Skip to content Skip to footer

White House Pressured CDC to Produce Data Backing Trump’s Push to Reopen Schools

One former White House aide said the administration was “exchanging votes for lives” in pressuring the CDC.

A crossing guard helps students cross the street after months of school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, at James H. Cox Elementary School on September 23, 2020, in Fountain Valley, California.

Officials within the Trump administration sought to pressure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to downplay the risks associated with coronavirus in children in order to bolster the narrative that it was safe for schools to resume in-person instruction across the United States, according to The New York Times.

Trump officials also wanted the health agency to find data that would demonstrate the pandemic was weakening, and that it posed little risk to children, according to documents and interviews with those who were knowledgeable of the interactions between the White House and the CDC.

Officials at the CDC were alarmed at the administration’s efforts to politicize an issue that concerns national health. Some within the White House, too, had misgivings about the effort, including Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who told the Times that Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had pressured CDC leaders to find proof that the disease had little impact on the lives of children.

Troye expressed regret at having been “complicit” in the White House’s efforts to shape CDC policy for political purposes.

“You’re impacting people’s lives for whatever political agenda. You’re exchanging votes for lives, and I have a serious problem with that,” Troye said.

The effort by the White House lasted for several weeks during the summer when President Donald Trump was repeatedly calling for states across the country to reopen schools amid the pandemic, in what many believed was a blatant attempt by the president to score a political victory.

During a political rally in mid-September, Trump falsely asserted that children were safe from coronavirus, saying that “virtually nobody” who is young is affected by the disease. “By the way, open your schools,” Trump said at the same rally.

His remarks were inaccurate and misleading: While COVID-19 does not appear to threaten children at the same rate as older populations, it can still harm them and in some cases, prove fatal. Additionally, the long-term effects of COVID-19 are also unknown at this point, including in children.

More than 500 children under 18 were hospitalized due to the disease between March and July, for example, and more than 60 children 14 years of age and under have died due to complications from COVID-19 since the pandemic reached the U.S. Hundreds of children and young adults between the ages of 15 to 24 have also died from the disease.

Beyond the threat of infection to themselves, children have also played a significant role in the spread of the disease. In fact, their role is far greater than initially presumed near the beginning of the pandemic, which makes the issue of reopening schools a contentious choice. Children can, for example, potentially contract coronavirus in classrooms and carry it to their homes and infect others while remaining free of symptoms themselves.

As more testing is done in children and more is learned about how children are spreading the disease, new revelations are giving rise to fears that the country may see another spike in coronavirus infections in the coming months, particularly among communities that have decided to resume in-person classes. According to a joint survey from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, there has already been a 14 percent increase in COVID-19 cases among children during the two-week period preceding September 24.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 143 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy