The promise

Posted on September 11, 2024 by bpriddy

In this campaign year and its awful portents of the future, we are hearing voices, many voices, angry voices, boasting voices, threatening voices, halting voices, frightened voices, quiet hopeful voices almost afraid in today’s climate to speak of hope loudly enough to be heard through the blizzard of accusations and lies and over-emphasized blunders.

Do we believe anymore that this is really a land of promise? Or is it just a land awash in its own ugliness, self-pity, self-service, and self-defense so deep that the light of optimism cannot penetrate?

We cannot allow that mood or those who promote it to drag us down.

We must be, as Thomas Wolfe wrote in his 1934 masterpiece You Can’t Go Home Again, “burning in the night.”

We do not know if school children still memorize one paragraph from one chapter in Wolf’s book. It concludes Chapter 31, which begins cynically but tells us we cannot let cynicism corrupt our hope. Here is an excerpt lightly edited for shortness but still long:

The desire for fame is rooted in the hearts of men. It is one of the most powerful of all human desires, and perhaps for that very reason, and because it is so deep and secret, it is the desire that men are most unwilling to admit, particularly those who feel most sharply its keen and piercing spur.

The politician, for example, would never have us think that it is love of office, the desire for the notorious elevation of public place, that drives him on. No, the thing that governs him is his pure devotion to the common weal, his selfless and high-minded statesmanship, his love of his fellow man, and his burning idealism to turn out the rascal who usurps the office and betrays the public trust which he himself, as he assures us, would so gloriously and devotedly maintain…

So, too, the soldier. It is never love of glory that inspires him to his profession. It is never love of battle, love of war, love of all the resounding titles and the proud emoluments of the heroic conqueror. Oh, no. It is devotion to duty that makes him a soldier. There is no personal motive in it. He is inspired simply by the selfless ardor of his patriotic abnegation. He regrets that he has but one life to give for his country.

So it goes through every walk of life…

All these people lie, of course. They know they lie, and everyone who hears them also knows they lie. The lie, however, has become a part of the convention of American life… Is it not strange that, feeling only an amused and pitying contempt for those who are still naïve enough to long for glory, we should yet lacerate our souls, poison our minds and hearts, and crucify our spirits with bitter and rancorous hatred against those who are fortunate enough to achieve fame?

…And we? Made of our father’s earth, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh—born like our father here to live and strive, here to win through or be defeated—here, like all the other men who went before us, not too nice or dainty for the uses of this earth—here to live, to suffer, and to die—O brothers, like our fathers in their time, we are burning, burning, burning in the night.

Go, seeker, if you will, throughout the land and you will find us burning in the night.

There where the hackles of the Rocky Mountains blaze in the blank and naked radiance of the moon, go make your resting stool upon the highest peak. Can you not see us now? The continental wall juts sheer and flat, its huge black shadow on the plain, and the plain sweeps out against the East, two thousand miles away. The great snake that you see there is the Mississippi River.

Behold the gem-strung towns and cities of the good, green East, flung like star-dust through the field of night. That spreading constellation to the north is called Chicago… Beyond, close-set and dense as a clenched fist, are all the jeweled cities of the eastern seaboard. There’s Boston, ringed with the bracelet of its shining little towns, and all the lights that sparkle on the rocky indentations of New England. Here, southward and a little to the west, and yet still coasted to the sea, is our intensest ray, the splintered firmament of the towered island of Manhattan. Round about her, sown thick as grain, is the glitter of a hundred towns and cities. The long chain of lights there is the necklace of Long Island and the Jersey shore. Southward and inland, by a foot or two, behold the duller glare of Philadelphia. Southward further still, the twin constellations—Baltimore and Washington. Westward, but still within the borders of the good, green East, that nighttime glow and smolder of hell-fire is Pittsburgh. Here, St. Louis, hot and humid in the cornfield belly of the land, and bedded on the mid-length coil and fringes of the snake. There at the snake’s mouth, southward six hundred miles or so, you see the jeweled crescent of old New Orleans. Here, west and south again, you see the gemmy glitter of the cities on the Texas border.

Turn now, seeker, on your resting stool atop the Rocky Mountains, and look another thousand miles or so across moon-blazing fiend-worlds of the Painted Desert and beyond Sierras’ ridge. That magic congeries of lights there to the west, ringed like a studded belt around the magic setting of its lovely harbor, is the fabled town of San Francisco. Below it, Los Angeles and all the cities of the California shore. A thousand miles to north and west, the sparkling towns of Oregon and Washington.

Observe the whole of it, survey it as you might survey a field. Make it your garden, seeker, or your backyard patch. Be at ease in it. It’s your oyster—yours to open if you will. Don’t be frightened, it’s not so big now, when your footstool is the Rocky Mountains. Reach out and dip a hatful of cold water from Lake Michigan. Drink it—we’ve tried it—you’ll not find it bad. Take your shoes off and work your toes down in the river oozes of the Mississippi bottom—it’s very refreshing on a hot night in the summertime. Help yourself to a bunch of Concord grapes up there in northern New York State—they’re getting good now. Or raid that watermelon patch down there in Georgia. Or, if you like, you can try the Rockyfords here at your elbow, in Colorado. Just make yourself at home, refresh yourself, get the feel of things, adjust your sights, and get the scale. It’s your pasture now, and it’s not so big—only three thousand miles from east to west, only two thousand miles from north to south—but all between, where ten thousand points of light prick out the cities, towns, and villages, there, seeker, you will find us burning in the night.

Here, as you pass through the brutal sprawl, the twenty miles of rails and rickets, of the South Chicago slums—here, in an unpainted shack, is a Negro boy, and, seeker, he is burning in the night. Behind him is a memory of the cotton fields, the flat and mournful pineland barrens of the lost and buried South, and at the fringes of the pine another nigger shack, with mammy and eleven little niggers. Farther still behind, the slave-driver’s whip, the slave ship, and, far off, the jungle dirge of Africa. And before him, what? A roped-in ring, a blaze of lights, across from him a white champion; the bell, the opening, and all around the vast sea-roaring of the crowd. Then the lightning feint and stroke, the black panther’s paw—the hot, rotating presses, and the rivers of sheeted print! O seeker, where is the slave ship now?

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory today. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-baked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound’s; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher’s mitt, the umpire’s thumb jerked upward, the clean strike.

Or there again, in the East-Side Ghetto of Manhattan, two blocks away from the East River, a block away from the gas-house district and its thuggery, there in the swarming tenement, shut in his sweltering cell, breathing the sun-baked air through opened window at the fire escape, celled there away into a little semblance of privacy and solitude from all the brawling and vociferous life and argument of his family and the seething hive around him, the Jew boy sits and pores upon his book. In shirt-sleeves, bent above his table to meet the hard glare of a naked bulb, he sits with gaunt, starved face converging to his huge beaked nose, the weak eyes squinting painfully through his thick-lens glasses, his greasy hair roached back in oily scrolls above the slanting cage of his painful and constricted brow. And for what? For what this agony of concentration? For what this hell of effort? For what this intense withdrawal from the poverty and squalor of dirty brick and rusty fire escapes, from the raucous cries and violence and never-ending noise? For what?

Because, brother, he is burning in the night. He sees the class, the lecture room, the shining apparatus of gigantic laboratories, the open field of scholarship and pure research, certain knowledge, and the world distinction of an Einstein name.

So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him—this, seeker, is the promise of America.

——-

We had to memorize that. I think it was in the fifth or sixth grade. The masculine and some cultural references in it have become antiquated, but the ideal it expresses remains vital and probably is one of the reasons we refuse to be defeated by our present national darkness—because we remember the light of an earlier generation that called for us to be better, to reach higher, to see each other as equals, and to live the promise of America.

We must burn in the night.

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Who Will be Next?

Posted on September 9, 2024 by bpriddy

The fish are in the barrel.

The kids are back in school.

—and in Winder, Georgia a few days ago, a 14-year old boy with a gun went fish hunting. He killed four.

It’s the 45^th school shooting this year, the 385^th mass shooting in the United States.

Newsweek has counted 2,034 school shootings in this country since 2004. California has had the most, 169. Texas has had 141, to rank second. In today’s culture, these numbers should not be unexpected; they’re our two most populous states.

A few days ago—September 7—the Associated Press reported the Georgia incident was the 30^th mass shooting of 2024, producing 131 deaths. Four or more people have to die to be considered a “mass shooting” as compiled by the AP and USA Today, working in conjunction with Northeastern University. Last year was one of the deadliest on record, 42 incidents, 217 deaths..

It might surprise some people to hear someone such as Jennifer Briemann say it’s time to take school security seriously. Briemann is the Deputy Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. But she also tells Newsweek “The reality is that the proposals put forth by those who wish to disarm law-abiding citizens would not have prevented this senseless tragedy in Georgia.”

The rhetoric remains unchanged. So do the school shootings. There is a place for reasonable, pragmatic discussions—but they can’t happen as long as the political parties talk at each other instead of to each other.

A six-year-old video has re-emerged in the wake of the latest killings. It is an example of ongoing political unwillingness to confront this issue, the tendency to divert attention away from it, and the tendency to hide behind an illogical argument.

On March 24, 2018, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose critics consider her one of the nuttier members of Congress, decided to drive to Carbondale, Colorado where students were taking part in the national March for Our Lives in the wake of the 17-death school shooting in Parkland Florida. She apparently Facebooked as she drove and she said:

“So, I am on my way to Carbondale Colorado. There’s supposedly an organized march. The March for Our Lives is going to take place and I’m really interested to see if people know what they’re marching for. I guess this is supposed to be the beginning of people speaking out to take away our Second Amendment Rights, and I’m not happy about it. If this is really a March for Our Lives, let’s march against abortion, because I was looking at statistics and there are nearly one million abortions per year in America. One million! Do you know how many gun violence deaths there are, gun related deaths there are in America, per year? 15,000. Hmmm. A drop in a bucket, I’d say. So, I left Rifle, Colorado; I’m not going into Shooters right now. I’m going to Carbondale and I’m going to see what these people really believe, if they know what they’re marching for. If they know that they are marching against their rights. They’re marching, saying, “Hey, I have a right that I don’t want. Take it away from me. Get rid of this. (she is smiling as she makes these comments, by the way.) I want the people around me to not be able to protect themselves, to not be able to defend me.” I’m not—you know, I’m driving here, I think it’s kind of similar to talking on speaker phone so I guess I’m safe. But, I was thinking, my government requires me to wear this (shows her seat belt). I have to wear them to protect myself. And I can’t have my 9 millimeter to protect myself? I don’t think so. I don’t think so, not today, no. (laughs).

She apparently though herself humorous for talking about the town of Rifle (a nice place on I-70 in the Rockies) and Shooters, the sports bar, in her soliloquy in which she ignored any of the humanity behind the demonstrations, showed no awareness of any of the pathos so many felt and were feeling, and offered nothing of comfort to the affected or a cure for the problems that compound the school shootings other than seemingly suggest that everybody should have a 9 mm pistol.

She was driving and glancing at her cell phone during the presentation, unaware that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated almost 44,000 people died in traffic crashes last year.

They’re just bigger drops in the bucket. The agency thinks more than 13,500 of those fatalities were alcohol-related. Eh. If it’s not an aborted baby, these deaths seem to be insignificant to her.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 3,000 of the 44,000 people who die in traffic crashes each year die because of distracted driving. Maybe they’re just mist in the bucket to her.

If those are just drops, how would she rate the World Health Organization’s estimate that eight-million people a year die because of tobacco-related issues. The CDC says more than 480,000 deaths a year result from cigarette smoking—almost sixty years after the first warnings appeared on cigarette packages by federal mandate. More drops.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimated 49,476 people committed suicide in the United States in 2022. Of those, 27,032 used firearms.

Drip, drip, drip.

Every one of those deaths, whether by traffic crash, smoking, or suicide is a tragedy to somebody. As is an abortion. But she seems to be saying that abortion is her only concern.

For one thing, her “15,000” gun related deaths are pretty low. But looking for ways to minimize those deaths is too insignificant for her to worry about.

As for the seat belt—It’s a government mandate that reduces the chance of death or injury, not just for her but for others riding with her or in the other vehicle.

Comparing a seatbelt to a gun is over the top. Seat belts protect those who should not be driving as well as those who have no restrictions. There are few mandates that affect people who should not have guns. Instead, her argument seems to be that if everybody had a 9-millimeter gun, they’d be safe.

Yeah. Right. The students and the teachers in Georgia or in Parkland, Florida in 2018 or at any of the other mass-shooting sites in the last few decades would have had the presence of mind and the time to draw their Glocks from their holsters, backpacks, or desk drawers when someone walked into their rooms and immediately started shooting that the shootings would not have happened?

The students and others who were marching in Colorado, D.C., and other places that day were not saying they wanted to eliminate a right—the Second Amendment. They were saying THEY have a right, too. And if Boebert and other pro-life, pro-gun zealots don’t see the hypocrisy of the overlaps of the two issues and quit bloviating about the exclusivity of both, more fish in more barrels will be shot.

The right to life and the right to live are separate issues. Policy makers who strain to put them together solve nothing and avoid arriving at responsible difficult answers. There is shame in the repetition of that pattern.

And that is why more children will become fishes in barrels this year.

The school year is still young. Who will be the next fish in the next barrel while nothing is done by those who know a 9 millimeter pistol is not the real answer?

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.

“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.

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

Just the Facts. Part One

Posted on August 26, 2024 by bpriddy

A few weeks ago, we passed along CNN’s fact checking of the Trump-Biden presidential debate. It was a long entry and this one and the one we post on Wednesday combined will be even longer. But we are posting them 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. We believe it is irresponsible to take campaign rhetoric at face value.

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 it can be a reference for you in stating our own statements honestly and questioning honestly the statements of others.

We recently talked with a friend whose views are different from ours and at the end we agreed that one of the great things about our country is that two friends can have the kind of disagreements we had without them disrupting the respectful relationship we have with each other. So we hope this material furthers intelligent but respectful discussion with you and your friends.

Because we relied on CNN’s Daniel Dale for the debate, we are going back to him and his staff for evaluations of the Republican National Convention today and the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.

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.

First—because they went first—the Republicans:

Here are some of the most noteworthy falsehoods from night one of the RNC.

Trump makes false claims about election fraud in RNC video

The Republican National Convention played a video in which former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to use “every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats,” including voting by mail. 20788998 58:01 Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting during the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it during the current campaign

But Trump’s comments in the convention video also included some of his regular false claims about elections. After claiming he would “once and for all secure our elections” as president, Trump again insinuated the 2020 election was not secure, saying, “We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.” 20788998 57:44 And he said, “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are nonsense – slightly vaguer versions of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was highly secure; Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232; there is no evidence of voter fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state; and there is no basis for claiming that election cheating is the only thing at which Trump’s opponents excel.

The Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post-election November 2020 statement: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Sen. Blackburn claims Biden administration hired 85,000 new IRS agents

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed in her speech Monday that the Biden administration has hired 85,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents to “harass hardworking Americans.”

Facts First: This claim is false.

The Inflation Reduction Act – which Congress passed in 2022 without any Republican votes – provided an about $80 billion, 10-year investment to the IRS. The agency plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS employees with that money – but only some will be IRS agents who conduct audits and investigations. Many people will be hired for non-agent roles, such as customer service representatives. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

The 85,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees – not solely enforcement agents – over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Sen. Katie Britt on Americans working two jobs

Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama suggested in her speech on Monday that during President Joe Biden’s term, Americans are having to take on two jobs to deal with the cost of living.

“With President Trump, the tough choice was which job offer to accept, now it’s which second job to take just to pay the bills,” she said.

Facts First: The number of workers who hold multiple jobs as a percentage of total employment has never gone above the highest level under Trump, according to Labor Department data.

While it’s true that the annual inflation rate reached its highest level in more than four decades under Biden (in June 2022, though it has since declined), Americans aren’t necessarily taking on two jobs more than usual to deal with it. In fact, the number of Americans holding multiple jobs as a share of all employed workers was below levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic throughout 2021 and 2022. It has increased over the past several months, reaching 5.2% in June. The share of workers with multiple jobs hasn’t gone above 5.3% since the Great Recession.

From CNN’s Bryan Mena

North Carolina gubernatorial candidate’s economic claims

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, now running for governor, made a series of economic claims in his speech. One about the Biden era was misleading, while another about the Trump era touted pre-pandemic statistics without acknowledging that when Trump left office the economy was in much worse shape.

Robinson said that under Biden’s administration, “grocery prices have skyrocketed, and gas has nearly doubled.”

Facts First: It is true that grocery prices have jumped by over 20% since Biden was sworn in, but gas prices aren’t double what they were when he took office.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

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The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, according to AAA. When Biden was inaugurated, the national average was $2.39.

Robinson also claimed that while Trump was president, unemployment was “at a historic low.” That was certainly true prior to the pandemic. For instance, in February 2020, the nation’s unemployment rate was at 3.5%, the lowest since the late 1960s.
By comparison, the average monthly unemployment rate over the past decade was 4.8%.
But when Trump left office, it was at 6.4%, far from historic lows.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s misleading claim about Biden-era job growth

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia claimed of Democrats: “They claim that our economy is thriving, yet hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years.”

Facts First: This is misleading at best. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that the number of American-born workers with jobs has grown significantly during President Joe Biden’s administration. About 130.9 million American-born workers were employed in June, an increase of nearly 4.7 million since June 2021, shortly after Biden took office. (This data is not seasonally adjusted, so we have to look at the same month in each year for an accurate comparison. In January 2021, the month Biden was sworn in, about 123 million American-born workers were employed.)

There is always churn in the labor market, so it’s certainly possible that hundreds of thousands of individual American-born workers lost their jobs during this period – but contrary to Greene’s insinuation, there have been far greater gains than losses under Biden for American-born workers as a group.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Transgender Day of Visibility

Greene said while attacking Democrats in her convention speech that “the establishment in Washington” held Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter this year.

“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” the Georgia Republican said.

Facts first: This claim needs context. Transgender Day of Visibility has been held annually on March 31 since it was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of spring and can change year to year. The holiday happened to fall on March 31 in 2024.

Responding to Republicans criticizing President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in an April 1 briefing said she was “surprised by the misinformation” surrounding Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility falling on the same day.

“Every year, for the past several years, on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility is marked. And as we know — for folks who understand the calendar and how it works, Easter falls on different Sundays every year. And this year, it happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day. And so, that is the simple fact,” she said.

From CNN’s Jack Forrest

RNC video falsely claims Trump signed largest tax cuts ever

A video played at the Republican National Convention featured a narrator making the claim that Trump “gave us the largest tax cuts in history.”

Facts First: This is false. Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

In a report released in June, the federal government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills have been bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product – in other words, how much federal revenue the bill cuts as a portion of the economy – over five years. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Obama’s 2012 tax cut extension were 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit, found in 2017 that the framework for the Trump tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Republican chair falsely claims Middle East was ‘at peace’ four years ago

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in his speech on Monday: “Four years ago, Europe and the Middle East were at peace.”

Facts First: Whatley’s claim is false. Whatever the merits of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to negotiate, in which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan followed), there was still lots of unresolved armed conflict around the Middle East four years ago in mid-2020 and when Trump left office in early 2021.

The list notably included the civil war in Yemen; the civil war in Syria; and the conflicts between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, between Israel and Hezbollah on its border with Lebanon, between Israel and Syria, and what former State Department official Aaron David Millercalled “the war between the wars between Israel and Iran on air, land and sea.” Also, the US, its allies and civilians continued to be attacked in an unstable Iraq.

“It’s a highly inaccurate statement,” Miller, who worked on Mideast peace negotiations while in government and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said last fall, when Trump himself made a similar claim about having achieved peace in the Middle East.

Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC think tank, also called that claim “false” when Trump made it. She said in a November email: “The Abraham Accords did not achieve peace in the Middle East. In fact, violence escalated in Israel-Palestine in the aftermath of the Accords (using any metric you can think of – death tolls, settlement violence, etc).”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC video attacks Biden with two-year-old gas price figure

The Republican National Convention featured a video attacking Biden over the price of gas. But the video misleadingly deployed out-of-date figures as if they were current.

A narrator claimed: “When President Trump left office, gas cost only $2.20. Under Biden and Harris, gas skyrocketed to the highest price in history, over five bucks a gallon.” Later in the video, a young man said, “Within my first year of driving, I’m having to deal with an average of $5.03 across the nation,” and a woman said, “It’s impossible to pay $5.03. We need to care about our people better than that.”

Facts First: These claims about Biden-era gas prices are two years out of date. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, according to the AAA. The national average did, under Biden, hit a record high of more than $5 per gallon – about $5.02, according to AAA data – but that happened in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a global spike in oil prices. The RNC videos offered no indication that the national average has since fallen substantially.

Also, the national average on the day Trump left office in January 2021 was about $2.39 per gallon, not $2.20, though it was lower than $2.20 in some states.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC video doesn’t mention Trump was president during one of the years Americans’ incomes dropped

A video played during the Republican National Convention, which attacked Biden’s handling of the economy, featured a narrator saying, “The Wall Street Journal has reported today that Americans’ incomes have gone down three straight years.”

Facts First: This needs context. The RNC video left out an inconvenient fact from the Wall Street Journal report that was published in 2023: one of the three straight years in which inflation-adjusted median household income went down was 2020, when Trump was president. The Covid-19 pandemic played a major role in the decline, but the ad failed to explain that not all of the three years were under Biden.

Real median household income fell from $78,250 in 2019 to $76,660 in 2020 (all under Trump), then edged down to $76,330 in 2021 (mostly under Biden) and fell more substantially to $74,580 in 2022 (all under Biden). Figures for 2023 and 2024-to-date are not available.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC video cites outdated inflation figure

Attacking Biden’s handling of the economy, the Republican National Convention featured a video in which a narrator said, “America has reached the highest inflation in 40 years.”

Facts First: This claim is two years out of date. The year-over-year inflation rate in June 2022, about 9.1%, was indeed the highest since late 1981, between 40 and 41 years prior. But inflation has declined sharply since that Biden-era peak, and the most recent available rate, for June 2024, was about 3.0% – a rate that, the Biden presidency aside, was exceeded as recently as 2011.

SECOND NIGHT;

Speakers at the second night of the Republican National Convention made many false and misleading claims throughout the night which focused heavily on immigration and crime.

Here is a list of fact checks from CNN’s Facts First team.

Speaker Mike Johnson makes false claim about crime under Biden

After criticizing President Joe Biden as weak, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed in his Tuesday speech at the Republican National Convention that Democrats’ policies have brought communities “dramatic increases” in “violence, crime and drugs.”

Similarly, House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik referred to “Biden’s violent crime crisis,” and a video played near the beginning of the Tuesday evening proceedings featured a narrator saying, “It’s not just big cities. Rising crime is a problem everywhere.”

Facts First: Johnson’s claims about dramatic increases in violence and crime are false, as is the convention video’s claim that there is a problem “everywhere” with “rising crime.” Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.

Stefanik’s claim of a “violent crime crisis” under Biden is subjective, but she certainly did not acknowledge that the current numbers under Biden are superior to final Trump-era numbers.

Preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% national decline in overall violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in 2020. And 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.

There are limitations to the FBI-published data, which comes from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data, and the submitted data usually has some initial errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime. But these statistics and other data sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent nationally, though not everywhere.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said that if the final 2023 figures show a decline in murder of at least 10% from 2022, this would be the fastest US decline “ever recorded.” And he noted that both the preliminary FBI-published data from the first quarter of 2024 and also “crime data collected from several independent sources point to an even larger decline in property and violent crime, including a substantially larger drop in murder, so far this year compared to 2023, though there is still time left in the year for those trends to change.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Scalise claims Biden has ‘erode’ American ‘energy dominance’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise claimed Tuesday in his Republican National Convention speech that the Biden administration has “eroded the American energy dominance that President Trump delivered.” He also claimed that Democrats are waging an “assault on American energy.”

Facts First: Scalise’s claims are misleading. The US under President Joe Biden is producing more crude oil than any country ever has. The world record was set by the US in 2023, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, averaging about 12.9 million barrels per day – exceeding the Trump-era record, an average of about 12.3 million barrels per day in 2019. US production of dry natural gas also hit a new high in 2023. So did US crude oil exports.

CNN’s Matt Egan reported in December that the US was exporting the same amount of crude oil, refined products and natural gas liquids as Saudi Arabia or Russia were producing, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.

None of this is to say that Biden is the reason that domestic oil production has increased; market factors are the key driver of companies’ investment and production decisions, and the Energy Information Administration has credited technological improvements in fracking and horizontal drilling technology that have made oil wells more productive. Egan reported in August: “The American Petroleum Institute, an oil trade group that has been critical of the Biden administration’s regulatory efforts, noted that approved federal permits and new federal acres leased have both fallen sharply under Biden.”

Still, despite Biden’s often-critical rhetoric about fossil fuel companies, some policy moves to get tougher on those companies and his major investments in initiatives to fight climate change, he certainly has not come close to stopping fossil fuel production as Trump has claimed.

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Biden has also approved some significant and controversial fossil fuel projects, including the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Scalise on migrants coming to the US

Scalise said Tuesday that migrants are arriving in the US after having been deliberately freed from prison.

“On the border, Biden and Harris opened it up to the entire world. Prisons are being emptied,” said Scalise, a Louisiana Republican.

Facts first: There is no evidence for Scalise’s claim that “prisons of being emptied” so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants.

“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” said Helen Fair, who is co-author of the World Prison Population List, which tracks the global prison population, and a research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London.

Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, has repeatedly made such claims in his own speeches and interviews. But Trump has never provided any proof for the claim.

Trump’s campaign has provided CNN with only a vague 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents about Venezuela freeing violent prisoners who had then joined migrant caravans.

But this supposed claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated, and experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no proof of any such thing having happened.

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.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Lara Trump’s claims about unemployment records under Trump

Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and the former president’s daughter-in-law, hailed the state of the country during the Trump administration. Among other things, she said there were “record low unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and women.”

Facts First: These claims need context. Lara Trump didn’t mention that the Trump-era record lows for African American unemployment, Hispanic Americans unemployment and women’s unemployment were all beaten or matched during President Joe Biden’s presidency, though the Trump-era record for Asian American unemployment still stands.

The current record low for the Black or African American unemployment rate, 4.8%, was set under Biden in April 2023.
That beat the Trump-era low that was a record at the time, 5.3% in August 2019 and September 2019. (A cautionary note: This official data series goes back only to 1972.)

The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate hit 3.9% under Biden in September 2022, tying the record low first set in 2019 under Trump.

The unemployment rate among women hit 3.4% under Trump in September 2019 and October 2019, the lowest since the 1950s, but it fell to 3.3% under Biden in January 2023.

The record set under Trump for Asian American unemployment, 2% in June 2019, has not been matched under Biden. The lowest Biden-era rate was 2.3% in July 2023.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Rep. Stefanik claims that Biden presidency has led to the highest inflation of her lifetime

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York claimed in her Republican National Convention speech Tuesday that Biden’s presidency has led to the “highest rate of inflation” in her lifetime.

Facts First: This claim is out of date.

While the year-over-year inflation rate in June 2022, about 9.1%, was the highest since late 1981, inflation has declined sharply since that Biden-era peak, and the most recent available rate, for June 2024, was about 3%. That rate was exceeded as recently as 2011.
Stefanik was born in 1984.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Wisconsin Senate candidate exaggerates the numbers of fentanyl deaths

Eric Hovde, the Republican running for Senate in Wisconsin, claimed in his RNC speech Tuesday that the Biden administration “emboldened drug cartels to flood our streets with fentanyl killing over 100,000 Americans every year” by opening the country’s southern border and allowing “criminals and terrorists to enter the country.”

Facts First: It’s a significant exaggeration that fentanyl kills more than 100,000 Americans every year due to the country’s “open” borders. The number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids in 2023, including fentanyl, was approximately 75,000, according to estimated and provisional data.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in May that roughly 107,500 people in the US died from a drug overdose, but that is the total number of people who died from an overdose from any kind of drug.

Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, were involved in the majority of those fatalities, making up nearly 70% of overdose deaths in 2023, but they did not account for all of them.

In fact, compared with 2022, there were around 1,500 fewer overdose deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids in 2023. The estimated number of deaths involving cocaine and psychostimulants such as methamphetamines increased in 2023.

Specifically, in 2023, there were 74,702 deaths from synthetic opioids, and most of those deaths were from fentanyl. By comparison, in 2022 the estimated number was 76,226, according to the CDC.

It is also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled by US citizens through legal ports of entry, rather than by migrants sneaking into the country. Contrary to frequent claims by Republicans, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized an increasing amount of illicit fentanyl, numbering in the hundreds of millions of pills, under Biden.

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

Trump makes false claims about election fraud in RNC video

For the second consecutive night, the Republican National Convention played a video in which Trump urged Republicans to use “every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats,” including voting by mail. Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting during the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it during the current campaign

But Trump’s comments in the convention video also included some of his regular false claims about elections. After claiming he would “once and for all secure our elections” as president, Trump again insinuated the 2020 election was not secure, saying, “We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.” And he said, “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are nonsense – slightly vaguer versions of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was highly secure; Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232; there is no evidence of voter fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state; and there is no basis for claiming that election cheating is the only thing at which Trump’s opponents excel.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Kari Lake on her opponent’s record about voting laws

Kari Lake said Tuesday that Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, her likely opponent in the state’s US Senate race this fall, voted last week to let undocumented immigrants “illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

“These guys are full, they’re full of bad ideas,” Lake said in her speech. “Just last week Ruben Gallego voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

Fact First: This claim is false.

The House did not vote on whether to allow noncitizens to vote. The chamber passed a bill on July 10 that would require documentary proof of US citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Gallego voted against the legislation, which is not expected to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and experts say it rarely occurs. When people register to vote, they must provide a driver’s license or Social Security number, and their identity is checked against existing databases. Voters are required to swear under penalty of perjury that they are a US citizen. Noncitizens who vote illegally can face imprisonment or deportation.

Gallego said in a statement that he opposed the bill because its “only purpose is to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Arizonans, and I will not vote to take away the rights of Arizonans to stop something that is already illegal.”

“Of course, only U.S. citizens should vote,” said Gallego. “But this bill isn’t about that, it’s about making it harder for Arizonans to vote, including married women, servicemembers, Native Arizonans, seniors, and people with disabilities.”

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Perry Johnson’s incorrect claim about median family income

Perry Johnson, a Michigan business owner who previously ran for governor and president, said Tuesday that income rose consistently under Trump.

“Under Trump, family income went up every year. That is a fact,” Johnson told the crowd.

Facts first: Johnson is incorrect. Median family income fell in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic in both inflation-adjusted and non-adjusted terms.

Typical family income grew by several thousand dollars during each of Trump’s first three years in office, before adjusting for inflation. But it fell by $1,660 in 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the US economy.

After factoring in inflation, typical family income fell by nearly $2,900 in 2020, after rising in each of the first three years of Trump’s administration.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

THIRD NIGHT:

Night three of the Republican National Convention included former President Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, and other speakers who made false and misleading claims throughout the night.

Here is a list of fact checks from CNN’s Facts First team.

Vance’s misleading claim about Trump and the invasion of Iraq

Former President Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, insinuated in his speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday that Trump had opposed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Vance said that “when I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.” After mentioning other past Biden positions as well, Vance said, “Somehow, a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong. President Trump knew, even then, that we needed leaders who would put America first.”

Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. In reality, Trump did not publicly express opposition to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq before it occurred. When radio host Howard Stern asked Trump in September 2002 whether he is “for invading Iraq,” Trump responded, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Trump argued a military strike on Iraq might be necessary. And Trump did not express a firm opinion about the looming war in a Fox interview in January 2003, saying that “either you attack or don’t attack” and that then-President George W. Bush “has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps.”

Trump began criticizing the war in 2003, after the invasion, and also said that year that American troops should not be withdrawn from Iraq.
He emerged as an explicit opponent of the war in 2004, the year before Biden did.

But Vance suggested Trump had been right on the invasion itself while Biden got it wrong, and there’s no basis for the claim that they were on opposing sides of the issue.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Kimberly Guilfoyle claims that ‘Trump handed Biden a booming economy’

Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée and former Fox News host, slammed Biden for his handling of the economy in her speech on the third night of the Republican National Convention.

“President Trump handed Biden a booming economy and a strong nation. All Joe had to do was leave it alone and take a nap,” she said Wednesday.

Facts First: Guilfoyle’s comments are misleading. While the economy did well during the first three years of the Trump administration, it was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. While it had recovered somewhat by the end of 2020, there were still multiple weak points heading into 2021, when Biden took office.

The US economy grew at an annualized and seasonally adjusted rate of 4% in the fourth quarter of 2020. That would usually be a great rate, but it didn’t make up for a weak first quarter and terrible second quarter spurred by the pandemic. For all of 2020, the GDP fell 3.5% from the prior year, the worst decline since 1946.

Also, disposable incomes fell by 9.5% on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the unemployment rate was 6.7% in December of that year. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

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The US economy shed 140,000 jobs that month — a far worse outcome than economists predicted at the time.

Covid-19 infections had increased that month, prompting some states to take additional containment measures.

Trump was the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he entered, largely because of the pandemic.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

RNC video makes outdated claim about US wages

A video that played before Vance’s speech hit Biden over his handling of the economy.

“Under Biden, wages are going down while prices skyrocket,” the video said.

Facts first: The claim in the video is outdated. While inflation outpaced wages during the first half of the Biden administration, that reversed in the middle of last year.

Inflation rose sharply during the early years of the Biden administration but has since slowed to an annual rate of 3% in June. In fact, prices fell in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Meanwhile, real average hourly earnings – which takes inflation into account – began increasing in mid-2023. They rose 0.8% on a seasonally adjusted basis, from June 2023 to June 2024, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

RNC chairman’s false claim about the 2020 economy

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley said in his opening remarks at the party convention on Wednesday: “Our economy is not nearly as strong as it was four years ago.”

Facts First: This is false.
Four years ago, in mid-2020, the US economy was in dire straits because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the June 2020 unemployment rate was 11%, well over double the June 2024 rate of 4.1%. In late July 2020, the federal government announced that the US economy had just experienced its worst contraction on record – shrinking by an annual rate of 32.9% in the quarter running from April 2020 through June 2020.

We give politicians wide latitude to express opinions, and many Trump supporters have argued that the pre-pandemic economy under former Trump, in 2019 and prior, was stronger than the current Biden-era economy. That’s a matter of subjective debate. But it’s plainly inaccurate that the mid-2020 economy was superior to the current economy.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Newt Gingrich on the war in Afghanistan under Trump

Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich claimed that “President Trump orchestrated an orderly end to the Afghanistan war with no American killed in nearly two years.”

Facts first: Both of these claims are false.

Although Trump oversaw a deal with the Taliban aimed at the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the war did not end under his presidency. The last US troops left Afghanistan in August 2021 under the Biden administration.

Moreover, there is no period of “nearly two years” under Trump’s presidency where no American service member was killed. During his four years in office, there were 45 US service member hostile deaths, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System. The longest stretch without combat deaths was at the end of his presidency, from March 2020 until he left office in January 2021 – less than a year.

From CNN’s Jennifer Hansler

Former Trump intel chief misleadingly says ‘Taliban is back’

Richard Grenell, who served as the acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020, said Wednesday night that under President Joe Biden “the Taliban is back.”

“[A]fter four years of Joe Biden, wars are back, the Taliban is back and members of ISIS have slipped through America’s broken southern border,” Grenell said.

Facts first: The claim that the “Taliban is back” is misleading, as it insinuates the Taliban ever left.

While it’s true that the Taliban returned to power after the United States’ 2021 withdrawal, the Taliban remained present in Afghanistan throughout Trump’s time in office. The US, under the Trump administration, and the Taliban signed a historic agreement in 2020 that set into motion the US’ withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

Officials within the Trump administration also met with Taliban representatives “repeatedly” in Doha for nearly a year, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said in a 2019 report.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Peter Navarro’s false claims about his prosecution for contempt of Congress

The same day he got out of prison after serving his sentence for contempt of Congress, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro claimed that the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol demanded he break the law.

“They demanded that I break the law because they have no respect for it. I refused,” Navarro told the audience at the Republic National Convention Wednesday, adding that the committee wanted him to betray Trump.

Navarro also claimed that special counsel Jack Smith “indicted and prosecuted me.”

Facts first: These assertions are both false. While Navarro has long claimed that the information subpoenaed by the committee was protected by executive privilege, the judge presiding over his case found evidence did not show that Trump had formally asserted the privilege. And Smith did not prosecute Navarro; the US attorney in Washington, DC, did.

In a ruling last summer, prior to his trial where a jury convicted Navarro of being in contempt of Congress, US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Navarro could not argue that Trump asserted executive privilege to shield him from the congressional subpoena.

Mehta concluded that either Trump himself or someone authorized to assert privilege or immunity on his behalf would have had to personally invoke the privilege for it to be validly asserted. The judge said Navarro had not put forward adequate evidence to show such an assertion when he was subpoenaed for testimony and documents by the House committee in February 2022.

A jury in Washington, DC, found that Navarro broke the law in refusing to comply with Congress, not the other way around as the former adviser suggested.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand

Florida Republican’s false claim about electric tanks

Florida Rep. Mike Waltz said Wednesday that Biden is “focused on building electric tanks.”

“What do we have today with President Biden? What’s he focused on? … here’s my favorite, he’s focused on building electric tanks. Has anyone seen any charging stations in the Middle East for Biden’s electric tanks?”

Facts first: The claim that Biden is focused on building electric tanks is false.

The Army released a climate strategy in 2022 that called for a move toward various kinds of electric vehicles, including “fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050,” but that would not include tanks. And, regardless, a strategy is not a mandate.

An engineer with the RAND Corporation told FactCheck.org of similar claims made by Trump regarding electric tanks in the military: “While it may be true that an electric tank would have limited range, the Army is not planning on fielding or deploying an electric tank, though there have been prototypes of hybrid tanks.”

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Florida lawmaker’s claim about extremism training in the military

Florida Rep. Brian Mast claimed at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday that the Biden administration has distracted the military “with millions of hours of so-called extremism training.”

“Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have once again weakened our armed forces and …
distracted our troops with millions of hours of so-called extremism training,” Mast said.

Facts first: The claim that the US military has “millions of hours” of extremism training is false.

While there has been training in the military on extremism, it is not millions of hours’ worth. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered units in 2021 to hold a one-day “stand down” to discuss extremism in the military. The undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said in a 2022 memo that “discussions about extremist activity” would be included in “periodic training.”

But the Biden administration has also shown an unwillingness to require more training on extremism in the military.

In 2021, the White House said that while the administration “shares the goal of preventing prohibited extremist activities and holding offenders accountable,” it would not support the establishment of an Office of Countering Extremism in the Pentagon “because it would impose onerous and overly specific training.”

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Burgum claims Biden has waged a ‘war on energy’

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed Wednesday night as he addressed the Republican National Convention that Biden has waged a “war on energy.”

Facts First: This claim needs context. Biden has stressed the importance of renewable energy during his administration, but the US under Biden is producing more crude oil than any country ever has.

The world record was set by the US in 2023, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, averaging about 12.9 million barrels per day – exceeding the Trump-era record, an average of about 12.3 million barrels per day in 2019. US production of dry natural gas also hit a new high in 2023. So did US crude oil exports.

Egan reported in August: “The American Petroleum Institute, an oil trade group that has been critical of the Biden administration’s regulatory efforts, noted that approved federal permits and new federal acres leased have both fallen sharply under Biden.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Rep. Ronny Jackson’s false claim of ‘record-high inflation’

Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas claimed in his Republican National Convention speech on Wednesday that there has been “record-high inflation” under the Biden administration.

Facts First: This is false. The record for US inflation, set in 1920, is 23.7%; the Biden-era peak was 9.1% in June 2022. Jackson could fairly say there was a four-decade high under Biden – that June 2022 figure was the highest since late 1981 – but there was nothing close to a new record.

In addition, Jackson didn’t mention that inflation has fallen sharply since the Biden-era peak two years ago. The current inflation rate, for June 2024, is 3%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Rep. Mike Waltz’s false claim about spy balloons

Republican Rep. Mike Waltz said Wednesday that there were no spy balloon incidents during the Trump administration, like the Chinese spy balloon that transited over the continental US in 2023 before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean.

“We had a president who defeated ISIS, broke Iran, stood with Israel, always stood with our allies, made China pay. You didn’t see any spy balloons under President Trump, did you?” Waltz said.

Facts first: The claim that there were no spy balloons under Trump is false.

Three suspected Chinese spy balloons transited over the continental US during the Trump administration, but they were not discovered until after Biden took office. Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in 2023 that a “domain awareness gap” allowed the balloons to travel undetected.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

RNC chairman’s false claim about Russia’s nuclear missiles near Cuba

Whatley claimed in his opening speech on Wednesday evening that Russia has “parked a nuclear missile capable boat” in Cuba.

“Where are we today? Russia has invaded Ukraine,” he said. “They’ve parked a nuclear missile capable boat 90 miles off our shore in Havana, Cuba.”

Facts first: This claim about the status of a Russian boat is false. While Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June along with other Russian Navy vessels, all of the vessels – including the submarine – have since left.

A group of four Russian Navy vessels arrived in Cuba on June 12 as part of what Pentagon and State Department officials stressed is a routine activity and noted that Cuba has hosted Russian ships every year between 2013 and 2020. A Pentagon spokesperson, Maj. Charlie Dietz, said in June that “given Russia’s long history of Cuban port calls, these are considered routine naval visits, especially in the context of increased US support to Ukraine and NATO exercises.”

The nuclear-powered submarine, the Kazan, was the first of the vessels to leave Havana on June 17.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

RNC video falsely claims there was peace in the Middle East under Trump

A video played early in the Republican National Convention proceedings on Wednesday night claimed that the “strength” of Trump kept “the Middle East at peace.” Whatley had similarly claimed in his convention speech on Monday that the Middle East was “at peace” four years ago under Trump.

Facts First: The claim that there was peace in the Middle East under Trump is false. Whatever the merits of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to negotiate, in which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan followed), there was still lots of unresolved armed conflict around the Middle East when Trump left office in early 2021.

The list notably included the civil war in Yemen; the civil war in Syria; and the conflicts between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, between Israel and Hezbollah on its border with Lebanon, between Israel and Syria, and what former State Department official Aaron David Miller called “the war between the wars between Israel and Iran on air, land and sea.” Also, the US, its allies and civilians continued to be attacked in an unstable Iraq.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

RNC video cites right-wing think tank without mentioning it was doing so

A video played at the beginning of Republican National Convention proceedings on Wednesday evening attacked Biden’s handling of foreign policy – and featured a narrator saying, “The Defense News reports today that the US military is in decline and threats from China are formidable.”

Facts First: This claim is misleading. Defense News, an independent publication covering national security, did not itself assert that the US military is in decline. Rather, the publication reported that the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank had made that assertion.

A Defense News article in October 2022 was headlined, “US military in decline, threats from China ‘formidable,’ report says.” The article explained that these assertions came from “a new report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that each year analyzes the strength of the armed forces and the threats to America.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

FOURTH NIGHT:

Former President Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday with the most dishonest speech of the four-day Republican National Convention, making more than 20 false claims by CNN’s count.

Many of the false claims were ones Trump has made before, some of them for years. They spanned a wide variety of topics, including the economy, immigration, crime, foreign policy and elections. Some of them were wild lies, others smaller exaggerations. Some were in his prepared text (like the absurd claim that he left the Biden administration a world at peace), while he ad-libbed others (such as his usual lies that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election and that the US is experiencing the worst inflation it has ever had).

Below is a fact check of some of Trump’s false or misleading remarks, plus a fact check of claims made by other Thursday convention speakers.

Trump claimed that there is record inflation under President Joe Biden.

Former President Donald Trump claimed that there is record inflation under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. The current inflation rate, 3% in June 2024, is nowhere near the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920.

Trump could fairly say that the inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but it has since plummeted.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s misleading claim about North Korean missile launches during his presidency

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he “got along with” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and “we stopped the missile launches from North Korea.”

“But, no, I got along with him,” Trump said, “and we stopped the missile launches from North Korea. Now North Korea is acting up again.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that he “stopped the missile launches” from North Korea is misleading. While missile launches did pause from North Korea for a period of time during his administration, they started up again before he left office.

A May 2019 launch of what was assessed to be a short-range ballistic missile was North Korea’s first since 2017, which was seen as a sign of growing frustration from Kim on the state of talks with the US. North Korea later launched two more missiles in July 2019, a month after Trump’s high-profile meeting with Kim in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. North Korea conducted four missile tests in 2020.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Trump on his claims of defeating ISIS in “couple of months”

Former President Donald Trump claimed in his RNC speech that “we defeated 100% of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, something that was going to take five years. … We did it in a matter of a couple of months.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim of having defeated ISIS in “a couple of months” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019.

Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq in late December 2018, as he has suggested in past remarks, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has before, when he said he defeated the terror group with no caveats or credit to anyone else. Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

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IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Donald Trump’s misleading claim that federal judge ruled case against him was ‘unconstitutional’

Donald Trump said Thursday that the Florida federal judge who was overseeing the classified documents case dismissed the criminal charges against the former president, finding “that the prosecutor and the fake documents case against me were totally unconstitutional.”

Facts first: Trump’s claim is misleading. District Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in her ruling that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who was prosecuting the case, violated the Constitution. But Cannon specifically did not comment on the validity of the charges Trump was facing, or whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper.

In a 93-page ruling Monday, Cannon said Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. Cannon said that Smith’s position as special counsel “effectively usurps” Congress’ “important legislative authority,” because Congress should have the authority – not the head of the Justice Department – to appoint such an official.

Cannon also said that Smith’s office was being funded improperly.

But Cannon also specifically noted that she was not deciding any “other legal rights or claims” brought by Trump or his co-defendants in the case.

The judge also said that the Justice Department could potentially revive the case by funding the special counsel through different means. Prosecutors from outside the special counsel’s office could also refile the charges.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Trump on the impact of immigration on Medicare and Social Security

During his Republican National Convention speech, former President Donald Trump again said that Democrats are harming Social Security and Medicare by letting migrants into the US.

“Democrats are going to destroy Social Security and Medicare because all of these people by the millions are coming in – they’re going to be on Social Security and Medicare and other things, and you’re not able to afford it. They are destroying your Social Security and your Medicare,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true, particularly in the near term, multiple experts say. Many undocumented immigrants work, which means they pay much-needed payroll taxes, and this bolsters the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and extends their solvency. Immigrants who are working legally typically won’t collect benefits for many years. As for those who are undocumented, some are working under fake Social Security numbers, so they are paying payroll taxes but don’t qualify to collect benefits.

The Social Security Administration looked at the effects of unauthorized immigration on the Social Security trust funds. It found that in 2010, earnings by unauthorized workers contributed roughly $12 billion on net to the entitlement program’s cash flow. The agency has not updated the analysis since, but this year’s Social Security trustees report noted that increasing average annual total net immigration by 100,000 persons improves the entitlement program’s solvency.

“We estimate that future years will experience a continuation of this positive impact on the trust funds,” said the report on unauthorized immigration.

Meanwhile, unauthorized immigrants contributed more than $35 billion on net to Medicare’s trust fund between 2000 and 2011, extending the life of the trust fund by a year, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“Immigrants tend to be younger and employed, which increases the number of workers paying into the system,” said Gary Engelhardt, a Syracuse University economics professor. “Also, they have more children, which helps boost the future workforce that will pay payroll taxes.”

“Immigrants are good for Social Security,” he said.

However, undocumented immigrants who gain legal status that includes eligibility for future Social Security and Medicare benefits could ultimately be a drain to the system, according to Jason Richwine, a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration.

“Illegal immigration unambiguously benefits the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, but amnesty (legalization) would reverse those gains and add extra costs,” Richwine wrote in a report last year.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump on trade deal with China

Former President Donald Trump claimed that he struck a trade deal with China, requiring the country to purchase $50 billion worth of American products. “They buy $50 billion worth,” he said at the Republican National Convention Thursday.

Facts First: The claim that China bought $50 billion worth of American product as a result of a trade deal is false.

Trump is referring to what is known as the Phase One deal he struck with Beijing in December 2019.

While the deal required China to buy $50 billion worth of American agricultural products by the end of 2021 – Beijing did not live up to its commitment.

US agricultural exports to China recovered from the trade war but did not reach the levels in the Phase One commitments, according to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Donald Trump exaggerates how much higher gas prices are right now

Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump described gas prices inaccurately during his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. He said that “gas prices are up 60%.”

Facts First: The average price of a regular gallon of gasoline nationwide is $3.51 as of Thursday, according to AAA. That’s up about 47% from the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated, when the average was $2.39, not 60% higher as Trump claimed.

Although the United States has a strategic gasoline reserve, which can be tapped by the White House to ease upward pressure on prices, as Biden did in May, gas prices are still mostly determined by market forces, such as global petroleum production and consumer demand, not solely by the decisions of a sitting US president.

From CNN’s Bryan Mena

Trump claims government hired 88,000 IRS agents

Former President Donald Trump, while recounting a conversation he had with a waitress worried about the taxes on her tips, claimed that the government recently hired 88,000 IRS agents to audit individuals.

Facts First: This claim is false.

The 88,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees – not solely enforcement agents – over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump on Biden increasing Americans’ taxes by four times

Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim that President Joe Biden wants to hike people’s taxes by four times.

“This is the only administration that said, ‘We’re gonna raise your taxes by four times what you’re paying now,’” Trump said Thursday in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Facts First: This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024.

Biden has not proposed quadrupling Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center think tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented budget proposals for fiscal 2024, found this: “His plan would raise average after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households, and lower after-tax incomes significantly for the highest-income taxpayers.”

The Tax Policy Center found that Biden’s proposal would, on average, have raised taxes by about $2,300 – but that’s about a 2.3% decline in after-tax income, not the massive reduction Trump is suggesting Biden wants. And critically, Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman noted to CNN in May that 95% of the tax hike would have been covered by the highest-income 5% of households.

The very biggest burden under the Biden plan would have been carried by the very richest households; the Tax Policy Center found that households in the top 0.1% would have seen their after-tax incomes decline by more than 20%. That’s “a lot,” Gleckman noted, but it’s still nowhere near the quadrupling Trump claims Biden is looking for. And again, even this increase would have been only for a tiny subset of the population. Biden has promised not to raise taxes by even a cent for anyone making under $400,000 per year.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s claim on the situation before the ‘Right to Try’ law

Former President Donald Trump touted the “Right to Try” law he signed in 2018 in his convention speech Thursday, which gave terminally ill patients easier access to experimental medications that haven’t yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Before the measure was passed, Trump claimed, terminally ill patients in the United States would have to go to foreign countries to seek experimental treatments or go home to die if they couldn’t afford it.

“Sounds simple, but it’s not, and I got them to agree that somebody that needs it will – instead of going to Asia or Europe or some place – or if you have no money, going home and dying,” he said.

Facts First: This is misleading. It is not true that terminally ill patients would simply have to go home and die without any access to experimental medications or would have to go to foreign countries seeking such treatments until Trump signed the Right to Try. Prior to the law, patients had to ask the federal government for permission to access experimental medications – but the government almost always said yes.

Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s FDA commissioner, told Congress in 2017 that the FDA had approved 99% of patient requests under its own “expanded access” program.

‘“Emergency requests for individual patients are usually granted immediately over the phone and non-emergency requests are generally processed within a few days,” Gottlieb testified.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Trump’s claim about Russian warships near Cuba

Former President Donald claimed in his RNC speech on Wednesday evening that “Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off our coasts in Cuba. … The press refuses to write about it.”

Facts First: Trump’s present-tense claim that Russian warships and nuclear submarines “are” operating close to the United States is misleading. While Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June along with other Russian Navy vessels, all of the vessels – including the submarine – have since left.

The vessels left Havana on June 17.

It is also not true that media organizations “don’t want to talk about it.” CNN, along with most other major news outlets, reported on the Russian ships’ positioning.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Trump on military equipment left in Afghanistan

Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.

Trump said, “And we also left $85 billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.”

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 minority of this funding was for equipment.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s false claim that the ‘world was at peace’ during his administration

Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday, as many others at the RNC did, that while he was president the world was at peace.

“Our opponents inherited a world at peace and turned it into a planet of war,” he also claimed later in his speech.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about world peace under his presidency is false. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.

US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2021.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on Venezuela’s crime rate

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday at the Republican National Convention that “in Venezuela, crime is down 72%” because foreign governments are sending their countries’ criminals to the US.

Facts First: Trump greatly overstated the Biden-era decline in crime in Venezuela, at least according to the limited statistics that are publicly available.

And while it is certain that at least some criminals have joined law-abiding Venezuelans in a mass exodus from the country amid the economic crisis of the last decade, there is no proof Venezuela’s government has deliberately emptied prisons for migration purposes or intentionally sent ex-prisoners to the United States.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s evidence-free claim on immigration

Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. … Terrorists are coming in at numbers we’ve never seen before.”

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that jails around the world are being emptied out so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants, nor for his claim that foreign governments are also emptying out mental health facilities for this purpose. Last year, Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower claim at the time that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.

Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN at the time 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.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s false claim on US crime statistics

Former President Donald Trump claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that “our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about a dramatic increase in the crime rate is false. Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.

Preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% national decline in overall reported violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime levels below where they were in 2020. And 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 reported violent crime.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump blames Biden administration for ‘greatest invasion in history’

During his RNC speech, former President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration has done nothing to curb illegal immigration to the US.

“The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country—they are coming in from every corner of the earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East,” Trump said, “they’re coming at levels we’ve never seen before it is an invasion indeed and this administration does nothing to stop them.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the Biden administration is doing “nothing” is incorrect. Illegal crossings at the US border dropped in June and the Biden administration has imposed significant restrictions on asylum along with other measures to curb illegal immigration.

Arrests along the US southern border dropped 29% in June, according to new data released by US Customs and Border Protection, following the Biden administration’s order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings.“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy A. Miller previously said in a statement.

Last month, the Biden administration invoked an authority to shut off access to asylum for migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally, a significant attempt to address one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities. It was the administration’s most dramatic move on the US southern border, using the same authority former President Donald Trump tried to use in office.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand

Trump makes claims about grocery prices rising under Biden

Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that groceries are up 57% during the Biden administration.

Facts First: Trump’s claims of grocery prices being up 57% are false and could use some context.

Inflation’s rapid ascent, which began in early 2021, 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.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year high, and has slowed since (the Consumer Price Index was at 3% as of June 2024). However, it remains elevated from historical levels. Three-plus years of pervasive and prolonged inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, especially lower-income households trying to afford the necessities (food, shelter and transportation).

Food prices, specifically grocery prices, did outpace overall inflation for much of 2022 and 2023, driven higher by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Still, grocery prices didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual food and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Since Biden took office, the CPI “food at home” index is up 21%, which is higher than its 9% typical rise in recent history over a 54-month period, but it’s not 57%.

Through the 12 months that ended in June, overall food and grocery prices were up just 2.2% and 1.1%, respectively.

Certain food categories saw much greater inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. However, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a highly contagious, deadly avian flu. Food prices are highly volatile and can be influenced by a variety of factors, especially disease, extreme weather events, global supply and demand, geopolitical events, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump’s misleading claim about energy independence

Former President Donald Trump claimed that the US was “energy independent” during his presidency but that this changed under President Joe Biden.

Facts First: This is misleading. “Energy independent” is a political phrase, not a literal phrase, that can be defined in various ways – and, under Biden, the US has continued to satisfy the same definitions it satisfied under Trump. US production of oil and gas have set records under Biden.

“Energy independent” doesn’t mean the US uses no foreign energy or that it is untethered from global energy markets; this wasn’t the case under Trump and still isn’t under Biden. Experts in energy policy tend to scoff at the term “energy independence,” with three experts telling CNN in 2022 that it is a “horrible term,” “ridiculous term” and “stupid term,” respectively.

But if the term is defined as the US exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, that has happened in every year under Biden after happening under Trump in 2020 for the first time in decades. (In fact, the US surplus in petroleum trade has grown under Biden as US crude oil production and exports have hit new highs) And if the term is defined as the US producing more energy than it consumes, that has also continued to happen under Biden after happening under Trump in 2019for the first time in decades.

You can read here about the various economic reasons the US has imported foreign energy under both Trump and Biden despite its so-called “energy independence.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump’s false claim on his tax cuts

Former President Donald Trump once again claimed that he signed the largest tax cuts in history during his administration.

“We got credit for the war, and defeating ISIS, and so many things. The great economy, the biggest tax cuts ever, the biggest regulation cuts ever, the creation of Space Force, the rebuilding of our military. We did so much,” Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump’s false claim US had ‘no’ inflation during his presidency

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that inflation did not exist during his presidency – drawing a contrast between his administration and that of President Joe Biden, whose early years in office were plagued by decades-high inflation.

“We had no inflation,” Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Facts First: Trump’s comment is false. Inflation was low, but not nothing.

The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose about 8% during Trump’s four years in office. In January 2021, his final partial month in office, it increased 1.4% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump repeats frequent claim about oil drilling and gas prices

As he has done repeatedly on the campaign trail, Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that under a new Trump administration, the United States would “drill, baby, drill, … by doing that, we will lead to a large-scale decline in prices.”

Facts First: Trump’s frequent campaign claim that the US can lower gas prices by producing more domestic oil is misleading.

Under President Joe Biden, US oil production has reached a new record this year, even surpassing output under Trump’s administration. The Energy Information Administration expects crude oil production to hit successive records this year and next, powered by an oil boom in the Permian Basin. As CNN has reported, the US currently produces more oil than any other country on the planet, at about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019.

Prices at the pump in the US are highly dependent on the global oil market and the US cannot be truly energy independent when it comes to gas prices, energy experts have told CNN. Oil is a global commodity; the global price of oil determines US gas prices and it’s simply impossible to separate that price from shifting global dynamics like Russia’s war on Ukraine or OPEC’s recent decisions to cut oil production.

“Whether we’re drill baby, drilling has more to do with what the price of crude oil is, how healthy is the economy,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, and a former George W. Bush White House official, told CNN recently. “These things are outside of a president’s direct control.” There’s also the fact that the US consumes a different kind of oil than it produces, McNally told CNN last year. McNally compared the light crude the US produces to champagne, and the heavy crude it imports to coffee. US oil refineries are specifically built to separate out the “heavy and gunky” crude we consume, McNally said.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Pompeo falsely claims Biden ‘won’t even talk about’ American hostages in Gaza

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Thursday that President Joe Biden “won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held” in Gaza.

“And now of course a second war in Gaza. President Biden won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held there by the Iranian regime,” Pompeo said.

Facts First: The claim that Biden “won’t even talk about” the American hostages in Gaza is false. Biden has spoken about the Americans held in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ invasion of Israel several times since October.

Recently on May 31, speaking about a proposed deal for Israel and Hamas, Biden said American hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal: “[W]e want them home.”

On October 25, Biden said his administration was working “around the clock together with our partners in the region to secure the release of hostages including American citizens … left behind.”

On November 26, he spoke extensively about the release of an Israeli American little girl who was held hostage and said he was pressing for more Americans to be released, adding, “we will not stop working until every hostage is returned to their loved ones.”

Most recently, at the NATO Summit in DC last week, Biden talked about hostages broadly, saying the US “has been working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, to bring the hostages home, to create a path for peace and stability in the Middle East.”

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Trump biographical video includes false and misleading claims

The Republican National Convention played a biographical video about former President Donald Trump before Trump began his own speech. The video included false and misleading claims.

The Trump tax cuts

The video featured a narrator making a claim that Trump himself frequently utters. The narrator said, “The Trump tax cuts: largest in America’s history.”

This is false. Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars. You can read a detailed fact check here.

Global conflict under Trump

The video’s narrator also delivered a version of another claim Trump has made repeatedly, saying Trump’s “strength and resolve” produced “a stable world at peace.”

This claim about world peace under Trump is false, too. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.

Americans’ incomes

While attacking President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, the video featured on-screen text that said, “U.S. incomes fall for third straight year,” attributing those words to a Wall Street Journal article in 2023. An image of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was shown on screen at the same time.

This combination of words and images is misleading. The video didn’t acknowledge that the first of the three straight years in which the Wall Street Journal article reported that inflation-adjusted median household income went down was 2020, when Trump was president. (The Covid-19 pandemic played a major role in the decline.)

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Eric Trump’s false claims about the economy and US global standing in 2016

Eric Trump told the crowd at the RNC Thursday that the “economy was struggling, jobs were scarce” and the US had poor standing on the global stage when his father was elected president in 2016.

Facts First: Eric Trump’s claims are false. When Donald Trump took office in 2017, he inherited a strong economy, including a robust labor market, and a nation that was viewed favorably on the global stage.

In 2016, the US added an average of nearly 194,000 jobs per month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In the two years before, those average gains were even higher: 226,000 in 2015 and nearly 250,000 in 2014.

Job gains remained above historical averages in 2017 through 2019, with 177,000 jobs added on average per month.

Eric Trump’s claims that jobs were scarce in 2016 were not accurate. In fact, the US labor market experienced its longest expansion on record starting in 2010 and continuing until March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic crippled global economies, including that of the US.

In addition to inheriting a labor market in good shape, the economy was growing when Trump took office. Real gross domestic product – the widest measure of economic activity – typically grows between 2% and 3%, and it averaged 2.4% between 2014-2016 and then nearly 2.7% during the first three years of Trump’s presidency, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Also, the US was well regarded internationally when Barack Obama left office, and those sentiments plunged at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, according to the spring 2017 Global Attitudes Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Pompeo’s claim about the southern border under Trump

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that the US-Mexico border was “closed” during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Facts First: Pompeo’s claim is false.

While Trump tightened the border during his tenure, illegal crossings into the US from Mexico still numbered in the tens of thousands each month leading up to when he left office. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration limited non-essential travel on the US-Mexico border and prohibited migrants from crossing it in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus. President Joe Biden later extended the restrictions.

The former president’s biggest effort to “close” the border was met with resistance by federal courts, and the Supreme Court later gave Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy.

From CNN’s Devan Cole

Trump makes false claims about election fraud in RNC video

For the fourth straight night, the Republican National Convention played a video in which former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to use “every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats,” including voting by mail. Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting during the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it during the current campaign

But Trump’s comments in the convention video also included some of his regular false claims about elections. After claiming he would “once and for all secure our elections” as president, Trump again insinuated the 2020 election was not secure, saying, “We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.” And he said, “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims are nonsense – slightly vaguer versions of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was highly secure; Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232; there is no evidence of voter fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state; and there is no basis for claiming that election cheating is the only thing at which Trump’s opponents excel.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Pompeo’s false claim about spy balloons

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday evening that under former President Donald Trump’s administration, “not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across” the US.

“We’d begun on an honorable exit from Afghanistan, and not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across the United States of America,” Pompeo said.

Facts First: The claim that there were no spy balloons under Trump is false.

Three suspected Chinese spy balloons transited over the continental US during the Trump administration, but they were not discovered until after President Joe Biden took office. Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in 2023 that a “domain awareness gap” allowed the balloons to travel undetected.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Linda McMahon’s misleading claim on tariffs

Linda McMahon, who served in the Trump administration as the Small Business Administrator, suggested at the Republican National Convention Thursday that China paid the tariffs that the former president put on roughly $300 billion of Chinese-made goods. “Instead of taxing American companies, Donald Trump put tariffs on China that raised billions of dollars and protected American industries,” she said.

Facts First: This characterization of Trump’s tariffs is misleading.

It’s true that Trump’s tariffs on China raised billions of dollars for the US government, but the duties were paid by US companies – not China.

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

Once an importing company pays the tariff, it can decide to eat the cost or pass all or some of it to the buyer of its goods – whether that’s a retailer or a consumer.

Many economists agree that tariffs act as a tax on American consumers.

“A tariff is just a form of a tax,” Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN earlier this year.

Tariffs can benefit some companies by raising the prices of competing foreign-made goods, but the duties can hurt other companies by raising component parts they need to manufacture.

For example, Trump’s tariffs were imposed, in part, to boost the US manufacturing sector – but that industry lost jobs.

Federal Reserve economists found a net decrease in manufacturing employment due to the tariffs in 2019. That’s mostly because goods became more expensive to US consumers. Plus, retaliatory tariffs put on American-made goods made other US manufacturers less competitive when selling abroad.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

RNC video featuring Reagan’s voice misleadingly twists magazine article

A video played on the final night of the Republican National Convention tried to attack President Joe Biden by featuring quotes from then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s famous rhetorical questions about the President Jimmy Carter era at a presidential debate against Carter in 1980.

At one point, the video featured Reagan’s voice asking if, compared to four years ago, “Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?” On-screen text answered the question with the words “allies no longer trust the United States,” attributing them to a September 2021 article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Facts First: This quote is misleading. The article in Foreign Affairs didn’t actually declare that allies no longer trust the United States. Rather, the article noted that “critics of President Joe Biden” make the “claim” that allies no longer trust the US after Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – but the article then went on to argue that “these concerns about credibility are overblown.”

The convention video also featured Reagan’s voice asking, “Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?” But if you go back precisely four years from the most recent unemployment rate, the answer is: less unemployment. The current unemployment rate is 4.1% for June 2024; four years prior, in June 2020, the unemployment rate was 11.0% amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is a reasonable basis for this part of the video, though, if you interpret “four years ago” more broadly to refer to any time in 2020. Before the pandemic, in the first two months of 2020, the unemployment rates were 3.6% and 3.5%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

We’ll have the reviews of the Democratic National Convention from Daniel Dale and his CNN colleagues on Wednesday.

The Difference

Posted on July 3, 2024 by bpriddy

Tomorrow is Independence Day, the day the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Only two people definitely signed it that day, The President of the Congress, John Hancock, and Secretary Charles Thompson. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams claimed they signed it then, too, but historians have disagreed for decades on whether they did and when the other signers added their signatures.

The course of human events had made it necessary to dissolve the political bands that had linked the colonies with Great Britain.

What of the people from whom we separated? Are they different from us after almost 250 years?

We recently spent two weeks sharing streets, buildings, restaurants, and other places with them, people differing from us only in accent, the side of the road on which they drive, and dogs.

The people of the United Kingdom do love their dogs and they take them everywhere. It’s a rare restaurant that has a sign we are familiar with: “Service dogs only.” We saw one sign that told us we could buy vegan ice cream for our dog inside. One of our hotels had a kiosk with a dog menu.

We loved our exploration of their country. We enjoyed meeting the many people we met. Our guides were incredible. Every citizen was friendly and courteous and proud to show us things or explain things—-as we would be for those from England who visit our country. They, like us, are free people. But our definitions of freedom are a little bit different—-which is why our country got its divorce in 1776.

But few citizens of this country likely would want to trade places with those good folks as far as government is concerned and as far as the citizen’s voice is heard in government.

Much of our system of government and laws is based on the centuries-old policies born in England starting with King John I’s acceptance of demands by several of his Barons at Runnymede in June, 1215 in the Magna Carta. The document placed the King and all the Sovereigns who have come after him within the rule of law, a concept we are arguing in this country more than 800 years later.

The document remains a symbol of freedom from government oppression. It’s philosophy was brought to our shores with the early English settlers and was a precedent for the Declaration of Independence.

But our founders took the concepts far beyond the Magna Carta, and we were surprised by how hard our differences in approach to rule hit home with us during our visits to two places within the last month.

This is the Tower of London:

And this is Edinburgh Castle in Scotland:

What is inside these two structures says much about our differing national concepts of government.

The Tower of London, among other things, is the home of The Crown Jewels. Edinburgh Castle houses the much smaller Honours of Scotland, that country’s crown jewels that date from the days before Scotland became part of the United Kingdom. When a new monarch is coronated, these items are ceremonially donned to symbolize the monarchy’s rule over all of the UK.

We would like to show you pictures of this collection; it’s overwhelming. But photography is not allowed in the darkened rooms where spotlights illuminate the sparkling and glowing treasured regalia that is kept behind enclosures. Visitors can purchase a $10 guidebook, however. Although it devotes fourteen of its eighty pages just to the various crowns in the collection, it cannot carry the impact of walking into dark rooms with illuminated display cases filled with large sparkling items of gold and jewels.

The guidebook to the collection at the Tower of London tells visitors:

Kings of England had a crown for everyday use, and the coronation crown that was worn rarey but was the ultimate symbol of their sacred and regal authority. The crowns were accompanied by other symbols of power: a sceptre indicating control over the realm and royal rights; a rod representing the responsibility to protect the people; a decorated sword for military strength; and an orb; a globe representing the world with a cross on top symbolizing Christ’s power over all creation

The Crown Jewels include more than 23,000 gemstones and more than 100 objects. The value of the collection is placed as much as six BILLION dollars, although officially they are considered priceless. One diamond, the Cullinan, has an estimated value of $430 million

The collection says everything about the difference between our system of government and the English system of government.

These jewel-encrusted items are symbols intended to make it clear that power is separate from and far above the people, and that it is blessed by an official national church. Only three people are permitted to handle these treasurers—the King, the Royal Jewler, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Contrast those museums with a museum in this country that shows us the symbols of OUR system. We have one room displaying, not jewels but a few pages of paper:

—Four pieces of paper in particular.

The National Archives Museum in Washington, D. C. has rules about cameras, too. Take them in. Use them. Photograph the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Don’t use flash or other supplemental lighting, selfie sticks, monopods or similar equipment. But otherwise, snap away.

If you want real detailed images of the documents, you can download free scans of them, buy facsimiles in the museum store or online, or download closeups of the documents and other features in the rotunda. You can have the symbols of our government in your own home or your office. You don’t have to go hundreds of miles, get tickets, and stand in lines to see them. They belong to YOU. You do not belong to them.

The words of the documents describe the gulf between this country and the home country we left in 1776:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands….”

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…..”

“The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: and as extending the ground of public confidence in government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”

In darkened tight rooms of ancient buildings in London and Edinburgh are housed symbols that display the power of government OVER the people who are not allowed to even take photographs of those symbols

In the bright, light-filled rotunda of a public building in our country are the documents that describe the power of the PEOPLE over government.

We, the people of the United States, elect a President and two houses of a Congress that represents us. The people of the United Kingdom have little voice in picking those who will rule them.

The Constitutional Monarchy that is the United Kingdom considers the King, an inherited position, the head of state although not the head of government. Political decisions have been left to the government and Parliament since the Magna Carta but the people’s involvement is relatively minimal.

The top officer in the political system is the Prime Minister, who is not elected by the people. By tradition, the PM is a member of Parliament answerable to the House of Commons. The King has “Royal Prerogative powers” that include the power to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister. However, it is customary that the Sovereign (King or Queen) appoints someone from the majority party in the House of Commons.

And the way those representatives of the people are elected seems by comparison to our elections to minimize the power of the voter.

The 650 members of the House of Commons are elected from districts in a “first past the post” system of voting that pits all candidates together regardless of party with the candidate getting the plurality, not necessarily the majority, winning the position. The “first past the post” concept is likened to a horse race finish in a multiple horse field. Members of the House of Commons are called MPs, Members of Parliament.

The members of the House of Lords are not elected. They are appointed and serve for life. The custom of people serving by inheritance was ended in 1999 but Lordships are determined by in-house elections. There is no fixed number of members and not all who are members are allowed to attend proceedings. Last year there were 261 Conservative Party Lords, 185 Crossbench Lords, and 174 Labour Party members. A year earlier, the total was 798 but only 755 could take part in the proceedings. As many as 26 members are bishops or archbishops of the national church. The people have no voice in selecting members of the House of Lords..

We describe all of this, as far as we are capable of understanding it, given our background in our own form of government, to point out how distinctly different things are for us, and to underline how those dark rooms filled with billions of dollars of jewelry symbolize power that does NOT flow from the people but clearly reminds the people how superior the government is over them, how separate government power is from the consent of the governed.

Those rooms remind us that government of, by, and for the people is a concept that was stated in Philadelphia by traitor radicals who knew the personal danger they faced. Many have died to protect that traitorous system. Many have died in the country’s uniforms as well as in civilian attire on battlefields and in city streets to protect and expand that concept for everyone.

We left those darkened rooms in England and Scotland with even greater appreciation for being a citizen of a country that trusts the people to define governmental power. In doing so we are not criticizing the system that the people of our Mother Country have; we are only pointing out the differences with which both we Americans and our British cousins are comfortable having.

On this Independence Day, we need to ponder the power—and especially in this year the responsibility—we have to determine the kind of government we will allow and the kind of people we will choose to operate it on OUR behalf, not on THEIR behalf.

Symbolically, we are facing a choice between going to a dark place or staying in a place of light, of retaining the power of government that serves the people or giving it up to those who seek power to serve themselves.

We the people are the crown jewels of this country.

And this country is the crown jewel of freedom for the rest of the world.

Never, ever, forget that.

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Letting the Ashes Cool

Posted on July 1, 2024 by bpriddy

(This post includes a lengthy addition.)

We thought it judicious to refrain from what many years ago was given the title of “instant analysis” after last Thursday night’s sad demonstration of the state of our major political parties. It was a dismaying performance from both sides—-dueling dumpster fires, if you will.

It is hard to see that the debate allowed many voters to make their final presidential-support decisions. It lived down to its expectations by presenting us with a seemingly doddering old man against a blustering congenital liar. It demonstrated that our political parties truly are giving us a choice of the lesser of two evils.

(CNN calculates Trump out-shown Biden 30-9 in false statements and misleading claims. The network drew some criticism for not doing instant fact-checking during the debate, an impossibility given the volume of them. For the historical record, we are adding at the end of these comments the extensive fact-checking done by Daniel Dale and other staffers at CNN that addresses that issue.)

The debate was an example—indeed the entire contest is likely to be an example—of the dangers of political deference. Both parties long ago decided who would run for President this year. The decision means that the emergence of fresh, incisive, inspirational new potential leadership has been discouraged for another cycle. It is one thing to offer retreaded old warriors, but to stifle political vision necessary to confront a rapidly-changing world is something else entirely. And that is what is happening in both parties.

It is of little comfort, but some comfort, to know that this election cycle should be the end of a political era that has aged out.

We pretty well knew, or feared, what we were going to get last Thursday night. One candidate is great with a teleprompter that keeps his thoughts organized and cogent. One candidate is at his best (or worst) when he goes off script, a teleprompter, poorly-read, never expressing his true attitudes.

President Biden appeared, if anything, to be overly-prepared to make his points. Ex-President Trump appeared to be prepared to be his usual self. Biden at times appeared frail and vacant. Trump was verbose in his lying and demonstrated a third-grader’s ability to make faces when Biden was speaking. When things degenerated so far that they argued over their golf games, it was clear this event was in the toilet.

Even during the event, and in the hours and days immediately afterward, Democrats seem to be personifying the saying attributable to several people:

“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”

MAGA Republicans are celebrating; mainline Republicans continue shaking their heads. In truth, neither party should consider anything is final.

We are more than four months away from the election, a long, long time in politics.

At least one more debate is scheduled.

Two political convention/patent medicine tent shows/infomercials are yet to be held.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are yet to be spent on thirty-second messages, direct mail pieces, social media blasts, etc., all of which are designed to manipulate the public.

The President’s health and mental acuity remains an issue. The ex-president’s civil and criminal record is still being built, with a criminal sentencing coming up just before his convention. Both parties would do well to have a Plan B in case either candidate is taken out of or falls out of the race.

It was observed many years ago that Ronald Reagan’s most important ingredient in building his legacy was that he surrounded himself with good people. He was never accused of being the intellectual equal of, say, John Kennedy or of nuclear submarine officer Jimmy Carter. But his advisers played a major role in his administration’s policies.

So it is that during this long, intensive public job interview that we observers and interviewers ask ourselves not to focus as much as we are inclined to and encouraged to focus on the individual candidates but to view their administrations in a holistic manner. Who will their advisers be?

We should recall the story is told of Billy, the operator of a little barge operator in New York who, at the end of each day, would return to his dock, bringing with him some of the harbor garbage that had collected around his boat. Look at our candidates and think of the story of Billy’s barge. Who and what will they bring with them to the White House?

Last Thursday night was no prize-winner for either side. But there are months to go and many harbors to visit.

Both sides have ample reasons for concerns and numerous questions about whether either candidate should still be around at the end.

Recognize danger and doubt. But running in circles, screaming and shouting, whether in seeming triumph or seeming disaster, on either side appears to be premature.

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Now, the analysis:

Trump made more than 30 false claims during CNN’s presidential debate — far more than Biden

By CNN Staff

Updated 1:47 PM EDT, Fri June 28, 2024

Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made false and misleading claims during CNN’s presidential debate on Thursday – but Trump did so far more than Biden, just like in their debates in 2020.

Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate. They included numerous claims that CNN and others have already debunked during the current presidential campaign or prior.

Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.

Trump also added some new false claims, such as his assertions that the US currently has its biggest budget deficit and its biggest trade deficit with China. Both records actually occurred under Trump.

Biden made at least nine false or misleading claims in the debate. He used false numbers while describing two of his key Medicare policies, falsely claimed that no US troops had been killed on his watch, repeated his usual misleading figure about billionaires’ tax rates, baselessly claimed that Trump wants to eliminate Social Security, falsely said that the unemployment rate was 15% when he took office, inaccurately said that the Border Patrol union had endorsed him before clarifying that he was talking about agents’ support for the border bill he had backed, and exaggerated Trump’s 2020 comments about the possibility of treating Covid-19 by injecting disinfectant.

Here is a detailed fact check from CNN’s reporting team of some of those claims.

Trump on abortion policy after Roe v. Wade

Trump repeated his frequent claim that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and the power to set abortion policy returned to individual states. He said: “Everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders.” He also added: “ Every legal scholar wanted it that way.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims arefalse. Poll after poll has shown that most Americans – two-thirds or nearly two-thirds of respondents in multiple polls – wish Roe would have been preserved. And multiple legal scholars have told CNN that they had wanted Roe preserved.

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS in April 2024 found 65% of adults opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. That’s nearly identical to the result of a CNN poll conducted by SSRS in July 2022, the month after the decision. Similarly, a Marquette Law School poll in February 2024 found 67% of adults opposed the decision that overturned Roe.

A NBC News poll in June 2023 found 61% opposition among registered voters to the decision that overturned Roe. A Gallup poll in May 2023 found 61% of adults called the decision a bad thing.

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And “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.”

It is true that some legal scholars who support abortion rights wished that Roe had been written differently; the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of them. But Ziegler noted that although “there was a cottage industry of legal scholars kind of rewriting Roe – ‘what Roe should’ve said’ — that isn’t saying Roe should’ve been overturned. Those are very different things.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on Democrats and abortion

Trump repeated his frequent claim that Democrats will kill babies in the “eighth month, the ninth month of pregnancy, or even after birth.” After Biden said that he would “restore Roe v. Wade” if reelected, Trump said, “So that means he can take the life of the baby in the ninth month and even after birth, because some states – Democrat-run – take it after birth.”Trump pointed to the former Virginia governor’s support of a bill that would loosen restrictions on late-term abortions as an example.

Trump also said later in the debate that some “Democrat-run” states allow babies to be killed after birth.

Facts First: Trump’s claim about Democrats killing babies after birth is nonsense; that is infanticide and illegal in all 50 states. A very small percentage of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy.

According to data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 0.9% of reported abortions in 2020 occurred at 21 weeks or later. (Many of these abortions occur because of serious health risks or lethal fetal anomalies.) By contrast, 80.9% of reported abortions in 2020 were conducted before 10 weeks, 93.1% before 14 weeks and 95.8% before 16 weeks.

Trump invoked controversial comments made in 2019 by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, as he voiced support for a state measure that would significantly loosen restrictions on late-term abortions when the fetus was not viable. Northam was not talking about infanticide, which Virginia continues to prohibit.

There are some cases in which parents decide to choose palliative care for babies who are born with deadly conditions that give them just minutes, hours or days to live. That is simply not the same as killing a baby.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jen Christensen

Trump on the ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’ controversy

Trump denied that he had used the words “suckers” or “losers” to describe members of the US military who had been killed in action, after Biden pointed to the remarks to criticize his predecessor’s record on supporting veterans. And he claimed that the idea he had made these remarks was “made up by him,” Biden.

Facts First: Trump’s claim that Biden made up this story is false. The story was initially reported by The Atlantic. The magazine, citing four unnamed sources with “firsthand knowledge,” reported in 2020 that on the day Trump canceled a visit to a military cemetery in France where US troops who were killed in World War I are buried, he had told members of his senior staff, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” The magazine also reported that in another conversation on the same trip, Trump had referred to marines who had been killed in the region as “suckers.”

John Kelly, who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security, has said on the record that in 2018 Trump did use the words “suckers” and “losers” to refer to servicemembers who were killed in action. Kelly told CNN anchor Jim Sciutto for Sciutto’s 2024 book that Trump would say: “Why do you people all say that these guys who get wounded or killed are heroes? They’re suckers for going in the first place, and they’re losers.”

There is no public recording of Trump making such remarks, so we can’t definitively call Trump’s denial false. But it wasn’t Biden’s invention.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Biden on his record as commander-in-chief

Biden claimed that he is the only president this decade “that doesn’t have any … troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did,” referring to Trump.

“Truth is, I’m the only president this century, that doesn’t have any, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden is wrong. US service members have died abroad during his presidency, including 13 troops killed in a suicide bombing during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Thirteen US service members — including 11 Marines, one Army special operations soldier, and one Navy corpsman — were killed in the suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Three US soldiers were also killed this year at a small US outpost in Jordan in a one-way drone attack launched by Iran-backed militants. And two US Navy SEALs died in January off the coast of Somalia while conducting a night-time seizure of lethal aid being transported from Iran to Yemen.

Other US service members have also died abroad in training incidents, including five US soldiers who died in a helicopter crash in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in November 2023 during a routine refueling mission, and eight US airmen who died in a CV-22 Osprey crash in November 2023 off the coast of Yakushima Island, Japan.

From CNN’s Haley Britzky

Trump on Biden and the term “super predators”

Trump claimed that Biden called Black people “super predators” for a decade in the 1990s.

“What he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years he called them ‘super predators’ – in the 1990s – we can’t forget that,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Biden never publicly deployed the phrase “super predators” or endorsed the criminological theory behind it (which held that there was a new breed of highly and remorselessly violent young offenders), let alone do so for 10 years. Biden did refer to “predators on our streets” who were “beyond the pale” while promoting the 1994 crime bill, but he did not specify that he was talking about people of any particular race.

As reported by CNN’s KFILE in 2019, Biden said in a 1993 Senate floor speech in support of the crime bill that “we have predators on our streets that society has in fact, in part because of its neglect, created.” And he urged the government to focus on the people he said were in danger of becoming “the predators 15 years from now” if their lives weren’t changed – “the cadre of young people, tens of thousands of them, born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing because they literally … have not been socialized, they literally have not had an opportunity.”

But Biden did not speak of “super predators.”

Four years later, in a 1997 hearing, he noted that the vast majority of youth criminal cases involved nonviolent offenses and said, “When we talk about the juvenile justice system, we have to remember that most of the youth involved in the system are not the so-called super predators.”

It was Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, who affirmatively used the phrase “super predators” as she argued in support of the 1994 crime bill (in 1996). She said in 2016 that she shouldn’t have used that language.

Trump wrote in a 2000 book that he supported tougher sentencing and street policing and warned of “wolf packs” of young criminals roaming the streets – and he cited a since-discredited statistical analysis that was linked to the “super predator” theory.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Daniel Dale

Trump on Iran’s funding for Hamas and Hezbollah

Trump claimed that when he was president, Iran “had no money for Hamas” and no money “for terror.”

“Do you wanna know why? Because Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke,” he said. “They had no money for Hamas, they had no money for anything. No money for terror. That’s why you had no terror, at all, during my administration. This place, the whole world is blowing up under him.” He added later that Iran also had “no money” for Hezbollah.

Facts First: Trump’s claims that Iran had “no money for Hamas,” “no money for terror” and no money for Hezbollah during his presidency is false. Iran’s funding for such groups did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions on the country had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped entirely, as four experts told CNN earlier this month.

Trump’s own administration said in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups including Hezbollah. The Trump administration began imposing sanctions on Iran in late 2018, pursuing a campaign known as “maximum pressure.” But Trump-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said himself in 2020 that Iran was continuing to fund terror groups. “So you continue to have, in spite of the Iranian leadership demanding that more money be given to them, they are using the resources that they have to continue funding Hezbollah in Lebanon and threatening the state of Israel, funding Iraqi terrorist Shia groups, all the things that they have done historically – continuing to build out their capabilities even while the people inside of their own country are suffering,” Pompeo said in a May 2020 interview, according to a transcript posted on the State Department’s website.

Trump could have fairly said that his sanctions on Iran had made life more difficult for terror groups (though it’s unclear how much their operations were affected). Instead, he continued his years-old practice of exaggerating even legitimate achievements.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Biden on drug prices

Biden touted two measures that his administration and congressional Democrats have enacted to reduce drug prices.

“We brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for a insulin shot as opposed to $400. No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug … beginning next year,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden is wrong. He incorrectly described two key provisions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that aim to reduce prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

Under the law, Medicare enrollees don’t pay more than $35 a month for each insulin prescription.

The law also placed a cap on Medicare’s Part D drug plans so that seniors and people with disabilities won’t pay more than $2,000 a year in out-of-pocket costs for medications bought at the pharmacy, starting in 2025. Biden corrected himself later in the debate to use the $2,000 figure when talking about the cap on those out-of-pocket costs.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Biden on border crossings dropping during his administration

Biden said border crossings had dropped 40% since he took executive action to tighten the border in early June, arguing that the numbers are better than when Trump left office.

“What I’ve done since I changed the law, what’s happened? I’ve changed it in a way that now you’re in situation where there are 40% fewer people coming across the border illegally,” Biden said.

Facts First: This is misleading.

The number of daily encounters at the US southern border dropped 40% following Biden’s executive action restricting asylum access earlier this month. While there’s been a recent drop in border crossings, the number of people crossing the US-Mexico border was generally lower during the Trump administration.

From CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez

Biden on support from the Border Patrol union

Biden said the Border Patrol union endorsed him, and then appeared to clarify and said the group “endorsed (his) position.”

Facts First: This is misleading. The National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents Border Patrol agents, backed a bipartisan border deal reached by senators that included some of the toughest security measures in recent memory, but didn’t endorse Biden. The deal failed in the Senate.

In a post on X, the union swiftly responded to the president Thursday: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

From CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez

Trump on the National Guard in Minneapolis

Trump said that he deployed the National Guard to Minneapolis in 2020 during the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

“When they ripped down Portland, when they ripped down many other cities. You go to Minnesota, Minneapolis, what they’ve done there with the fires all over the city – if I didn’t bring in the National Guard, that city would have been destroyed.”

Facts First: This is false. Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, not Trump, deployed the Minnesota National Guard during the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s office told CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities also run by Democrats.

You can read more here.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Daniel Dale

Trump on the European Union’s trade practices

Trump, complaining about the European Union’s trade practices, claimed that the EU doesn’t accept US products, including American cars. “They don’t want anything that we have,” Trump said Thursday. “But we’re supposed to take their cars, their food, their everything, their agriculture.”

Facts First: It’s not true that the European Union won’t take American products, including American cars, though some US exports do face EU trade barriers and though US automakers have often had a hard time gaining popularity with European consumers.

The US exported about $368 billion in goods to the European Union in 2023 (while importing about $576 billion from the EU that year), federal figures show. According to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.) The EU’s Eurostat statistical office says that car imports from the US hit a new peak in 2020, Trump’s last full year in office, at a value of about 11 billion euro.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Ella Nilsen

Biden on Black unemployment

Biden attempted to contrast himself with Trump on the economy. He said, “Black unemployment is the lowest level it’s been in a long, long time.”

Facts First: This is false. While the Black or African American unemployment rate hit a record low under Biden in April 2023, 4.8%, the rate was up to 6.1% in May 2024 – higher than in eight months of the Trump presidency.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on job growth during Biden’s presidency

Trump said of President Biden, “The only jobs he created were for illegal immigrants and ‘bounce-back jobs,’ a bounce-back from the Covid.”

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

Nearly 22 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, the US has added nearly 6.2 million more jobs in what’s become the fifth-longest period of employment expansion on record. In total under Biden, 15.6 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.

When the pandemic was more under control and in-person activities could fully resume, those industries faced worker shortages.

The pandemic recovery included what’s been called the Great Resignation or the Great Reshuffling, where people – for a variety of reasons – switched jobs or careers.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump on the Paris climate accord

Trump claimed that the Paris climate accord would have cost the US $1 trillion, that it was the only country that had to pay, and that China, India and Russia weren’t paying. Trump called the accord “a rip-off of the United States.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the US would alone have had to pay $1 trillion as part of the Paris climate accord is wildly inflated.

As part of the Paris agreement, in 2009, the US and other developed nations, including Western European countries, committed to collectively contribute $100 billion per year by 2020 to help poorer, developing countries, predominantly in the Global South, adapt to the impacts of climate change like sea level rise and worsening heat. Developed nations met their collective goal two years late in 2022, but the figure has never been as high as Trump was suggesting – and the US has certainly never paid $1 trillion in international climate finance.

Under the Obama administration, the US paid $1 billion of a $3 billion commitment it originally made in 2014. After Trump pulled the country out of the Paris accord, the US paid nothing to the global finance goal. And while Biden pledged $11.4 billion annually from the US, this level of funding hasn’t materialized. That’s because Congress, responsible for appropriating the nation’s budget, has allocated only a fraction of that – roughly $1 billion in 2022.

Trump is correct that countries including China, India and Russia have thus far not contributed to international climate finance. However, China’s position as the largest global emitter means many countries are pressuring it to contribute to international climate finance through a formal process.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Trump on Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor

Trump brought up an anti-Biden lie about Ukraine that has been a mainstay of both the 2020 and 2024 presidential cycles, plus Trump’s 2019 impeachment.

Trump slammed Biden for supposedly “telling the Ukrainian people” to “change the prosecutor, otherwise, you’re not getting $1 billion,” referring to Biden’s efforts to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016. Trump also claimed the Ukrainian prosecutor’s ouster was related to Biden’s “son,” referencing Hunter Biden, who at the time was on the board for a prominent Ukrainian energy company.

“If I ever said that, that’s quid pro quo,” Trump quipped.

Facts First: Trump’s claims are false.

Since 2019, Trump and his Republican allies have falsely accused Biden of abusing his powers while serving as vice president to get a top Ukrainian prosecutor fired, supposedly because the prosecutor’s probe into the Ukrainian energy giant Burisma Holdings threatened his son, Hunter Biden.

This claim was never true and has been repeatedly debunked. Nonetheless, it is one of the most-cited talking points used by Republicans against Biden during any discussion about his ties to Ukraine.

In reality, Biden’s actions toward the prosecutor were consistent with bipartisan US policy, and was in lockstep with what America’s European allies were pushing for at the time. They sought to remove the prosecutor because he wasn’t doing enough to crack down on corruption in Ukraine – including at Burisma.

The Obama administration, career US diplomats, US allies, the International Monetary Fund and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, and even Senate Republicans, among others, all made clear that they were displeased with the performance of Viktor Shokin, who became Ukraine’s prosecutor general in 2015.

It is not clear how aggressively Shokin was investigating Burisma or its oligarch owner – or if there was even an active investigation – at the time that Joe Biden successfully pushed for Shokin’s firing in 2016.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Senate Republicans led a probe to find evidence on whether Biden abused his position to help his family financially, but came up empty. As the 2024 campaign approached, House Republicans put these false claims at the center of their now-flatlined impeachment inquiry into Biden.

From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

Trump on tariffs

Trump claimed that his proposal to impose a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the US would not raise prices on Americans and instead cost other countries.

“It’s just going to cost countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China, and many others,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false. Study after study including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission(USITC), have shown that American consumers and industries bear almost the entire cost of US tariffs, including those duties previously imposed by Trump.

When the US puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff comes directly out of the bank account of an American importer when the foreign-made product arrives at a US port. It’s possible that some foreign manufacturers lowered their prices to stay competitive in the US market after Trump raised tariffs – but not enough to keep the cost paid by American importers the same as before.

As of June 12, American importers have paid more than $240 billion for tariffs that Trump imposed – and Biden mostly left in place – on imported solar panels, steel, aluminum, and Chinese-made goods, according to US Customs and Border Protection. The USITC found that US importers, on average between 2018 and 2021, ended up paying nearly the full cost of the tariffs because import prices increased at the same rate as the tariffs. For each 1% increase in the tariff rate, the price paid by the American importer also went up 1%.

Once an importing company pays the tariff, it can decide to eat the cost or pass all or some of it to the buyer of its goods – whether that’s a retailer or a consumer. For example, American shoe seller Deer Stags, which imports most of its product line from China, decided to do a little bit of both.

It was harder to get customers to pay more for existing styles that Deer Stags had carried for a long time, company president Rick Muskat told CNN.So the company ended up eating the cost of the tariffs placed on some older styles and charging more for some new items.

Economists generally agree that tariffs drive up prices . The Peterson Institute for International Economics recently estimated that Trump’s proposed 10% across-the-board tariff, together with his proposal to impose a 60% tariff on all imports from China, would cost the typical middle-income household at least $1,700 a year. And JP Morgan economists estimated in 2019 that the tariffs Trump imposed on about $300 billion of Chinese-made goods would cost the average American household $1,000 a year.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump on his criminal cases

Trump repeated his frequent claims that Biden and his Justice Department were behind Trump’s four indictments, including the Manhattan hush money case in which Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

“He indicted me because I was his opponent,” Trump said of Biden.

Of the Manhattan conviction, Trump said: “That was a case that was started and moved. They moved a high-ranking official at DOJ into the Manhattan DA’s office to start that case.”

Facts First: There is no evidence supporting either of Trump’s claims.

Grand juries made up of ordinary citizens – in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC – approved the indictments in each of Trump’s criminal cases. There is no basis for the claim that Biden ordered Trump to be criminally charged or face civil trials.

There is also no evidence that Biden or the federal Justice Department had any role in launching or running Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution – and Bragg, a Democrat, is a locally elected official who does not report to the federal government. The indictment in the case was approved by a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

Trump’s two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden personally ordered the indictments. Garland has said that he would resign if Biden ever asked him to act against Trump but that he was sure that would never happen.

As he did during the debate, Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making claims about the Justice Department’s involvement in the New York case. 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 had been colleagues before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.

Before Colangelo worked at the Justice Department, he and Bragg worked at the same time in the office of New York’s state attorney general, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and financial practices and was involved in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Trump on other countries doing business with Iran during his presidency

Trump claimed that China, among other countries, “passed” on doing business with Iran during his presidency after he vowed that the US would not do business with any country that does so.

“Iran was broke. Anybody that did business with Iran, including China, they couldn’t do business with the United States. They all passed,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false.

China’s oil imports from Iran did briefly plummet under Trump in 2019, the year his administration made a concerted effort to deter such purchases, but they never stopped – and then they rose sharply again while Trump was still president.

“The claim is untrue because Chinese crude imports from Iran haven’t stopped at all,” Matt Smith, lead oil analyst for the Americas at Kpler, a market intelligence firm, told CNN in November.

China’s official statistics recorded no purchases of Iranian crude in Trump’s last partial month in office, January 2021, and none in most of Biden’s first year in office. But that doesn’t mean China’s imports ceased; industry experts say it is widely known that China has used a variety of tactics to mask its continued imports from Iran.

Smith said Iranian crude is often listed in Chinese data as being from Malaysia; ships may travel from Iran with their transponders switched off and then turn them on when they are near Malaysia, Smith said, or they may transfer the Iranian oil to other ships.

Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said in a November email: “China significantly reduced its imports from Iran from around 800,000 barrels per day in 2018 to 100,000 in late 2019. But by the time Trump left office, they were back to upwards to 600(000)-700,000 barrels.”

Vaez’s comments were corroborated by Kpler data Smith provided to CNN. Kpler found that China imported about 511,000 barrels per day of Iranian crude in December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office. The low point under Trump was March 2020, when global oil demand crashed because of Covid-19. Even then, China imported about 87,000 barrels per day, Kpler found. (Since data on Iranian oil exports is based on cargo tracking by various companies and groups, other entities may have different data.)

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on the impact of immigration on Medicare and Social Security

Trump said at least twice during the debate that Biden will destroy Social Security and Medicare by putting migrants entering the US on the benefits.

“These millions and millions of people coming in, they’re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security. He will wipe out Medicare,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true, particularly in the near term, multiple experts say. Many undocumented immigrants work, which means they pay much-needed payroll taxes, and this bolsters the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and extends their solvency. Immigrantswho are working legally typically won’t collect benefits for many years. As for those who are undocumented, some are working under fake Social Security numbers, so they are paying payroll taxes but don’t qualify to collect benefits.

“We estimate that future years will experience a continuation of this positive impact on the trust funds,” said the report on unauthorized immigration.

“Immigrants are good for Social Security,” he said.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump on the 2020 election

Trump reiterated election lies, claiming that he didn’t accept the results of the 2020 election because of voter fraud.

“I would’ve much rather accepted these, but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s election claims remain false.

The 2020 election was not rigged or stolen, Trump lost fair and square to Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232, his opponents did not cheat, and there is no evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on his own comments after 2017 Charlottesville march

Biden denounced Trump for saying in August 2017 that “very fine people” were among the participants in a hateful “Unite the Right” event days prior in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event was organized by White nationalists after the city decided to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park. The participants included neo-Nazis, one of whom murdered a counter-protester, and prominent public racists.

But Trump claimed that Biden’s recall of his remark was “made up” and a “nonsense story.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that Biden’s description of his comments is a “nonsense story” is itself false. Biden fairly characterized Trump’s comments about the events in Charlottesville.

The claim that Trump’s “fine people” comment is a “hoax” and “nonsense story” is based on the inaccurate premise that there were peaceful non-racists attending an aggressively hateful marchthat was held in Charlottesville the night before the main daytime protest that featured prominent White nationalists as advertised speakers.

And supporters of the “hoax” claim have noted that, when Trump told reporters days later that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” he had also said “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally” – and had specified that he was talking about other unnamed people he claimed had been at the nighttime march “protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.”

But there has never been evidence that such a benign group was present at the march. The march – which testimony in a 2021 civil trial showed was organized by White nationalists – was a bigoted gathering at which participants chanted Nazi and White nationalist slogans targeting Jews and others, and displayed Nazi symbols, while carrying Tiki torches.

CNN correspondent Elle Reeve, who has extensively reported on the Charlottesville gathering, noted that the torch march was organized quietly in White nationalist “alt-right” online spaces and intended to be a surprise event that was known in advance only to a select group of like-minded people.

So, it’s not clear how people who were not supportive of White nationalism might have come to be part of the crowd or why such people would have remained there if they had somehow stumbled in. And Trump has never identified any non-racists who participated.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Chandelis Duster

Trump on the United States’ trade deficit with China

Trump claimed that under Biden, “We have the largest deficit with China.”

Facts First: This is false. Even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade – in which the US traditionally runs a surplus with China – the deficit with China fell to about $279 billion in 2023, the lowest since 2010.

In 2018, under Trump, the goods deficit with China hit a new record of about $418 billion before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.

From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

Trump on terror attacks during his administration

In discussing the Middle East and Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Trump claimed that there was “no terror at all during my administration.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false, and it remains false even if he was referring specifically to attacks by Islamic extremists. There were various terrorist attacks during the Trump presidency. In fact, in his State of the Union address in 2018, Trump blamed immigration policies for “two terrorist attacks in New York” in “recent weeks.”

Trump’s own Justice Department alleged that a mass murder in New York City in 2017, which killed eight people and injured others, was a terrorist attack carried out in support of ISIS; Trump repeatedly lamented this attack during his presidency. Trump’s Justice Department also alleged that a 2019 attack by an extremist member of Saudi Arabia’s military, which killed three US servicemembers and injured others at a military base in Florida, “was motivated by jihadist ideology” and was carried out by a longtime “associate” of al Qaeda.

In addition, there were a variety of other terrorist attacks during Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump’s Justice Department said it was a “domestic terrorist attack” when one of Trump’s supporters mailed improvised explosive devices to CNN, prominent Democratic officials and other people in 2018. In 2019, a White supremacist pleaded guilty to multiple charges in New York, including first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, for killing a Black man in March 2017 to try to start a race war. And Trump’s Justice Department described a 2019 shooting massacre at a Walmart in Texas as an act of domestic terrorism; the gunman who killed 23 people was targeting Latinos.

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand and Daniel Dale

Trump on his tax cuts

Trump once again claimed that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest tax cut ever.

“I gave you the largest tax cut in history,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is wrong. Analyses have found that the act was not the largest in history either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars.

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates.

In a report released earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills have been bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found in 2017 that the framework for the tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Trump on his own comments on January 6

In response to a question about his actions – and inaction – on January 6, 2021, while his supporters stormed the US Capitol, Trump defended the incendiary speech he delivered before the attack.

“I said, ‘Peacefully and patriotically,’” Trump said.

Facts First: This is highly misleading. He did say those words during his speech on the Ellipse on January 6, but he also told his supporters that they “wouldn’t have a country anymore” if they didn’t march to the US Capitol and “fight like hell” against a “rigged” election.

CNN has previously fact-checked this self-serving quotation from Trump about his January 6 speech.

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

But on the debate stage Thursday night, Trump omitted the fact that later in his January 6 speech, he told his supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to give GOP lawmakers the “boldness that they need to take back our country.” He also told the crowd at the Ellipse, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” and encouraged Republican lawmakers to stop fighting like a boxer “with his hands tied behind his back.”

Last year, a civil court in Colorado, and the Colorado Supreme Court, closely examined Trump’s speech as part of a lawsuit that tried to disqualify him from office under the 14^th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

The Colorado trial judge concluded that “while Trump’s Ellipse speech did mention ‘peaceful’ conduct in his command to march to the Capitol, the overall tenor was that to save the democracy and the country the attendees needed to fight.”

From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

Trump on abortion medication

Trump claimed, “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim about the abortion drug is false. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case and approve mifepristone, one of the pills used in a medication abortion. It sent the case back to the lower courts for additional proceedings.

The court earlier this month rejected a lawsuit that challenged the US Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating mifepristone.

The court did not “approve” the drug, as Trump claimed; instead it ruled that the doctors and the anti-abortion groups that had challenged access to the drug did not have the standing to sue. The reasoning of the court in this decision, scholars say, could encourage other mifepristone challenges in the future.

Medication abortion is now the most common method of abortion in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the formal US health care system – about 63% – were medication abortions in 2023.

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

Trump on Pelosi and January 6

Trump once again tried to blame former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, saying that the California Democrat had turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol that day and had admitted this in video taken by her own daughter.

“Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter, who is a documentary filmmaker … but she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility, I was responsible for this,’ because I offered her 10,000 soldiers, or National Guard, and she turned them down,” Trump said.

He added, “And I offered it to her. And she now admits that she turned it down.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims about Pelosi’s role in Capitol security and in the deployment of the National Guard are false. The speaker of the House is not in charge of Capitol security; that is overseen by the Capitol Police Board, a body that includes the sergeants at arms of the House and the Senate. And the House speaker does not have power over the District of Columbia National Guard, which is under the command of the president. While there is no evidence Pelosi ever received a Trump offer of 10,000 soldiers on January 6, she would not even have had the power to turn down such an offer even if she had received one.

Trump also overstated what Pelosi said in a video recorded by her filmmaker daughter Alexandra Pelosi on January 6 and later obtained by House Republicans, who posted a 42-second snippet on social media earlier this month. Pelosi was shown expressing frustration at the inadequate security at the Capitol, and she said at one point, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.” But the short video doesn’t show her absolving Trump of responsibility or admitting she was the person in charge of Capitol security – and Pelosi continues to say it’s not true she turned down an offer of National Guard troops..

After Trump began referring to this clip earlier in June, Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email to CNN: “Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th. Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”

In fact, another part of the video appears to undermine Trump’s frequent claims that Pelosi was the person who turned down a National Guard presence in advance of January 6. She said, “Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?”

The House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol found “no evidence” Trump gave any actual order for 10,000 Guard troops to anyone. Christopher Miller, Trump’s acting defense secretary at the time of the attack on the Capitol, testified to the committee that Trump had, in a phone call on January 5, 2021, briefly and informally floated the idea of having 10,000 troops present on January 6 but did not issue any directive to that effect. Miller said, “I interpreted it as a bit of presidential banter or President Trump banter that you all are familiar with, and in no way, shape, or form did I interpret that as an order or direction.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on migrants and crime

Trump claimed that migrants were entering the United States and killing women, saying that “these killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women.”

Facts First: This needs context. Preliminary statistics show that crime in the US dropped significantly in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, with a steep drop in murders and other violent offenses, even as the number of people crossing the southern border spiked. While some undocumented immigrants have been charged with high-profile crimes during the Biden presidency, some undocumented immigrants committed serious crimes under Trump and previous presidents as well. And research has generally found no connection between immigration levels and crime – and has sometimes found that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than people born in the US.

Charis Kubrin, co-author of the 2023 book “Immigration and Crime: Taking Stock” and professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN’s Catherine Shoichet early this year:

“Across a variety of studies that use different years of data that focus on different areas of the United States — with some exceptions, there’s some nuance there. I don’t want to deny the nuance — in general, on average, we do not find a connection between immigration and crime, as is so often claimed. The most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area or is negatively associated with crime in that area. Meaning more immigration equals less crime. It’s rare to find studies that show crime following increases in immigration or with larger percentage of the population that are immigrants.”

Kubrin’s co-author, Graham Ousey, professor of sociology and criminology at the College of William & Mary, added: “A lot of people when you say that will then say, ‘Oh, well, but what about undocumented immigration?’ And there’s less research on that topic. But that body of research is growing, and it pretty much reaches the same conclusion.”

From CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Daniel Dale

Trump on the US share of NATO funding

During a dispute over who would do a better job countering Russia’s war in Ukraine, Trump criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and how it is funded by its members, claiming he had learned after taking office that “almost 100% of the money was paid by us.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false.

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 100%.” And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions to NATO that cover the alliance’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 and Marshall Cohen

Trump on the cost of food

Trump claimed that Biden caused inflation and that it’s “killing” Americans, who “can’t buy groceries anymore” because the cost of food has “doubled and tripled and quadrupled.”

Facts First: Trump’s claims of food prices doubling, tripling and quadrupling are not entirely factual and could use some context.

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year high, and has slowed since (the Consumer Price Index was at 3.3% as of May 2024). However, it remains elevated from historical levels. Three-plus years of pervasive and prolonged inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, especially lower-income households trying to afford the necessities (food, shelter and transportation).

Food prices, specifically grocery prices, did outpace overall inflation. However, they didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual food and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Through the 12 months ending in May, overall food and grocery prices were up just 2.1% and 1%, respectively.

Certain food categories saw much greater inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. However, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a highly contagious, deadly avian flu. Food prices are highly volatile and can be influenced by a variety of factors, including disease, extreme weather events, global supply and demand, geopolitical events, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Biden on taxing billionaires

Biden claimed that there are a thousand billionaires in the country who are “in a situation where they, in fact, pay 8.2% in taxes.”

Facts First: Biden used this figure in a way that was misleading. As in previous speeches, including the 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.

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%.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Biden on unemployment when he took office

In defending his record on the economy, Biden said that when he took office, “the economy was flat on its back. Fifteen percent unemployment. (Trump) decimated the economy. … That’s why there was not inflation at the time. There were no jobs.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim that the US unemployment rate was 15% when he took office is incorrect.

In January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The unemployment rate did near 15% during Trump’s presidency, but that occurred during April 2020, when the global and national economy were crushed by the emerging Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2020, the US lost more than 20 million jobs, resulting in unemployment skyrocketing from 4.4% in March 2020 to 14.8% in April 2020.

After peaking in April 2020, the unemployment rate declined substantially as the nation recovered those lost jobs (reaching pre-pandemic levels in June 2022) and gained millions more. The nation’s jobless rate is in the midst of a 30-month streak of being at or below 4%.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

Trump on Biden’s tax plans

Trump claimed that Biden is proposing to multiply Americans’ taxes by four times.

“He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times,” Trump said.

Facts First: This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024.

Biden has not proposed to quadruple Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so. The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center think tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented budget proposals for fiscal 2024, found this: “His plan would raise average after-tax incomes for low-income households in 2024, leave them effectively unchanged for middle-income households, and lower after-tax incomes significantly for the highest-income taxpayers.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on funding for Ukraine

Trump claimed that the US has given more in aid to Ukraine than European countries put together.

“The European nations together have spent $100 billion, or maybe more than that, less than us,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. From just before Russia’s invasion in early 2022 through April 2024, European countries contributed more aid to Ukraine than the US, 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 (the month prior to Russia’s invasion) through April 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $190 billion to Ukraine in military, financial and humanitarian assistance, compared with about $106 billion committed by the US. Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $109 billion for Europe compared with about $79 billion for the US.

Additionally, Europe had committed more total military aid to Ukraine, at about $76 billion to about $69 billion for the US. The US narrowly led on military aid that had been allocated, at more than $50 billion for the US to less than $48 billion for Europe, but even 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 and Kaanita Iyer

Trump on the Veterans Choice program

Trump took credit for the passage of the Veterans Choice health care law, referring to “Choice, that I got through Congress.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. The Veterans Choice program was actually signed into law in 2014 by his predecessor, President Barack Obama. Trump signed a law in 2018, the VA MISSION Act, that expanded and modified the program established under Obama, and, as Trump has said, made the initiative permanent.

During Trump’s presidency, he falsely took credit for the Choice law more than 150 times.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Trump on lowering the cost of insulin

Trump again tried to take full credit for lowering the cost of insulin for older Americans.

“I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump’s claim that he was the one who reduced the cost of insulin for seniors is exaggerated. The former president did get a $35-per-month out-of-pocket cap on insulin for some seniors through a voluntary program that Medicare prescription drug plans could choose to participate in. But Biden ensured that all 3.4 million-plus insulin users on Medicare got $35-per-month insulin — through a mandatory cap that not only covers more people than Trump’s voluntary cap, but also applies to a greater number of insulin products and stays in effect at a level of individual drug spending at which Trump’s cap disappeared.

Trump could fairly say he played a role in lowering insulin costs and that Biden does not deserve sole credit. The Biden-era federal government has acknowledged that his mandatory $35 monthly cap, signed into law in his Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, “closely aligns with” the voluntary $35 monthly cap in the Trump-created model that was announced in 2020 and launched in the final month of the Trump presidency in 2021.

But Biden’s policy does more than Trump’s did in several substantive ways.

The Inflation Reduction Act measure applies the $35-per-month cap to every insulin user in Medicare Part D. Trump’s policy didn’t.

Biden’s policy imposes the mandatory $35 monthly cap on insulin taken via a pump, which is obtained through Medicare Part B. Under Trump’s program, the voluntary $35 monthly cap only applied to insulin obtained via Medicare Part D drug plans, such as insulin that is injected or inhaled.

The Inflation Reduction Act measure requires a $35 cap on all covered insulin products. Trump’s policy only required it on some.

Under Biden’s policy, people in Medicare Part D no longer have to make any payments for covered prescription drugs, including insulin, once they reach a very high level of annual drug spending known as the “catastrophic” level. Under Trump’s voluntary insulin program, the $35 monthly cap didn’t apply to those whose spending reached the “catastrophic” threshold, though many people likely paid less than $35 per month for insulin at that point regardless.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Trump on funding HBCUs

Trump made a claim during the debate that he “funded” historically Black colleges and universities.

“When they see what I did for criminal justice reform and for the historically Black colleges and universities where I funded them and got them all funded,” Trump said.

Facts First: Trump is exaggerating here and his claims need context.

In 2019, Trump signed the FUTURE Act (Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education), a bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening HBCUs as well as other minority-serving institutions by providing $255 million annually.

“HBCUs have been underfunded for over 150 years, since inception. President Trump did sign measures into law that helped HBCUs tremendously (FUTURE Act and the first two COVID 19 packages). However, he never set out to do it,” Monique LeNoir, vice president of branding, marketing and communications for the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), told CNN. “Congress took the lead on putting the HBCU funding in those bills and passing them. The third COVID-19 bill, passed under President Biden, included as much funding for HBCUs as both of the first two COVID-19 bills under President Trump.”

Marybeth Gasman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, echoed LeNoir, adding that Congress, during former President Barack Obama’s administration, also allocated funding to HBCUs.

“HBCUs are strong and resilient institutions, and they are that way because of Black people, Black leaders, Black alumni, Black students. They face obstacles but continue to persevere. They were not at risk of being out of operation — that’s a big overstatement,” Gasman told CNN.

The Trump administration also had a frayed relationship with HBCUs, and Trump’s views on funding for HBCUs have also not been consistent. In 2017, Trump questioned the constitutional basis for federal funding for HBCUs, saying, according to NPR, that “it benefits schools on the basis of race.”

CNN’s Chandelis Duster and Owen Dahlkamp

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If Our History Were Written West to East

Posted on May 8, 2024 by bpriddy

Ignorance of history is helping fuel the controversial White Christian Nationalism movement. There are plenty of people in our political world who prefer to keep things that way.

To base our understanding of our nation’s history on Jamestown, Plymouth, Pilgrims and Puritans and interpretations of their reasons for coming here—and the reasons behind more than a century of explorations before they arrived—is a grave mistake. It shortchanges our future as a nation and as a nation’s people.

One of the best cases for understanding our history differently is in a letter written by our great poet Walt Whitman after he had been invited to compose a poem to celebrate the 333^rd anniversary of the settlement of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is dated July 20, 1883. It is critical of those who think our history began on the rocky shores of Massachusetts and Virginia. The invitation to deliver the poem arrived too late, he wrote, so he had to decline. “But I will say a few words off-hand.”

We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed and in widely different sources. Thus far, impressed by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashioned from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a great mistake. Many leading traits for our future national personality, and some of the best ones, will certainly prove to have originated from other than British stock. As it is, the British and German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Or rather, I should say, they have certainly reach’d that excess. To-day, something outside of them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed.

Thus seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world’s development, and are certainly to be follow’d by something entirely different—at least by immense modifications. Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be establish’d , through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic and democratic attributes—not one of which at present definitely exists—entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded on it, and to justify it.

To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect—grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time to dismiss utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bones and half Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writers of the past 200 years. It is time to realize—for it is certainly true—that there will not be found any more cruelty, tryanny, superstition, &c., in the résumé of past Spanish history than in the corresponding résumé of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there will not be found so much.)

Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come, I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and West—I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, from its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own—are we to see it cheerfully accepting and using all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside globe—and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own—the autochthonic ones?

As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?

If I might assume to do so, I would like to send you the most cordial, heart-felt congratulations of your American fellow-countrymen here. You have more friends in the Northern and Atlantic regions than you suppose, and they are deeply interested in development of the great Southwestern interior, and in what your festival would arouse to public attention.

Very respectfully &c.,Walt Whitman

Here we are, 141 years after Whitman’s letter, being encouraged by the “seething, materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else.” Whitman’s letter still calls on all of us to realize history written west to east is a valid subject and that the more comprehensive history will bring about “character, literature, a society worthy the name…through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic, and democratic attributes.”

It is a national shame that so many prefer “devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else” to understanding the reverse geographical truths of our history that will allow us to achieve “the broadest flow” of the representative democracy we only partially understand, and in only partially understanding it continue to further disadvantage our country.

(Photo Credit: PBS “The American Experience”)

One Man’s Vision—5

Posted on April 8, 2024 by bpriddy

The shift of the focus on a convention center and hotel reopens the penitentiary for more redevelopment ideas than museums.

We need a new library.

Last August, the local library board asked voters for a 15-cent levy increase to renovate, expand, and modernize our 50-year old building. The $28-million effort was killed by a secret group of people, none of whom had ever attended a single library board meeting during which these plans were developed (and who have never attended a board meeting since), who circulated a huge lie throughout Cole County that the library board was going to increase property taxes by 75%. We were asking for nothing of the sort and I am still waiting for someone from this group to explain to the library board why they circulated this lie and who created it. I want to see its homework but it appears no one from this group has the courtesy or the courage to prove its case.

—Because it can’t.

What is true is that the need for 21^st century library service has not changed. We know that we will have to go to the voters again but we worry that this group so poisoned public confidence in the library system and the library board that our task of winning support for the library this city, county, and region must have for most of the rest of this century is much harder.

Nonetheless, we cannot stay in a building that no longer meets the needs of our constituents. Our efforts to maintain the services we offer has led to the rental of office space across High Street for our administrators who have been crowded out by the space we needs to meet our responsibilities. We are facing a choice of moving some of our staff back into the building and reducing some services now occupying the space they would reclaim, or leaving things as they are.

We have never had the parking we need. When the present building was constructed, the plan was to tear down the original Carnegie building to create parking for our patrons. After the building was completed, however, those interested in historic preservation preserved the old building.

We thought in our planning for last year’s renovation election that the county would be picking up some of the Buescher vacant lots and leasing some of the space to us, but the city decided after we had set the August election date that it would be keeping all of them—although it has told us it will lease space to us once it has completed its acquisition program.

But that still does not resolve the inadequacies that have developed through fifty years since the building was new. The county has indicated an interest in acquiring the building if we decide to sell and move, and further negotiations are warranted because we will, eventually, move.

We have no choice but to do so if we are to responsibly serve our patrons.

About twenty years ago or so, we planned to put up a new building across Lafayette Street from the original prison entrance. But the federal government decided to build the Christopher S. Bond Federal Courthouse there, leaving us in our present situation.

Moving the convention center discussion to Madison and Capital re-opens the prison as a potential site for a new library. It’s in the minds of our library board members but not yet an active discussion.

We are starting to think about asking ourselves, however, “How can we do this?”

One Man’s Vision—4

Posted on April 3, 2024 by bpriddy

A state-of- the-art comprehensive Jefferson City/Cole County History Museum, at the old prison—discussed in the previous entry in this series—should be only a start.

Let’s shoot for the moon.

What really would be a giant step toward greatness would be he acquisition of another museum, one destined for a Smithsonian-quality reputation.

Six years ago we had a shot at getting the Steamboat Arabia museum to move here from Kansas City. But our planning group never got beyond talking, talking, talking and the expertise I hoped would develop when the group was formed never did develop. In effect, we decided we are good enough, as is. And one important business leader straight-out told me it wouldn’t work here.

None of the people I thought would take the practical lead did. But another smaller, more ambitious town went beyond talking and what it discovered for itself speaks volumes of what Jefferson City would have discovered had there been some initiative generated by all of that talking and should be a challenge to Jefferson City to show it wants to be more than the state capitol, more than a convention center can give us, more than we are.

City leaders in Marshall reportedly raised $150,000 for a feasibility study of a steamboat museum at I-70 and Highway 65. The initial investment would be high. The payoff will be large and long-lasting

The findings show that the payoff of this major commitment will be multiples of what was forecast for the Marshall/Sedalia/Lexington area.

I took a lot of notes at the meeting where the findings by the consulting firm of Peckham, Guyton, Albers & Viets (PGAV) were revealed three years ago.

PGAV called the museum proposal “a chance to put something iconic in Central Missouri.’ It described a state of the art museum with a national and regional strategy. It addressed continued investment that renewed the museum’s life cycle, the development of supporting amenities, the financial sustainability for generations, and the leadership the project would provide for future development.

The company looked at tourism strategies—attracting people to the area, creating support for the project, and connecting the museum to other parts of the country by defining a larger region to draw from.

They saw the museum as being a local draw and, more important, a destination attraction. PGAV calculated the trade area for the museum south of Marshall at more than 7.5 million people within a three-hour travel time. The study forecast the operating costs would be about $2.4 million a year, based on an $18 adult admission fee, retail sales, and food and beverage income, among other things. It could be operated with 18 fulltime employees.

The first phase would be a 77,000 square foot museum (about double the present footprint, that would hold the Arabia and a second boat (we’ll discuss that later) and provide support and storage space on 3.7 acres, including parking. Estimated cost: $37 million. That’s what we built the Center for Missouri Studies for in Columbia—a three-story, 77-thousand square feet building. By the time the third phase of the steamboat museum would be completed, the complex would cover 8 acres, including parking

PGAV’s site analysis pointed to the great visibility of the museum from I-70 and to the great amount of open land at Marshall Junction.

The company found that museums are “economic engines” for an area—that non-profit art and culture attractions have an economic impact of more than one-billion dollars in Missouri (that’s a 2015 study). They calculated that $1 generated by such a museum would generate $3.20 for the economy.

The study identifies several financial tools created by state law—Community Development Block Grants, Neighborhood Assistance tax credits, Community Improvement Districts, and ta exempt bonds issued by the Missouri Development Finance Board.

Additionally, PGAV calculated the national 250^th anniversary celebration in 2026 will create federal funding capabilities for projects with about two-billion dollars allocated for state signature projects—and the museum, they said, would be a prime choice that a signature project (Jefferson City benefitted from the Bicentennial in 1976 by getting funding for restoration of Lohman’s Landing when it was declared a statewide bicentennial project).

In Summary, PGAV concluded that the Marshall-centered market would be enough to support a destination museum that would be an anchor for other tourism assets in the region (Arrow Rock, Sedalia and the State Fair, Santa Fe Trail sites, etc. It would develop tourism synergies for local tourism in a three-county region (or broader), it would trigger multiple development opportunities near the Marshall Junction interchange and would create an economic development opportunity when combined with other attractions. The study indicated the museum would draw 3.7 million visitors when phase one opens in 2026.

If that is true for Marshall, consider what it would mean for Jefferson City.

The population of Columbia, Jefferson City, and Fulton tops 182,000. The combined populations of Marshall, Sedalia, Lexington, Boonville, and Moberly is about one-third that.

Seven state or private institutions of higher education within thirty miles of Jefferson City have more than 44,000 students. Another thirty miles, north and south, are Moberly Area Community College and the Missouri University of Science and Technology that add another 12,000 students. Sporting events and parental visits bring tens of thousands more people to those schools.

Add tto that, that Jefferson City is on the way to the Lake of the Ozarks. Lake Expo recently estimated 2.5-million people visit the Lake every year, 75% of them between May and September.

Increased tourism is only part of the benefit. The steamboat museum here could offer academic opportunities in technology, archaeology, textile preservation, museum management, American Western history, and other programs at or through those higher education institutions. The museum could benefit them and could gain benefits from them.

And think what a museum dedicated to grow in coming years or decades to capture the history of the golden decades of Missouri River commerce and frontier development (1820-1880) could do. The goal of the museum is to have artifacts—and maybe complete steamboats—excavated from past river channels, now farm fields from each of those decades. Arabia museum President Dave Hawley has one of those boats located and test borings indicate the Malta might be complete enough to bring up as whole as possible. He would love to open a new museum with an 1841 steamboat in it.

Think about that.

Six years ago, we had the chance to raise about five million dollars to pay the costs of excavating the Malta and having it here, keeping the museum project highly visible while he rest of the project developed. Only one person was asking, “How do we do that?” Nobody answered.

At the time, major fund-raising was focused on the Bicentennial Bridge or on the Missouri River Port.

I wrote at the time that I didn’t see hundreds of school buses with thousands of school children and their adult chaperones visiting a river port or taking in the view from Adrian’s Island as they would visit a steamboat museum. To be clear, I think Adrian’s Island will be appreciated more in ten years than it was then or might be appreciated now. I can’t recall the last time I heard anything about the riverport but it’s not likely something I will take visiting relatives to see.

The Arabia museum is running out of time before it closes and the collection possibly moves to Pennsylvania, significantly, in November, 2026. Making the acquisition of that museum for our city as the official Capital City Bicentennial Project would be about a $50 million initial commitment. But it would transform our city and it would be an incredible driver to prison redevelopment as well as an incredible complement to the convention center/capitol avenue restoration and redevelopment effort.

Based on my conversations with Joe and Josephine Jeffcity, the steamboat museum would enhance chances for approval of a bond issue for the convention center, the library, and the historical museum, together or separately.

How can we make this step toward greatness happen?

Why should we do it?

Some of us are old enough to remember President Kennedy’s September 12, 1962 speech at Rice University when he set the goal of a manned moon landing within the decade:

“But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?…We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”

The steamboat museum can be, should be, Jefferson City’s moonshot.

At the risk of sinking into hyperbole, bringing this museum to Jefferson City could be the greatest reach for greatness in city history since civic leaders organized the construction of our first Missouri River bridge that helped blunt Sedalia’s effort to steal the capital in 1896.

How can we organize and measure the best of our energies and skills to make it happen?

How can we do it?

One Man’s Vision—2

Posted on March 27, 2024 by bpriddy

Jefferson City’s hopes of turning the old penitentiary into a major redevelopment project are in danger. City officials have for many years pinned many of their hopes for a mid-city rennaiscance to the state’s preservation, restoration, and redevelopment of the prison and dozens of acres of land controlled by he city inside the old walls.

Jefferson City leaders must aggressively overturn an effort by the House of Representatives Budget Committee to eliminate $52.3 million from the state budget that Governor Parson recommended in January and another $40 million he wants set aside for later preservation and restoration work.

It is essential if a downtown convention center is to be more than a stand-alone project that misses the chance to bring about greater transformational change for our city from Madison and Capitol for the next seven blocks to the east.

The plan has been promoted as putting the old place in shape for expanded tourism attraction. But the issue is far more important than that. It is only one part of a much greater future for a major part of the Capital City and, it can be argued, is part of a package of developments that is highlighted by the expansion of the Capitol itself.

The Capitol and the penitentiary are bookends of our city’s historic, cultural, economic, and ethnic past, present, and future. In fact, the penitentiary is a major reason this city continued to exist for the first eighty-five years as the seat of state government, a development that curtailed the efforts to end the City of Jefferson’s political history before it had hardly begun.

Jefferson City was a tiny, dirty/muddy, little frontier village, the worst of the three possible locations for a permanent capital, when Governor John Miller told the legislature in 1832 it had to do something to create an economy for the city or take the government elsewhere:

If t is not to be the permanent seat of government, that fact cannot be too soon made known, while on the other hand if it is to remain as such, it is advisable that those measures which would advance its prosperity, should be taken with the least possible delay. Some of the principle streets are from the nature of tne ground impassable. It is therefore respectfully recommended that an appropriation be made for grading and otherwise improving,them. The erection of a penitentiary here, the necessity and utility which cannot be doubted, would contribute in a great degree to calm the public mind in relation to th« permanent location of the seat of government.

The penitentiary, for many years well outside the city limits, today is the link between the water company overlooking the river on the hill west of Bolivar Street to Ellis Porter/Riverside Park and its recently-restored amphitheatre on the east. It’s an area that swells to include Dunklin Street that runs through the heart of Munichberg and continues to and past the entrance to Lincoln University before turning back toward the river at Clark Avenue.

For many years, the tall standpipe at the water company, the capitol dome, and the smokestacks of prison industries were parts of our skyline.

That area has been, is, and will be the heart of our city.

One Budget Committee member called the restoration “the stupidest idea I’ve heard all day,” and another said it was not a place she would take her grandchildren. Another opposes the idea of making a tourist attraction out of the suffering of thousands of inmates.

It’s time for these folks to hear, loudly, from city leaders that they are flat wrong on several counts.

There’s plenty of time and ways to get that money put back into the budget but Jefferson City needs to become very aggressive in making the case that these committee members are just flat wrong. Thirty thousand people a year don’t think the prison is stupid. A lot of grandchildren have gone through it. And the suffering of inmates is an important part of the reason our national history of corrections has undergone massive change. The prison is a great example of showing how our past can guide us to the future.

Alcatraz is not too gruesome to draw 1.5-million people a year. Nor is the old Eastern State Prison in Philadelphia, which draws 350-thousand. Nor are at least a dozen restored prisons and jails throughout the nation.

Jefferson City cannot allow the short-sightedness of these representatives to prevail.

In a city where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a lobbyist, it wouldn’t hurt if they had enough interest in their town to speak up for it voluntarily and help get that money back. And asking the governor to step in would not be improper.

Jefferson City must fight for the restoration of this funding not just because the old prison is a tourism draw but because of its potential for significant other developments that will take advantage of a large plot of available land in the heart of the city. What prison restoration can mean to Jefferson City’s core redevelopment is part of the vision of making a good city a great one.

The prison is more than an old, miserable lockup. It is one of the most important historical structures still standing in Missouri, a massive learning experience for all who visit it, even grandchildren. Going through it is a matter of going through several eras in the history of crime, punishment, and justice in Missouri.

You want to know how bad things were? Take a tour. You want to know how things changed? Take a tour. The stories you hear from guides are intensely human. Calling the prison a tourist attraction, in fact, cheapens the prison as a teaching and learning experience.

We can concede that there are those who don’t think the public should see this institution that focuses on the worst of our society. But ignoring the worst does not make us better. Crime is here. Prisons are here. Refusing to acknowledge their presence, their purposes, or the changing standards that they represent in our history is unrealistic.

Thousands of men and women went into that “bloodiest 47 acres in America” and came out to live peaceful lives. Understanding the world where they were sent and from which they emerged is important. Making a tourist attraction out of the suffering of thousands of inmates? It’s much more than that.

The decision by our city leaders to abandon the old penitentiary as the potential site for a convention center and hotel is a welcome, solid, decision. The plan to put the hotel/center in the prison seemed to be a good idea about a decade ago but nothing developed other than a few lines on paper. It was correct for the previous city administration to bring this long-ignored opportunity back to the public mind and to keep it there. But it is not unusual for first concepts to fall by the wayside as time shows their weaknesses.

I was the President of the State Historical Society of Missouri when we opened our $37-million Center for Missouri Studies about five years ago. It is far beyond what we imagined it would be in the first stages of our planning and it is not on our first choice of location. But the leaders of our society never once conceded that we could not do what we wanted to do. Our only question was, “How do we do this?”

That characteristic, when applied to cities, is what elevates good cities to great cities. Do not tell me we can’t do something; explain to me how we can.

What happens with the penitentiary now that it is available for new development is a major factor in Jefferson City’s move from a good city to a great city. As we explore one man’s vision in this series, details will emerge.

We’ll talk about our vision for the penitentiary later. But for now, the priority must be action that will preserve the penitentiary for its own value to the public while creating an improved opportunity for the city to take steps toward greatness within it.

(photo credit: Missouri American Water Company)

Bob Priddy

A journalist's random observations

Category Archives: education

The promise

Who Will be Next?

Just the Facts. Part Two

Just the Facts. Part One

The Difference

Letting the Ashes Cool

Trump made more than 30 false claims during CNN’s presidential debate — far more than Biden

If Our History Were Written West to East

One Man’s Vision—5

One Man’s Vision—4

One Man’s Vision—2

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Trump made more than 30 false claims during CNN’s presidential debate — far more than Biden

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