In justifying the government’s termination of $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine projects, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively” against COVID-19 and suggested they are unsafe. The mRNA shots saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and have shown promise against influenza.
Hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released employment data showing slow job growth for July and prior months, President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner, claiming the job numbers were “phony” and that the commissioner had “faked” other job figures to help Democrats. There’s no evidence the commissioner, or others at BLS, manipulated the data, and Trump hasn’t provided any.
President Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, appeared to be at odds over whether Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon, but Gabbard said the two leaders were saying “the same thing.” We’ll lay out the facts.
Republicans say that able-bodied adults who don’t work would lose Medicaid coverage under the House tax-cuts-and-spending bill, while Democrats say the legislation would hurt vulnerable groups. The bill’s main target is those able-bodied adults, but other groups would lose coverage due to paperwork burdens and other provisions in the bill, health policy experts say.
To commemorate his first 100 days in office this term, President Donald Trump gave a speech in Michigan and granted interviews to several news outlets. In our review of his remarks, we found false and misleading claims, including quite a few Trump has made before.
We look at a half dozen of Trump’s most consequential pledges – ones that he said would happen immediately — and the progress Trump has made toward fulfilling them.
In his first speech since leaving office, former President Joe Biden criticized the Trump administration’s staffing cuts and other changes at the Social Security Administration, but he made several misleading claims in the process.
Q: Is it true the rumor that all Social Security beneficiaries will have to go to a location to verify their identity to receive their monthly check?
A: The Social Security Administration had announced new policies on identity verification that would have required those applying for retirement and survivor benefits for the first time to verify their identity either online or in person at a field office. Phone verification wasn’t going to be an option any longer.
Abrupt changes in staffing and some procedures at the Social Security Administration, coupled with false and misleading claims about widespread fraud, have prompted heated criticism from Democrats, with some statements leaving the wrong impression that benefits are being cut. Experts share a concern that disorderly actions by the Trump administration could cause administrative errors and disruptions, but there has been no proposed change to benefits mandated by law.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term, President Donald Trump distorted the facts on fraud, immigration, aid to Ukraine, the economy, autism and more.