Jonathan P. Caulkins
Role at the time: Professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, in an email interview with PolitiFact
Challenged the characterization
Response to this claim
Maine’s decrease in overdose deaths in 2025 and 2026 occurred because the Trump administration sealed the border.
“We did not literally seal the borders (to fentanyl)” “Obviously some is still getting in; otherwise deaths would be zero.”
Open source (opens in a new tab)Maine drug overdoses are down. Is Vance right that Trump’s border policies are the cause?Expert interviews and ruling
Reports named interviews with University of Maine, Carnegie Mellon, University of Maryland, Georgetown, and Brown drug-policy and public-health researchers, plus a response from the vice president’s office.
Why we used this label
The statement directly challenges the factual premise used in Vance’s causal attribution.