---
title: "Political interference with science agencies by the first Trump administration"
chunk: 4/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interference_with_science_agencies_by_the_first_Trump_administration"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:13.322702+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic ===

==== COVID-19 testing ====
At a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20, 2020, Trump claimed he had instructed his administration to slow down COVID-19 testing in order to keep the number of confirmed cases down.
In August 2020, Trump announced the appointment of radiologist Scott Atlas as a White House advisor on the coronavirus. According to task force official Deborah Birx, Atlas wanted to change testing guidelines to say that people without symptoms did not need to be tested. On August 24, 2020, the testing guidelines on the CDC web page were quietly changed from their earlier recommendation that testing is recommended for anyone who has come into contact with someone who has COVID-19; the new message said that such people do not need to be tested if they do not have symptoms. Multiple public health experts expressed alarm at the new guideline, because people can be contagious even if they have no symptoms, and early testing of exposed people is considered essential to track and suppress the spread of the virus. On September 17, it was reported that the new guidelines had been written by the White House coronavirus task force, and had been "dropped into" the CDC website by officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) without the knowledge of, or over the objections of, CDC scientists. A July document on "The importance of reopening schools" was also placed on the CDC website by HHS officials rather than CDC scientists. Two former directors of the CDC said that the notion of political appointees or non-scientists posting information to the CDC website is "absolutely chilling" and undermines the credibility of the institution. On September 18, the day after the manipulation of the CDC by political appointees was reported, the testing guideline was revised to its original recommendation, stressing that anyone who has been in contact with an infected person should be tested. In late October, two guidance documents, including "The importance of reopening schools," were quietly removed from the CDC website. The updated website now states that "the body of evidence is growing that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and contrary to early reports might play a role in transmission."

==== Treatments for COVID-19 ====
In early March, Trump directed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test certain medications to discover if they had the potential to treat COVID-19 patients. Among these were chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which have been successfully used to treat malaria for over fifty years. On March 28, the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) which allowed certain hospitalized COVID-19 patients to be treated with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. The FDA's emergency approval was limited to use in hospitals and clinical drug trials. But in April the White House, at the urging and under the direction of senior economic advisor Peter Navarro, set aside those limitations and ordered that 23 million hydroxychloroquine tablets from the Strategic National Stockpile of drugs be released to a dozen states. The drugs were ordered to be distributed not only to hospitals but also to retail pharmacies in five cities. It is unclear where all the pills ended up; one distributor said they were also sent to long-term care facilities, but none are known to have gone to retail pharmacies.
On June 8 Trump called NIH director Francis Collins to the White House to urge him to approve and promote hydroxycholoroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Trump got golfer Jack Nicklaus on the phone to describe how he had recovered from the virus after taking the drug at Trump's urging. Collins explained that anecdotal stories do not prove anything, and said the research data did not support the use of the drug. A week later, on June 15, the FDA revoked the EUA for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatments for COVID-19. The FDA said the available evidence showed "no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery". On July 1, the FDA published a review of safety issues associated with the drugs, including fatal cardiac arrhythmias among other side effects. After the FDA withdrew its emergency authorization, health officials told holders of the pills from the Strategic National Stockpile that they could choose to return the pills to wholesalers or destroy them. As of late July, Trump was still promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, despite the position of the NIH that the drug was "very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with COVID-19".
In August, Trump pushed to get speedy approval of convalescent plasma as a COVID-19 treatment, because he wanted to be able to announce it as a treatment breakthrough at the August 2020 Republican National Convention. A week before the convention he claimed in a tweet that people within the FDA were deliberately delaying approval of treatments and vaccines in order to hurt his chances of re-election; he tagged FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn in the tweet. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) had concerns about the effectiveness of the treatment. On the Wednesday before the convention Trump phoned Francis S. Collins, head of the NIH, and ordered him to "get it done by Friday." On the eve of the convention the NIH still had concerns, but Trump announced that the FDA had given emergency authorization for plasma therapy to be more widely used. In his announcement he greatly exaggerated the effectiveness of the treatment, calling it a major breakthrough and suggesting it might save the lives of 35% of coronavirus patients. The FDA approval had been much more limited in its scope and application, but Hahn initially echoed the president's claims, for which he apologized the next day.

==== Mask wearing ====