Ken Cuccinelli, who did the No. 2 job at the Homeland Security Department under President Donald Trump, was looking at a corporate opportunity after he left the administration when the work was suddenly pulled.

“They just decided they didn’t want Trump people,” said Cuccinelli, who declined to name the company. “It was just flat out—you can call it Trump discrimination.”

The revolving door is as much of a Washington tradition as National Mall fireworks on the Fourth of July—people hold prominent government positions and then step into lucrative and often prestigious outside roles. More than 80% of top lawyers in Trump’s administration have landed somewhere since he left office, even if their roles are part time or not their first choice, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Law. (See complete list.)

But the Trump lawyers have been more difficult to place than those who served in previous administrations, particularly if they were closely connected to his most controversial policies or if they lacked the experience past alumni had, said Laura Drake, a partner at search firm Macrae.

Representative Briscoe Cain
R–Deer Park
When Dade Phelan tapped Cain to chair the House Elections Committee, some speculated that the Speaker must have been trying to sink the politically charged “election integrity” legislation. After all, in his first two terms, Cain showed an aptitude for little more than getting dunked on by his colleagues. Last session, he was relegated to the chairmanship of the backwater Select Committee on Driver’s License Issuance and Renewal. So why would Phelan give the Legislature’s chief bumbler such a delicate assignment, under a harsh national spotlight?


As it turned out, Republican leaders didn’t need a dealmaker to push through one of their top priorities; they just needed someone who’d eat dirt for them. And, boy, did Cain eat dirt. In committee, this small-government crusader seemed unable to describe his own bill, refused to take questions from the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, and got into a tussle for the gavel with his vice chair, Democrat Jessica González. Then he abruptly recessed the committee, violating House rules and robbing hundreds of witnesses, some of whom traveled long distances, of the opportunity to testify that day. One Republican member began referring to himself as “Briscoe’s babysitter.” For his part, Cain blamed the committee kerfuffle on COVID-19 protocols that kept him from getting to know González. “I do wonder if things would have been different,” he said.

Things got even worse when his bill reached the floor. One of the viral moments of the session came when Representative Rafael Anchía, a Dallas Democrat, explained that language in Cain’s legislation regarding the “purity of the ballot box” was a Reconstruction-era phrase used to justify the disenfranchisement of Black Texans. Cain suddenly looked like a panicked Boys State participant. That day, he was locked out of negotiations over his own bill.

Cain was unchastened: he continued to insist he was defending the state against the specter of voter fraud. But he also seemed to be enjoying it. At a House football game, he tried to reprise his glory days as a high school cheerleader by doing a cartwheel. The next day, he arrived at the House on a crutch.

Representative Gary Gates
R-Richmond
When Gates won a House seat in a special election last year, two issues dogged him. One, he was once under investigation by Child Protective Services over allegations that he had abused his adopted children. (He was officially cleared, but the investigation revealed a parenting style that would make a lot of folks queasy, to say the least.) Two, he was accused of being, in effect, a slumlord who neglected to address rampant crime plaguing apartment complexes in poor parts of Houston.

Gates was undaunted. His major focus during his first full session was to make it harder for CPS to investigate abuse cases and to make life easier for landlords who own apartment complexes in poor parts of Houston. In the first case, Gates sought to block Texans from submitting anonymous complaints to CPS and to require the agency to warn tipsters who phone in their allegations that false reporting is a state jail felony. This, he said, would help CPS avoid wasting time on false accusations.

With other bills, Gates attempted to make it easier to disband special management districts of the kind he has repeatedly clashed with in his capacity as a landlord, while making it harder for local governments to enforce building codes. Gates sees his personal involvement in these matters as an asset. “My experience just kinda gives me a little bit different insight than most people would normally have,” he told the Houston Chronicle. But when he stumbled into matters that didn’t affect him personally, Gates seemed uninterested. One night on the House floor, a colleague asked Gates a few softball questions about a minor education bill that he had authored. An excruciating silence descended. Gates pulled down his own legislation, seemingly so he could figure out what it said. And if all that weren’t enough, Gates took a private jet to Florida during the February blackouts. That’s the mark of a true freshman: everyone knows that the pros go to Cancún.

The study is posted on a website that publishes “preprints” — studies that “have not been finalized by authors, might contain errors and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.”....

The study was posted May 31 on medRxiv, a website that publishes studies that have not been fully vetted. This note is posted with the study: "This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice."

he website also says about its "preprint" or "unrefereed" articles: "Before formal publication in a scholarly journal, scientific and medical articles are traditionally certified by ‘peer review.’ In this process, the journal’s editors take advice from various experts — called ‘referees’ — who have assessed the paper and may identify weaknesses in its assumptions, methods and conclusions … Readers should therefore be aware that articles on medRxiv have not been finalized by authors, might contain errors, and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community."

Our ruling
A widely shared social media post stated: "Study: hydroxychloroquine can boost COVID-19 survival chances by nearly 200%."

A study says a certain dosing of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin "improves survival by nearly 200%" among hospitalized COVID-19 patients who received invasive mechanical ventilation, but the post exaggerates the finding’s significance.

The study is posted on a website that publishes studies that "have not been finalized by authors, might contain errors and report information that has not yet been accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community." Experts told PolitiFact the study is poorly designed and that no conclusion about cause and effect should be drawn from it.

For a statement that contains only an element of truth, our rating is Mostly False.