Notes from a Quiet Street

Posted on December 23, 2024 by bpriddy

(Comments on affairs of our world that do not reach the umbrage level necessary to result in a full blog).

This is sooooo bureaucratic—from someone who wants to reduce the bureaucracy.

President Trump has set up a Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE to those who speak Bureaucratic.

Think about that for a minute. Trump’s first step in making major cuts to the federal bureaucracy is to establish a new bureaucracy. We’ll be watching to see how many employees it takes to be efficient.

It’s not really a “department” that is part of the cabinet. So far it’s just two rich guys who’ve never been inside government, hired by a third billionaire.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are the two guys.

We will watch to see if adjusting the tax code for themselves is as important as axing programs for those farther down the economic ladder.

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Many of us are surprised to learn that Canada is such an evil country, right up there with Mexico. One of the reasons the incoming president has given for big tariffs being put on products from those two countries is that they facilitate the entrance of Fentanyl into this country.

It’s always easy to do tariffs. Let’s see what the administration’s plan is to reduce consumption of the drug in this country. Money follows the consumption of a product, whether it’s fentanyl, superhero trading cards, gold tennis shoes, allegedly fancy watches, or even red caps. Right?

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And, of course, making Canada our 51^st state—-hear that, Texas and Alaska, who will be dwarfed by this new state—will solve all that problem.

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How about making Panama our 52^nd state?

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And maybe we can revive talks about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland, or just buying Greenland, too, and keeping Puerto Rico!!

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How much will the Billionaire Boys have to cut out of the budget to pay for that little shopping spree by someone who is unlikely to have ever bought a ten-dollar shirt at Sam’s club?

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Lt. Governor-elect Dave Wasinger has hired Katie Ashcroft as his Chief of Staff. She needed the job as she looks toward being the sole breadwinner for the family when her spouse gets laid off in January.

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Wasinger is the first person who to preside over the Missouri Senate as the Senate President (one of the roles of the Lt. Governor) with no experience in elective office at any level since Kansas City lawyer and Democratic Party activist Hillary Busch, who served from 1961-65 under Governor John Dalton.

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It is such a relief to open our mail at this time of year and hearing from people who have a personal relationship with us to donate more than $19 a month—or to dispense with parts of my children’s inheritance.

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But then again, we’re not getting automated phone calls from people wanting to counsel us about Medicare enrollment.

In the space of 24 hours our caller-ID told us we had gotten calls from Elgin, Missouri; Laddonia, Benton, Lewistown, and Jefferson City. Most left no messages but a few times when we answered and a human was on the other end, we asked, “Where are you located?” One person would only say, ”I’m calling from a remote location.”

I thought we were on the Attorney General’s no-call list. I would call him to ask, but he’s too busy working on national issues, probably, to talk about why it doesn’t seem to work very well.

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One day last year, our caller ID said the call was coming from our number.

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It oughta be illegal.

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It’s been so nice not wrapping a bunch of presents and not digging out all of the Christmas decorations and planning a big meal for the extended family. Instead of wrapping things, we’re packing things. We’ve given ourselves a great big present—a new mailing address.

But the blog is not moving. It’s going to stay right here.

(image credit: Executioner—Reddit)

Let the Ethnic Cleansing Begin—Part Two

Posted on December 16, 2024 by bpriddy

We painted a rather pessimistic view in our last entry of our retread President’s plans for the largest deportation effort in our history. We looked at a Mother Jones article from a few months back that tried to gauge what the difficulties would be if he carries through with his plan.

The article displayed concerns about grave economic consequences of deporting 11-million people. Most of the adults in the group would be forced to leave their jobs behind, producing a crisis in the chicken plucking, roofing, and agricultural industries.

Here’s how to deal with this:

During his campaign, the incoming President asserted that these brown people from the south and the (probably) predominantly white people form the north—all of those thieves, killers, rapists, robbers, insane people, and major drug carriers, you know—were taking jobs away from Americans. Late in the campaign, speaking to a special group, he emphasized that these jobs were “Black jobs.”

You might remember from his June debate: “They’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”

Hispanics taking Hispanic jobs? We’ll let him try to make that logical some other time, which might be one of the few times he has done that. But what about “Black jobs?”

If I were an African-American, I might take great offense at his assumption that there are certain jobs set aside for Black people. I thought our civilized America had pretty well gotten beyond that, but maybe he was too busy bankrupting his latest business venture to notice.

Incidentally, did he ever check the citizenship status of the cleaning staff at his hotels, clubs, and other properties? And what color were those jobs?

Well, not to get toooooo snarky—

The Hispanic people that he seems to have a hate/love relationship with do the farming, roofing, hotel cleaning, and healthcare jobs that include, as one source put it in our last entry, “emptying bedpans.” But if we export the Hispanics despite them having “Hispanic jobs,” then Black people seem to be the correct substitute, especially since those folks took black jobs to begin with.

But before we jettison all of these brown rapists, drug smugglers, etc., we can make them build the wall on our southern border that Mexico was supposed to pay us for building. We’re still waiting to hear that the check has cleared.

NBC had a story this summer reporting that Black workers often are overrepresented in government and health care work. There are eight Fortune 500 companies already headed by black executives, and Black people cause a problem for this scheme elsewhere. Under the first Trump administration, black unemployment dropped to 5.3%–in September 2019. Under Joe Biden, it dropped to 4.8% in April 2023.

But that’s good news because the Army and the National Guard won’t have to round up a real big bunch of people to fill vacancies in Black people’s Black jobs. That’s good news because he won’t have enough federal military or state national guard units to round up all of the Black people who will be told to fill in for the rounded-up Hispanics. Federal law tends to oppose that sort of thing anyway—-although the Trump Supreme Court might refine that provision.

Oh, wait! We DO have enough troops to do all of this. We just bring home soldiers helping protect our NATO allies and our sailors whose ships are protecting Israel from Iranian rocket attacks, and sailors from the ships protecting Taiwan, and troops keeping peace or holding enemies at bay in other places. He doesn’t seem to think many of them belong out there anyway, so that’s not an employment gap he needs to worry about filling.

But then, who will replace all the Black people who are going to replace the Brown people thrown out of the country?

The solution is too easy.

Round up all the homeless people and make them fill in for all the Black folks who will regain all the jobs the brown people took away from the black people who will get their jobs back when we get rid of the Hispanic people who risked everything to come to this country to get jobs, many of whom sent some of their earnings back to other people in their home countries .

Now, all of those people who sent money home from America will be no longer sending money back home that helps their national economies. Instead, they will become a burden to those counties that we consider our allies.

Getting back to the homeless—

There are studies that show many of the homeless have mental problems but they can’t be treated because Ronald Reagan killed President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act that continued funding federal community mental health centers. In a matter of weeks after he took office, Reagan changed things to give states block grants which haven’t made up for the loss of the Carter program. So we have a lot of mentally-ill homeless people among us and it’s easier to complain about them than do something about their problems.

But if we can take these folks, even those with mental health issues, round them up, get them off the streets and then distribute them out for mental health care duties now handled by Hispanic and Black people, everything’s fine.

Elon Musk wants to slash government spending by billions of dollars so don’t look for any mental health help for the homeless folks that will be rounded up to complete this restructuring of our economy. The buck has to stop somewhere.

But who is going to help those who have taken the remaining job openings that have trickled down after the Hispanic deportations?

Simple.

Our retread President tells all those countries for which he wants to inflict tariffs that if the armies in those other countries round up enough of their people and make them emigrate to the United States, we won’t have a problem. Unfortunately, our immigration people might be so busy getting people out of the country that they won’t have time to check the legality of those coming in.

But there it is. All the bases are covered. America will be great again.

No charge. No awards expected.

A lingering issue remains, though. Will the Army and the National Guard be committed equally to rounding up Canadians, Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Swedes—among others—who probably are in this country illegally, too?

And then once we’ve got all of immigrants out of the country, who’s going to protect the rest of us from the Wampanoags, whose lands were taken by the Pilgrims who came here seeking religious liberty for themselves but not for Baptists and other unacceptable people who they considered the equivalents of our rapists, drug smugglers, criminals and crazy people, when the Wampanoags and other nations demand the interlopers get out of places such as Mar-a-Lago?

Let the Ethnic Cleansing Begin—Part One

Posted on December 11, 2024 by bpriddy

Our retread President has promised that deportation of 11-millon undocumented aliens will be started on his first day in office. A number of economists or economy-watchers say the consequences could be severe. But that is immaterial to the incoming Commander/Demander in Chief of our country. Others have raised serious humanitarian questions about the policy. But nobody has ever accused our incoming President of having any humanitarian interests except for his own, which are closely tied to his personal wealth.

Today we are going to start describing a plan that will mitigate any economic or diplomatic damage resulting from this deportation efforts. We expect no recognition from the incoming administration for these helpful ideas. However, if an invitation were extended to attend the State of the Union speech during which it would be announced that our necks soon will be decorated with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, we would not object. Much. We are offering this advice at no cost, something that will please Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world who seems to have a plan to reduce government spending no matter what the cost.

Some might find this plan slightly off-the-wall. Or entirely so. But somebody has to provide some insight into how to deal with this issue and your faithful scribe will jump into the breach.

Mother Jones magazine, which some people dismiss as a liberal rag, took a hard look at Trump’s proposal a few months ago. The incoming president has blamed foreign drug cartels and gangs have “invaded” the United States and have established a foothold at an apartment complex in Colorado, a claim contested and/or debunked by the town mayor and residents of the apartment complex in much the same way that leaders of a town in Ohio deny there’s any cat-eating going on there. Regardless, the “invasion” deserves a forceful response from this country.

The incoming President also has asserted that brown people from Venezuela and other countries that have emptied their prisons and lunatic asylums are killers, rapists, fentanyl importers, and probably don’t wear clean underwear every day.

Mother Jones describes a lot of problems with 47’s plan (actually he’s the 45^th person to be President. He’s the second one to have two different administrations):

The magazine says it’s going to take 95,994 chartered flights to get the 11-million people out of the country and going to wherever they will be unloaded. Projected costs, spread through 20 years because you can’t do this in two weeks would be $300-Billion.

Who would profit? Private prison companies such as CoreCivic and the GEO Group were paid $1.5 billion by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to run immigration detention centers in 2022. They’ll improve our economy by building new facilities and hiring a lot of people to guard the women and children—and men—at new lockups. A GEO Group subsidiary, BI Incorporated, got a five-year deal to produce ankle monitors and phone tracking apps worth $2.2 billion to ICE and will do quite well making 11-million more of these shackles. CSI Aviation has a $128.3 million contract for daily transport flights that they’ll have to increase, again pumping more money back into economy.

And this business expansion will offset the loss of jobs elsewhere in our economy.

There probably will be inconsiderate and ungrateful lawyers who will sue the government if the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is used to justify the deportations.

This might be the time to invest in a critical industry: hardware and home improvement companies. All of those detention camps will require a lot of posts and poles and wire and plywood buildings for the large facilities for undesirable Canadians, Mexicans, etc. A spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association likens such camps to Soviet Gulags.

If there aren’t enough people in our regular military services who are guarding Taiwan, and South Korea and other pressure points in the globe and a decision is made not to lessen those protections, then nationalizing the National Guard is a possibility, he says. Fine and dandy but the Posse Comitatus Law forbids the National Guard from doing civilian law enforcement jobs.

Let’s face it, establishing military guard posts at every road in and out of all of our states is going to take a lot of people making sure no undocumented aliens can seek safety in a different state from their illegal homes here.

The article suggested we brace ourselves for big increases in food costs, decreases in important segments of the workforce, cuts in housing development, and cuts in some health programs.

The magazine quotes an agriculture and economics professor at the University of California-Davis who estimates food prices for hand-picked products will go up 21% because the deportations will eliminate half of the hands doing the picking. The survey also estimates 25% of the people who process our chicken, turkeys, pork, and fish are undocumented aliens. And it says we can look for a doubling of the price of milk if the people doing the milking are shipped out.

Illegal migrants are not eligible to collect Social Security. But they pay about $13-Billion a year into it. Undocumented immigrant households paid $35.1 Billion in state and federal taxes in 2022. That’s a pretty big economic hole. We’re waiting to see the plan for dealing with that.

It’s estimated about 350,000 undocumented immigrants work in health care, two-thirds of them in providers or in supporting positions. Rebecca Shi, who heads the American Business Immigration Coalition says, “They are the people that pick our crops, prepare our foods, clean our hotel rooms and empty our bedpans.”

This roundup also could affect the roofs over our heads. A study indicates one third of the crews that are whizzes at installing new roofs on our homes and businesses are potential deportees. The construction industry already is short an estimated half-million workers.

But don’t worry. The incoming President knows who will replace all of these workers. If he doesn’t, we’re going to tell him in our next installment.

It might seem bizarre and crazy. It isn’t. It’s just the new normal.

The Ones Most Interested

Posted on December 5, 2024 by bpriddy

—and the places most damaged.

We’ve had three weeks or so to digest the results of the November 5 election. We are going to offer some insights in the next few entries.

One of the amendments we voted this month proposed something that we’ve seen before—a statewide vote to force a city or an area to allow something the people there did not want.

That was Amendment 5, which would have forced the people living and working at the Lake of the Ozarks to accept a commercial casino in their midst. Two areas of Missouri were involved: the area where a casino is proposed and an area fearful that it would be the next place forced to accept one.

We’re talking about the Lake of the Ozarks and Branson.

It might be instructive to see their thoughts about the sports wagering amendment and the casino-placement amendment. We looked at the votes in five lake counties and in five Branson-area counties.

Both groups wanted nothing to do with either proposal, sports wagering or a casino.

The five lake counties were 57% against sports wagering, Amendment 2, that barely passed statewide with only 50.074% of the votes (as of last night), a margin so small a recount can be justified if the losers want to pay for it. The five Branson-area counties opposed it to the tune of 60%.

Amendment 5 was the issue that was most stark in its possibilities for these two areas and the message sent by these ten counties was more than no. It pretty much amounted to a “Hell, No.” Camden County rejected the proposal 10,621-14,375. Taney County swamped it 9,875-16,071. Sixty percent of the voters in the five lake counties rejected the casino. In the Branson area, the rejection was even greater, 61.4%.

End result: People in those ten counties don’t like sports wagering but their people can do it if they want, but they’re sure don’t want them ever to do it in a local casino.

Both of these counties have promoted their areas as family-friendly tourism destinations. Branson was worried that a Lake of the Ozarks casino would be the precedent-setter for a casino campaign in Branson. Amendment 5 would have forced one area to accept something the voters clearly did not want, and exposed the other area to a similarly unwelcome intrusion later.

Branson had a taste of this issue twenty years ago when voters defeated a proposal to put a casino next to the White River at Rockaway Beach.

How about counties that have casinos? Amendment 3 failed in three of them—Cape Girardeau (46.4%), Lewis (Mark Twain Casino in LaGrange—46/7%), and Cooper (Boonville 48.5%).

This time, the casino industry spent ten-million dollars on a petition effort and an election campaign for Amendment 5. Their efforts netted them less than 48% of the statewide vote.

In St. Charles County, the home of Missouri’s most lucrative casino, Amendment 3 got only 53.4%.

The spending on the Lake of the Ozarks proposal was pocket change compared to the huge amount invested in the sports wagering amendment. It took $41 million from the two biggest internet bookies to overcome the $14 million dollar opposition campaign financed by another bookie. The victory margin was only (as of last night) 4,360 votes out of almost three million votes cast. The certified final results will be posted after the Missouri Board of Canvassers meets on December 10. Presidential electors meet a week later. Congress is to certify the federal results on January 6.

The casinos will get their money back pretty fast. The host cities of the casinos will lose millions because of the support their voters game to Amendment Two.

How much will they lose? There are two factors. The state tax rate on gambling (table games and slot machines is 21%. Host cities get ten percent of that amount. In the last fiscal year, ten percent of the state gaming taxes collected provided $39,711,780 to the host cities.

But sports wagering will provide ZERO money from the state gaming tax, which will be only ten percent to begin with. The State Auditor estimates casino revenues in the first five years will be $1,044,684,612. The states ten percent will amount to $104,467,878, all of it earmarked for higher and lower education. None of it goes to the home cities. None.

If Amendment 2 followed current law, the casinos’ own home dock cities would split an additional $10,446,788.

But it’s worse than that. If the tax rate on sports wagering were the same as it is on other forms of gambling—and the industry has never given a consistent answer why is should not be—the home dock cities would have split an additional $21,938,377 in those first five years.

The casino industry will recover more than one-half of the money it spent on the campaign by giving their own host cities the shaft. Permanently.

I can show you the math; the casinos wouldn’t.

The manifest shortcomings in taxes can only be remedied by adoption of another amendment. A campaign that focuses on those shortcomings and either corrects or overturns Amendment 2 might be considered, given the paper-thin margin of victory for sports wagering. It would be interesting to know the reactions of city councils in the thirteen host cities if they are ever shown these numbers. I doubt the industry, its leaders, or its supporting organizations have ever given these figures to the cities

The casino industry has never been put on the defensive at the Capitol or at the ballot box.

And maybe it should be, as we will discuss in our next commentary because what could be coming will be only worse.

What Next?

Posted on December 4, 2024 by bpriddy

The casino industry spent a record $41 million dollars to convince few more Missourians to vote in favor of sports wagering than voted against it—very few—out of about three million votes cast.

It will be a mistake to think the industry is satisfied with the sweetheart arrangement voters approved. The casino industry is changing rapidly, and the legislature and the voters need to be preparing for the next change in law that will benefit casinos and disadvantage the state, our schools, and their own host cities.

We don’t profess to be an expert or some kind of Casino Nostradamus, but we have been studying this industry and its proposals for several years now. It is not hard to find industry and scholarly articles pointing to a much different industry materializing in the next ten years or less. The casino industry is being altered by demographic changes. But rapidly changing technology will let the industry respond to those demographic changes.

Amendment 2 was just the first step. The policy set by Amendment 2 is likely to be the template for state policy as casinos move increasingly to remote betting on ALL gambling offerings.

We know from experience that technology often moves faster than the development of reasonable and fair regulation of it, making this a time for correction of shortcomings of the past coupled with anticipation of problems in the future. The state will be well-served by a adopting a policy of correction and anticipation, although there is considerable doubt that such a policy will be enacted a Missouri Legislature that is heavily influenced by industry pressure and largesse. Whether voters who can be wooed by absurd amounts of money spent on advertising that is low on the honesty scale would approve a policy unfriendly to the casinos is problematic.

A couple of years ago, Joey Richardson wrote for Gamblingsites.org, “(Casinos) are going to need to change what they offer and how they offer it if they want to continue to attract new customers.”

Millennials who have grown up on video games and who learned during the pandemic how to live their lives without leaving their homes already are having a major impact on the future of businesses of all kinds. Past discussions of internet sales taxes as a meager protection for brick and mortar businesses were one of the beginnings of this trend that gained momentum in the pandemic era when working from home became viable.

Hoosier Park Racing & Casino in Indiana became one of the first casinos to have a Pac-Man video slot machine, in September of 2017. Blackjack revenue for casinos is about half what it was in 1985 when it was responsible for 85% of table game revenues. Richardson noted in his article that casinos already had brought in new games to fill the gap—Caribbean stud, Three Card Poker, and Casino Holdem among them. All can be played remotely—if laws are changed to allow it.

Although Richardson doubts brick and mortar casinos will die out, Mehul Boricha, at Techrival.com has suggested virtual reality casinos could be on the way. He wrote, “Rules and regulations will always continue to influence future casinos. Various regulatory bodies come up with new and stricter policies that online casinos and games have to adopt without losing their grip on their innovation and creativity.” The new world of casino gambling that is being born in front of us will be a challenge not only to tomorrow’s legislature but to the gaming and lottery commissions that will have to regulate it. The gambling industry prefers not to make or be forced to make an investment that will allow regulatory bodies to prepare for the changes they must make to balance public responsibility with private profit.

Marketing Manager Emily Rodgers with driveresearch.com reported on August 2, 2023 that the growing preference for online or mobile app betting among three-quarters of sports bettors indicates a significant shift in the gambling industry towards digital platforms, offering convenience, accessibility, and potentially contributing to the overall increase in sports betting activity worldwide. She says convenience (78%) and easy deposits (75%) are the top reasons people prefer online/mobile sports betting. She argues that these top factors highlight the importance of user-friendly and seamless platforms in the gambling industry, factors that not only attract more bettors but also contribute to increased customer retention and engagement. She says digital channels are in the future for casino gambling, beginning with sports wagering..

Online sports betting revenue is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate (CAGR) of 10% during the next 5 years.

The introduction of AI (artificial intelligence) in sports betting will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the industry. One example is the way systems record information in digitized ledgers known as blockchain, which is being adopted globally. Blockchain applications will help automate real-time data, expedite payments and wagers, and provide in-the-moment security and monitoring – including cryptocurrency transactions that are not allowed in Missouri, yet.

The sports betting marketplace grew ten-fold from 2019 to 2021 while netting nearly $7B in revenue from $83B in total bets placed on sports in 2022.

Another report by marketdecipher.com revealed similar findings. In fact, its estimated $85B in bets placed in 2023 is forecast to balloon to $288B total by the end of 2032.

Virtual reality sports betting took a step forward with the launch of the VR22 sports betting platform last October. The service allows users to take in a 360-degree live gaming experience as if they were there in person. Users can interact with the game or match in real time including the ability to place wagers down to a specific play – and even purchase merchandise or NFTs.

Missouri already has remote betting although it has been on a small scale. In the past several years, a few of our casinos have had what they call “hybrid” wagering. If a table is too crowded to allow additional players, gamblers are referred to a computer terminal that lets them place bets at the table as if they were physically there. It has been done on a small scale and has generated generally small profits. But it’s an experiment and it works. Whether the terminal is fifty feet from the table or 50 miles and at someone else’s table, it is still sports wagering. And it is part of gambling’s future.

Another reason present casinos need to reach the public where it is, instead of waiting for the public to come back, is the threat of widespread competition. It is a very real threat and the first part of it could be in business in a few years. We’ll talk about that in our next edition.

The Choice

Posted on November 4, 2024 by bpriddy

We will decide the future of our state and nation tomorrow.

Some argue we will decide the FATE of our nation tomorrow.

We harken back to the story of an English stable owner in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries who had forty horses, leading customers to think they could choose one from among the forty. But the stable owner allowed only the horse in the first stall to be rented, believing that he was keeping the best horses from always being chosen.

Customers believing they had many choices actually had only one. Take it or leave it, even if neither was desirable.

The stable owner was named Thomas Hobson, whose name is preserved in the phrase “Hobson’s Choice,” meaning only one thing is really offered while it appears there are other choices and it isn’t particularly desirable.

Many believe that is what we are facing tomorrow, a Hobson’s Choice.

We’ve all survived the weeks of rhetoric, weeks of misstatements and lies, or misinformation from insiders and outsiders on our social media, weeks of efforts to denigrate competing candidates and competing issues.

We have listened to the two sides paint the picture of the other side. And after listening to all of that noise we have concluded that we have these choices at the top of the ticket:

—A candidate who claims to be middle-class child of immigrants whose party has been branded as Marxist and Socialist and a threat to our democracy by the other party.

—A felon, a congenital liar and narcissist whose party is backing him despite complaints that he wants to emulate Hitler and other dictators and is a threat to our democracy.

Thomas Hobson would be greatly entertained. Take it or leave it when neither choice seems to be desirable.

The political process seems to have given us horses in the first of two stalls in a stable full of better mounts that we can’t have.

This might not be any help to you at all, but let’s skim the surface of the two possibilities.

Both Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler wrote books: Marx’s Das Kapital, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Marx is described as “a German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.” The description is from Wikipedia, which serious researchers caution should not be considered original research. It is an amalgam of the evaluations done by others presumably well-acquainted with a subject. So, We are going to rely on one of Wikipedia’s sources, English historian Gareth Stedman Jones, whose work focuses on working class history and Marxist theory and who wrote in 2017 in the journal Nature:

“What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon. And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism, including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems… it [connects] critical analysis of the economy of his time with its historical roots. In doing so, he inaugurated a debate about how best to reform or transform politics and social relations, which has gone on ever since.”

The same resource describes Hitler as “an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator” of Germany under the Nazi Party that “controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship.” He wrote his book in prison while serving four years for treason after a failed coup in 1923. The book outlined his plans for Germany’s future, the main thesis being that Germany was in danger from “the Jewish peril,” a conspiracy of Jews to gain world control. It is considered a book on political theory. “For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world’s two evils: communism and Judaism…Hitler blamed Germany’s chief woes on the parliament…Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists, though he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish interests. He announced that he wanted to destroy the parliamentary system, believing it to be corrupt in principle…”

So there you have it. A choice between an economic theorist whose theories challenge our capitalistic society and a political theorist who used every means necessary to be an all-powerful manipulator of a political system, including mass incarceration and murder of undesirables.

You might have a different evaluation for these two whose partisans have stereotyped each other throughout this campaign.

We had a coworker who once observed, “Stereotypes are so useful because they save a lot of time.”

In American politics, stereotyping saves the voters a lot of thinking.

And that’s too bad.

From our lofty position, we offer this thought;

Economic theories are abstract offerings that do not imprison or murder those who differ from them. Political theories can create tangible results that, taken to extremes, can produce (in order) division, disrespect, control through, if necessary, mass incarceration and—-at the very worst—murder.

We have two politicians to think about tomorrow. It’s too bad none of the others in the stable are available. It’s take it or leave it time.

Which Hobson’s Choice are you going to make?

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“Winning for Education” Turns Casino Host Cities Into Bigger Losers

Posted on October 21, 2024 by bpriddy

So this is what they get for three decades of being the hosts of Missouri’s casinos—a financial knife in the ribs.

For three decades, ten percent of the casino gambling taxes have gone to the home dock cities and half of the admission fees, too, to pay for the police and fire protection, the infrastructure the cities provide so people can go to and from their casinos, use their bathrooms, and drink city water instead of some of the river water under the ‘excursion boat” where they gamble.

The cities have used some of that money for other improvements—parks, for example.

But not with Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot.

They’re cut out of it. Completely.

None of the sports gambling taxes will go to the home dock cities.

There will still be an admission fee charged for those who go into the casinos to place their sports bets. But Winning for Missouri, the committee that is, shall we say, gloriously overstating the public benefits of sports wagering, has an economic study saying that, eventually, more than 98% of the bets will be placed online. There will be no admission fee paid by the casinos for almost all of the sports bets. And there is no fee in lieu of the admission fee. They’re going to keep it all.

None of the sports gaming revenue will go to the cities, as it does for present casino table games and slot machines. Admission fees going to host cities will be minimal.

Once again, everybody loses except the casinos and the sports teams—including the host cities (the formal name is Home Dock Cities, harkening back to the days when the industry convinced voters there would be real boats traveling on our big rivers, before they became boats in moats—which is a good thing; we might tell that story in a later entry).

The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick for all of these three decades. For more than a decade, fewer and fewer people have been going to the casinos. At their peak, casinos counted about 54-million admissions. In the last fiscal year, the admissions continued their decline toward 27 million.

Adding insult to injury is the industry’s refusal to let the legislature increase the admission fees so those home communities admission payments could keep up with inflation. The equivalent of two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 was $4.31 when we checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator Saturday night.

Yes, we mean “let the legislature increase the admission fees.” Your faithful correspondent has suggested increases to legislators for six years. One of the more frequent responses is, “The casino industry would never buy that.”

The suspicion in the hallways for some time that the industry is, in one way or another, buying something. It has several political action committees with bottomless checking accounts. And legislators have to run for re-election for an unfortunately limited number of times.

The influence of the casinos is so ingrained in the legislative process that their representatives don’t even try to justify their statutory or constitutional demands. They just make brief statements about how great sports wagering will be and then sit down.

Not making any accusations, mind you. We’re just sayin,’ as the colloquial phrase goes.

Anyway—the $4.31 equivalency means the state is getting two 1993 dollars while the casinos keep $2.31 of 2024 money.

The casinos are making more off the admission fee than the state and the home dock cities are making. But the situation is even worse than what we’ve just shown.

Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of those two dollars to about 95 cents. So, while the home dock cities and the gaming commission are starving for funding with two dollars that are worth 95 cents in contemporary money, the casinos are making $2.31, and the gap between what the casinos keep and what the state and the home dock cities receive widens each year.

Our extensive research and hours with the calculator indicate the home dock cities and the State of Missouri, since the first casinos opened in 1994, have lost almost $1.9 billion ($1,880,392,926) in outright cash payments and in purchasing power combined because the casinos have pressured the legislature into making no change.

Extensive research has calculated how much each of our thirteen cities has lost in the last eight years or so. The individual tables are available but we don’t want to spend the space here to print them. Perhaps that can be done at another time.

Has anyone told our thirteen cities they’re being taken for a ride by their “excursion gambling boats?” The cities are part of the Home Dock Cities Association that one might think would be working to keep the losses from continuing and increasing. But we have seen representatives for the association spouting the casino line every time they’ve testified before legislative committees. It’s okay with the association, apparently, that the people they represent keep losing funding and will see no improvement from sports wagering.

The association says it favors the casino position because casinos are economic drivers for the region. Really? Can they show any studies that prove it? They haven’t, and the industry’s own statistics reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission show a different story.

We started compiling comprehensive statistics three years ago with a five-year lookback and we have updated figures from the Gaming Commission’s annual and monthly reports. In the now-eight years of statistics, these are the combined losses in cash admissions payments and lost value of those payments for each of our casinos:

Ameristar St. Charles $46,399,739
River City, Lemay $43,956,210
Hollywood, Maryland Heights $42,069,051
Horseshoe (form Lumiere Place), St. Louis $31,287,455
Ameristar Kansas City $36,290,466
Harrah’s NKC $29,250,328
Argosy Riverside $27,274,214
Bally’s KC $21,852,498
IOC Boonville $13,568,851
Century Cape Girardeau $12,712,770
Century Caruthersville $7,200,880
Jo Frontier $8,357,439
Mark Twain, LaGrange $5,718,114

Amendment 2 will only increase those numbers.

Sports wagering backers say sports wagering will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will make a big difference for the pay of our classroom teacher.

That isn’t true. As mentioned earlier, if voters approved Amendment 2, only a few million will be added to the $10-Billion dollar annual budgets of the elementary and secondary schools and the additional multi-million dollar budgets of our colleges and universities.

The industry has testified that increasing the admission fee to benefit our veterans would be a hardship on the industry, especially the smaller casinos. Bunk. It wasn’t but a few years ago when they paid $100 million a year, or more, for a decade and were not whining about the payments being an economic threat.

The industry has offered no statistical evidence to support its contentions. It has shown no independent studies proving any of the claims made in their advertising leading up to the vote in a few days on Amendment 2.

The industry can’t or won’t supply that information to support its promises and claims. But everything written in his series of posts is backed up by lengthy research.

Not only have the casinos fought efforts to maintain the value of the admission fee for their host cities, they have laid off about 5,500 of their employees since the number peaked at 11,658 in 2008. In the most recent fiscal year, the total was down to 6,079.

Will sports wagering bring back those jobs? Not with 98% of wagers made remotely. We can see a few more people serving drinks in the modest, at best, sportsbooks that will be created in our casinos to handle the few walk-ins. There might be a few runners taking bets to the I-T people—who might represent the biggest employee boost. But the jobs needle won’t move very much.

Let’s look at how much of an economic driver the casinos have caused in our five non-metropolitan areas, where one might suspect significant economic impact would produce community growth. Here are the population numbers for those communities, the census of 1990 first and the 2020 census next:

LaGrange 1,990-825

Caruthersville 7,389-5,562

Cape Girardeau 34,435-39,540

Boonville 7,095-7,969

St. Joseph 71,852-72,473

Five thousand jobs are gone. Limited population growth in some places or losses in others do not indicate casinos are causing their host cities to flourish. Admission Fees are dropping by the thousands, cutting funding for their host cities in half.

We mentioned in an earlier the industry’s claim that casinos “give back generously. Here’s the truth:

Casino “donations” or “contributions” to local causes are pennies on the dollar. Charitable giving during the last six fiscal years has averaged 0.000391% of their adjusted gross revenues. Their adjusted gross receipts have totaled almost $10.5 Billion in those years and their total charitable giving has been just $4.1 million. That’s less than pocket change. And most of those who read these entries give far more than four-ten thousandth of our personal revenues to charities each year.

Again, we have charted the “giving generously” figures for each casino for the last six fiscal years. But we don’t have room for the charts in this post. They are available, though.

A few years ago, casinos started reporting how much their customers left behind for charitable donations. We have spotted six times when the customers provided more than the casinos did.

And that’s just fine with the industry, which fights every effort to restore funding to the towns that welcomed the casinos as great economic boosts for the area. Maybe for a while they were— thirty years ago. But now?

The casinos also do not mention fees in Amendment 2, and for millions of reasons. The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick every year and it’s been getting worse for a long time. It is going to get even worse for host cities if sports wagering is approved next month.

I often wonder if the thirteen host cities ever get reports from their association or consider Missouri Gaming Commission annual reports that track how their fee income has fallen off a cliff and sports wagering will not save it.

Do not look for sports wagering to lead to reopened closed restaurants in our casinos. Not if only two percent of the sports bettors walk through the turnstiles. At one time, local restaurants feared the casinos would take away their business. Today there’s far less competition from the casinos for the restaurant business in many of our towns.

One final thing before we go today:

The sports wagering proposal the casinos want to adopt in this election could be the prototype for expanded remote wagering in all other forms of gambling. As walk-in traffic continues to dwindle, the casinos will be looking for more remote attachments to existing games. Some casinos already have stuck their toes in those waters in recent years with hybrid table games—blackjack and other games in which people who can’t find room at the gaming table go to a computer nearby to place their bets. The tests have not generated many dollars, relatively, but tests have been run. Don’t be surprised if the casinos come back to our lawmakers and ask for remote slot machines and table games—again paying much less tax than those games pay now. It’s a characteristic of business that stacks the cards only for itself.

(We stayed at a casino hotel a few weeks ago and went to the breakfast bar where we placed an order and were given a tag for our table. A few minutes later, a robot playing a catchy tune, came around the corner, and came down the aisle to my table, my order on its tray. I took off the plate and the robot went back to the kitchen, trailing its little melody behind it. One nice thing, I suppose, is that I wasn’t given a choice of 15, 18, or 25 percent for a tip. I found myself wondering how soon there would be robots, not people, dealing the cards or spinning the wheel.)

There go more jobs.

Add the casino host cities to the list of those whose situations will get worse if Amendment 2 is approved with its sweetheart tax rate, its deductions and carryovers, and its reliance on customers who carry casinos in their pockets.

This kind of thing should be handled by our elected representatives and senators, not written by two industries who place profit over any services to the people of the state. But we have this proposal because our elected senators and representatives didn’t do their job. Voters are well-advised to give them another chance by defeating a proposal that enriches the casinos and the pro sports teams and impoverishes our educators, our veterans, and the casinos’ own host cities.

Vote for Amendment 2 if you want. But don’t do it if you think it will benefit anybody but the casinos and the sports teams, no matter what they tell you on the television or with misinformation you will find in your mailbox.

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Fact-Checking the VP Debate

Posted on October 4, 2024 by bpriddy

We turn again to Daniel Dale and his staff of fact-checkers at CNN to straighten out the information that gushed at us during Tuesday’s debate among the candidates for Vice-President. We use the CNN analysis because it does not just offer true-false responses but because it places remarks in contest.

As has been the case with previous presidential debates (Trump vs. Biden and Trump Vs. Harris), the predominant questions about truth and shades of truth are from the Republican side. While President Trump, after the debate with VP Harris complained he had been fact-checked far more frequently than Harris had been, the observation is merited that his arguments merited checking more than hers.

In political debates, candidates limited by time sometimes speak in headlines that do not allow more complete explanations. That is when the checkers step in with context that helps consumers make their own evaluations of the accuracy or the (sometimes intentional) inaccuracy of remarks.

As we have reviewed these findings, we find Dale and his staff found fifteen statements from Vance that were questionable but only two from Walz.

One Walz statement was branded as “false;” the other statement “needs context.”

In Vance’s case, five needed context, four were misleading, five were false and one overstated a statistic.

Here’s how the CNN staff appraised the debate points:

Vance mischaracterizes Harris’ role on border policy

Sen. JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the “border czar” during the Biden administration. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outlets, including CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Walz on jobs from Biden’s climate law

Touting the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate law for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, her running mate, Tim Walz, spoke of how the law created “200,000 jobs in the country,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.

Facts First: This claim needs context. While it’s clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs were created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “200,000” figure includes jobs that companies have promised to create but aren’t finalized. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have come up with smaller figures.

There are several data sets that track climate law investments, all of which differ slightly. Walz’s number of jobs created by President Joe Biden’s climate law is slightly smaller than a June tally by communications group Climate Power that found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies following the IRA passage through May 2024.

E2, another clean energy group that tracks Inflation Reduction Act-related investments and jobs, has counted over 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced from August 2022 to May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power number. A recent report from the US Department of Energy found 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.

Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power’s topline number also didn’t distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs at those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

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Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there’s no question there’s a huge amount of clean energy investment, and a significant number of new jobs building EVs and renewables like wind and solar are being created by the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. The 2024 Energy Department report showed clean energy jobs made up more than half of the total for new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate twice as large as the overall US economy.

The report also acknowledged how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector from the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs that are being created.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Vance on migrants in Springfield, Ohio

Sen. JD Vance said that schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.”

“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed … because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s statement, referencing the Ohio town subject to a firestorm of misinformation about Haitian migrants this summer, is misleading.

We don’t know the immigration status of each and every immigrant in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians have official permission to live and work legally in the US. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And many have “temporary protected status,” which shields Haitians in the US from deportation and allows them to live and work here for a limited period of time. Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Danya Gainor

Vance’s claims about Biden-Harris immigration executive orders

Sen. JD Vance said that the United States has a “historic immigration crisis” because Vice President Kamala Harris “wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies” with “94 executive orders” that did things like “suspending deportations” and “decriminalizing illegal aliens.”

Facts First: While the Biden-Harris administration has signed dozens of executive orders about immigration, Vance’s comments about the administration decriminalizing illegal immigration through executive order aren’t true. Harris did, however, say she supported decriminalizing illegal immigration – a position she’s since reversed.

When she was a candidate for president and a sitting US senator, Harris filled out an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in which she expressed support for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.

Harris has since acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an August interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Walz falsely claims Project 2025 calls for a pregnancy registry

Gov. Tim Walz claimed that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation think tank’s detailed right-wing blueprint for the next Republican administration, says people will have to register their pregnancies.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.

Facts First: Walz’s claim is false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that a Trump-Vance administration is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.

Project 2025 is firmly anti-abortion; it proposes, among other things, to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication and devices. But it does not propose to require people to register their pregnancies.

The Project 2025 policy document, released in 2023, proposes that the federal government take steps to make sure it is receiving detailed after-the-fact, anonymous data from every state on abortions and miscarriages. The vast majority of states already submit anonymous abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a voluntary basis – the CDC has collected “abortion surveillance” data for decades – and all states already submit some anonymous miscarriage data under federal law.

Minnesota, the state run by Walz, is one of the states that voluntarily submits abortion data to the CDC. And Minnesota posts anonymous abortion and miscarriage data on the state health department’s website every year.

The Project 2025 policy document says the existing federal Department of Health and Human Services should “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

The document also says the department “should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” And it says, “In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”

In the context of the CDC, the word “monitoring” is used to mean statistical tracking. For example, the existing CDC webpage that displays anonymous state-by-state abortion data says, “Since 1987, CDC has monitored abortion-related deaths” through its Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. Neither “monitored” nor “surveillance” means the CDC is spying on individuals during their pregnancies.

Trump dodged the question when asked in a Time magazine interview earlier this year whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies to ensure compliance with an abortion ban, saying, “I think they might do that” but that “you’ll have to speak to the individual states.” Walz is free to criticize Trump for this answer, but nowhere in the interview did Trump make an actual proposal to create a new pregnancy-monitoring government body.

Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino wrote on social media last month that Project 2025 “merely recommends CDC restore the decades-long practice of compiling *anonymous* abortion statistics for all states” – and noted that Minnesota already compiles such data.

Vance denied that a Trump-Vance administration would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency when asked by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell.

“Certainly, we won’t,” Vance said.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

Vance falsely says he never supported a national abortion ban

Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.

Facts First: This is false. Vance previously said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” in 2022 while running for his Senate seat in Ohio. He did say that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion in 2023. During the current campaign, however, Vance has deferred to former President Donald Trump’s stated view that each state should set its own abortion policy.

In 2022, while running for his Senate seat in Ohio, Vance said, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. He also said on his website during that Senate campaign that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he favored “eliminating abortion”; these words remained on his website until Trump selected him as his running mate in July. And Vance said in an interview during the 2022 campaign that he wanted abortion to be “primarily a state issue,” but also said, “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”

In November 2023, Vance told CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett in the Capitol: “It seems to suggest there needs to be some more interest in this building among Republicans in setting some sort of minimum national standard, whether that it’s 15 weeks or 20 weeks or the different ranges that are thrown out there.” He said, “We keep giving in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this matter. Because if it doesn’t … then the pro-life movement is basically not gonna exist, I think, for the next couple of years.”

Vance, emphasizing his support for certain exceptions to abortion bans, said on CNN in December 2023, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t. And I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for life of the mother, for rape, and so forth.”

During his vice presidential campaign this year, Vance has aligned himself with Trump’s professed desire for a state-by-state approach to abortion policy rather than federal legislation. Vance said on Fox News in July, “Alabama’s going to make a different decision from California. That is a reasonable thing. And that’s how I think we build some bridges and have some respect for one another.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck

Vance falsely claims Biden administration unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Biden-Harris administration had unfrozen more than $100 billion in Iranian assets, which he said were then used to buy weapons.

“Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially, launching against the United States as well,” Vance said, referring to Iran’s Tuesday attack on Israel.

Facts first: Vance’s statement is false. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration unfroze more than $100 billion in Iranian assets. As part of a prisoner exchange last year, $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets were moved from restricted accounts in South Korea to restricted accounts in Qatar to be used for humanitarian purchases. The process for Iran to be able to spend those funds was expected to take months, if not years.

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House lawmakers that the US and Qatar had reached a “quiet understanding” not to allow Iran to access any of the $6 billion in Iranian funds for the time being, according to a source familiar.

Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, sanctions waivers would allow Iran to access frozen assets abroad. Estimates varied, but some said those assets could be worth more than $100 billion. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was California attorney general at the time, had no involvement with the nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew under former President Donald Trump.

From CNN’s Jennifer Hansler

Vance on Harris’ energy policies and China

Speaking about combatting climate change and bringing down planet-warming emissions, Sen. JD Vance suggested the fix was to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of making climate change worse by supporting clean energy, saying her policies “actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas.”

Facts First: A few parts of Vance’s claim are misleading and need context. First, while Vance is correct that China is currently the biggest global supplier of clean energy technologies and components, the Biden administration is trying to stop that by bringing more clean energy manufacturing to the US and moving the global supply chain away from China.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history, was designed to bring more manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, large batteries and other components to the United States. The law’s EV tax credits were crafted with the intention of moving the EV supply chain away from China, which has long dominated the industry. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who authored much of the IRA, changed its federal EV tax credits to move the supply chain for the critical minerals needed for things like EV batteries, solar panels and smaller rechargeable batteries away from China.

China will likely continue to dominate the global clean energy supply chain in the coming years. But the US is catching up; companies have announced over $346 billion worth of investments building new clean energy projects and factories in the US since the law was passed. According to the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and MIT, in the last two years, companies have invested $89 billion in clean energy manufacturing alone – a 305% increase from the prior two years.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Vance on a Minnesota ‘born alive’ law

Sen. JD Vance claimed during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that Gov. Tim Walz signed a law that says doctors aren’t required to provide lifesaving care to babies that survive a botched abortion.

“The statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said, adding that the law is “fundamentally barbaric.”

Facts First: This needs context. The law Walz signed in 2023 says that an infant born alive must be “fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and must be provided “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.” While previous Minnesota law said that medical personnel needed to take steps to “preserve the life and health” of that infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, the new law says that medical personnel must take steps to “care” for the infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.

The key difference between the “preserve the life and health” language and the “care” language, experts say, is that the new law gives families the option to choose comfort care if their infant does not have a legitimate chance of survival.

Dave Renner, director of advocacy for the Minnesota Medical Association, which supported Walz’s change to the law, said in a September email: “The difference is the old law only focused on preserving the life and health of the infant, even if there was no chance of the infant living. The result was that infants who have no chance of survival were taken away from the parent at birth for extraordinary efforts to ‘preserve the life’ even though they would not succeed. It did not allow the grieving parent to hold their infant.”

Dr. Erin Stevens, legislative chair of the Minnesota section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a September email that under the new law, “any infant that is born alive in any circumstances who has a legitimate chance of survival will be provided sound medical care to encourage survival. No one is sitting by depriving healthy infants of nutrition and care.”

Stevens said that people who decide to terminate pregnancies at a very advanced gestational age generally do so because of a “particularly dangerous or life-threatening” new diagnosis and are offered either a surgical abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) or a delivery after a C-section or the induction of labor.

“In the latter scenario of a delivery,” she said, “often that is pursued knowing the baby could be alive for a very short time after the birth but that that life would not be sustainable. Generally, these are the cases on mandated statistical reports of terminations that indicate live births after abortion. It’s not a ‘botched abortion,’ which many people envision as a D&E gone wrong resulting in a mangled, living baby. Many times, the reason a patient chooses the option of delivery is to have the opportunity to hold their baby and experience that precious time with them.”

She continued: “When there are mandates to resuscitate in such circumstances no matter how futile the attempts, the parents lose out on that opportunity and will never get that time back. It’s not only a waste of costly medical resources, but it’s cruel. Comfort care is provided as clinically appropriate.”

Former President Donald Trump has previously claimed that the new law allows the execution of Minnesota babies after birth. That is still murder in the state.

“This change does not allow ‘the execution of babies’ and to suggest so does not understand the change,” Renner said.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jack Forrest

Vance claims DHS ‘effectively lost’ 320,000 children

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Department of Homeland Security has “effectively lost” 320,000 children.

“You ask about family separation. Right now, in this country, we have 320,000 children that the department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said, referring to separating migrant families.

“Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’ wide-open southern border,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said.

Facts First: This claim needs context. An August 2024 report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 (which includes two years and four months under the Trump administration). The report added that the number could be larger, given that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children were not given notices to appear in court. The report said that without the ability to monitor those children, ICE has “no assurances” those children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” The report does not say for certain that those children are being used in drug trafficking or are victims of sex trafficking.

The report, released August 17, said that of 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) transferred or released from Homeland Security or Health and Human Services custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 “failed to appear for their immigration court hearings.”

The report also said that ICE failed to issue a “Notice to Appear” for 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children in that timeline and that those children “therefore do not yet have an immigration court date.”

By not issuing the notices, the report says, “ICE limits its chances of having contact with UCs when they are released from HHS’ custody, which reduces opportunities to verify their safety. Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN last month: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”

Some right-leaning outlets, such as the New York Post and the Washington Times, took the report from the Office of Inspector General and combined those numbers, reaching the 320,000 figure of migrant children who are unaccounted for.

From CNN’s Jack Forrest

Vance’s claim about Trump’s comments to protesters on January 6

Sen. JD Vance claimed that then-President Donald Trump said protesters should protest peacefully on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was attacked and overrun by Trump supporters.

“He said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” Vance said.

Facts First: This claim leaves out some key context. During his speech, Trump did tell protestors to “peacefully” make their voices heard and, in the same speech, told protesters they should “fight like hell” and used other combative language.

During his speech that day, Trump told those attending: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump, however, also made numerous other remarks in the speech in which he struck a far more combative tone.

Trump, for example, urged Republicans to stop fighting like a boxer “with his hands tied behind his back,” saying, “We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder.” Trump told marchers, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.” After urging congressional Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College results, Trump said, “And fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”

Trump alleged there would be dire consequences if his supporters did not take immediate action – saying that, if Joe Biden took office, “You will have an illegitimate president. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.” And he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump also spent much of the speech laying out a false case that the election was marred by massive fraud. And he falsely claimed, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand

Vance on the number of undocumented immigrants in the country under Biden administration

Sen. JD Vance claimed during the debate that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”

Facts First: That number is significantly higher than most estimates.

While the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the country difficult to track, multiple estimates show it is probably smaller than the number Vance floated during the debate. For instance, a 2024 report from Pew Research Center estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the US grew to 11 million in 2022. The report used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.

In 2024, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports curbing immigration and criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, estimated there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Vance on CBP One app

Sen. JD Vance claimed Tuesday that migrants who apply for legal status through a Customs and Border Protection app can have it granted “at the wave of a … wand.”

“There’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” he said.

Facts First: This claim is false. CBP One allows users to schedule appointments to claim asylum with border authorities, but that does not mean that their request will be granted. The app is not a means to make an asylum application. It allows applicants to enter their information through the app rather than going directly to a port of entry.

The app was launched in October 2020, during the Trump administration, so people could access Customs and Border Protection services on their mobile devices. It was expanded during the Biden administration and is now “the only way that migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry can preschedule appointments for processing and maintain guaranteed asylum eligibility,” according to the American Immigration Council.

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Vance on inflation under Trump

Sen. JD Vance claimed at Tuesday’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered 1.5% inflation for Americans.

“Because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim needs context. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was indeed 1.5% in May 2019; however, the average inflation rate was north of 2.1% from January 2017 through February 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its quick and deep economic recession in the US, inflation slowed drastically as Americans sheltered at home and reduced spending on in-person services.

Including the pandemic-distorted pricing environment, the CPI averaged 1.9% from 2017 through 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For comparison purposes, during the Biden-Harris administration, the CPI averaged an annual rate of 5.2%

Inflation’s rapid ascent – which began in early 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 before moderating to 2.5% in August 2024 – was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as snarled supply chains, and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Vance’s misleading claim that Trump ‘saved’ Obamacare

Sen. JD Vance said in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that former President Donald Trump could have “destroyed” the Affordable Care Act during his first term, but instead he “saved” it.

“He saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges. Also, during his term, the Department of Health and Human Services approved several state waiver requests that resulted in lower premiums for Affordable Care Act plans.

As president, Trump initially tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act but failed because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017.

Then, Trump put in place many measures aimed at undermining the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.

Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the Trump administration did approve several states’ waiver applications to implement reinsurance programs in their Affordable Care Act exchanges. This generally lowered Obamacare premiums by providing funding for insurers that enrolled many high-cost patients.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Vance on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Sen. JD Vance argued that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies have helped American workers, specifically citing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“If you look at what was so different about Donald Trump’s tax cuts, even from previous Republican tax cut plans, is that a lot of those resources went to giving more take-home pay to middle class and working-class Americans,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance’s comments need context. While the 2017 law reduced taxes for most people, the rich benefited far more than others, according to a 2018 analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contained an array of individual income tax reductions – including lowering many individual income tax rates, notably the top rate, from 39.6% to 37% for the highest earners.

More than 60% of the benefits were expected to go to those whose incomes are in the top 20%, and they were projected to get the largest bump in after-tax income, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Only a little more than a quarter of those in the lowest-income households would see their taxes reduced, and they were projected to have a very small bump in after-tax income.

Most middle-income taxpayers were expected to see a tax cut, but their boost in after-tax income was projected to be smaller than those at the top of the income ladder.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Vance says illegal guns are flowing into the US from Mexico

Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday claimed that part of the United States’ issue with gun violence stems from Mexican drug cartels smuggling guns into the country from across the border.

“Thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel … then the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance’s claim is misleading. There is a proliferation of illegal guns crossing the US-Mexico border – but they are going from the US into Mexico, not the other way around.

Mexico has been plagued by gun violence for years – and the Mexican government has pinned bloodshed on the free flow of guns over the border from the United States.

An estimated 200,000 guns are trafficked from the US into Mexico each year, the Mexican Foreign Ministry has said – an average of nearly 550 per day. In 2021, Mexico sued several US-based gun manufacturers claiming they “design, market, distribute and sell guns in ways” that arm cartels in Mexico.

Mexico strictly controls the sale of firearms. There is only one gun store in Mexico, and it’s controlled by the army. That makes the large-scale smuggling of guns from Mexico into the US, where laws are laxer and gun stores plentiful, unfeasible.

From CNN’s Michael Williams

Fact Checking The Debate

Posted on September 13, 2024 by bpriddy

We don’t usually post something on Friday but the timing of the debate and its evaluation of it fits the weeks schedule, so we return to CNN and its fact-checker Daniel Dale and his staff. When first published on the CNN Politics web page, it carried the message that it would take 38 minutes to read. We publish it to be consistent with previous fact-checking postings.

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Former President Donald Trump delivered more than 30 false claims during Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, CNN’s preliminary count found – as he did during his June debate against President Joe Biden.

Trump again delivered a staggering quantity and variety of false claims, some of which were egregious lies about topics including abortion, immigration and the economy.

Harris was far more accurate than Trump; CNN’s preliminary count found just one false claim from the vice president, though she also added some claims that were misleading or lacking in key context.

Here is a fact check of some of the remarks made by each candidate.

Harris on Trump’s tariff plan

Former Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s policies would result in a “Trump sales tax” that would raise prices for middle class families by about $4,000 a year.

Facts First: The claim is reasonable enough, but it’s worth explaining that Harris is referring to Trump’s proposal to implement new tariffs if he returns to the White House.

Trump has called for adding a tariff of 10% to 20% on all imports from all countries, as well as another tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports.

Together, a 20% across-the-board tariff with a 60% tariff on Chinese-made goods would amount to about a $3,900 annual tax increase for a middle-income family, according to the Center for American Progress Action Fund a liberal think tank.

If the 20% tariff was just 10%, as Trump sometimes suggests, the total impact for middle-class families could be $2,500 a year, according to CAP.

Separate studies estimate that the impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs would also raise prices for families, but by a lower amount. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated the new duties would cost the average middle-class household about $1,700 annually. And the Tax Policy Center said the impact could be $1,350 a year for middle-income households.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump on inflation during his presidency

Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that there was virtually no inflation during his administration.

“I had no inflation, virtually no inflation,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false. Cumulative inflation over the course of Trump’s presidency was about 7.8%.

Inflation was low at the end of Trump’s term, having plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic. The year-over-year inflation rate was about 1.4% in January 2021, the month Trump left office.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Trump claims migrants are arriving to US from prisons and mental institutions

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a claim that migrants are arriving to the US after fleeing prisons and mental institutions.

“We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump claimed. Trump makes this claim often, and he’s often alleged that jails and mental institutions are being emptied out deliberately to somehow dump people upon the U.S.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim.

Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN last year they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing.

Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.

In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – a 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart News about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents that Venezuela had done this. But that vague and unverified claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated.

And a second article that Cheung cited at the time, about Mexico’s president having freed 2,685 prisoners, was not about migration at all; that article simply explained that the president had freed them “as part of an effort to free those who have not committed serious crimes or were being held unjustly.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on the number of undocumented immigrants under Biden

Former President Donald Trump claimed during Tuesday night’s debate that “21 million people” are crossing the border monthly into the United States under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: This number is false. The total number of “encounters” at the northern and southern borders from February 2021 through July 2024, at both legal ports of entry and in between those ports, was roughly 10 million, far less than Trump’s “21 million” figure.

An “encounter” does not mean a person was let into the country; some people encountered are promptly sent away. Even if you added the estimated number of “gotaways” (people who evaded the Border Patrol to enter illegally), which House Republicans have said is more than 1.7 million during the Biden-Harris administration, “the totals would still be vastly smaller than 15, 16 or 18 million,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute think tank, said in an email in June, when Trump made similar claims.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Harris on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday night’s debate that the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Trump would “essentially be immune from any misconduct” undertaken by him while in the White House.

“Let’s talk about extreme and understand the context in which this election in 2024 is taking place. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” she said.

Facts First: This needs context. In their decision in July in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought in his federal election subversion case. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office.

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority.

From CNN’s Devan Cole

Trump repeats false claim about migrants eating people’s pets

Former President Donald Trump repeated a false claim at Tuesday’s debate that has been promoted by numerous prominent Republicans in the past week, including Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance. Trump claimed that Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, are stealing people’s pet dogs and cats and eating them.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Facts First: This is false. The City of Springfield and the local police have said they have seen no evidence for the claim – which appeared to originate from a Facebook post in which someone purporting to be a local resident passed along what they said was a story about their neighbor’s daughter’s friend.

In a statement to CNN on Monday, a spokesperson for the City of Springfield said “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

The Springfield News-Sun reported that “the Springfield Police Division said Monday morning they have received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.”

Vance acknowledged on social media on Tuesday that it is “possible” that the “rumors” he has heard from local residents “will turn out to be false,” though he also encouraged people to “keep the cat memes flowing.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Michael Williams

Trump on who pays for tariffs

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday the United States took in billions of dollars from China as a result of his tariffs.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about how tariffs work is false. A US tariff is paid by importing businesses in the United States – not other countries – when a foreign-made good arrives at the American border.

Here’s how tariffs work: When the United States puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff usually comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer.

Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission, have found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.

It’s true that the US Treasury has collected more than $242 billion from the tariffs Trump imposed on imported solar panels, steel and aluminum, and Chinese-made goods – but those duties were paid by US importers, not the country of China.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Harris on her stance on fracking

During Tuesday night’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I made it that very clear in 2020 – I will not ban fracking,” though she had said, while running in the Democratic presidential primary in 2019, that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

Facts First: This is misleading. Harris did not make her position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence; Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate.

Rather, she said that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would not ban fracking if he was elected president. Harris said in the 2020 vice presidential debate: “Joe Biden will not end fracking”; “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”

It made sense that Harris was addressing Biden’s plans at the time given that the president sets administration policy. But contrary to her claim on Tuesday, neither of these 2020 debate comments made clear that she personally held a different view on the subject than she had the year prior.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Ella Nilsen

Trump falsely claims US experienced highest inflation ever under Biden

Former President Donald Trump said the US experienced “the highest inflation” ever under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Facts First: Trump’s claim that inflation was at its highest under the Biden-Harris administration is false. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit 9.1% in June 2022. That wasn’t the highest ever recorded. Rather, it was the highest inflation rate in nearly forty years. For instance, in 1980, inflation hit nearly 15%, according to CPI data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some of the earliest inflation data the BLS maintains indicates that inflation was even higher in 1917, when it was trending at nearly 18%.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Trump on Harris’ previous run for president

Former President Donald Trump claimed that when Vice President Kamala Harris previously ran for the presidency, during the 2020 election cycle, she was the very first candidate to drop out of a crowded Democratic primary.

“When she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed,” Trump claimed, referring to Harris’ 2020 bid, while arguing that Harris didn’t receive any votes this primary cycle because President Joe Biden was still at top of the ticket during the primaries.

Facts First: This is false. Harris was far from the first candidate to drop out of that Democratic primary when she exited the race in early December 2019

Harris was preceded by the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate, plus some others.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

 Trump on Harris’ border role

Former President Donald Trump claimed at Tuesday’s debate that Vice President Kamala Harris has been the Biden administration’s “border czar.”

“Remember that she was a border czar,” Trump said. “She doesn’t want to be called the border czar because she’s embarrassed by the border.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day). Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Trump claims legal scholars wanted states, not the federal government, to decide how to regulate abortion

Former President Donald Trump repeated a version of one of his frequent claims Tuesday night that legal scholars wanted Roe v. Wade overturned so individual states could instead decide how to regulate abortion.

“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened,” Trump said. “It’s the vote of the people, now it’s not tied up in the federal government.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Many legal scholars wanted the right to have an abortion preserved in federal law, as several told CNN when Trump made a similar claim in April.

Some legal scholars who support abortion rights had wanted Roe written in a different way, including even the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but that isn’t the same as saying that “every legal scholar” believed Roe should be overturned and sent to the states.

“Any claim that all legal scholars wanted Roe overturned is mind-numbingly false,” Rutgers Law School professor Kimberly Mutcherson, a legal scholar who supported the preservation of Roe, said in April.

“Donald Trump’s claim is flatly incorrect,” another legal scholar who did not want Roe overturned, Maya Manian, an American University law professor and faculty director of the university’s Health Law and Policy Program, said in April.

Trump’s claim is “obviously not” true, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who is an expert on the history of the US abortion debate. Ziegler, who also did not want Roe overturned, said in an April interview: “Most legal scholars probably track most Americans, who didn’t want to overturn Roe … It wasn’t as if legal scholars were somehow outliers.”.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen

Trump blames Rep. Nancy Pelosi for poor security at the Capitol on Jan. 6

Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, was responsible for inadequate security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn’t do her job,” he said.

Facts First: This claim is false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security. Capitol security is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. Pelosi’s office has explicitly said she was not presented with an offer of 10,000 National Guardsmen as Trump has claimed, telling CNN last year that claims to the contrary are “lies.” And even if Pelosi had been told of an offer of National Guard troops, she would not have had the power to turn it down. The speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which reports to the president (whose authority was delegated, under a decades-old executive order, to the Secretary of the Army).

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump claims Harris met with Putin days before Russian invasion

Former President Donald Trump claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris met with Russian President Vladimir Putin days before Russia invaded Ukraine and failed to deter him from the invasion.

“They sent her to negotiate peace before this war started,” Trump said, referring to Harris. “Three days later, he went in, and he started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Harris was not sent to negotiate peace, and she has never met with Putin. In reality, she met with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Munich Security Conference in the days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was not at the conference.

“Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris,” a Kremlin spokesperson said in July, according to a state-owned Russian news agency.

The Biden administration was still trying to deter an invasion of Ukraine at the time of Harris’ 2022 trip to the conference in Germany, but top administration officials, including President Joe Biden himself, made clear that they believed Putin was already moving toward invading. As Harris was on her way to Germany, Biden told reporters that he thought a Russian attack “will happen in the next several days.”

CNN reported on the day the Munich conference began that a senior administration official said Harris had three key objectives: “Focus on the ‘fast-changing’ situation on the ground, maintain full alignment with partners and send a clear message to Russia that the US prefers diplomacy but is ready in case of Russian aggression.”

The Munich conference was held from February 18 to February 20, 2022; Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump repeats familiar claim about military equipment left in Afghanistan during withdrawal

In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump repeated a familiar claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when President Joe Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.

“We wouldn’t have left $85 billion worth of brand new, beautiful military equipment behind,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure – it’s closer to $83 billion – for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A fraction of this funding was for equipment.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris claims Trump left with worst unemployment since Great Depression

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday claimed that former President Donald Trump left office “with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”

Facts First: Harris’ claim is false.

In January 2021, when Trump left office, the official unemployment rate was 6.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.8% in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down global economies, including that of the US. That was the highest rate since 1939, according to BLS historical records.

Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. But by the time Trump left office, the unemployment rate had gone down.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump’s claim about jobs created under Biden administration

Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that 818,000 of the jobs created under the Biden-Harris administration from April 2023 to March 2024 were a “fraud.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false and needs additional context.

Trump was referring to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recently released preliminary estimate for its annual benchmark revision that suggested there were 818,000 fewer jobs for the year ended in March 2024 than were initially reported.

Economic data is often revised, especially as more comprehensive information becomes available, to provide a clearer, more accurate picture of the dynamics at play.

Every year – including the four years when Trump was president – the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a thorough review of the survey-based employment estimates from the monthly jobs report and reconciles those estimates with fuller employment counts measured by the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program.

This annual process, called a benchmarking, provides a near-complete employment count, because the BLS can correct for sampling and modeling errors from the surveys and re-anchor those estimates to unemployment insurance tax records. The revision process is two-fold: A preliminary estimate is released in mid-August, and the final revision is issued in February, alongside the January jobs report.

While the recently announced preliminary revision (which amounts to 0.5% of total employment) was the largest downward revision since 2009 (which was -902,000, or -0.7%), there have been other large revisions made in recent years – notably a downward revision of 514,000 jobs (-0.3%) for the year ended in March 2019, during the Trump administration.

The preliminary revision was larger than typical, but economists and even a Trump-appointed BLS commissioner have publicly stated that there is nothing nefarious at play. Revisions of this size typically happen at turning points in the economy, when the BLS’ methodology is less reliable, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Additionally, the pandemic had a seismic effect on the economy as well as the gold standard methods used to measure it, so this large revision is likely a reflection of that. Specifically, the BLS’ model for capturing business “births and deaths” is likely overstating new firm formation while underestimating deaths, Oxford Economics’ Chief US Economist Ryan Sweet told CNN.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump claims Biden took money from China, Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump claimed that President Joe Biden has taken money from China and Ukraine, including $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow.

Facts First: There is no public evidence that Joe Biden received money from any foreign entities while in office or as a private citizen. While investigations by House Republicans have found that Biden family members who have been involved in business, including his son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden (“and their related companies”), have received over $18 million from foreign entities, they have found no proof to date that the president himself received any foreign money.

Roughly a year after launching their impeachment inquiry into Biden and more than three years into Biden’s presidency, the closest House Republicans have gotten to connecting the president to money earned by his family members is in finding that the president received personal checks from his brother while he was a private citizen after his vice presidency. Republicans have questioned the legitimacy of these transactions and used them to suggest that Joe Biden did benefit from his brother’s relationships with foreign entities. But banking records provide substantial evidence that Joe Biden had made loans to his brother and then was paid back without interest, as House Democrats have said.

Biden said at a presidential debate against Trump in 2020: “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”

The Washington Post dove into the allegations in 2022 that Hunter Biden received money from the wife of the Moscow mayor. But there’s no evidence that Joe Biden had any involvement regardless.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jeremy Herb

Trump falsely claims Biden orchestrated criminal cases against him

Former President Donald Trump repeated a claim he has made on numerous occasions during his campaign – that the Biden administration orchestrated a criminal election subversion case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, a criminal fraud case that was brought against him by a local district attorney in Manhattan, and a civil fraud case that was brought against him by the attorney general of New York state.

Facts First: This is false. There is no evidence that Biden or his administration were behind any of these cases. None of these officials reports to the president or even to the federal government.

Attorney General Merrick Garland testified to Congress in early June about the Manhattan case in which Trump was found guilty: “The Manhattan district attorney has jurisdiction over cases involving New York state law, completely independent of the Justice Department, which has jurisdiction over cases involving federal law. We do not control the Manhattan district attorney. The Manhattan district attorney does not report to us. The Manhattan district attorney makes its own decisions about cases that he wants to bring under his state law.”

As he did in his conversation with Musk, Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg. But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s employment decision. Colangelo and Bragg were colleagues in the New York attorney general’s office before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris overstates the effect of the $50,000 start-up deduction she proposed

Vice President Kamala Harris implied Tuesday that all prospective start-up business owners will be able to take advantage of the $50,000 tax deduction she’s proposing for new small businesses, saying that it will help them “pursue their ambitions.”

“I have a plan to give startup businesses $50,000 tax deduction to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work,” Harris said.

Facts First: Harris’ point about new business owners being able to benefit from the deduction she’s proposed lacks context.

“Businesses that fail before they begin to turn a profit won’t be able to utilize the deduction, because to take a deduction you have to have taxable income to deduct against,” Erica York, a senior economist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN.

In other words, the tax deduction may not ultimately help businesses owners get off the ground and running initially. However, it may help lower their tax burden over time, but only if they turn a profit.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Trump claims Biden job growth was all ‘bounce-back jobs’

Former President Donald Trump said of the Biden-Harris administration, “the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs” that “bounced back and it went to their benefit,” but “I was the one that created them.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims that the job growth during the Biden-Harris administration presidency has been all “bounce-back” gains where people went back to their old jobs is not fully correct.

More than 21 million jobs were lost under Trump in March and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. Following substantial relief and recovery measures, the US started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million jobs from May 2020 through December 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The recovery continued after Biden took office, with the US reaching and surpassing its pre-pandemic (February 2020) employment totals in June 2022.

The job gains didn’t stop there. Since June 2022 and through August 2024, the US has added nearly 6.4 million more jobs in what’s become the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record. In total under the Biden-Harris administration, around 16 million jobs have been added.

But it’s not entirely fair nor accurate to say the jobs gained were all “bounce-back” or were people simply returning to their former positions.

The pandemic drastically reshaped the employment landscape. For one, a significant portion of the labor force did not return due to early retirements, deaths, long Covid or caregiving responsibilities.

Additionally, because of shifts in consumer spending patterns as well as health-and-safety implications, public-facing industries could not fully reopen or restaff immediately. Some of those workers found jobs in other industries or used the opportunity to start their own businesses.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump falsely says he rebuilt the US military

Former President Donald Trump repeated Tuesday past claims that he “rebuilt our entire military.”

“We’re going to end up in a third world war, and it will be a war like no other. Because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan,” he said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim to have rebuilt the entire military is false. “This claim is not even close to being true. The military has tens of thousands of pieces of equipment, and the vast majority of it predates the Trump administration,” Todd Harrison, an expert on the defense budget and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, told CNN in November.

Harrison said in a November email: “Moreover, the process of acquiring new equipment for the military is slow and takes many years. It’s not remotely possible to replace even half of the military’s inventory of equipment in one presidential term. I just ran the numbers for military aircraft, and about 88% of the aircraft in the U.S. military inventory today (including Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft) were built before Trump took office. In terms of fighters in particular, we still have F-16s and F- 15s in the Air Force that are over 40 years old.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on US and European aid to Ukraine

Former President Donald Trump complained that the US had given $250 billion to $275 billion in aid to Ukraine while European countries had given just $100 billion to $150 billion even though they are located closer to Ukraine.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. In total, European countries have contributed significantly more aid to Ukraine than the US has during and just before the Russian invasion began in early 2022, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany.

The Kiel Institute, which closely tracks aid to Ukraine, found that, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion in February 2022) through June 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $207 billion to Ukraine, in military, financial and humanitarian assistance, compared to about $109 billion (€98.4 billion) committed by the US. Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had actually been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $122 billion (€110.21 billion) for Europe compared to about $83 billion (€75.1 billion) for the US.

In addition, Europe had committed more total military aid to Ukraine, at about $88 billion (79.57 billion euro) to about $72 billion (64.87 billion euro) for the US. The US narrowly led on military aid that had actually been allocated, at about $56.91 billion for the US (51.58 billion euro) to about $56.84 billion for Europe (51.52 billion euro), but that was nowhere near the lopsided margin Trump suggested.

It’s important to note that it’s possible to come up with different totals using different methodology. And the Kiel Institute found that Ukraine itself was getting only about half of the money in a 2024 US bill that had widely been described as a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine; the institute said the rest of the funds were mostly going to the Defense Department.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on crime statistics

Former President Donald Trump claimed during the debate on Tuesday that “crime in this country is through the roof.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that crime rates are up is false. And while it is true that the FBI’s most recent data did not include some large cities, crime counts still show a downward trend as both violent crime and property crime dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024.

There are limitations to the FBI-published data from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data and the submitted data usually has some errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime.

The preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% decline in murder and a roughly 6% decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in Trump’s last calendar year in office in 2020. The preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and roughly 15% decline in overall violent crime.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said in an email to CNN last week: There is ample evidence that crime is falling in 2024 and murder specifically fell at the fastest – or one of the fastest – paces ever recorded in 2023 and again in 2024.”

Asher continued: “The evidence comes from a variety of sources including the FBI’s quarterly data, the CDC, the Gun Violence Archive, and our newly launched Real-Time Crime Index. We show a 5 percent decline in violent crime – including a 16 percent decline in murder – and a 9 percent decline in property crime through June 2024 in over 300 cities with available data so far this year. Data from these various sources suggest the US murder rate was down significantly in 2023 relative to 2020/2021 highs but still slightly above 2019’s level.”

After Trump claimed in June that “crime is so much up,” Anna Harvey, a political science professor and director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University, noted to CNN that the claim is contradicted both by the data from the FBI and from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents 70 large US police forces. She said: “It would be more accurate to say that crime is so much down.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump falsely claims Central Park Five pleaded guilty

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Central Park Five pleaded guilty to crimes, and that the five teenagers “badly hurt a person, killed a person” in the 1989 attack.

Facts First: These claims are false. The Central Park Five did not plead guilty, they were convicted by a jury at trial (that conviction has since been vacated). Also, the five teenagers were accused of raping a jogger – not of murder.

Five teenagers who were accused of raping a jogger in 1989 were pressured into giving false confessions. They were exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence linked another person to the crime. The teenagers sued the city, and the case was settled in 2014.

A sixth teenager charged in the attack did plead guilty to robbery charges. His conviction was also overturned because there was no physical evidence connecting him to either the rape or the robbery, and because people who blamed the sixth teen later recanted.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Trump on ending the Nord Stream pipeline

Former President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that he “ended” the Nord Stream pipeline.

“I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Biden put it back on day one,” Trump said. “But he ended the XL pipeline – the XL pipeline in our country, he ended that. But he let the Russians build a pipeline going all over Europe and heading into Germany; the biggest pipeline in the world.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not “end” Nord Stream.

While he did sign a bill that included sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine in early 2022. The pipeline was damaged later that year in what has been described as a likely act of sabotage.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump falsely claims some states allow abortion after birth

Former President Donald Trump claimed that some states allow people to execute babies, in addition to allowing abortion in the ninth month, and he singled out the governors including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz for his stance on the issue.

On Walz, Trump said, “He also says execution after birth – it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born – is OK. And that’s not OK with me.”

“They have abortion in the ninth month. They even have – and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia not the current governor he’s doing an excellent job. But the governor before, he said, ‘The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby,’ in other words, ‘We’ll execute the baby,’” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about infanticide is false. No state allows for the execution of a baby after it is born.

That’s called infanticide, which is illegal in every state.

“Every state explicitly criminalizes infanticide,” Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said in June.

“There is no basis for this claim,” Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers Law School, also said at the time.

There are some cases in which parents choose palliative care, a kind of care that can provide relief for the symptoms and stress of a deadly illness or condition that gives the baby just minutes, hours or days to live. That is not the same as executing a baby.

Trump also misspoke. It was not the governor of West Virginia, it was the former Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam who made a controversial remark in 2019 that many Republicans said sounded like he supported infanticide. Northam, who is a pediatric neurologist, said his words were being misinterpreted. In any case, infanticide was not legal when Northam was governor of Virginia nor was it ever legal in West Virginia either.

As for abortions in the ninth month, Minnesota is one of a handful of states that allow abortion at any stage of a pregnancy, but it doesn’t mean that doctors perform them. Nationally, just 0.9% of abortions in 2021 – the latest year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has data – happened at 21 weeks or later. Many abortions at this point in the pregnancy are necessary due to serious health risks or lethal fetal anomalies. More than 93 percent of abortions were conducted before the 14th week of pregnancy, according to the CDC. In Minnesota, according to state data for 2022, of the 12,175 abortions in the state, only two happened between the 25 and 30th week of pregnancy. None happened after the 30^th week of pregnancy that year.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen

Trump on NATO funding

Former President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” for years, until he “got them to pay up” by threatening not to follow through on the alliance’s collective defense clause.

“For years, we were paying almost all of NATO,” he said. “We were being ripped off by European nations, both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying one of the statements you made before, ‘if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.’ Otherwise we would have never gotten it.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the US was “paying almost all of NATO” needs context. Official NATO figures show that in 2016, the last year before Trump took office, US defense spending made up about 71% of total defense spending by NATO members – a large majority, but not “almost all.” And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions to NATO that cover NATO’s organizational expenses and are set based on each country’s national income; the US was responsible for about 22% of those contributions in 2016.

The US share of total NATO military spending fell to about 65% in 2023. And the US is now responsible for about 16% of direct contributions to NATO, the same as Germany. Erwan Lagadec, an expert on NATO as a research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of its Transatlantic Program, said the US share was reduced from 22% “to placate Trump” and is a “sweetheart deal” given that the US makes up more than half of the alliance’s total GDP.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump claims Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance

In Tuesday night’s debate, former President Donald Trump once again claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris wants to get rid of private health insurance.

“But she won’t improve private insurance for people, private medical insurance,” Trump said. “That’s another thing she doesn’t want to give. People are paying privately for insurance that have worked hard and made money and they wanna have private – she wants everybody to be on government insurance where you wait six months for an operation that you need immediately.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is outdated. While Harris did say in her first presidential campaign in 2019 that she wanted to eliminate private health insurance, the plan she rolled out later that year included a role for private insurers, and as vice president, she has supported bolstering the Affordable Care Act. Coverage on the Obamacare exchanges are offered by private insurers.

At a CNN town hall in January 2019, Harris, who was then a California senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that she would eliminate private health insurance as a necessary part of implementing Medicare for All, a government-run health insurance proposal promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Harris was a co-sponsor of Sanders’ bill, which called for essentially getting rid of the private insurance market.

A furor erupted, and her national press secretary and an adviser quickly walked back her comment, saying she was open to multiple paths to Medicare for All. And private insurers were included in the plan she rolled out in July 2019.

“We will allow private insurers to offer Medicare plans as a part of this system that adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits,” Harris wrote in a Medium post about her plan. “Medicare will set the rules of the road for these plans, including price and quality, and private insurance companies will play by those rules, not the other way around.”

Since she was named President Joe Biden’s vice president, she has supported his efforts to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, which has led to a record number of people signing up for 2024 coverage from private insurers on the individual market.

Harris’ campaign has confirmed that the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris on manufacturing jobs

Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Tuesday that the economy has added over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs during the Biden-Harris administration.

Facts First: Harris was rounding up and was referring to labor market data available through July 2024, which showed the US economy added 765,000 manufacturing jobs from the first full month of the Biden-Harris administration, February 2021. Though it’s worth noting that the growth almost entirely occurred in 2021 and 2022 (with 746,000 manufacturing jobs added starting in February 2021) before a relatively flat 2023 and through the first seven months of 2024.

In August, the US economy lost an estimated 24,000 manufacturing jobs, bringing that tally down to 739,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary employment data released Friday.

The gain during the Biden-Harris era is, however, over 800,000 using non-seasonally-adjusted figures that are also published by the federal government – in fact, the non-seasonally adjusted gain is 874,000 through August – so there is at least a defensible basis for Harris’ claim. However, seasonally adjusted data smooths out volatility and is traditionally used to observe trends.

An estimated 172,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during former President Donald Trump’s administration, however, most of those losses occurred following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. From February 2017, the first full month that Trump was in office, through February 2020, the US economy added 414,000 manufacturing jobs, BLS data shows.

Presidential terms don’t start and end in a vacuum, and economic cycles can carry over regardless of party. Additionally, the ups and downs of the labor market and the broader economy are influenced by factors beyond a single president, although specific economic policies can influence economic and job growth.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace

Trump claims he saved Obamacare

Former President Donald Trump claimed in Tuesday night’s debate that he saved Obamacare, his predecessor’s landmark health reform law that Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal and replace.

“I had a choice to make: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be, or do I let it rot? And I saved it,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is misleading. The only reason Obamacare wasn’t repealed was because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges.

Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at rolling back Obamacare – stating that the administration’s official policy was “to seek the prompt repeal” of the Affordable Care Act.

Although Congress failed to repeal it, Trump did manage to undermine the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris on US military members on active duty in combat zones

Vice President Kamala Harris said Tuesday, “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Facts First: This claim is misleading. While US service members are not engaged in major wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan, US service members have come under fire in the Middle East repeatedly over the last year and increasingly been in harm’s way since Hamas’ attacks on Israel last October.

There are currently roughly 2,500 US troops in Iraq, who have come under repeated fire since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on October 7. Also since October, more US troops have deployed to the Middle East, including on Navy ships to the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea. CNN cited two US officials in reporting Tuesday that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group was last operating near the Gulf of Oman, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group is expected to leave the region this week after last operating in the same area.

Additionally, in the last several months, US service members have taken fire in the Middle East and been injured or killed. Last month, eight US service members were treated for traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation after a drone struck Rumalyn Landing Zone in Syria. In January, three US soldiers were killed, and dozens more were injured, in an attack on a small outpost in Jordan called Tower 22. The same month, two US Navy SEALs died after going missing one night at sea while trying to seize lethal aid being transported from Iran to Yemen.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Harris on manufacturing jobs

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Donald Trump said he was going to create manufacturing jobs. He lost manufacturing jobs.”

Facts First: This needs context.

It’s true that the US lost 178,000 manufacturing jobs during Trump’s presidency – but the loss overwhelmingly occurred because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency in January 2017 through February 2020, before the pandemic crash, there was a gain of 414,000 manufacturing jobs.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Harris on trade deficits

Vice President Kamala Harris said during Tuesday’s debate: “Let’s be clear that the Trump administration resulted in a trade deficit, one of the highest we’ve ever seen in the history of America.”

Facts First: This needs context.

It’s true that there were high trade deficits during the Trump administration. The seasonally adjusted 2020 goods trade deficit, about $901.5 billion, was the highest on record at the time.

However, Harris did not acknowledge that trade deficits have been even higher during the Biden-Harris administration. The seasonally adjusted goods trade deficit exceeded $1 trillion in each of 2021, 2022 and 2023.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Just the Facts. Part Two

Posted on August 28, 2024 by bpriddy

The Democrats wrapped up last week the most creative and glitzy convention we can recall—by far. It was a convention in which the delegates seemed genuinely to be having fun that transcended the usual partisan enjoyment of a convention.

Monday, we relied on CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale and his staff, who evaluated the presidential debate in July, to point out the untruths that were spoken each night of the Republican National Convention.

Today we look at the work done by Dale and his staff in evaluating the Democratic National Convention. This entry will be shorter than Monday’s entry, not because there were no untruths of various degrees spoken at the DNC—-because there were—-but because there were fewer of them during the DNC, in good part because the Democrats have no match for the one-person nonstop generator of nonstop lies that the Republicans had.

But we are posting these evaluations because the personal discussions we have with others in the 70 days or so before the election are likely to rely on what was said during the political conventions.

Again, we offer these entries because words are cheap on both sides, because political commercials are more manipulative than they are honest, and because we hope this can be a reference for you in stating our own statements honestly and questioning honestly the statements of others.

And once again we remind you that The Washington Post and FactCheck.org (which is based at the Annenberg School for Communication Trust at the University of Pennsylvania), Politifact (part of the Poynter Institute which has a truth-o-meter than goes from zero to “Pants on Fire”), The Associated Press which has a webpage at Fact Check: Political & News Fact Check, are among other fact checkers not only for politics but in some cases for other issues.

DEMOCRATS, FIRST NIGHT:

Democratic state and federal officeholders, including President Joe Biden, delivered some false, misleading or lacking-key-context claims on the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday.

Biden repeated misleading claims he has made in previous speeches about billionaires’ tax rates and foreign trade. He also overstated the extent to which his efforts to fight climate change are expected to reduce US carbon emissions in the next decade. He made an outdated claim about the number of Americans with health insurance. And he omitted key context about his administration’s infrastructure-building efforts, framing distant goals as if they were already achievements.

Speaking earlier in the night, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois denounced former President Donald Trump for having presided over a loss of jobs without mentioning the critical context that the losses occurred because of the Covid-19 pandemic that caused a global economic crash. A video played at the convention similarly left out important context on the respective job-related records of the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow falsely claimed that the Supreme Court has made Trump “completely immune from prosecution,” significantly overstating the court’s recent ruling.

And Rep. Robert Garcia of California misleadingly described Trump’s widely criticized 2020 comments about the possibility of scientists studying the use of injected disinfectant as a Covid-19 treatment, wrongly saying Trump had instructed Americans to inject bleach.

Here is a CNN fact check of these claims and some other remarks made on Monday.

Biden on taxing billionaires

During his speech, Biden asked the audience if they knew what the average billionaire in the United States pays in taxes.

“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what the average tax rate they pay? 8.2%,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden used this figure in a way that was misleading. As in previous remarks, including his State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation, from economists in his own administration, that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the alternative calculation itself; the administration economists who came up with it explained it in detail on the White House website in 2021. Biden, however, has tended to cite the figure without any context about what it is and isn’t, leaving open the impression that he was talking about what these billionaires pay under current law.

So, what do billionaires actually pay under current law? The answer is not publicly known, but experts say it’s clearly more than 8%.

“Biden’s numbers are way too low,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, told CNN in 2023. Gleckman said that in 2019, University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman “estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23% in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24% for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3,” numbers Biden has used in some previous speeches, “or even 8%.”

In February 2024, Gleckman provided additional calculations from the Tax Policy Center. The center found that the top 0.1% of households paid an average effective federal tax rate of about 30.3% in 2020, including an average income tax rate of 24.3%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Biden on carbon emissions

Speaking about his achievements on climate, Biden said his agenda made possible “cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.”

Facts First: Independent analysis shows the US is off-track to meet an ambitious goal Biden set early in his administration of slashing US carbon emissions in half by 2030 – even with his climate law.

Biden’s climate target of cutting emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels (2005 was the historical peak for US carbon emissions) by 2030 was always going to be a tough goal to achieve. When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, analysis suggested it would get the US most of the way toward its goal – about a 40% reduction in carbon emissions. The thinking was that regulations from agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency would help make up the rest of the goal.

But a recent analysis from the nonpartisan Rhodium Group found that the US isn’t on track to hit Biden’s goal of slashing US emissions in half by 2030. Rhodium estimates the US is currently on track to reduce emissions anywhere from 32-43% by that date. However, the report says the US could surpass Biden’s goal by 2035 if there are no major changes to current policies, finding that the US would likely pick up the pace of decarbonizing its transportation, power and heavy industry sectors in the 2030s compared to the 2020s.

One big impediment to Biden’s goal is the fact that the EPA’s marquee climate rules regulating emissions from vehicles and power plants are facing an onslaught of legal challenges and a skeptical US Supreme Court. And an even bigger question mark is the 2024 election and whether Biden will be replaced by another Democrat with similar climate ambitions or former President Donald Trump – who has vowed to reverse much of Biden’s climate agenda.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Biden’s claim about removing lead pipes from schools and homes

Biden, speaking about his bipartisan infrastructure law, said: “We’re removing every lead pipe from schools and homes, so every child can drink clean water.”

Facts First: This claim needs context. While the administration is spending $15 billion and working on federal regulations to remove all lead pipes from public drinking water systems over a decade, they may not be able to replace all pipes and service lines on private properties.

Lead drinking pipes can be found all over the country; some national estimates say the total number of lead service lines is around 9.2 million. Lead in drinking water is a major health concern for babies and young children, and Biden has made eradicating it a major priority. The Biden EPA proposed a major rule that, if finalized, would compel water utilities to gradually get rid of 100% of their lead pipes and service lines over 10 years.

The EPA estimates this effort will cost utilities $20 billion to $30 billion over that decade; $15 billion of that could be covered by the bipartisan infrastructure law, and there is an additional $11.7 billion available through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund that could be used for lead removal as well. Cities with lead pipes, including New Orleans, are currently trying to locate all of their lead pipes.

Besides funding, the other issue is the EPA rule as currently proposed doesn’t cover lead pipes or service lines on private property. Replacing these smaller pipes on private property that go into homes could present an even more complex and costly challenge. Though the Biden initiative will make a major dent in replacing the country’s lead pipes, it’s unlikely to be able to replace every single one on both private and public property.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Biden’s claim about trade ignores widening deficit under his presidency

In his speech, Biden said, “We used to import products and export jobs. Now we export American products and create American jobs right here in America.”

Fact First: This claim is misleading. So far this year, the United States has imported more goods than it has exported, leading to a seasonally adjusted trade deficit of more than $567 billion, according to figures from the US Census Bureau.

In fact, the goods trade deficit has widened since Biden took office. In 2020, the nation’s goods trade deficit was $901 billion. After Biden’s first year in office, it increased to over $1 trillion and has stayed above that threshold every subsequent year.

The dollar’s strength has played a role in widening the goods trade deficit, making it more expensive for other countries to buy US-produced goods, and at the same time, cheaper for Americans to buy goods abroad.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Biden on building electric vehicle charging stations

Speaking about his administration’s goal to create more clean energy jobs, Biden said IBEW workers were at work “installing 500,000 charging stations all across America” to power electric vehicles.

Facts First: This is more of a promise than a fact, but even so, it needs context. For a few reasons, it’s questionable whether the Biden administration will be able to meet its goal of installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations on US roads.

Installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations has long been one of Biden’s goals. The president initially proposed Congress spend $15 billion to make it a reality, but just half of that – $7.5 billion – passed as part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The latest data from the Department of Energy shows the United States is still a long way from that goal; there are currently more than 180,000 EV charging ports operating at over 66,000 station locations around the US.

Though the administration has said that could be backfilled by private investment, that change in funding could hinder the administration’s ability to meet the goal. The federal government has spent the last few years sending money to states; states can now unlock more than $900 million in funding for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, which the administration estimated will “help build” chargers across approximately 53,000 miles of US highways.

Over the next five years, the full $5 billion will be spent to build out a network of EV chargers on major highways. Another pot of $2.5 billion in grant funding is also available for states to apply to; in January, $623 million in grant funding went out the door to help counties, cities and tribes around the nation install new charging stations for electric vehicles and long-haul freight trucks.

But it’s been slow going. States are still in the process of selecting companies to actually build the charging stations, meaning it could still take months or even years to fully see the impact of the money around the nation.

There is also a wide range in how much different types of chargers cost, and individual states have a lot of leeway in deciding what kinds of chargers will go on their roads. DC fast chargers can charge a car to mostly full in 20 minutes to an hour and are meant to go on major highways and roads. Another kind of charger known as an L2 charger can take hours to charge a car to full. But DC fast chargers are much more expensive, costing around $100,000 compared to around $6,000 for an L2, Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior resident fellow at the think tank Third Way, has told CNN.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Biden on number of people with health insurance

Biden touted his achievements in expanding health insurance coverage to more Americans.

“More Americans have health insurance today than ever before in American history,” he said at the Democratic National Convention.

Facts First: Biden’s claim is outdated. While it’s true that health insurance coverage hit a record high last year, fewer people were insured in the first quarter of this year than in the spring of last year – in large part because a federal law that prevented states from winnowing their Medicaid rolls lapsed last year.

Some 130 million Americans had public health insurance coverage, such as Medicare or Medicaid, in the first quarter of this year, but that’s down from nearly 138 million people in the second quarter of last year, according to the latest National Health Interview Survey. The loss outpaces the gain of just under 3 million people in private health insurance plans. (A small number of people have both types of coverage.)

At the same time, the number of uninsured Americans rose to 27.1 million in the first quarter of this year, up from 23.7 million people in the spring of 2023. That pushed the uninsured rate up to 8.2%, from 7.2%, over that time period.

One main reason why health insurance coverage hit a record high last year was because of a Covid-19 pandemic relief provision that barred states from involuntarily disenrolling residents whom they deemed no longer qualify in exchange for enhanced federal funding. That prohibition was lifted in April 2023.

Only 81.7 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program this past April, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That compares to 93.9 million people in March 2023, before the provision lapsed.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Biden claims Trump will do “everything to ban abortion nationwide”

Biden said Monday that “Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide. Oh, he will.”

Facts First: Biden is making a prediction that we cannot definitively fact check, but the claim does not reflect Trump’s most recent comments on abortion and needs context.

While Trump regularly boasts that he played a key role in getting the US Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the country, Trump says it should be up to the states to decide how and when to restrict abortion. Polls show that the majority of Americans are against a federal abortion ban.

Throughout this most recent campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly ducked direct questions about his support for a federal ban on abortions, but he said in April that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected to the White House again. That statement reversed what he said in 2016 when he was first running for the presidency and was the opposite of statements he made throughout his time in office.

Some scholars are concerned that conservative advisers to Trump have encouraged him to ban abortions by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act, a method that could essentially create a federal ban without Trump needing to sign any legislation to do it.

The Victorian-era anti-vice law that is still on the books is not currently enforced. The law bans the mailing of “obscene” materials used to produce an abortion. Some scholars believe Trump could use the Justice Department to enforce a ban that would not just restrict people from sending the medication currently used in the majority of abortions through the mail, but would ban any kind of materials used to produce any kind of abortion.

Trump has not officially endorsed the enforcement of the Comstock Act, but it is a strategy some of his advisers have outlined as an option for Trump to restrict abortions nationwide.

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

California congressman’s misleading claim about Trump’s comments about Covid-19 and disinfectant

Garcia claimed, among other things, that Trump “told us to inject bleach into our bodies,” while criticizing Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

Facts First: Garcia’s claim is misleading. Trump never portrayed his ill-informed 2020 musings about the possibility of using disinfectant to treat Covid-19 as actual advice to Americans. Rather, Trump was talking about the possibility of scientists testing the possibility of using disinfectant as a treatment.

During a press briefing in April 2020, Trump expressed interest in scientists exploring the possibility of whether Covid-19 could be treated using disinfectants inside people’s bodies, “by injection inside or almost a cleaning,” or by deploying powerful light “inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.” Trump’s comments were slammed by medical experts as highly dangerous, and they prompted urgent warnings from public health authorities and companies that sell household disinfectants. But he never actually said he was suggesting citizens go and use such products.

Trump made the ill-informed remarks after Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, outlined tests in which he said sunlight or disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the coronavirus on surfaces and in saliva.

When Trump jumped shortly afterward to the dangerous idea of injecting disinfectants inside people’s bodies, he was talking about experts somehow testing that idea. He said: “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Durbin’s missing context on Trump’s jobs record

Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Majority Whip, claimed of Trump: “He lost millions of jobs in America.” Durbin said shortly after that, “He is one of only two presidents in the history of the United States to leave office with fewer Americans working than when he started.”

Facts First: Durbin’s statistics are correct, but he left out some critical context about them. While there was a net loss of about 2.7 million jobs from the beginning of Trump’s four-year term to the end, there was a net gain of about 6.7 million jobs under Trump until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country about three years into his term.

Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March 2020 and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. The US then started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million from May 2020 through December 2020, but not enough to make up for the massive early-pandemic losses.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Beatty’s claim about the Biden administration’s expansion of the child tax credit

Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty praised the Biden administration’s efforts to provide larger tax credits for families and lift more children out of poverty.

“Joe and Kamala have been expanding the child tax credit, and let me just tell you … cutting the poverty rate for our children,” she said.

Facts First: Beatty’s claim needs context. It’s true that the expanded child tax credit passed early in the Biden administration slashed the child poverty rate in 2021, but the benefit only lasted for the one year the temporary enhancement was in effect. Child poverty increased in 2022 to a rate roughly comparable to where it was in 2019.

The American Rescue Plan Act, which Democrats pushed through Congress in March 2021, increased the size of the child tax credit to up to $3,600 – from $2,000 – for eligible families, enabled many more low-income parents to claim it and distributed half of it on a monthly basis.

That helped send child poverty – as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure – to a record low 5.2% in 2021, a drop of 46% from 2020, when the rate was 9.7% according to the US Census Bureau. The child tax credit lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty in 2021, with the temporary enhancement accounting for 2.1 million of those kids, according to the Census Bureau.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which began in 2009, takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.

But in 2022, child poverty soared to 12.4%, roughly comparable to where it was prior to the pandemic in 2019. It was the largest jump in child poverty since the Supplemental Poverty Measure began.

Earlier this year, the House passed a tax bill that would again expand the child tax credit temporarily, though the boost would not be as generous as it was in 2021. Senate Republicans blocked it from advancing in their chamber earlier this month.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris campaign video showcasing Trump’s ‘lies’ on the economy misses context

In a prerecorded video from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team, a staffer shared claims Trump has made about the economy seeking to disprove them.

“Let’s take a look at his track record on jobs before Covid, as compared to the Biden-Harris administration. What do you know? Hardly the most successful ever,” the staffer said as a screen displayed average monthly job gains under Trump from January 2017 to February 2020 compared to average monthly gains during the entire Biden-Harris administration.

“And about his supposed manufacturing miracle, Trump talked a big game, but actually lost 178,000 manufacturing jobs. And just to be clear, it wasn’t just Covid here either. Manufacturing jobs were already on their way down before the pandemic.”

Facts First: The numbers the campaign staffer shared are correct, but they lack crucial context. It’s unfair to compare the average monthly job gains Trump achieved up until March 2020 to that of the Biden-Harris administration. That’s because the average monthly gains achieved under their administration were propped up by some of the gangbuster job reports that came just as the economy was recovering from the pandemic. For instance, in July 2021, 939,000 jobs were added in just one month.

And while it’s true 178,000 manufacturing jobs were lost when Trump was president, Covid-19 did in fact play a big role. In the immediate months before the pandemic, manufacturing jobs were declining very slightly. From November 2019 to February 2020, 36,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. That hardly compares to the roughly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs lost from February 2020 to April 2020. That so many of those job losses were able to be recouped by the time Trump left office is noteworthy.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Rodriguez’s claim on Trump wanting to terminate the Affordable Care Act

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez on Monday accused Trump of still wanting to kill the Affordable Care Act.

“Now, Trump is promising to terminate the Affordable Care Act,” Rodriguez said at the DNC.

Facts First: Rodriguez’s claim does not reflect Trump’s recent comments on the Affordable Care Act. He did appear to express renewed support for terminating the law in one social media post late last year, but he has since said he wants to improve it, not terminate it. Most recently, he has said he will keep the law unless he can come up with an unspecified “better” plan.

Repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act was one of Trump’s top priorities in his 2016 presidential campaign and first term. However, even though Republicans controlled Congress and the White House the following year, they failed to unite behind a plan to do so, ending any serious attempts to completely overhaul the landmark health reform law, popularly known as Obamacare.

The former president revived the debate over the law’s fate in November 2023, when he wrote on his Truth Social platform that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” and that the failure to terminate it “was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”

Trump quickly walked back his comments, posting a few days later that he doesn’t “want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”

In April, Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social: “I’m not running to terminate the ACA as crooked Joe Biden says all over the place. We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.”

And at a North Carolina rally last week, he said: “(Vice President Kamala Harris) goes around saying, ‘Oh, he’s going to get rid of the health.’ No, no, I’m going to keep it unless we can come up with something that’s better for you and less expensive for you. Otherwise, we’re not doing it.”

However, Trump has yet to release a proposal on how he would make the Affordable Care Act better and less expensive.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Michigan state senator makes false claim about Trump immunity

During a speech at the DNC about Project 2025, McMorrow said that the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term aimed to greatly expand the power of the presidency “like no president has ever had or should ever have.”

The Democratic lawmaker went on to say that if anyone wondered if those potential new powers were legal, “Thanks to Donald Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court, he’s now completely immune from prosecution – even if he breaks the law.”

Facts First: McMorrow’s comment about the case Trump v. US is false. In their decision last month in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some immunity from prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office.

And while Trump appointed three of the justices who helped make up the six-justice majority, the other three, including Roberts, were appointed by previous Republican presidents.

The federal judge in Washington, DC, overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Trump must now examine the allegations against the former president to determine which ones are covered by the newly granted immunity.

From CNN’s Devan Cole

DNC video leaves out context about Trump abortion comment from 2016

A video about abortion rights that was played at the DNC on Monday featured a short clip of former Trump agreeing, in a television interview, that women who get abortions should be punished.

Facts First: The video left out some important context: Trump made this comment more than eight years ago and retracted it hours after he made it. In an interview in April 2024, Trump declined to express an opinion on the idea of a state deciding to punish women for getting an abortion after it is banned, returning to his campaign refrain that abortion policy is now a matter for each state to decide.

Trump made the comment featured in the DNC video at an MSNBC town hall during the Republican presidential primary in 2016. Trump said that “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortion. When host Chris Matthews asked, “For the woman?” Trump responded, “Yeah, there has to be some form.” When Matthews pressed further, Trump said he didn’t know what the punishment should be.

Hours later, after facing widespread criticism, Trump issued a statement in which he said women should not be punished for getting abortions.

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed – like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.”

The next day on Fox News, Trump said, “It could be that I misspoke” during an abortion discussion he claimed was “convoluted.” He said that “if, in fact, abortion was outlawed, the person performing the abortion, the doctor, or whoever it may be that’s really doing the act is responsible for the act, not the woman, is responsible.”

In an April 2024 interview, Time magazine asked Trump if he is “comfortable if states decide to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned,” such as after a 15-week cutoff date. Trump said, “Again, that’s going to be – I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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