About two weeks after October 7, 2023, then-President Joe Biden told reporters that he had “no confidence” in the death tolls kept by the Gaza Health Ministry.

“I have no confidence in the number that Palestinians are using,” Biden said. At the time, the Gaza Health Ministry death tolls estimated 6,000 Palestinians, including 2,700 children, killed by the Israeli military. Biden’s National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby doubled down and said nothing from the health ministry, which he called “a front for Hamas,” could be taken “at face value.”

In June 2024, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.; Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J.; Joe Wilson, R-S.C.; Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.; and Carol Miller, R-W.Va., helped pass an amendment to a State Department spending bill that blocked the department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry data in its reports.

Later that year, Congress passed a defense spending bill that similarly barred the Pentagon from publicly citing the Gaza Health Ministry estimates as “authoritative.”

“Will Congress now overturn its own ban on citing the [Gaza Health Ministry] data,” Whitson said, “now that even the Israeli government has conceded it’s accurate?”