Category: Fact Check

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde is criticizing large cities for how much they are spending on law enforcement.

As in, not spending enough.

Hovde tweeted out a clip of an interview on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show podcast on Feb. 25, 2024 where he mentioned conversations he had with Milwaukee voters and criticized the movement to “defund the police,” calling it the “dumbest idea of the last 100 years.” 

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson responded to Hovde on X, saying Milwaukee “never defunded the police.” 

In his tweet, Johnson included a page of the 2023 proposed budget for the Milwaukee Police Department showing an increase in funding from the $280 million adopted in 2022, to more than $300 million. 

That’s a piece of evidence, but is it the full picture?

Funding for police in previous budgets

We reached out to Johnson’s office for backup, and spokesman Jeff Fleming responded by using the Wikipedia definition of the phrase “defund the police,” which describes it as “removing funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources.”

Previous fact-checks have described “defund the police” as a movement to reduce funding to law enforcement and invest in community services such as social services, youth services and public housing. 

Fleming said any reduction to the police department’s funding in the past was a result of “across the board cuts” or “transfer of significant numbers of employees out of MPD to the new Department of Emergency Communications. No money has been taken from the police and reallocated for other non-policing forms of public safety.”

In previous budgets, positions within the police department also were eliminated through attrition.

Fleming also shared a chart from the city’s budget office showing funding for police at the highest levels since 2018 –  at $304 million in the adopted budget for 2024. We went back to each year mentioned in the chart and verified its accuracy. 

The lowest amount of funding the department received during that time was in 2022 when it received $280 million. 

Further, in 2020, several aldermen pushed the city to explore a 10% cut in the police budget for 2021, but no such budget amendments were proposed or voted on. 

That’s not to say police haven’t been negatively impacted by Milwaukee city budgets. 

The 2021 budget cut 120 police positions under then-Mayor Tom Barrett. Johnson, as Common Council president, was among those who voted in favor of the budget. 

In addition, Johnson’s tweet does not mention the number of sworn officers has decreased in Milwaukee from 1,864 in 2019, despite spending more on police. 

In this year’s budget, the Police Department’s average sworn strength would increase to about 1,645. The increase is a product of a requirement in a 2023 state law that boosted funding for local governments across the state but also required Milwaukee to increase police sworn strength. 

The city is spending more on police in this current budget, at $304 million, than any other department. And that was the case 15 years ago when the city was spending $230 million on police.

The total 2024 City of Milwaukee budget is $1.92 billion.

Our ruling

When responding to a claim about Democrats defunding the police, Johnson said Milwaukee “never defunded the police.” 

The city of Milwaukee has continued to fund the police department through multiple budgets and for years no department has gotten more funding than police.

However Johnson does not mention the reduction in recent years of sworn police officers because of across-the-board cuts.

Our definition of Mostly True is a statement that is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. That fits here.

  

After police said a Georgia nursing student was killed by a Venezuelan immigrant, criticism over President Joe Biden’s immigration policies intensified. 

Laken Riley, 22, was killed Feb. 22 while on a jog at the University of Georgia. The suspect, an immigrant from Venezuela, entered the U.S. illegally in September 2022, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. 

Former President Donald Trump says Riley’s death is evidence of what he termed “Biden migrant crime,” although studies show that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are less likely than people born in the U.S. to commit crimes.

During a recent campaign rally in Rome, Georgia, Trump cited Riley’s killing to condemn what he characterized as Biden’s deportation policies. 

“Biden has implemented a formal policy that illegal aliens who intrude into the United States are granted immunity from deportation,” Trump said. “Thus, when this monster showed up at our border, he was set free immediately under the program Crooked Joe created — I call it, ‘Free To Kill.’”

Trump did not clarify what policies he was referring to, and his campaign did not answer our request for comment.

ICE told PolitiFact that murder suspect Jose Ibarra was given a temporary entry into the country via a process known as parole, allowing him to be released into the U.S. to await further immigration proceedings. But that’s not evidence that Biden has a policy granting people immunity from deportation, immigration experts said. 

The U.S. has expelled, removed or returned people out of the U.S. around 3.8 million times under Biden, according to PolitiFact’s analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.

Because of limited resources, Biden implemented deportation priorities 

On Biden’s first day in office, the DHS published a memo pausing the removals of certain people illegally in the U.S. for 100 days. But federal courts blocked the pause.

The memo also acknowledged that because of resource constraints, and increased illegal border crossings, resources should be directed to the border and removals should be prioritized for people who threatened national security or public safety or who entered the U.S. after Nov. 1, 2020. 

“While resources should be allocated to the priorities enumerated above, nothing in this memorandum prohibits the apprehension or detention of individuals unlawfully in the United States who are not identified as priorities herein,” the memo added.

The memo would not have applied to Ibarra, who entered the U.S. in 2022. 

In September 2021, DHS released a second memo detailing similar guidelines, instructing ICE to prioritize the removal of people who have crossed the border in recent years or who threaten public safety. Courts also halted those guidelines in 2021, but they were reinstated in 2023 after a Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court said that no administration has had enough resources to arrest or remove all people illegally crossing the border. The federal government therefore had to prioritize the use of available resources, the court said.

“It may be that Biden’s choice means that certain criminal offenders will not get deported,” said Rick Su, a University of North Carolina Chapel Hill immigration law professor. “But it is not really granting any legal ‘immunity.’ And criminal sentences are still served.”

Foreign relations, immigration law, resources can dictate deporations 

Many people who cross the border illegally cannot be immediately deported, but not because of a Biden administration policy. Immigration law, congressional appropriations and foreign policy all factor in what happens to a person at the border. 

Under immigration law, when people cross the border illegally they can be quickly deported without a formal proceeding in immigration court, unless they’re requesting asylum. That rapid deportation is known as expedited removal. Asylum officers must determine whether migrants have a credible case for seeking asylum.

“Even those folks, seeking asylum, are certainly not ‘immune’ from deportation and must prove that they meet the standard for either asylum protection, withholding of removal protection, or protection under the Convention Against Torture, in order to remain in the United States,” said  Lindsay Harris, the International Human Rights Clinic director at the University of San Francisco. 

The volume of people coming to the border and the limited resources appropriated by Congress mean the government must release people to await formal immigration court proceedings,  Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s senior adviser for immigration and border policy, said in a February interview with Katie Couric. A backlog of millions of immigration court cases means it could take years for these new cases to be resolved.

People’s nationality also affects what happens to them at the border. 

Under Biden, people are arriving at the border from more countries than in the past, the Migration Policy Institute wrote in a January report. And to deport people, the U.S. needs a working relationship with their countries of origin.

For example, because of fraught diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela, Venezuelans cannot be easily deported. Ibarra crossed the U.S.-Mexico border before October 2003, when Venezuela did not accept its own deported nationals and before Mexico began accepting a limited number of deported Venezuelans. People from countries that don’t cooperate with U.S. removals must be released because federal law prohibits indefinite detention.

“That is not immunity for deportation,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director for Boston University’s Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program. “It may be a temporary delay in deportation but those people who are slated for deportation and who the administration is unable to remove are under surveillance.”

Programs to quickly release people aren’t deportation immunity, immigration experts say

The number of people reaching the border has been rising, stressing resources. That has led the Biden administration to apply different processes to quickly move people out of Border Patrol processing centers. 

“Due to limited resources, DHS cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all individuals who are determined to be in the U.S. without lawful immigration status,” a September 2022 Government Accountability Office report said.

One of these processes, used in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, was called “parole + ATD.” Under that process, people were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, which uses technology such as GPS tracking, ankle monitors or a smartphone app to track people’s locations. They also were paroled into the country and required to appear at an ICE office a few weeks later to officially begin their removal proceedings in immigration court.

People who threatened national security or public safety or presented an “unmitigable flight risk,” could not be enrolled in the program, according to a CBP memo. A federal court blocked the program in March 2023. 

But these processes don’t exempt people from deportation, immigration experts said. 

People under parole “can be deported if they affirmatively do something that is deportable, like commit an ‘aggravated felony’ or a ‘crime involving moral turpitude,’” such as murder or rape, Su said.

“Parole is not immunity from deportation,” Sherman-Stokes said. “Parole provides a temporary entry into the United States, but people on parole are placed into deportation proceedings and have to make a claim for why they should be able to remain in the United States with authorization.”

Our ruling

Trump said, “Biden has implemented a formal policy that illegal aliens who intrude into the United States are granted immunity from deportation.”

The U.S. has expelled, removed or returned people on about 3.8 million occasions during Biden’s administration, PolitiFact’s analysis of DHS data shows.

And immigration experts told PolitiFact that DHS’ priorities for deportation and processes under the Biden administration intended to quickly move people out of Border Patrol processing centers are not giving people immunity from deportation. 

We rate Trump’s claim False.

From spring break parties to Mardi Gras, many people remember the last major “normal” thing they did before the novel coronavirus pandemic dawned, forcing governments worldwide to issue stay-at-home advisories and shutdowns.

Even before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S., fears and uncertainties helped spur misinformation’s rapid spread. In March 2020, schools closed, employers sent staff to work from home and grocery stores called for social distancing to keep people safe. But little halted the flow of misleading claims that sent fact-checkers and public health officials into overdrive.

Some people falsely asserted COVID-19’s symptoms were associated with 5G wireless technology. Faux cures and untested treatments populated social media and political discourse. Amid uncertainty about the virus’s origins, some even proclaimed COVID-19 didn’t exist at all. PolitiFact named downplay and denial about the virus its 2020 Lie of the Year. 

Four years later, people’s lives are largely free of the extreme public health measures that restricted them early in the pandemic. But COVID-19 misinformation persists, although it’s now centered mostly on vaccines and vaccine-related conspiracy theories.

PolitiFact has published more than 2,000 fact-checks related to COVID-19 vaccines alone.

“From a misinformation researcher perspective, [there has been] shifting levels of trust,” said Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of: ‘this isn’t real,’ fake cures, and then later on, we see more vaccine-focused mis- and disinformation and a more partisan type of disinformation and misinformation.”

Here are some of the most persistent COVID-19 misinformation narratives we see today:

A loss of trust in the vaccines

COVID-19 vaccines were quickly developed, with U.S. patients receiving the first shots in December 2020, 11 months after the first domestic case was detected.

Experts credit the speedy development with helping to save millions of lives and preventing hospitalizations. Researchers at the University of Southern California and Brown University calculated that vaccines saved 2.4 million lives in 141 countries from January 2021 to August 2021 alone. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows there were 574 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19 the week of March 2, down from nearly 26,000 at the pandemic’s height in January 2021, as vaccines were just rolling out.

But on social media and in some public officials’ remarks, misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and safety is common. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his 2024 campaign on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories about the vaccines. We made that our 2023 Lie of the Year.

PolitiFact has seen claims that spike proteins from vaccines are replacing sperm in vaccinated males. (That’s False.) We’ve researched the assertion that vaccines can change your DNA. (That’s misleading and ignores evidence). Social media posts poked fun at Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce for encouraging people to get vaccinated, asserting that the vaccine actually shuts off recipients’ hearts. (No, it doesn’t.)  And some people pointed to an American Red Cross blood donation questionnaire as evidence that shots are unsafe. (We rated that False.)

Experts say this misinformation has real-world effects.

A Nov. 2023 survey by KFF found that only 57% of Americans “say they are very or somewhat confident” in COVID-19 vaccines. And those who distrust them are more likely to identify as politically conservative: Thirty-six percent of Republicans compared with 84% of Democrats say they are very or somewhat confident in the vaccine.

Immunization rates for routine vaccines for other conditions have also taken a hit. Measles had been eradicated for more than 20 years in the U.S. but there have been recent outbreaks in states including Florida, Maryland and Ohio. Florida’s surgeon general has expressed skepticism about vaccines and rejected guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how to contain potentially deadly disease spread.

The vaccination rate among kindergarteners has declined from 95% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in 2022-23, according to the CDC. Public health officials have set a 95% vaccination rate target to prevent and reduce the risk of disease outbreaks. The CDC also found exemptions had risen to 3%, the highest rate ever recorded in the U.S.

Unsubstantiated claims that vaccines cause deaths other illness

PolitiFact has seen repeated and unsubstantiated claims that COVID-19 vaccines have caused mass numbers of deaths.

A recent widely shared post claimed 17 million people had died because of the vaccine, despite contrary evidence from multiple studies and institutions such as the World Health Organization and CDC that the vaccines are safe and help to prevent severe illness and death. 

Another online post claimed the booster vaccine had eight strains of HIV and would kill 23% of the population. Vaccine manufacturers publish the ingredient lists; they do not include HIV. People living with HIV were among the people given priority access during early vaccine rollout to protect them from severe illness.

We have also seen COVID-19 vaccines blamed for causing Alzheimer’s and cancer. Experts have found no evidence the vaccines cause either conditions.

“​​You had this remarkable scientific or medical accomplishment contrasted with this remarkable rejection of that technology by a significant portion of the American public,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

About 70% of Americans have completed a primary series of COVID-19 vaccination, more than three years after they became available, according to CDC figures. About 17% have gotten the most recent bivalent booster.

False claims often pull from and misuse data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The database, run by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, allows anybody to report reactions after any vaccine. The reports themselves are unverified, but the database is designed to help researchers find patterns for further investigation.

A November 2023 survey published by Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 63% of Americans think “it is safer to get the COVID-19 vaccine than the COVID-19 disease” — that was down from 75% in April 2021.

Celebrity deaths falsely attributed to vaccines

Betty White, Bob Saget, Matthew Perry, and DMX are just a few of the many celebrities whose deaths were falsely linked to the vaccine. The anti-vaccine film “Died Suddenly”  tried to give credence to false claims that the vaccine causes people to die shortly after receiving it.

Dr. Céline Gounder, editor at large for public health at KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist, said these claims proliferate because of two things —  cognitive bias and more insidious motivated reasoning. 

“It’s like saying ‘I had an ice cream cone and then I died the next day, the ice cream must have killed me,” she said. And those with pre-existing beliefs about the vaccine seek to attach sudden deaths to the vaccine.

Gounder experienced this  personally when her husband, the celebrated sports journalist Grant Wahl, died while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Wahl died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm but anti-vax accounts falsely linked his death to the COVID-19 vaccine, forcing Gounder to publicly set the record straight.

“It is very clear that this is about harming other people,” said Gounder, who was a guest at United Facts of America in 2023. “And in this case, trying to harm me and my family at a point where we were grieving my husband’s loss. What was important in that moment was to really stand up for my husband, his legacy, and to do what I know he would have wanted me to do, which is to speak the truth and to do so very publicly.”

False claims the pandemic was planned or government-orchestrated

We continue to see false claims that the pandemic was planned by government leaders and those in power.

At any given moment, Microsoft Corp. co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci are blamed for orchestrating pandemic-related threats.

In February, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., falsely claimed Fauci, “brought” the virus to his state a  year before the pandemic.  There is no evidence of that. Gates, according to the narratives, is using dangerous vaccines to push a depopulation agenda. That’s False. And Schwab has not said he has an “agenda” to establish a totalitarian global regime using the coronavirus to depopulate the earth and reorganize society. That’s part of a conspiracy theory that’s come to be called “The Great Reset” that has been debunked many times.

The United Nations’ World Health Organization is frequently painted as a global force for evil, too, with detractors saying it is using vaccination to control or harm people. But the WHO has not declared that a new pandemic is happening, as some have claimed. Its current pandemic preparedness treaty is in no way positioned to remove human rights protections or restrict freedoms, as one post said. And the organization has not announced plans to deploy troops to corral people and forcibly vaccinate them. The WHO is, however, working on a new treaty to help countries improve coordination in response to future pandemics.

 

A new bill would not make a 2023 California program that helps first-time homebuyers with down payments available only to immigrants in the country illegally, as an Instagram post claims. 

“I think it’s kind of cool that California is working on giving first-time home buyers interest free and payment free loans for their home”, a man says in a March 5 video. He then says: “A-ha! Psyche motherf—–s, it’s only for illegals.” 

He reads from an article shown on screen that’s from BNN News, a website known to spread misinformation and linked to hundreds of X news accounts that were suspended in 2022 for violating spam policies. The BNN News article says California Assembly Bill 1840 would give immigrants in the country illegally interest free loans.

The Instagram poster also says that people who live in California legally don’t get this help: “They are giving it to them instead of Californians.” 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The Instagram video misrepresents the proposed legislation about eligibility requirements for California’s “Dream for All” program, which has been in place for a year. The program gives first-time homebuyers interest-free loans for 20% of down payment or closing costs.

The proposed legislation would not give the loans exclusively to immigrants in the country illegally. Californians who meet certain income limits also are eligible for the program.

Assembly Bill 1840, introduced in January, would codify into law that “an applicant under the program shall not be disqualified solely based on the applicant’s immigration status.” 

Eric Johnson, a California Housing Finance Agency spokesperson, said people who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, also called DACA, already are eligible to apply for “Dream for All” loans. DACA protects people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children from deportation and allows them to apply for work permits. 

Jacob Moss, the legislative director for Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, who introduced Assembly Bill 1840, said the legislation is necessary because federal law says a state must enact a law so that the immigrants in the country illegally can receive state public benefits. Otherwise federal regulations will not allow lenders to give them loans. Moss said the bill would apply only to immigrants in the country illegally who have Social Security numbers or Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers — which can include DACA recipients. 

So Assembly Bill 1840 would make it official that a group of people that already is eligible to receive the loans under the program’s rules also would be eligible under state and federal law. 

“It’s a complicated issue area, so we’re trying to bring some clarification to it,” Moss said.

The “Dream for All” loan is repaid if or when the homeowners sell their home. Although there is no interest charged on the loan, the homebuyers program participants have to pay back 20% of any appreciation on a home’s value, according to information on California Housing Finance Agency’s website. 

Existing loan eligibility for the loans is for first-time home buyers who do not exceed specified income limits that vary by county. The loans are given to applicants who are chosen randomly from a lottery. The new bill does not change how the loans are distributed. 

Assembly Bill 1840 has been referred to the Committee on Housing and Community Development to be reviewed. 

Our ruling

An Instagram video says that only immigrants in the country illegally are eligible for an interest-free California housing loan program.

Proposed California legislation would codify into law that certain immigrants in the country illegally are eligible for the state’s “Dream For All” loan program. 

Immigrants with DACA status are already eligible to apply for the program. But federal law says a state must enact a law so that the immigrants in the country illegally can receive state public benefits. Otherwise federal regulations will not allow lenders to give them loans.

The proposed legislation would not give the loans exclusively to immigrants in the country illegally. Californians who meet certain income limits also are eligible for the program.

We rate the claim False.

Cindy McCain may still endorse President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, but she has not done so yet. 

A March 7 Facebook post painted a different picture, however, when it shared a quote from McCain, the widow of former Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

“My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There’s only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is Joe Biden,” the post quoted Cindy McCain as saying. “…He is a good and honest man. He will lead us with dignity.”

This Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Although the quote in the Facebook post is accurate, it is lifted from two of Cindy McCain’s Sept. 22, 2020, tweets, when she endorsed Biden over incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Her endorsement made national headlines. A month prior, she appeared in a Democratic National Convention video, talking about her husband’s friendship with Biden, which developed while he and John McCain both served in the U.S. Senate. Biden has since said that he helped introduce John McCain to his future wife.

Cindy McCain is now the executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme and has most recently traveled to South Sudan to help alleviate starvation there, according to her X account. Sen. John McCain died in August 2018.

She and Biden  appeared together in September 2023 at an event at the Tempe Arts Center in Arizona to announce the creation of a library and museum honoring John McCain.

But a search of Nexis news archives, Google and Cindy McCain’s social media accounts show she has made no 2024 presidential election endorsement. PolitiFact reached out to the World Food Programme and the McCain Institute, where Cindy McCain serves as chairman emeritus of the board of trustees, but did not hear back before publishing.

We rate the claim that Cindy McCain has endorsed Biden in 2024 False. 

Eric Hovde, a businessman who is the first Republican candidate to announce a challenge to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin this November, says reining in the national debt will be one of his top priorities.

Hovde has talked about the size of the national debt on his campaign website, in his first speeches to supporters, and now in a clip published March 4 that’s part of his video series “Just Facts.”

Perhaps the most eye-popping claim Hovde makes is on his website, which he’s paraphrased elsewhere:

“Since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, President Biden and Senator Baldwin have added over $7.3 trillion of debt, more than the first 228 years of our nation’s history combined,” his website says.

The national debt is a complicated subject, so we called in two economics experts to explain it as Hovde’s campaign kicks into gear.

Here’s what we found. 

Numbers are correct, but size of the economy has grown dramatically over history

First, let’s look at Hovde’s raw numbers. He says $7.3 trillion has been added since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, and it took 228 years for the debt to reach that same number. 

One point right off the bat: The 2020 fiscal year ended in September 2020, which means the numbers include the last few months of former President Donald Trump’s time in office. 

Overall, Hovde is “pretty close on the actual numbers,” said Menzie Chinn, a public affairs and economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

However, Chinn said, “the basic point is that the numbers are meaningless.”

Part of that is because prices have increased over time. Something that cost $1 in 1776 costs more than 30 times as much in 2023, Chinn said.

And the economy has just gotten much bigger. The first estimate from 1790 shows the economy is now 141,750 times larger, so using plain dollar comparisons doesn’t make sense, Chinn said. 

“It’s not a fair comparison,” agreed Kundan Kishor, economics department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

“The size of the economy is much bigger now than it used to be, and the average price level is also increasing,” he said. 

So, although Hovde’s numbers look correct, economists say it’s not fair to compare them with earlier in history, when the U.S. economy was smaller and prices were lower.

Another measurement did spike during pandemic, but continues high trend

Economists say a better measurement is the debt-to-GDP ratio. Gross domestic product refers to how much a country produces and gives a picture of how the economy is doing.

“Think about your credit card debt,” Kishor said. If you have more income, your capacity to pay off debts is much easier. 

Currently, the debt-to-GDP ratio is around 121%, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows. 

For context, when Trump took office, the ratio was around 102%. The ratio peaked around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching nearly 133%. 

The ratio has been rising since it was at 30% in 1981, Kishor said, apart from a dip around 2000 toward the end of the Clinton administration. 

So, if the debt-to-GDP ratio has been increasing for at least 20 years, how much are Biden and Baldwin responsible for? 

Pandemic-era policies did lead to spike in debt-to-GDP ratio, similar thing happened in 2008

Let’s look into a last element in Hovde’s claim: that his opponent, and Biden, are responsible for debt increases. 

In his video, Hovde is clear in who he blames for the increase in the debt: “Joe Biden and his Democratic allies take the cake for the damage that they have done.” It includes a side-by-side photo of Biden and Baldwin.

Earlier in the video, though, Hovde acknowledges that politicians over the last 15 to 20 years are also to blame for government finances. The numbers from the St. Louis Fed support that.

Ben Voelkel, Hovde’s campaign spokesperson, pointed to policies such as the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Baldwin voted for and Biden signed into law. 

The second bill, known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was also supported by 32 Republicans — and Baldwin is just one vote in Congress. The American Rescue Plan Act’s goal was to stimulate the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When “something unanticipated” like the pandemic happens, Kishor said, “the government has to step in, and that leads to a temporary increase.” The same thing happened during the 2008 financial crisis.

So, Hovde is correct that pandemic-era spending packages supported by Baldwin and Biden led to a spike. 

Although the ratio has since cooled off, the deficit — which is related but different to the national debt — remains above pre-pandemic levels, PolitiFact National found.

But regardless of the large increase during the pandemic, the trend of higher debt-to-GDP ratios has been around during other administrations. 

“What people usually lose track of is the fact that this is a long-run problem. One particular president or one particular party is not responsible for it,” Kishor said. 

Finally, the economists do agree that the national debt is a problem. If the government has to make very high interest payments, that would come at the expense of other spending, Kishor said. 

The national debt does need to be reined in, Chinn said, through spending cuts and changes to entitlement programs such as Social Security, which are driving the debt-to-GDP ratio up over the long term.

Our ruling

On his campaign website — and elsewhere — Hovde says “since the end of the 2020 fiscal year, President Biden and Senator Baldwin have added over $7.3 trillion of debt, more than the first 228 years of our nation’s history combined.”

Hovde’s raw numbers look correct, apart from including some of the last months of Trump’s presidency. 

But economists say it’s not meaningful to compare present-day numbers with numbers from far back in U.S. history, when the economy was much smaller and prices were lower. 

Instead, it’s better to look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, which did spike under Biden when the government spent more money to respond to the pandemic. 

Still, that ratio has been increasing under other administrations, so it’s not only the fault of Biden and Baldwin. Some Republicans also voted for the infrastructure law Hovde’s campaign mentioned.

Our definition of Half True is “the statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.” That fits here.

 

As Floridians continue to grapple with a state property insurance crisis, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned that the state-backed insurer of last resort for disaster damage is insolvent.

Over the past year, several major insurance carriers have left the state, citing Florida’s high risk of a costly weather calamity. Loose regulations and repeated hurricane damage have left residents paying the highest average property insurance premiums in the country — about $6,000 a year, or more than triple the national average.

This squeeze has pushed more homeowners to explore insuring with Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which holds about 1.2 million policies. The company is considered the “insurer of last resort” because it offers policies to customers who are seen as high risks because their properties are particularly vulnerable to damage, making them unattractive to conventional insurers.

Insurers of last resort do not have to agree to cover properties they consider too risky, and they may require potential policyholders to adhere to certain conditions for protecting a property before offering a policy.

During the legislative session, DeSantis touted efforts to improve Florida’s insurance market, saying new companies have entered the state. 

On Feb. 27 on CNBC’s “Last Call,” DeSantis said the companies that recently entered the Florida market “have taken out hundreds of thousands of policies from this Citizens Property Insurance, which was created decades ago. 

“It is not solvent,” DeSantis said of Citizens, “and we can’t have millions of people on that because if a storm hits, it’s going to cause problems for the state.”

DeSantis has repeated the claim several times over the last year — catching Washington, D.C.’s attention. In a Nov. 30 letter to Florida officials and Citizens, U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said his committee began investigating Citizens’ finances “in light of the state’s acknowledgment of Citizens’ potential insolvency.” Whitehouse outlined concerning implications for the Florida insurance market, state taxpayers and the potential of a federal bailout.

However, the company’s financial data undermines DeSantis’ use of “not solvent.” Financial experts said that term is inaccurate for the situation.

Citizens’ latest financial report, from December 2023, shows that the insurer had a $5 billion surplus at the end of 2023. The company expects a $6.3 billion surplus by the end of 2024. (A surplus is the amount of money or resources an organization has that is not immediately being used to pay expenses.)

Additional state funding, and the company’s ability to draw funds from Florida taxpayers in a pinch, brings the insurer’s total reserves to about $17.8 billion, according to the report.

Jeremy Redfern, the governor’s press secretary, told PolitiFact that Citizens was never meant to accommodate as many policies as it currently does, and, therefore, “at its current growth rate, Governor DeSantis is correct.” 

But this is not what “insolvency” means — it means that an entity can no longer meet its financial obligations today. Citizens could be considered insolvent if its debts exceeded the value of its assets, economics experts said.

If the company can now pay out claims and other expenses it isn’t insolvent. This remains true even if Citizens had to offload its expenses onto policyholders, which is allowed by Florida law, but would likely be unpopular.

“Citizens has the capacity to levy surcharges on property insurance policies,” said Hakan Yilmazkuday, an economics professor at Florida International University. “In other words, Citizens can never be ‘insolvent’ in technical terms.”

Redfern acknowledged that Citizens can’t run out of money to pay claims.

“Citizens is structured so that it will always be able to protect its policyholders and pay claims,” Redfern said. “But this comes at the expense of all Florida insurance policy holders.” These charges can be levied on nearly every type of property and casualty policy in Florida, including homeowner, renter, auto, boat and pet insurance policies.

Citizens CEO Timothy Cerio made a point similar to Redfern’s in a Dec. 15 reply to Whitehouse, writing the senator’s concern about insolvency showed “a fundamental misunderstanding” of how the company operates and its ability to pay claims. 

He told PolitiFact in an email that DeSantis has been “consistent and clear” in his concern that, if there were a major storm or series of storms and Citizens exhausted its surplus and reinsurance, Florida law would require the company to levy an emergency charges on state policyholders — “83% of whom are not even Citizens’ customers.”

“Although Citizens’ assessment authority means that it will always be able to pay claims. Citizens’ rates are currently actuarially unsound,” Cerio wrote. “It is critical that Citizens be able to charge actuarially sound rates to help minimize the risk of such assessments on the people of Florida.” (Citizens said “actuarially unsound” means charging rates that inadequately cover potential losses.)

Cerio further explained to Politico’s E&E News that the company’s premiums are 55% below their actuarially sound level and, in some areas, 40% below rates charged by insurance companies. The Insurance Information Institute verified the data with PolitiFact.

With a major storm, Citizens may not have enough resources to pay its customers. It would then need to rely on financial assistance from the state, and that would mean a hit to Florida taxpayers. 

“If certain property insurance policies are transferred to multiple private policy companies, the stress on each company would be easier to handle … without any impact on the Florida State budget,” Yilmazkuday said.

Still, he said that DeSantis inaccurately defined Citizens’ fiscal position in the CNBC interview. DeSantis could have described Citizens as financially stressed, financially vulnerable, under financial strain, or a state budget risk, Yilmazkuday said. 

Efforts to shift policies from Citizens to other insurers have led to some small results. The number of Citizens’ policies declined from 1.4 million in September to about 1.2 million in January. That’s still about three times more Citizens policies than the company had in 2019.

Our ruling

DeSantis said that Citizens Property Insurance is “not solvent.” 

Insolvency means a company cannot pay its bills today. That’s not so with Citizens, which has a $5 billion surplus and expects a surplus of more than $6 billion by the end of 2024.

Citizens faces significant financial challenges and must worry about one or more massive storms pressuring those surpluses. If that happens, the company can rely on backstopping from taxpayers under state law. That would be unpopular, but is different from insolvency.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

Has Easter been replaced?

Nope, the internet is just hopping to conclusions.

“Trans activists replaced Easter with the Transgender Day of Visibility,” posted conservative influencer Ian Miles Cheong on X. “Easter is no more.”

The March 14 post featured an infographic from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization PFLAG that announced the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on March 31. 

Easter Sunday falls on the same day this year, but that is just a coincidence.

Transgender Day of Visibility, a day dedicated to raising awareness about the transgender community, has been on March 31 every year since its creation in more than a decade ago.

It is a fixed date like the Fourth of July, Veterans Day, or Christmas.

But Easter’s date changes each year.

The Christian holiday celebrating Jesus Christ’s resurrection is also observed by children with chocolate bunnies and egg hunts. It falls on March 31 this year. In 2023, it fell on April 9, and the year before, on April 17. 

Easter’s date is based on the lunar calendar, and always falls on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. Other roving holidays such as Thanksgiving or Memorial Day are based on a certain week in a given month.

The Easter Bunny’s favorite workday has not been replaced by the Transgender Day of Visibility.

If anything is to blame for a crowded calendar, it’s the moon.

We rate this claim False.