About six months into the second term of President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats are making conflicting and often misleading assessments of the Trump administration’s impact on inflation and prices. Both sides cherry-pick examples of consumer products to support their claims, while sometimes wrongly taking credit for lower prices or falsely casting blame for rising costs.
The United States and the European Union have reached a preliminary trade deal to avoid a 30% U.S. tariff on imported goods from the EU that President Donald Trump threatened would go into effect on Aug. 1. Trump had argued that higher tariffs were needed because EU tariffs and nontariff policies “cause the large and unsustainable trade deficits” between the U.S. and the EU, but economists disputed that statement.
In recent months, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has amplified unfounded concerns about the safety of seed oils, a subset of vegetable oils used in infant formula. There isn’t evidence these fat sources are harmful to infants.
In justifying the United States’ rejection of updates to global health regulations, the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed that the policy would give the World Health Organization the ability to “order global lockdowns” or “travel restrictions” in response to a pandemic. Experts told us that is “entirely untrue” and “clearly” incorrect.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims to have uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” But the foundation for her case is misleading.
In recent speeches and media scrums, President Donald Trump has lauded the federal budget surplus for the month of June, claiming the surplus had not happened in “many, many years” or “decades.” To be clear, the U.S. had not recorded a surplus in June since 2016 – but the country has had several surpluses in other months since that time.
Contrary to President Donald Trump’s claim that no one will die as a result of the Republican budget bill, an analysis from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University estimated that the legislation’s changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will result in at least 42,500 preventable deaths each year. At the same time, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has slightly overstated the estimate.
An attack ad by a super PAC called MAGA Kentucky targets Republican Rep. Thomas Massie — a longtime conservative foil of President Donald Trump — with claims that distort the congressman’s votes on some of Trump’s policy goals.
Border Czar Tom Homan has been repeating the misleading claim that there are “over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation.” That number includes legal immigrants, not just those who entered the country illegally; about a third of them have only been charged, not convicted; and it’s unclear how many of them have been, or currently are, incarcerated.
Unfounded rumors linking an extreme weather event to human attempts at weather modification are again spreading on social media. It is not plausible that available weather modification techniques caused or influenced the July 4 flash flooding along the Guadalupe River in Texas.
