Team Trump to Use Unverified Data to Blame Deaths on Covid Vaccine

Trump administration health officials are planning to link the deaths of more than two dozen children to the Covid-19 vaccine based on information from a database of unverified reports, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Health officials plan to include the deaths of 25 children as part of an upcoming presentation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, according to four people familiar with the situation who spoke anonymously with the Post.

The findings they plan to present appeared to be pulled from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which collects claims of adverse reactions and results of taking vaccines. But because the claims are self-reported and unverified, the system can sometimes be exploited by anti-vaccine activists. People sometimes submit fraudulent claims, or they deliberately present the data as verified in order to stoke fear around vaccines.

The CDC has previously emphasized that the database is not designed to determine a link between a shot and individual deaths. In fact, VAERS comes with a disclaimer that users must acknowledge they have read and understood before they can use the database: “VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Most reports to VAERS are voluntary, which means they are subject to biases.”

In 2021, the CDC condemned efforts to willfully misinterpret the data, asserting that statements that implied “deaths following vaccination equate to deaths caused by vaccination are scientifically inaccurate, misleading, and simply irresponsible.”

Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon defended the agency’s intent to use the VAERS database. “[Food and Drug Administration] and CDC staff routinely analyze VAERS and other safety monitoring data, and those reviews are being shared publicly through the established ACIP process,” he wrote in an email to the Post Friday. “Any recommendations on updated COVID-19 vaccines will be based on gold standard science and deliberated transparently at ACIP next week.”

The Trump administration’s report is not yet finalized, one source told the Post. The methodology is also unclear.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 vaccine providers around the country are waiting with bated breath to see how the panel will side regarding Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to stop recommending the Covid-19 vaccine to healthy children.

While claiming that patients could simply consult with their doctors, Kennedy has taken great efforts to make the Covid-19 vaccine less accessible to Americans.

Kennedy’s efforts to limit vaccine efforts have alarmed health professionals. In June, CDC staff reported that at least 25 children who had Covid-associated hospitalizations since 2023 had died. Of the 16 old enough for vaccination, none was up to date on the jab.

With his feverish fantasies about occupying Chicago dashed, President Donald Trump on Friday announced he’s moved on. He now plans to send federal troops to Memphis, with the blessing of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.

“We’re going to Memphis,” Trump told Fox and Friends, calling the city “deeply troubled.” The president claimed that Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, and Lee, a Republican, approve of the decision.

Young contradicted Trump on Friday afternoon, saying that it was “an overstatement” to describe him as “happy” about the move, per a Washington Post reporter. “I do not support the National Guard; however, they are coming. It’s not the mayor’s call,” Young said. “My goal is to make sure that as they come, that I have an opportunity to work with them.”

The Republican governor, for his part, issued a statement Friday confirming he has been in “constant communication with the Trump administration to develop a multi-phased, strategic plan to combat crime in Memphis, leveraging the full extent of both federal and state resources.”

Lee’s statement represents a stark reversal from his stance two weeks ago, when he claimed there were “no plans” for the National Guard to come to Memphis, citing existing investments in crime fighting and a 15 percent decrease in crime in the city in the past year.

But the governor changed his tone last week, saying, “Nothing is off the table.” According to Trump, that means not even the military. “By the way, we’ll bring in the military too if we need it,” the president said Friday.

Mayor Lee Harris of Shelby County, where Memphis is located, condemned Trump’s decision as “anti-democratic” and in violation of “American norms and possibly US laws.”

“The President sending troops to Tennessee will interfere and have a chilling effect on Tennesseans’ ability to exercise critical freedoms, such as the freedom to protest and the liberty to travel,” said Harris, a Democrat. “We will do everything in our power to prevent this incursion into Tennessee.”

With Memphis in his sights, the president has apparently backed down on his musings about stationing troops in Chicago. In recent weeks, the president has expressed interest in recreating his federal takeover of Washington, D.C., in the Windy City, but wavered amid pushback from local leaders, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. On Friday, Trump said he would have preferred targeting Chicago over Memphis.

Johnson celebrated Trump’s retreat in a statement: “Because of the unified opposition from community leaders and elected officials in Chicago and throughout the state, the Trump administration backed down from its threats of sending in the National Guard to Chicago,” he wrote. “We continue to call on the federal government to send additional resources to help us continue to drive down violent crime, but we reject any military occupation of our city.”

White House border czar Tom Homan is threatening to detain more immigrants than Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has beds for.

“We’re almost at capacity,” Homan told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, after announcing raids in Boston and Chicago earlier this week. “[But] we got beds coming online every day.”

Part of this ratcheting up of immigration raids is due to ICE still not reaching its lofty goal of 3,000 arrests a day, a goal that Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem set for it back in May.

That goal is, of course, easier said than done.

As of September 7, there are 58,766 people in ICE detention. The government has just under 65,000 beds, making Homan’s push for ICE blitzes on Boston and Chicago a logistical issue. “It’s interesting timing because we don’t have the bed space to support all the arrests,” an anonymous official told Politico.

The Trump administration is rushing to expand its detention space, hastily setting up centers like Florida’s now infamous “Alligator Alcatraz” and another center called “Louisiana Lockup.”

“The One Big Beautiful Bill provided historic funding to help us carry out this mandate, including $45 billion to support the expansion of detention space to maintain an average daily population of 100,000 illegal aliens and 80,000 new ICE beds,” McLaughlin said.

Others in the administration aren’t so sure they’ll be able to meet Trump’s goal.

“Do they have enough transportation? Can they move people fast enough? There are all sorts of pieces to this pipeline, and if any one of them gets clogged, it slows everything down,” the anonymous official later said. “From teeing up your deportable targets to your detention and transportation plan for them, to keep running it all at scale smoothly—that’s a big management and logistics challenge.”

Homan remains bullish, leveling threats at both Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu.

“Shame on [Massachusetts] Gov. Healey and Mayor Wu,” he said Tuesday. “Shame on both of them. They should be calling the White House thanking Trump, thanking ICE for making the community safer.”

Homan’s “blitz” is very much underway. On Friday, ICE shot and killed a man as he ran his car into an officer while trying to flee the scene.

Trumpworld is no longer convinced that FBI Director Kash Patel is up to the job.

A multiday manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer came to a dramatic close Friday morning when 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was turned in to the authorities by his own relatives, unassisted by the mad-dash efforts of the bureau.

The uncoordinated search left Patel’s conservative allies remarkably unimpressed, taking to social media to openly question his future atop the country’s top law enforcement agency.

“I’m grateful that Utah authorities have captured the suspect in the Charlie Kirk assassination, and think it is time for Republicans to assess whether Kash Patel is the right man to run the FBI,” posted conservative culture warrior Christopher Rufo. “He performed terribly in the last few days, and it’s not clear whether he has the operational expertise to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements—of whatever ideology—that threaten the peace in the United States.”

Rufo rose to prominence among the right for inventing a fiction that the left has taken over America, despite the reality that Republicans hold a majority in every major branch of the federal government and that Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp continue to be the largest and most powerful media outlets in the country.

“We would be wise to take a moment and ask whether Kash Patel has what it takes to get this done,” Rufo wrote. “I’ve been on the phone the last few days with many conservative leaders, all of whom wholeheartedly support the Trump Administration and none of whom are confident that the current structure of the FBI is up to this task.”

Over the last 48 hours, Patel has managed to flub practically every component of the investigation, grinding the patience of other MAGA-heads. On Wednesday, he prematurely congratulated authorities for nabbing a suspect who turned out to be the wrong man, earning him the ire of Alex Jones associate Joseph Biggs and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who criticized the FBI director’s social media dog-and-pony show.

“@FBIDirectorKash you’re the person we are supposed to get the final truth from,” Biggs wrote. “Stop all this click bait shit you keep doing. It’s unbecoming of the office in which you represent and only proves you were a horrible pick for this position.”

Ingraham described Patel’s efforts as “unreal.”

Patel reportedly lost it during an online meeting Thursday with some 200 agents involved in the search as he cracked under pressure to find Kirk’s killer. In the expletive-ridden tirade, Patel warned his subordinates that he would no longer put up with the FBI’s “Mickey Mouse operations,” and was apparently irate that it had taken the bureau some 12 hours to obtain a photograph of Robinson.

Even the $100,000 bounty on Robinson’s head caught Patel flak, with far-right influencer Laura Loomer demanding to know why the sum was less than had been posted for information leading to the potential capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“So the DOJ and FBI are willing to offer $50 million for information about @NicolasMaduro, but only $100,000 for information about who killed Charlie Kirk on American soil in a cold blooded assassination?!?” Loomer wrote on X. “This is honestly embarrassing for the FBI and our country. What a slap in the face to Charlie Kirk.”

Former FBI officials questioned Patel’s decision to get so close to the investigation, arguing that his high-profile involvement would only be a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City FBI field office.

Patel, a former podcast host with conspiratorial tendencies, was roundly criticized as Trump’s top choice to run the bureau. Lawmakers and former officials condemned Patel’s lack of relevant experience during his confirmation hearings and raised flags regarding his vindictive nature, pointing to an enemies list he published in his 2022 book Government Gangsters as evidence.

President Donald Trump on Friday christened New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani with a bizarre new nickname, while predicting that the 33-year-old Democrat will win the November election.

Asked about Mamdani’s commanding lead in the polls on Fox and Friends, Trump replied, “It’s amazing. I call him my little Communist. He’s my little Communist mayor.”

The democratic socialist candidate has vowed, if elected, to use his power to “reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop ICE agents from deporting our neighbors, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party.”

“Maybe one-on-one, somebody could beat him,” Trump said. “But it would look like he’s going to win.”

The president then went off on a tangent about NYPD officers weeping while shaking his hand before Fox host Brian Kilmeade set him back on track by asking his views on the other three candidates: disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, scandal-ridden Mayor Eric Adams, and eccentric Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Trump suggested that Cuomo—currently running a distant second—is the most promising challenger to Mamdani, and proposed that Adams and Sliwa drop out and back Cuomo.

But while Cuomo “seems to be leading” Adams and Sliwa, the president said, “he’s still way behind”—leading him to conclude that, even if Mamdani’s challengers consolidate behind Cuomo, the progressive front-runner may inevitably come out on top.

President Donald Trump keeps snubbing Charlie Kirk to talk about construction of a new ballroom at the White House.

Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday morning, Trump took the opportunity to plug preparations for the $200 million ballroom, while describing his despair at learning that his right-wing ally had been fatally shot in Utah.

“I was in the midst of, you know, building a great—for 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House, right? They don’t have a ballroom, they have to use tents on the lawn for President Xi when he comes over; if it rains it’s a wipeout, and so I was with architects that were design[ing]—it’s gonna be incredible,” Trump rambled.

This may seem par for the course for Trump’s roundabout speech pattern, but later Friday, the president changed the subject from Kirk to construction yet again while taking questions from reporters outside of the White House.

“How are you holding up over the last three and a half days?” asked one reporter, who’d also wished him condolences for Kirk.

“I think very good,” Trump replied. “And by the way, right there you see all the trucks; they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House. Which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about 150 years, and it’s gonna be a beauty, it’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure.

“And I just see all the trucks, they just started, so it’ll get done uh very nicely and it’ll be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually,” the president went on.

Online, some people accused Trump of not even pretending to care about Kirk’s death.

“Now this is how you respect a man’s memory,” politics podcaster Briahna Joy Gray wrote on X.

Joanne Carducci, a Democratic influencer, wrote, “I vehemently disagreed with every single thing Charlie Kirk ever said, and I was able to express more empathy than this.”

Trump announced the construction of a new 90,000 square foot ballroom that could seat 650 people in July, as the latest project in his sweeping aesthetic overhaul to transform the White House into his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort.

President Donald Trump was—predictably—dismayed by the news that Brazil’s former right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, had been sentenced to 27 years in prison.

“President Bolsonaro was just found guilty by the Supreme Court [of Brazil]. You’ve been very clear that you would apply further sanctions to Brazil because of Bolsonaro,” a reporter said to Trump on Thursday. 

 “Well, I watched that trial, I know him pretty well. Hard leader … I thought he was a good president of Brazil. And it’s very surprising that that could happen. That’s very much like they tried to do with me, but they couldn’t get away with it, at all,” the president replied. “But uh, I can only say this: I knew him as president of Brazil, he was a good man. And I don’t see that happening.” 

Trump and Bolsonaro share a long-running fondness for authoritarianism that transcends borders, and has led them to become true allies over the years.

On Thursday, Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced the former leader to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup in 2023, or what some see as an attempt to recreate January 6 in Brazil. Bolsonaro had his supporters raid Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court, and Congress, all because he’d rather see chaos than admit he lost the election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 

The coup attempt caused “damage of an Amazonian scale.” Bolsonaro also planned to have multiple leaders arrested or assassinated. 

The former Brazilian leader’s actions and conviction only endeared him to Trump. In July, the president posted one of his many tariff letters on Truth Social, this one addressed to Brazil. He ordered them to end their “witch hunt” of Bolsonaro “IMMEDIATELY” or be hit with 50 percent tariffs. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also chimed in disapprovingly. 

“The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Rubio wrote Thursday on X. “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”

 While Brazil’s left is wary of continued, U.S.-backed attempts from Bolsonaro’s party and supporters to free him, they see the conviction as  repudiation of authoritarianism rather than a political persecution. 

“Today, Brazil is making history,” Lindbergh Farias, who heads Lula’s Workers’ Party in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress, said, after Bolsonaro’s sentencing. “Brazil is saying: ‘Coups are a crime!’”

FBI Director Kash Patel’s yapping may have implicated Donald Trump in another legal fiasco.

A lawsuit brought by three senior FBI agents—Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans—accuses Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the agencies they head of wrongfully firing the men.

Driscoll argued that he was fired after he attempted to halt the firing of another FBI employee, Christopher Meyer, who was ordered to pilot Patel’s flights to Las Vegas but had also been falsely accused of signing off on the agency’s 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Driscoll served as acting FBI director at the start of the year—by accident. Robert Kissane was supposed to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray in January, but a clerical error instead placed Driscoll at the top of the FBI. Kissane then acted as Driscoll’s number two—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Patel at the end of February. Driscoll notably refused orders from the White House to expose the bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, earning him the adoration of his colleagues, who nicknamed the 45-year-old “Saint Driz.”

The legal complaint torches Patel’s leadership at the agency from the perspective of the senior agents, accusing the FBI leader of punishing the trio because they attempted to treat other subordinates, such as Meyer, with respect. But the suit also claims that Patel was fully aware of the illegality of his actions as he worked to force them and their peers out the door.

“When Driscoll explained that firing employees based on case assignments would be in direct violation of internal FBI processes meant to adjudicate adverse actions and prevent retaliation based on case assignments, Patel said that he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed,” the complaint reads.

Beyond blatantly violating the law, the statement also stood in direct contrast to what Patel had promised Congress during his confirmation process weeks earlier, when he swore to Senator Richard Blumenthal that all FBI employees would “be protected against political retribution.”

But the phrasing of Patel’s rebuke also implicated Trump, explicitly pointing to the Justice Department and the White House as the origin of the command.

“Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,’” according to the legal filing.

National security journalists were quick to note that Patel’s loose lips might have made it easier for the ex-FBI agents to achieve an incredible feat: getting a U.S. president to sit for a deposition.

FBI Director Kash Patel is hoping to salvage his mishandled manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Speaking at a press conference Friday morning, Patel attempted to take a little credit for a job well done.

“This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk.”

But Patel’s manhunt didn’t accomplish much—22-year-old Tyler Robinson was “turned in” by a family member, President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Trump’s statement, telling the Friday morning press conference that a family friend of Robinson’s had contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, after learning from a family member that he’d confessed. “We got him,” Cox said.

Patel viewed this manhunt as an opportunity to prove himself—but he seemed to stumble through it.

On Wednesday, Patel quickly got out over his skis, when he congratulated state and federal officials for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody, only to release that suspect hours later.

Patel completely lost it during a meeting Thursday with 200 agents involved in the manhunt, berating them with expletives and accusing them of slowing down the search.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s decision to get personally involved in the search, arguing that his presence would impose a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City field office and that his missteps were either the result of a poor flow of information or Patel’s own utter cluelessness.

Representative Nancy Mace, of all people, is accusing Democrats of derogatory conduct toward Republicans.

In a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, attributed the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk to an increase in political violence and divisiveness—problems that she, absurdly, said were confined to the left.

“It’s very one-sided right now,” Mace said. “I have never called one of my colleagues the kind of names that we’ve been called. I’ve never dehumanized my colleagues.”

The claim echoes those of many prominent Republicans who have baselessly blamed the shooting and the nation’s political temperature entirely on the Democratic Party and left generally.

The sentiment was particularly ludicrous coming from Mace, who has a well-documented history of transphobic attacks.

The South Carolina Republican notoriously responded to the election of the first transgender woman in Congress, Democratic Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, with an outpouring of hate.

In November 2024, Mace spearheaded an effort to ban transgender people from using Capitol bathrooms, which she said was “absolutely” meant to target McBride. Mace referred to McBride as a “biological man,” saying, “It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal.”

When demonstrators protested the ban, she referred to them using the transphobic slur “tranny.” (When confronted for her use of the term in a congressional hearing, she said tauntingly, “Tranny! Tranny! Tranny!”)

Mace’s hostility toward her colleagues doesn’t stop at transphobia. In January, for example, she responded to criticisms from Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett with an apparent threat. “If you want to take it outside,” she said, cutting herself off. She later claimed she hadn’t been suggesting “a physical fight.”