Amid upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the firing of the agency’s director, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. distorted the facts to falsely claim that the agency’s website lists abortion as one of the “10 greatest advances in medical science.”
While signing executive orders at the White House on Aug. 25, President Donald Trump wrongly said that an 11-day span of no homicides in Washington, D.C., was the “first time that’s taken place in years,” a claim reiterated by other members of the administration who credited Trump’s federal takeover of the district’s law enforcement.
Since announcing the temporary federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s, law enforcement, President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized state laws limiting the use of cash bail. But his arguments have strayed from the facts in three key areas.
The Environmental Protection Agency is holding public hearings this week on its effort to undo the legal foundation for its regulation of greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change. In a major policy shift announced in late July, the Trump administration EPA said it would rescind the so-called “endangerment finding,” which allows the agency to regulate such emissions, arguing that legal and scientific developments justify a reconsideration.
President Donald Trump launched his second-term assault on mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines on Aug. 18, firing off a series of unfounded claims while announcing an effort to do away with both.
In the battle over Texas’ redistricting plan to pick up Republican House seats, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have made competing claims.
After months of delay, higher tariffs that President Donald Trump had vowed to impose on goods imported from dozens of countries went into effect on Aug. 7. Trump has made a series of false and misleading statements to justify his new tariff policies. Here is a recap of some of his claims that we have fact-checked.
President Donald Trump inaccurately claimed that the murder rate in Washington, D.C., “reached the highest rate probably ever” in 2023, and he ignored a decline in murders since then to justify a federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement.
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.