalating housing costs.” He estimated a less than 1% impact on the current median sales price.

Vance correctly noted the low housing supply in his Nov. 13 interview. He said, “And at the same time, we weren’t building enough new houses to begin with, even for the population that we had.”

He further said the Trump administration was “trying to make it easier to build houses” and “getting all of those illegal aliens out of our country,” measures that were starting “to pay some dividends” with the housing price growth slowing to about 1% to 2% under President Donald Trump. One housing metric supports those figures, but the slowdown began well before Trump took office in January.

Vance made similar claims in an Aug. 28 Fox News interview, saying there was a “100% housing price increase in four years under Joe Biden.” He said the increase was due to high interest rates and illegal immigration, and that the “main driver” of housing prices flattening was “negative net migration.”

But housing experts cite other factors for the slowdown in rising prices.

Home Prices Under Biden

According to federal data, home prices increased during the Biden administration, but not nearly as much as Vance claimed. The Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development data show there was a 21.1% increase in the median sales price of new homes, rising from $354,800 in January 2021 to $429,600 in January 2025. 

The National Association of Realtors’ seasonally adjusted annual sales figures show a similar trend for existing single-family homes. In 2024, the national median price was $412,500, a 37.4% increase from 2020, the year before Biden took office.

Another commonly used metric, the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller national home price index, which tracks monthly price changes in existing single-family homes, increased about 36.9% during the Biden administration, as measured from January 2021 to January 2025.

Vance’s claim about housing price growth slowing is supported by the Case-Shiller Index, which has risen 1.62% since Trump took office in January.

But Vigdor told us that this slowdown “started in March 2024, 10 months before the current administration took office.”

The Case-Shiller Index rose by 2.1% over those 10 months.

“There are a couple of things going on,” Vigdor said. “Demographically, birth rates are falling and the population is aging, which will naturally reduce the number of young families looking to purchase a home. That softens the demand side.” He added that “buyers may also be waiting for interest rates to come down, or for macroeconomic uncertainty associated with tariffs and other Trump administration initiatives to resolve.”

The other home price measures show conflicting changes since Trump took office in January. The Census Bureau and HUD data on the median price of new homes show a 3.7% decrease from January to August, the most recent month available. NAR’s figures for the median existing single-family home price show a 7.5% increase over the same time period. The monthly data isn’t seasonally adjusted.

Rising Mortgage Rates

Although the Vance press office declined to provide us an on-the-record response, when Vance cited a similar statistic in March, Vance’s staff pointed PolitiFact to a May 2024 Heritage Foundation report that said in Biden’s first three years, “the cost of a median price home has more than doubled, increasing 114.5%.” But that statistic was referring to the monthly carrying costs of a new home purchase, not the purchase price. The very next line in the Heritage report stated that “average prices paid by consumers have risen 19.3%.”

Mortgage rates, and consequently the monthly mortgage costs of a newly purchased home, went up substantially under the Biden administration. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage average rose from 2.77% in the week he took office in 2021 to 6.96% in the week he left office this year. Since the Trump administration took over, the average rate dropped to 6.19% as of Dec. 4.

We asked the Heritage Foundation about its 114.5% calculation, but we didn’t get a response. Our own calculations using the Census and HUD price data and the 30-year fixed mortgage rates (assuming a 20% down payment) show that the monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced new home was about $1,162 in January 2021. At the peak of prices in October 2022, that monthly payment rose to $2,470. By the end of Biden’s term in January, it had declined slightly to $2,277. So, the increase in the monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced new home was about 96% over Biden’s presidency.

Contrary to Vance’s statements, the May 2024 Heritage Foundation piece didn’t blame the higher prices or mortgage rates on illegal immigration. Instead, it faulted federal deficits and borrowing; the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates, “which then amplified the increase in home prices as would-be buyers bid up sales prices”; and the Fed then increasing interest rates to combat inflation, “which caused borrowing costs to skyrocket.”

Illegal Immigration Not Primary Driver of Prices

Vance attributes the increase in home prices to “20 million” or “30 million,” as he said on Nov. 13, “illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens.” Those figures are exaggerations.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that about 18 million or 20 million immigrants had entered the country illegally during Biden’s time in office. We calculated in June 2024 that the figure would be about a third of that, including an estimated 2 million “gotaways” who evaded capture by Border Patrol and about 3 million people released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole.

The Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2023 there were 14 million “unauthorized immigrants” residing in the U.S. in total, which includes those with some protection from deportation, such as parole or having applied for asylum. That’s nearly 4 million more than the 10.2 million estimate from the Pew Research Center for 2019.

Their impact on housing is much smaller than Vance suggests, according to experts.

“I reported that every immigrant entering a local housing market, which I defined as a county, raises home values by about 11.6 cents,” Vigdor, who released a study in 2013 examining the link between immigration and housing prices, explained in an email. Using the Pew Research Center estimate for the unauthorized population, Vigdor estimated “32,000 unauthorized immigrants in the ‘typical’ American housing market, which suggests a boost to home values of under $4,000, or less than 1% of the current median sales price in the US.”

Steven A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports lower levels of immigration, said in September 2024 testimony to Congress that immigration was driving an increase in demand for rental housing. His analysis, he said, “indicates that a 5-percentage point increase in the recent immigrant share of a metro area’s population is associated with a 12 percent increase in the average U.S.-born household’s rent, relative to their income.” He noted that this was “only a simple correlation and does not include homeowners. Much more detailed analysis would be necessary to confirm this relationship.”

Other experts acknowledge that immigration overall plays a role in the supply and demand of housing, but they also point to larger factors driving home prices in recent years. 

Neel Kashkari, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, wrote in May 2024 that “there appears to be a significant shortage of housing that will take a long time to close,” due to supply not keeping up with demand since the Great Recession. “In addition, responses to COVID have led to an increase in people working from home, and that has led to increased demand for housing.” As for immigration, he said, “While the long-run effect of increased immigration on inflation is unclear, immigrants nonetheless need a place to live, and their arrival in the U.S. has likely also increased demand for housing.”

Chris Herbert, the managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, told us via email that “[v]ery low interest rates during the pandemic were a significant factor in rapidly rising prices. And the slowdown in price growth has been heavily influenced by the sharp rise in rates as the Federal Reserve moved aggressively to slow inflation.” 

Similar to Kashkari’s remarks, an October 2024 article by the Joint Center for Housing Studies said that the low interest rates during the pandemic “motivated a spike in housing demand among those wanting to take advantage of the lower rates and the greater purchasing power they provided. The heightened demand from these factors quickly clashed with the country’s constrained housing supply, which remained at insufficient levels after years of underproduction following the Great Recession. These forces combined to put enormous pressure on home prices as well as rents, as the growing number of renter households competed for limited rental stock.”

The article, by the center’s senior research analyst, Riordan Frost, looked at the role of immigration in housing costs and found that “the recent surge in immigration … does not line up with the high growth in both rents and home prices that happened at the start of the pandemic.” The largest increases in prices occurred in 2020 and 2021 before immigration rose in 2022 and 2023, Frost wrote, noting that the growth rate in prices slowed in those latter years.

“Immigrants play a role in household growth, sometimes to a substantial degree, but housing demand during the pandemic has been primarily shaped by native-born household growth in a time of constrained housing supply,” Frost wrote. One-quarter of household growth from 2019-2023 was due to foreign-born householders, while the rest was native-born household growth, he said, citing Census Bureau data.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, also pushed back against Vance’s assertions. “It is misplaced to blame immigration for the runup in house prices since the pandemic,” he told us in an email, noting that “[m]ost new immigrants rent” and the construction industry is “more dependent” than any other “on immigrant workers.”

Frost’s analysis also said that immigrants are strong contributors to the housing supply side as they accounted for 34% of construction trade jobs in 2023, based on Census data.

“The recent flat house prices are unrelated to less immigration, as immigrants generally don’t own homes,” said Zandi, whose work was frequently referenced by the Biden administration. “However, affordability remains a problem given high mortgage rates and the previous runup in house prices, rising homeowner insurance rates, and property taxes.”

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Upending decades-old guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee voted to no longer issue a blanket recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Throughout the meeting, many panelists made misleading claims about the vaccine.

Here, we address claims about the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety, and other countries’ vaccination policies.

The hepatitis B vaccine, which is typically given in a three-dose series, is highly effective in preventing disease and has a strong safety record. As the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explains, there are no known serious side effects other than anaphylaxis, or a life-threatening allergic reaction, which is very rare and can be treated.

A universal birth dose was first recommended in 1991, after risk-based approaches had not brought cases down. Young children are the most likely to develop a chronic infection that can lead to liver cancer and other problems. In the decades since, rates of hepatitis B in children have fallen by 99%.

In an 8-to-3 vote on Dec. 5, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided to end that policy. If accepted by the CDC director, parents of babies born to mothers who test negative for the virus will now be advised to discuss vaccination with a doctor to decide “when or if” to give the vaccine. For those who opt to forgo a birth dose, the panel “suggested” waiting at least two months to vaccinate.

This type of recommendation, which is known as shared clinical decision-making, has typically been reserved for cases in which experts do not think a vaccine is universally necessary for the recommended group, and there is no “default” answer on whether to vaccinate.

The hepatitis B vaccine would remain recommended at birth for babies born to mothers who are infected with the virus and to mothers with unknown status. The changes should not affect health insurance coverage of the shots.

Numerous experts and medical groups have slammed the decision to end the universal birth dose.

“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children,” American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Susan J. Kressly said in a statement. “I want to reassure parents and clinicians that there is no new or concerning information about the hepatitis B vaccine that is prompting this change, nor has children’s risk of contracting hepatitis B changed. Instead, this is the result of a deliberate strategy to sow fear and distrust among families.”

The panel also voted to advise parents to “consult with health care providers” about whether antibody testing should be done to determine if a child needs an additional HBV vaccine.

However, experts present at the meeting emphasized that it is not known whether a child who achieves a certain level of antibodies after an incomplete vaccination series will in fact have long-term protection from hepatitis B. Dr. Adam Langer, a CDC staff member with a leadership role in the division tasked with preventing hepatitis, called this “a really huge assumption.” He added, “There really is no reason not to give the full series.”

In the past, members of ACIP were scientists and physicians with particular expertise in vaccinology, pediatrics, and other relevant fields. Many of the current panelists, who were hand-selected by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. beginning in June after he dismissed the existing panel, do not have the typical qualifications and also have expressed views opposed to vaccination.

None of the scientific presentations were given by career CDC staff, as is typical. Instead, presentations were given by ACIP member Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a doctorate in public health who has ties to anti-vaccine groups; Cynthia Nevison, an environmental scientist who has volunteered for SafeMinds, an anti-vaccine group, and is now a CDC consultant; and Mark Blaxill, a well-known anti-vaccine advocate  with no medical training who was recently hired as a senior adviser at the CDC.

Presenters also did not use the committee’s usual frameworks to evaluate evidence.

Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, neuroscientist and ACIP member, repeatedly complained about the lack of a rigorous scientific framework and the evidence to support the votes. He voted no on both.

“No rational science or discussion has been presented on these two novel issues,” he said, noting that no information had been given on why the group should advise vaccination after two months rather than any other timeline, and that there was “no data” on whether the antibody testing would actually work to ensure protection if people were not getting the full series of shots.

Claims About Hepatitis B Safety Studies 

In a presentation on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose, Blaxill claimed that the “safety evidence is limited” and implied the vaccines were not properly tested in placebo-controlled trials.

“There were basically no randomized or placebo controlled trials, meaning an inert placebo applied to infants and in comparison to the vaccine,” he said of the clinical trials previous ACIP members cited when making the 1991 birth dose recommendation.

This family of claims about placebo-controlled trials, advanced in the past by Kennedy, relies on narrowly defining placebos and on the faulty assumption that a randomized trial with a saline placebo is the only way to show the safety of a vaccine. Vaccines often are compared with other types of controls, such as other vaccines.

Looking at the data available today, there have been more than half a dozen randomized, controlled trials on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose, a Dec. 2 report from the Vaccine Integrity Project, an initiative of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, found. These include studies that compared the safety of giving vaccines at birth versus on a delayed schedule. In addition, the review detailed other types of safety studies done in the decades the vaccine has been given to infants at birth and also pointed out that the U.S. and other countries have ongoing vaccine safety programs.

“Results of randomized trials, large national safety monitoring programs, and long-term follow-up studies consistently demonstrate that the hepatitis B vaccine is safe regardless of vaccine timing,” the review said. “No safety benefits were identified for a delayed first dose versus vaccination at birth.”

Flawed Claim About Multiple Sclerosis

Dr. Evelyn Griffin, an ACIP member who is an ob-gyn from Louisiana, misleadingly suggested during discussions that the hepatitis B vaccine might cause multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease in which the body mistakenly attacks the protective covering around nerve fibers.

“There are signals of autoimmune conditions,” she said of the hepatitis B vaccine. “Multiple sclerosis, for example, is a large signal.”

Later, she claimed that “a large number of studies” show an association between the vaccine and “multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune conditions,” while acknowledging that associations are not necessarily causal. She wondered whether hepatitis B vaccination should “be paused in the meantime, so that we don’t continue autoimmune risks.”

It’s true that in the 1990s, case reports in France sparked concerns about the hepatitis B vaccine and MS. But as an archived CDC webpage explains, the issue has now been studied more rigorously.

“A large body of scientific evidence now shows that hepatitis B vaccination does not cause or worsen MS,” the webpage, which was last reviewed in 2020, says.

A 2007 French study failed to find any link between hepatitis B vaccination and childhood onset MS, while numerous others have looked at adults and also not found associations.

The World Health Organization’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has concluded that there is “no association” between the hepatitis B vaccine and MS. The group has also reviewed a couple of outlier studies that have claimed to identify possible links, but has found the evidence unconvincing. Several systematic reviews have also concluded there is no link.

Misleading Claim About Antibody Waning

In her presentation, Nevison misleadingly suggested that starting hepatitis B vaccination at birth could be putting people at risk later in life because of waning immunity. While antibody levels do drop over time, there is no evidence that people are getting sick as a result of declining immunity.

Antibodies “wane the most rapidly in children who begin their primary series as infants, especially as newborns,” Nevison’s slides read. “While most vaccinees respond well to a booster dose, some of those vaccinated as infants may lack protection when they enter their years of highest risk for acquiring hepatitis B.”

Noting that he disagreed with many statements in the earlier presentations, including Nevison’s, Dr. H. Cody Meissner, a pediatric infectious diseases expert and ACIP member, explained that it is well known that antibodies wane and in some cases disappear after hepatitis B vaccination. But the focus on antibodies is faulty, he said, because other parts of the immune system are very strong and can still provide protection even if antibodies have declined. He said he did not know of a single healthy vaccinated person later developing hepatitis B disease as a result of waning immunity. “I think the evidence is very strong that there is lifelong immunity to hepatitis B after completing the series,” he said. Meissner voted against both proposals.

Langer, the CDC expert, confirmed later in the meeting that the only instances of breakthrough infections had been in people who had, for example, immunocompromising conditions, and that the agency was not aware of any instances of a properly vaccinated, healthy person ever developing hepatitis B.

Dr. Amy Middleman, a pediatric and adolescent medicine physician at University Hospitals Babies & Children’s in Cleveland and a liaison to ACIP for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, objected to Nevison’s interpretation of one of Middleman’s studies from 2014.

“The entire point of our study is that for most vaccines, the anamnestic response is really their superpower,” she said, referring to the immune system’s ability to respond more quickly and more strongly when encountering a particular antigen again. “So this study shows that memory cells exist such that when they see something that looks like the hepatitis B [virus], they actually attack. The presence of a robust and anamnestic response, regardless of circulating antibody years later, shows true protection, and there was no difference in response based on when the dose was given.”

“In fact, 99% of those with any detectable antibody and 82% of those with zero antibody displayed persistent immunity to a challenge,” Middleman added, referring to a 2015 follow-up study she co-authored.

Comparisons Between Countries

Meeting attendees repeatedly compared the U.S. hepatitis B vaccine recommendations with those in other countries, calling the U.S. an “outlier” among peer nations. 

“The United States’ universal recommendation of the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose is an outlier among developed countries with low hepatitis B prevalence,” an HHS press release announcing the altered recommendations also said.

However, as we’ve written previously, countries that do not have universal policies differ from the U.S. in multiple ways. In countries with these so-called selective strategies, children whose mothers test negative for hepatitis B typically are recommended to receive the vaccine later, often at 2 months of age, although sometimes as late as adolescence.

“The United States is a unique country,” Langer said during the meeting. “I think that most of us would agree that we don’t really have a peer nation in this world.”

The World Health Organization recommends a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, and 115 out of 194 member states have adopted this policy. Nations with more selective vaccination strategies are concentrated in Europe.

“While appropriate to consider US vaccine guidance in the context of global recommendations, US vaccination policies were developed and revised to address real-world challenges related to hepatitis B epidemiology, populations at risk, continuity of care, access to care, costs, and other considerations —that are unique to the US and its healthcare system,” the Vaccine Integrity Project report says.

ACIP member Pebsworth presented a slide showing that a variety of countries with relatively low chronic hepatitis B prevalence do not give a universal birth dose. “This graph shows that the U.S. is an outlier,” she said. She is chair of the committee’s new work group on the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule, which was tasked with assessing the hepatitis B birth dose in advance of the meeting.

However, the U.S. achieved its relatively low rate of hepatitis B after decades of using public health measures to prevent childhood infections, including recommending a universal birth dose.

On her slide, Pebsworth cited data on international vaccine policy that Langer had presented at the prior September ACIP meeting. But at that meeting, Langer also showed data indicating that countries with selective birth dose policies generally have higher rates of successful screening for hepatitis B during pregnancy and also have universal health care — context Pebsworth did not mention.

During the December meeting, Langer expanded on this point, using Denmark as an example. Denmark’s vaccine policies have often been cited to question U.S. recommendations.

But Langer said that not only does Denmark have a lower population than New York City and a high rate of hepatitis B screening in pregnant women, it also provides free prenatal care “for both citizens and refugee or asylum seekers,” unlike the U.S.

In addition, he said that Denmark collects health information on its population on an individual level, tying it to an identification number, and follows babies of mothers who screen positive for hepatitis B to make sure the babies are protected. “In the United States, many of these infants are lost to follow-up as soon as they leave the hospital,” he said.

Langer said that perhaps a better peer nation is Canada. While hepatitis B vaccination recommendations for children there vary by region, he said, studies recently “have shown that universal hepatitis B birth dose is going to be needed to achieve elimination of hep B in Canada.” 

Indeed, a May 2025 study by Canadian researchers argued for a universal birth dose, explaining that a current risk-based policy in Ontario has not entirely prevented hepatitis B cases in children. In addition, the researchers wrote that areas that long ago adopted the universal birth dose now have lower hepatitis B rates in adults than those areas with selective policies. Canadian analyses have also found the birth dose to be cost-effective compared with delaying the vaccine until adolescence.

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