Tag: no-latest

WASHINGTON — Since the White House formed a task force in March intended to combat fraud, top administration officials have repeatedly heralded its work, pointing to huge amounts of recovered payments and graft stopped in its tracks.

“We found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar,” Vice President JD Vance, who leads the task force, said in a speech this month at the Republican midterm convention.

Yet some of the numbers Vance and his task force have promoted are overstated or lack specificity, and rely on temporary pauses in funding as well as cases and actions that long predated President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a New York Times analysis of documents released by the administration. The task force also appears to be relying on claims of fraud that could not be verified or leaning on allegations of fraud that are being prematurely included.

In August, the White House published a so-called fraud ledger chronicling its work. It singled out three categories of fraud identified and eliminated since January 2025 — not, as Vance said, since this March, when the task force was established. As of Wednesday afternoon, the task force asserted it had found, or “uncovered,” $245.7 billion in fraud through data analysis, “stopped” $62.9 billion annually through actions like suspending providers and enacting rule changes, and “enforced” $59.1 billion through indictments, settlements, and financial fines.

It is difficult to verify those figures because there is no publicly available breakdown of the total. A senior White House official said the task force chose not to itemize fraud schemes and actions to avoid compromising current law enforcement investigations.

The task force ledger’s chronology and a White House news release from August offer some details about $47 billion of the more than $300 billion the task force asserts it has identified or eliminated. But even that information falls short, leaving unclear how that amount is spread across the three categories.

Undoubtedly, the federal government loses vast amounts of money to fraud: $233 billion to $521 billion annually, equal to about 3% to 7% of federal spending, according to one estimate from the Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency that has scrutinized how the government spends taxpayer funds for more than a century.

Vance and his task force have ferreted out real cases of fraud, and their efforts to draw attention to the problem and recover taxpayer funds are laudable, experts said. But the task force’s unverifiable claims may undermine efforts at transparency and obscure the actual scale of the work it is performing.

“There’s absolutely no question it’s a ramp-up of effort, and there’s absolutely no question that there’s an opportunity to use technology, especially artificial intelligence, in ways that didn’t exist in the past,” said David Walker, who led the Government Accountability Office as the comptroller general in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

But, he said, the figures the task force has cited are “assertions that have not been validated by independent parties.”

Over the years, various inspectors general have struggled to quantify their anti-fraud work in broad strokes, as the task force has done, given the vast differences in how different agencies investigate cases and measure impact, said Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector general for the Interior Department who once led the council of inspectors general.

It is entirely possible that the task force’s figures are accurate, he added.

But given that Trump fired more than a dozen independent inspectors general (including Greenblatt) at the beginning of his second term and installed political allies in their place, “There’s no one that can look at those numbers in detail and share with the American people whether they are valid, transparent and that the methodology is sound,” he said.

Fuzzy figures and possible double-counting

The task force’s description of its largest “fraud actions” offers few details about how it arrived at the estimates, making it impossible to verify the reliability of those figures.

About half of what the task force casts as the $245.7 billion in “fraud uncovered” on its ledger can be attributed to the Small Business Administration. But neither the ledger nor the August news release elaborates on what that figure refers to.

When asked, a spokesperson for the agency referred to a 2023 estimate, calculated by its inspector general, of $200 billion in pandemic-era fraud. She said the agency had identified about $122 billion of that figure as potentially fraudulent but did not provide further details.

After repeated requests by the Times for additional documentation, the agency announced Wednesday that it had provided the IRS with tax information associated with pandemic-era loans earlier this year, and that the IRS had identified discrepancies associated with about $100 billion in loans. The announcement did not detail what the discrepancies or suspected tax violations may entail, but said that the tax agency was examining cases.

What the administration has described as other instances of anti-fraud victories appear to refer twice to the same actions or cases. The senior White House official denied that the task force double-counted any figures, saying that it included developments merely as informational updates. But whether the total figures include double-counting — as a ledger of government funding cuts maintained by the Department of Government Efficiency did — cannot be verified given that there is no breakdown.

The White House news release includes as “key actions and victories” the June captures of two fugitives accused of orchestrating Medicare fraud schemes that totaled $4.9 billion. But another key action encompasses charges against 455 defendants — including those two fugitives — accused of orchestrating healthcare fraud schemes totaling more than $6.5 billion.

Another key action details the April suspension of payments to 447 hospice providers in Los Angeles “with estimated fraud exceeding $600 million.” But a later action lists separately the May suspension of some 800 hospices, including the initial 447 providers. A news release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notes that it suspended $70 million in Medicare payments to 800 hospices in Los Angeles that billed Medicare $1.4 billion last year.

Taking credit for old cases

Fraud cases often span years as investigators gather evidence, prosecutors bring charges, juries deliver convictions, and judges issue sentences across different administrations. Many figures the task force has reported take credit for work conducted under previous administrations and local governments.

“They deserve credit for taking them through the finish line,” Greenblatt said. “I don’t want to denigrate it, but to make it sound like all of the effort, you know, occurred during the lifespan of the task force is a sleight of hand, in my view.”

The White House declared that the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, which was established in April, “took enforcement action in schemes totaling over $340 million in its first week alone.”

But according to the department’s own announcement, the bulk of that amount — nearly $280 million — represented people sentenced in fraud cases uncovered and tried months before the establishment of the fraud task force or even the second Trump administration itself.

For example, the biggest single action cited was the sentencing of a Minneapolis man for his role in a $250 million scheme by a local nonprofit during the pandemic to siphon off food assistance funding. That scheme was hardly unknown: The Times covered the department’s investigation in March 2022 and the man was charged in September 2022, under the Biden administration.

Prematurely counting pending actions

Several of the largest numbers the task force reported in its ledger describe actions that have not borne tangible results, but are merely the first steps in building cases or seeking repayment. Other examples refer to so far temporary withholding of federal funding.

More than a third of the total amount of “fraud enforced” can be attributed to $22.6 billion from the Small Business Administration, which appears to figure prominently in two of the three categories in the ledger. The vast majority of that figure refers to the agency’s announcement in April that it would send 562,000 delinquent pandemic-era loans for debt collection. The loans were previously identified by the Biden administration as potentially fraudulent and totaled $22.2 billion.

Just how much of that amount has been recovered is not known. In March 2024, under the Biden administration, the Small Business Administration referred about $20 billion in pandemic-era loans for debt collection, according to news reports and agency data. It recovered just over $1 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.

Topping the White House website’s list of “highest-impact anti-fraud actions” is the administration’s assertion of having recouped “$2.5 billion in Medicaid fraud deferrals,” referring to pauses in federal reimbursements to California and Minnesota.

But it is possible that the funds, or a portion of them, will be released in the future. The Department of Health and Human Services’ website notes that these are “not permanent funding cuts.” Moreover, top department officials said at a news conference that “federal funds move forward” once the states provide adequate documentation of eligibility.

When Minnesota sued the federal government for withholding funds, a judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction, ruling that the deferral was “not final,” and assumed “possible future harm.”

Some have also disputed the notion that a broad freeze on payments can reasonably be counted as fraud that has been prevented. Two officials who managed the Medicaid programs in North Carolina and Indiana recently wrote that withholding funding came with plenty of caveats.

It “does not identify a fraudulent provider,” they said. “It does not prove a false claim. It does not strengthen service documentation, improve provider screening, modernize data systems to better detect fraud, or help investigators build cases. It simply disrupts the flow of dollars that pay for healthcare and that pay to prevent fraud.”

Greenblatt said the deferral most likely did stop some fraud — “probably an uncomfortably high amount of fraud” — but assuming all $2.5 billion is fraudulent overstates the amount of fraud prevention.

Greenblatt added the potential discrepancy captured his prevailing concern over the task force’s accounting: “Are these figures grounded in any sort of standards?”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will move Monday to sharply scale back fuel-efficiency rules for new cars and light trucks, gutting one of the government’s most significant efforts to reduce gasoline consumption and speed the country’s shift to electric vehicles.

President Donald Trump said Saturday on social media that he had “just approved new Fuel Economy Standards,” adding falsely that President Joe Biden had implemented an “EV mandate.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in his own social media post that the move would be announced Monday.

The final rule from the Transportation Department is expected to significantly weaken federal mileage standards, which have prodded automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of gasoline-powered cars and to sell more nonpolluting electric models.

The proposed rule, issued in December, required automakers to achieve an average fuel efficiency of 34.5 mpg for cars and light trucks in model year 2031, down from the standard of 50.4 mpg set by the Biden administration.

Trump claimed on social media that loosening the mileage standards would lower the price of new cars by thousands of dollars. But Congress already eliminated fines for automakers that don’t meet the standards, rendering the rollback on Monday largely symbolic.

At the same time, drivers across the country have been spending more on gas since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began in February. The national average price of a gallon of gas was $4.48 on Saturday, according to AAA.

The move Monday would mark the final step in a remarkable retreat from U.S. attempts to counter China’s chokehold on the production of EVs and their batteries.

In February, the Environmental Protection Agency ended all federal limits on planet-warming pollution from cars. Last year, lawmakers also repealed tax credits of up to $7,500 for buyers of new electric cars and blocked California from setting its own stricter limits on automobile pollution.

When Congress ended the fines for failing to meet the mileage standards, it already saved automakers hundreds of millions of dollars. The new announcement could further encourage U.S. car companies to make more big pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, which tend to generate the most profit in the short term.

But that could threaten their competitiveness in the long run.

EV sales are growing rapidly in the rest of the world, spurred by concerns about spiking fuel prices amid the war in the Middle East. U.S. carmakers that delay EV development could be left at a significant disadvantage to foreign rivals in the coming years.

Congress created the mileage standards in 1975 in response to an oil embargo by Middle Eastern countries. Since then, automakers have steadily improved the distance that conventional cars can travel on a tank of gas while expanding their electric and hybrid offerings.

Transportation is the country’s largest source of the greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that are warming the planet. The Biden administration strengthened the mileage standards as part of its sweeping strategy for addressing climate change.

But Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” made attacks on EVs a mainstay of his campaign to retake the White House. He claimed falsely and repeatedly that Biden’s policies would ban conventional cars and force motorists to go electric.

The Sierra Club, an environmental group, said in a statement Saturday that it planned to challenge the Trump administration’s move in court. It also argued that the decision would raise fuel costs when affordability is a top concern for many voters.

“Americans need relief from high costs, but instead Trump is giving automakers a free pass on pollution and handing families the bill — at the pump and with their health,” said Katherine Garcia, director of the group’s Clean Transportation for All campaign. “The Sierra Club will fight this senseless rollback every step of the way.”

Representatives for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group for most major carmakers, did not immediately comment on the plan. The group previously argued that the Biden administration’s rules were difficult for many members to meet.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

The major networks were set to resume their collective television coverage of President Donald Trump on Sunday, even though the White House blocked CNN from participating in the TV pool over the weekend, according to four people briefed on the deliberations.

Five networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC — collaborate to provide footage of Trump’s daily events, covering the president on a rotating basis and sharing footage with one another and other global news outlets.

Throughout the past week, the quintet had suspended the TV pool in an effort to force the administration to reinstate CNN, after Trump barred its journalists from the White House grounds. The networks went so far as to refuse to air footage of portions of Trump’s summit with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.

But under a tentative plan that began taking shape late Friday, the other four networks would return to performing pool duties, the people said. Each time that CNN came up in the pool rotation, the group of networks would decide whether to provide a substitute crew. Otherwise, CNN’s slot would be left unfilled, and Trump would not receive major network coverage.

The networks could agree to suspend the White House TV pool at any time, the people said.

The major networks declined to comment Saturday. In a previous joint statement, they wrote that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Resuming the TV pool effectively hands Trump more control over the list of news outlets granted close-up access to many of his events. It also ensures that viewers will receive high-quality broadcast coverage of the president.

On Friday, the White House allowed CNN to provide pool footage for Trump and Xi’s visit to the National Archives. But the administration later backtracked, telling CNN it could not serve as the pool for Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday. The other networks declined to provide a substitute.

In private discussions over the weekend, network leaders said that Trump’s decision to restart the barricade of CNN had left them choosing among several unpleasant options.

If the TV pool was indefinitely suspended and an emergency or crisis occurred, there would be no cameras to film Trump, leaving the public relatively in the dark.

CNN’s tussle with the administration is also wending its way through the courts, and that could take months to resolve. A legal dispute involving the Associated Press, which the administration barred from the White House press pool in 2025, has dragged on for more than a year. Network leaders believe it would be untenable to suspend TV coverage of Trump for a significant length of time, according to two of the people briefed on their discussions.

(A federal court quickly restored the AP’s access, but an appeals court mostly reversed that decision.)

Network leaders stressed that their new plan for pool operations was ad hoc: If the White House was making last-minute decisions about which outlet could attend certain presidential events, they said, then the network pool would do so as well.

Trump’s standoff with the press began Sept. 18, when he abruptly banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, saying he disliked their coverage.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington ordered the White House to reinstate the outlets for two weeks.

The order, from Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington, made clear that CNN journalists should be given back their hard passes, the press badges that allow access to the White House grounds. But the ruling included no explicit instructions about whether the administration had to allow CNN back into the smaller TV pool, which is allowed to cover the president in tighter spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One.

The next hearing in the case has not yet been scheduled.

For now, the president does not appear to be backing down. He posted on social media Saturday, in all capital letters: “Fake News should not be allowed in the White House!!! It has gone on far too long, at a tremendous cost to our country.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.