President Donald Trump on multiple occasions has assured the public that high gasoline prices will “rapidly” or “quickly” decline “as soon as” the war with Iran ends. Energy experts told us that prices will start to fall when the conflict is resolved, but it could take many months before the national average price is back to where it was before the conflict began.
Q: Has President Trump asked for a billion dollars for the ballroom?
A: Since the White House announced plans in July for a ballroom, the president has promised to fund its construction without using public money. But in May congressional Republicans proposed $1 billion in federal funding for “security adjustments and upgrades” including at the White House and the ballroom site.
A federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey hinges on the meaning of “86.” The Department of Justice said it indicates a threat of physical harm, while the more common dictionary definition is to throw out or get rid of something.
Two days after an armed man tried to enter the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt cited rhetoric from Democrats that she said is “inspiring violence” against President Donald Trump and other Republicans. But several of the statements she quoted were stripped of their original context, a point that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries made in a rebuttal.
Q: How real is birth tourism?
A: The government doesn’t provide estimates of the extent of so-called birth tourism — pregnant women coming to the U.S. on tourism visas in order to obtain birthright U.S. citizenship for their newborn child. One outside group has estimated it may be more than 20,000 births per year. Some argue it’s not common enough to justify upending longstanding birthright citizenship policies.
In a speech to what he called “the single largest gathering of American farmers that the White House has … ever had,” President Donald Trump distorted the facts on the estate tax, soybean exports and more.
A month after the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, President Donald Trump addressed the nation in a prime-time speech on April 1, saying the military operation was “getting very close” to completing its mission. Trump repeated some false and questionable claims we’ve written about before.
With the Pentagon potentially seeking a $200 billion supplemental package to fund the ongoing war with Iran, President Donald Trump defended that figure in part by saying U.S. ammunition “was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.” He then exaggerated the amount of aid to Ukraine and falsely said that former President Joe Biden “didn’t rebuild anything” in the defense stockpile.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee said that he believes there are “at least tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands” of noncitizens illegally registered to vote in the U.S., adding that a federal tool used in nearly two dozen states would help identify the number. But the tool has wrongly flagged many as being noncitizens, and there’s no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting.
On March 17, the Senate began debate on the SAVE America Act, a Republican-backed voter identification and registration bill that passed the House last month. Here, we answer several questions about the legislation, many of them asked by our readers.