‘Formatting Issues’: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the fake studies NOTUS discovered in the “Make America Healthy Again” report were just “formatting mistakes” that would be fixed in an updated version. But how did they get there in the first place? There’s rampant speculation that AI was used, but Leavitt deferred that question to Health and Human Services, which hasn’t given an answer yet.
Last night, however, The Washington Post reported that “some references include ‘oaicite’ attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence.”
Nothing to See Here: An updated version of the MAHA Commission report dropped shortly after Leavitt’s press briefing Thursday. Citations to studies that don’t exist were removed, while others were updated.
- “Minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told NOTUS.
- The White House is standing by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s project, which he claims harnesses “gold-standard” science: “The bulk of the report is still factually accurate — nothing changes in the report,” a White House aide said.
However: “While the replacement references all appear to be to real sources, it’s not immediately clear whether they all support the claims the report is making,” NOTUS’ Margaret Manto reports.
If the MAHA Commission did use AI to write the report, it’s got plenty of company on Capitol Hill. From NOTUS’ Samuel Larreal:
- “I’m in Congress, and I need to tell the truth. So if I need to know what was the unemployment rate in 1978, it’ll tell me,” Rep. Aaron Bean said as he got his phone out of his pocket and searched the question on ChatGPT.
- “I’ve found it to be a great tool for summaries, if I just want to learn about something or if I have a slightly higher-order question — I use it all the time,” Rep. George Whitesides said. His AI of choice is Google’s Gemini.
- “I use it as I use a calculator. I’m not a mathematician, and I’m not a researcher either,” Rep. Mark Alford said. He said he recently used X’s Grok to help him get up to speed for a congressional hearing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “I’m hip, for a 61-year-old guy.”
Uncertainty Is Back, Baby: Just as Donald Trump’s trade war was reaching a cruising altitude, with markets returning to something resembling normal and consumer confidence shooting up, court rulings have confused things again.
- Wednesday Night: A panel of federal judges found that the across-the-board tariffs were illegal.
- Thursday: Another federal judge in a separate case said Trump couldn’t use “emergency powers” to impose this kind of “tax” on the American public (the ruling was limited to that specific case).
- Later Thursday: The U.S. Court of Appeals temporarily paused Wednesday’s lower court ruling, reinstating the tariffs for now.
Where This Is Heading: “The Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country,” Leavitt said at the Thursday briefing. Trump weighed in on Wednesday’s ruling over at Truth Social last night with his usual subtlety:
Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be? I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions. (It goes on.)
The New Hyde Amendment? Republican lawmakers and their allies want a ban on using federal funds to pay for gender-affirming care to be a standard part of spending bills moving forward.
“It’s the new Hyde Amendment,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw told NOTUS’ Oriana González, referring to a similar restriction on using federal funds for abortions. The Texas congressman was behind the push to include such a ban in the House-passed reconciliation bill, and even called it the “Crenshaw Amendment.”
- “I have a lot of things I’d like to be remembered for, but this is certainly one of them,” Crenshaw said. “I’m really proud to put my name on it.”
New on NOTUS
- Democrats Say MAHA Report Inconsistencies Show Kennedy Isn’t Fit to Lead HHS: Democratic senators said they were disappointed but not surprised at NOTUS’ finding that the “Make America Health Again” Commission’s report cited studies that don’t exist.
- Democrats Are Losing Key Immigrant Rights Champions. They Think a New Generation Is Ready.: Democrats are still figuring out how to tackle immigration as they lose many of their strongest advocates in Congress.
- New York NGOs Worry They Won’t Be Able to Make Up for Steep Medicaid and SNAP Cuts: Multiple districts in New York consistently rank among the most SNAP- and Medicaid-reliant in the nation.
- The Race for the Top Dem Spot on Oversight Is Heating Up: Reps. Robert Garcia and Stephen Lynch are jumping into the race, once again pitting seniority against generational change.
Not Us
- The Trump Administration Is Rolling Out a New Way to Shrink FEMA’s Role, by Zahra Hirji for Bloomberg
- Congressman Mike Flood tells crowd he didn’t read portions of the Big Beautiful bill before voting to pass it, by Alex Whitney for KMTV 3 News Now
- Musk sours Democrats on EVs, poll finds, by Alex Nieves for Politico
Be Social
It got a little weird, but we couldn’t look away.
Anyone who's looking for the whole CNN interview with the 'Miracle over the Mojave' pilot, Nathan Fielder, here you go. pic.twitter.com/dLbwUtC1Ta
— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) May 29, 2025
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