Heated exchanges between some senators and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a Sept. 4 hearing amplified confusion about the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations for the fall, with Kennedy misleadingly claiming that “anybody” can still get a vaccine. HHS policies have created roadblocks to vaccine access.
Stories by Saranac Hale Spencer
Addressing Trump’s Claims About Ending Multiple Wars
Q: Did President Donald Trump solve seven wars in seven months?
A: Trump has claimed he “ended” six or seven wars since returning to the White House in January. Experts in international relations said the president has had a significant role in ending fighting in four conflicts, though officials in one country refute Trump’s claim. But some of the international disagreements Trump cites have not been wars, and some clashes have not ended, experts said.
FactChecking Trump’s Claims About Mail-In Ballots, Voting Machines and States’ Role
Assessing Redistricting Claims from Texas, New York Governors
Are Prices Up or Down? Parsing Misleading Claims by Trump and Democrats
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.
Border Czar Makes Misleading Claim About Immigrants With Criminal Records
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.
Unraveling the Big Beautiful Bill Spin
Changes to Discrimination Language in VA Hospital Bylaws
Q: Has President Donald Trump issued a rule that VA doctors can refuse treatment to Democrats?
A: No. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs changed the wording in its bylaws to comply with recent executive orders. In making the changes, words including “national origin, politics, marital status” were removed from language prohibiting discrimination. But existing federal law already prohibits discrimination on those grounds, the VA says.
Q&A on Federalizing the National Guard in Los Angeles
Explaining Trump’s Claim of a ‘68%’ Tax Increase
The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that, on average, Americans’ taxes would rise about 7.5% if the 2017 tax cuts are allowed to fully expire at the end of the year. But President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that if the Republican budget bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, doesn’t pass, Americans “will get a 68% tax increase.”