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.
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.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would reduce Medicaid enrollment and cause millions of people to become uninsured by 2034. It didn’t say that “5 million” of the people who are “going to lose insurance” would have “other insurance” so “they’re still insured,” as National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett misleadingly claimed.
As the Republican budget bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, nears the July 4 deadline set by the White House, lawmakers have been ramping up the rhetoric. We referee the claims from both sides.
In a June 27 ruling, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to partially halt nationwide injunctions blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for certain people born in the U.S. We look at what that may mean for the president’s order going forward.
Treasury Department data show that revenue from tariffs on imported foreign goods increased substantially in April and May, setting monthly records. But the total is less than half the figure President Donald Trump has cited. At least twice this month, the president has wrongly claimed that the U.S. “brought in $88 billion” from tariffs in “two months.”
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.
A viral graphic warns that if the House-passed reconciliation bill becomes law, “we won’t have another election.” But there is no evidence to support that or some of the graphic’s underlying claims about “what’s coming” if the Senate also approves the legislation without any changes. For other claims, it’s unclear what they are based on.
Republican and Democratic leaders have either downplayed or overstated the estimated impact of the House reconciliation bill on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that due to work requirements in the bill, 3.2 million people would lose all of their SNAP benefits, which provide financial help to low-income people for groceries.
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.”