Happy Wednesday, and congratulations on surviving another week in the Trump era. Welcome back to our #TrumpCheck series, the LACDP's weekly newsletter that holds the Trump administration accountable for its lies and self-serving actions.
- Our new Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. has made his opinion on vaccines crystal clear: "There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective."
FACT: All FDA-approved vaccines in the United States have undergone large clinical studies that have found that the health benefits far exceed any potential risks. Measles, which had been considered eradicated in the United States 25 years ago due to the effectiveness of the measles vaccine, killed an unvaccinated child in Texas this morning, the first US death from the disease in 10 years.
- Donald Trump halted 60 billion in foreign aid dollars on his very first day as President in 2025, under the logic that "we're giving billions and billions of dollars to countries who hate us." This put the President’s Emergency Response Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program into jeopardy.
FACT: The PEPFAR program has been supported by every president since President Bush implemented it... including Donald Trump, when he signed the PEPFAR Extension Act of 2018. In the 2018 announcement, the Trump White House said, "PEPFAR has saved over 17 million lives, prevented millions of HIV infections, and transformed the global AIDS response from death and despair to life and hope." Lack of HIV healthcare globally for over 20 million people will cause HIV to spread and increase the chances of a drug-resistant strain developing.
- In a press conference this morning with the new cabinet, President Trump promised that federal budget cuts would not affect Medicaid: "We're not going to touch it."
FACT: There is no path to meeting the newly passed Republican budget resolution that does not cut Medicaid funding. Even if every other item in the budget was reduced to $0, a $600 billion cut would still be required from the federal healthcare budget.
The Trump administration is playing fast and loose with our health, safety, and, consequently, the world's health. This has life and death consequences, as we have unfortunately already witnessed.
Correcting misinformation distributed by the United States government is the first step in the fight and a job for us all. We will keep it up here, and on our social media accounts, linked below.
