As fact-checkers, we watch a lot of ads in the lead-up to elections, and we only write about a fraction of them. Some of them are downright bizarre. As we first started doing 20 years ago — just for fun — on Election Day, we’re giving out pretend awards to some of the notable ads we came across this campaign cycle.
Over the course of this election, we’ve monitored key toss-up congressional races, fact-checking false claims and distortions of the facts on a host of topics. But some issues have loomed larger than others.
In the Alaska Senate race, the candidacy of retired teacher Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. — not the incumbent Republican senator, Dan S. Sullivan — has been the subject of months of legal wrangling. But the issue took on increased national prominence this past week.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has cast data centers as a “massive force to reduce the price of electricity” even as many midterm ads claim the opposite. Who is right? We explain the complexities.
Throughout October, President Donald Trump has traveled across the country, holding campaign rallies supporting Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms. In his remarks, he has made a number of false, misleading or exaggerated claims.
Our latest quarterly report on various statistical indicators of how the country is faring as the midterms loom.
Democratic ads in multiple congressional races are accusing Republican candidates of “gutting Medicare,” voting for “huge cuts to Medicare” and “cheering on Trump’s attack on Medicare.” Several ads cite President Donald Trump’s major domestic policy law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But the law’s changes to Medicare are narrow in scope and affect relatively few beneficiaries.
An ad from a Democratic-aligned super PAC claims Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan “voted to raise Alaskans’ healthcare costs by $1,800 and on that same day voted to give himself a $500,000 taxpayer-funded payout.” But that’s not the whole story, and the ad leaves the false impression that Sullivan received that money.
In partially repealing a Biden-era regulation that limited carbon emissions from power plants, Trump administration officials have misleadingly cast the prior administration’s policy as a threat to grid reliability. Experts say that’s unfounded.
President Donald Trump’s remarks about the possibility that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego have sparked a firestorm of criticism, with Democrats claiming the president was either calling for a foreign adversary to attack the U.S. or portraying the destruction of two major cities as acceptable collateral damage. That’s not our reading of the president’s comments.