New COVID-19 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends precautions in line with influenza and other respiratory viruses, leaving some skeptics crowing on social media that they were right all along.
“The CDC officially agrees with ‘conspiracy theorists’’ from 2020,” a March 2 Instagram post read. “Interesting how that worked out.”
The post’s caption listed grievances about pandemic measures such as lockdowns, school closures and vaccines, saying, “And now, four years later the CDC says treat it like the flu.”
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.)
We found dozens of social media posts making similar claims that people who have long said COVID-19 was no different than the flu were right all along.
The claims are wrong about what the change in CDC guidelines says about the early days of the pandemic and a virus that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. and more than 7 million globally since 2020, experts told PolitiFact.
What changed in the guidance?
The CDC changed its guidance on COVID-19 to streamline it with other respiratory viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. People with COVID-19 no longer must isolate for five days before going back to the office or to school, as the CDC had previously recommended.
Instead, the CDC said, people sick with COVID-19, or the flu and other respiratory viruses, should stay home and away from others until their symptoms have improved and they no longer have a fever — without the use of fever-reducing medications — for at least 24 hours.
People are also encouraged to take additional steps for the next five days to avoid spreading the virus, such as social distancing, wearing a mask or improving air quality by opening windows or using an air purifier, the CDC said.
Those are important to protect those more vulnerable to COVID-19, such as people 65 and older and those with weakened immune systems, the CDC said.
“What (the) CDC is really saying is, ‘Here are three options for what to do during that five-day period when you might still be infectious,’” said Dr. Céline Gounder, editor at large for KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist.
The CDC also recommends people stay up to date with vaccines, practice good hygiene and take steps for cleaner air, such as purifying indoor air.
The new guidance doesn’t apply to health care settings or for pathogens such as measles that may have specific containment measures, the CDC said.
Why did the guidance change?
The CDC said in a March 1 news release that the new guidelines are meant to bring a unified approach to common respiratory viruses that have similar routes of transmission and symptoms. The changes would make recommendations easier to follow and help protect those most at risk, the agency said.
The change is possible because there are far fewer hospitalizations and deaths today associated with COVID-19, and there are more tools available to treat it, such as vaccines and treatments.
“We are in a different place. We have data and evidence that shows our tools are working to protect us against COVID,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a March 4 X post announcing the new guidelines.
— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) March 4, 2024
Weekly hospital admissions for COVID-19 this winter were down more than 75%, and deaths were down by more than 90% compared with January 2022, the peak of the virus’s first omicron wave, the CDC said.
“We saw these decreases even while our wastewater data showed we had high levels of viral illness circulating this season,” Cohen said in her X video.
More than 98% of the U.S. population has some degree of immunity against COVID-19, through vaccines, prior infections or both, the CDC said. At the same time, vaccines and treatments such as antiviral drug Paxlovid are available that weren’t early in the pandemic.
Some states, such as California and Oregon, had already put similar isolation guidance in place before the CDC change.
Gounder said most people who are sick aren’t testing and don’t know if they have COVID-19, the flu or a common cold virus. So the goal of the CDC change is to “align the guidance across all of them so you don’t even have to test to know what to do.”
Does that mean COVID-19 should have been treated like the flu from the start?
No, experts told PolitiFact. It just means that we’re in a much better place than we were early in the pandemic, when we were learning on the fly about a novel coronavirus.
“The CDC is comparing the mortality of COVID-19 to influenza now but that was not the case at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, a University of California, San Francisco, medical professor and an infectious disease expert. “COVID was far deadlier than influenza until we got to widespread population immunity.”
That does not mean that COVID-19 was like the flu in 2020, Gandhi said.
“SARS-CoV-2 hit a nonimmune population all over the planet at that time, unfortunately leading to high rates of mortality,” Gandhi said.
Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and George Washington University adjunct associate professor, said public health policy must evolve as science — and the facts — change.
The outlook for someone suffering from the flu is much different today, and public health measures have also evolved. Before the advent of flu vaccines or antibiotics, the influenza pandemic of 1918 spread worldwide and killed at least 50 million people, including about 675,000 in the United States. As with COVID-19, public health control efforts around that early flu outbreak were largely limited to social distancing and quarantines.
Health officials appropriately used mitigation measures specific to COVID-19 through 2020 and 2021 when there was hope the disease could be contained or eliminated, Wen said.
“Circumstances have changed,” Wen said, pointing to available vaccines, treatments and high population exposure to the virus, and less lethal subvariants of omicron. “It is now clear that it’s not possible for COVID to be eliminated. As a result, it is now appropriate to consider COVID in the same category of other serious respiratory pathogens such as influenza.”
Gounder said the claim that the CDC guidance change vindicated people who said we should have treated COVID-19 like the flu all along is “patently false,” adding that even though deaths are down from their peak, COVID-19 is still the deadliest of the common respiratory viruses in the U.S., and the most likely to land adults in the hospital.
Our ruling
An Instagram post said the CDC’s new COVID-19 guidance means “The CDC officially agrees with ‘conspiracy theorists’ from 2020″ who wanted to treat COVID-19 like the flu.”
The claim ignores what public health officials knew about the virus that causes COVID-19 in the pandemic’s early days. It overlooks that vaccines, treatments and natural immunity have since lessened the threat of COVID-19, leading to far fewer deaths and hospitalizations.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the abortion issue has been an easy motivator for Democrats and a political loser at the ballot box for Republicans nationwide.
Wisconsin Republicans, too, have struggled to weather that particular political storm. In January, a group of them proposed a bill marketed as a way to find consensus: a 14-week abortion ban that would have to be approved by voters before taking effect.
The bill would scale the timeframe for legal abortions in Wisconsin back from 20 weeks and is currently sitting with the state Senate after passing the Assembly Jan. 25.
Though the bill was ultimately amended to include exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, it didn’t have them initially.
When asked during an Assembly committee hearing on the bill why it didn’t include those exceptions, state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie — who co-authored the bill — said 14 weeks should be enough time for a person to be aware of a pregnancy and decide whether to continue that pregnancy.
In fact, Nedweski said, “we have technology and medical advancements today that can tell you if you are pregnant the day after conception.”
Medical experts disagree.
Pregnancy hormone can’t be detected right after conception
Nedweski’s office did not return a request for the evidence she used to make the claim. We’ll break down the science here.
A pregnancy test detects the presence of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, in a person’s body. But the body doesn’t produce that hormone until several days after conception.
Fertilization, which happens when the sperm and egg unite, is what most people refer to as “conception,” said Dr. Abigail Cutler, an OB-GYN at UW Health and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
About five to 10 days after fertilization, the fertilized egg implants in the lining of the uterus. HCG is produced shortly afterward, Cutler said, first in low levels which rise rapidly over time.
“The very earliest someone can confirm whether they are pregnant is following implantation, the timing of which varies but can take a week or more,” she said.
Pregnancy tests that people can buy over the counter, which detect the presence of hCG in urine, often aren’t sensitive enough to pick up those lowest levels of the hormone when it first appears, she added. An hCG blood test can detect the hormone as soon as it’s being produced, but that kind of test isn’t as readily accessible because it must be ordered by a health care provider.
Other medical information supports that hCG doesn’t show up immediately after conception, though its timing can vary.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, hCG can be found in a person’s blood around 11 days after conception, and it takes slightly longer to show up in urine. Johns Hopkins Medicine says it can be found in urine five to seven days after conception. Mount Sinai Health System says hCG can be found in the blood and urine of pregnant people as early as 10 days after conception.
Cutler also noted that confirming a pregnancy by any means requires having a reason to suspect pregnancy in the first place.
According to SSM Health, some people may begin noticing early symptoms of pregnancy a week or two after conception. But others may not realize until their period is noticeably late — which can be hard to determine for people with irregular menstrual cycles — or even further into the pregnancy. Some people feel no symptoms at all.
With that information in mind, Cutler said there are many reasons why someone may not suspect a pregnancy until it is several weeks along.
Our ruling
Nedweski claimed that there are “technology and medical advancements today that can tell you if you are pregnant the day after conception.”
But pregnancy tests are looking for a hormone that doesn’t get produced right after conception. It could take a week or more to be produced in high enough levels to show up on a pregnancy test, even one done by a health care provider.
Facing a challenging path to reelection amid low favorability ratings and public wariness over the economy, President Joe Biden used his 2024 State of the Union address to take a fighting posture. He repeatedly drew contrasts with his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, and occasionally sparred with GOP lawmakers in the audience.
“This is a moment to speak the truth, to bury lies,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who believed falsehoods that the 2020 election had been stolen. “Here’s the simple truth: You can’t love your country only when you win.”
Biden didn’t say Trump’s name in his remarks, but he frequently invoked Trump’s record and proposals, usually referring to him as “my predecessor.”
Some Republicans called out Biden from the floor. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., challenged Biden over the murder of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia nursing student. An immigrant in the country illegally has been charged in Riley’s death.
Another Republican lawmaker, Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden, yelled, “Lies!” in response to Biden’s criticism of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., gave the Republicans’ response to the speech and we fact-checked that.
In forceful terms, Biden framed himself as a protector and defender of Americans and their prosperity, touting pocketbook policies to ease student loan burdens and lower prescription drug prices.
Biden repeated calls for Republicans in Congress to approve aid to Ukraine, which is fighting an invasion by Russia. He also walked a fine line on the Middle East. He called for Hamas to free the Israeli hostages it continues to hold in Gaza — the families of some hostages were in the chamber for his address — but also announced a plan to build a temporary pier to expand humanitarian aid to Palestinians caught in the crossfire.
We fact-checked key statements on immigration, Trump, the economy, reproductive rights and crime.
Immigration
Biden blamed Republicans for sidelining Senate border security bill
For years, Republicans have blamed Biden for the historically high illegal immigration under his watch. Some Republicans wore red and white pins that said “Stop the Biden border crisis” in large capital letters.
As Biden entered the House chamber, Greene gave him a pin with text that said: “Say her name: Laken Riley,” the University of Georgia student who was murdered.
As he discussed border security and immigration, Greene interrupted Biden and challenged him to say Riley’s name.
“Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” Biden said, misstating Riley’s first name.
Some high-profile Democrats criticized him for using the phrase “illegal,” which some argue is dehumanizing.
“He should have said undocumented,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on CNN.
“Let me be clear: No human being is illegal,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., posted on X.
Biden also said it was Republicans’ turn to act and cooperate with him and Democrats on a border security bill. He blamed Republicans for sidelining a Senate immigration bill, which failed in a 49-50 vote, that he claimed was “the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen.”
Here’s some context missing from some of Biden’s comments on the bill.
“It would also give me and any new president new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming.”
This needs context.
The proposal sought to enable the executive branch to block people from seeking asylum in between ports of entry if illegal immigration encounters reached certain levels.
It aimed to change what happened when people reached the border, but that doesn’t mean people would stop showing up. Despite the emergency authority, the government’s ability to quickly remove people from the U.S. would still hinge on its resources, and other countries’ willingness to take back immigrants.
“In short, there is no authority that Congress could pass that would allow for a ‘complete and total shutdown of the border,’” Theresa Cardinal Brown, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s senior adviser for Immigration and border policy previously told PolitiFact. “That’s just not how borders work in any real sense. Especially not our border with Mexico.”
“That bill would hire … 100 more immigration judges to help tackle the backload of 2 million cases.”
The backlog number is higher — there are more than 3 million cases in immigration courts as of November 2023, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The backlog grew by 1 million cases from November 2022 to November 2023.
The bill called for “4,300 more asylum officers and new policies so they can resolve cases in six months instead of six years now.”
On average, asylum cases in immigration court take more than four years to be resolved, according to a 2023 report published by the American Immigration Council, an immigrants’ rights advocacy group.
But the growing case backlog could increase that average.
Attacking Trump with his own words
In more than a dozen nameless references to his predecessor, Biden used partial quotes by Trump to draw policy contrasts on guns; Roe v. Wade; and Russian President Vladimir Putin and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘do whatever the hell you want.’ That’s a quote.”
Trump wasn’t directly inviting Russia to do whatever it wanted to NATO allies. He was telling a story during a rally in South Carolina about what he said to an unnamed ally years ago. Trump claimed he was tough on NATO and got results, misrepresenting several facts about the alliance and his record in the process.
“I got them to pay up,” Trump said Feb. 10. “NATO was busted until I came along. I said, ’Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Trump added, “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we are attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you are delinquent?” He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you, in fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they wanted. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”
“My predecessor told the NRA he’s proud he did nothing on guns when he was president.”
Trump did say that, even though his record was more nuanced. Speaking at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Pennsylvania in February, Trump said, “During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me, having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield.”
But in 2019, when Trump was asked what he had done about the gun problem, he said, “We’ve done, actually, a lot.” Trump banned bump stocks, which let semi-automatic weapons fire dozens of bullets in seconds. He also supported a bipartisan effort to improve the background-check database and his administration prioritized gun-related prosecutions. However, Trump’s administration also tried to expand gun laws and regulations or block efforts to tighten them.
“After another shooting in Iowa recently … when asked what to do about it he said, ‘Just get over it.’”
Trump’s remarks were not in direct response to a question. Trump’s full remarks, which included sympathies for the victims, came at a January rally in Iowa after a sixth grade student was killed and several others wounded in a shooting at Perry High School. The shooter, 17, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
“I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa.” Trump also said, “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But, ah, have to get over it, we have to move forward, we have to move forward. But to the relatives and to all of the people that are so devastated right now to a point they can’t breathe, they can’t live, we are with you all the way, we are with you and we love you and we cherish you.”
“My predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned. He’s the reason it’s overturned and he brags about it.”
At a January town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump said, “For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated. And I did it and I’m proud to have done it.” Trump also said, “Nobody else was going to get that done but me and we did it, and we did something that was a miracle.”
Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices that cemented the court’s conservative majority, which reversed the Roe decision in June 2022.
On Truth Social in May 2023, Trump said, “After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone.”
Economy
Biden took a victory lap on the reduced inflation rate and other economic metrics. But a few of his talking points, including on “soaring” consumer confidence and cuts to the deficit, were exaggerated.
“Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% — the lowest in the world!”
The U.S. is doing better on managing inflation than most advanced industrialized nations are, but does not rank No. 1 internationally.
Biden is correct that the year-over-year inflation rate has dropped from 9%, a four-decade high, in summer of 2022 to a little above 3% today amid sharp interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
In December 2023, seven countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — Canada, Denmark, Italy, Latvia,Lithuania, the Netherlands and South Korea — had inflation rates lower than the U.S’.
Twenty OECD member countries had higher inflation rates than the U.S., including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, each of which belongs to the G-7 of elite economies.
“Consumer studies show consumer confidence is soaring.”
It depends on the measure.
Two long-running consumer confidence measures are released by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board, a business membership and research organization.
Consumer confidence, as measured by the University of Michigan survey,, has climbed sharply since bottoming out in the summer of 2022, when inflation reached 9%, a four-decade high. However, the rating under Biden remains lower than it was for four of the past five presidents at the same point in their tenures.
Biden scores higher on the Conference Board survey, which is focused more on questions related to the labor market than inflation.
The labor market has been a strength for Biden during his watch. And the Conference Board survey shows that consumer sentiment is now higher than it was under three of the previous four presidents at this point in their tenures.
“I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over a trillion dollars.”
This merits asterisks. The deficit — the difference between federal spending and federal revenues — fell by $1.4 trillion between 2021, Biden’s first year in office, and 2022, his second year. That was a larger decline than any in any previous one-year span.
However, this reduction stems largely from the phasing-out of pandemic era relief programs. Also, even at its reduced levels, the deficit remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic. The deficit in 2022 and 2023 under Biden was higher than in each of Trump’s first three years, partly because of bills such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan, a pandemic recovery measure.
Biden: “There are 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what the average federal tax is for those billionaires? No? They’re making great sacrifices. 8.2%.”
This is misleading.
A White House report arrived at the 8.2% figure by including unrealized gains in the income calculations of the 400 richest U.S. families.
Currently, if people see their stock shares rise in value over time, those gains are not taxed until the shares are sold. If the shares are never sold, they aren’t taxed. Under current law — which Biden proposes to change — stocks may be passed to the next generation with little or no taxation.
Economists and policymakers have long debated whether the government should tax unrealized gains. But Biden made it sound as if 8.2% was the standard tax rate billionaires pay today. It’s not: Unrealized wealth, unlike income, is not taxed today.
The actual average tax rate the top 1% of taxpayers pay is more than three times what Biden said: 25.6%, according to IRS data from 2019. A more elite group, the top 0.001% — which in 2019 meant people earning about $60 million or more a year — paid 22.9%.
Another analysis, by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica, found that the actual tax rate paid by 25 U.S. billionaires under current law is 16%, which is still about twice what Biden said.
A “law and order” president
Violent crime has declined recently in the U.S., and Biden largely took responsibility.
“America is safer today than when I took office,” he said, claiming that the year before he became president, “murders went up 30%, the biggest increase in history.”
Homicides did increase 30% in 2020, and it was considered the largest single-year jump in more than a century. But Biden ignored that the spike coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Touting his 2022 American Rescue Plan Act as “the largest investment in public safety ever,” Biden pointed to the 2023 homicide rate: “Last year, the murder rate saw the sharpest decrease in history. Violent crime fell to one of its lowest levels in more than 50 years. But we have more to do.”
Violent crime has decreased from 2020’s record highs, but this is because of a confluence of factors, experts said, some that are beyond Biden’s control.
Using data from hundreds of cities, criminologists estimated that 2023 homicides were down around 12% compared with 2022. The numbers are considered preliminary, but crime analysts say that if the final numbers remain the same, it would represent one of the largest single-year homicide declines since U.S. crime record-keeping began.
Despite the decline, data shows that the 2023 homicide rate is expected to be about 18% higher than it was in 2019, before the pandemic began.
Legislation such as the American Rescue Plan, which included funding for community public safety initiatives, and the 2022 Bipartisan Safer in Communities Act, which provided funding to help states implement “red flag laws” and put more limits on gun purchases, might have helped propel the downward trend, researchers said. Other contributing factors likely include an easing of the pandemic’s social disruptions and cities’ individual crime-reduction efforts in response to homicide spikes.
Reproductive issues
“The Alabama Supreme Court shut down IVF treatments across the state, unleashed by a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”
On Feb. 16, the Alabama Supreme Court released a ruling that said frozen embryos should be considered children.
The decision lacks the power to shut down in vitro fertilization treatments statewide. But it caused multiple clinics in the state to pause IVF treatments as they reviewed the decision and potential liabilities.
Since then, Alabama lawmakers passed legislation to shield IVF providers from civil or criminal liability in a rush to protect fertility treatments after backlash grew. Two clinics announced they were resuming operations after Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the law.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. — who had two daughters using in vitro fertilization — introduced a similar federal bill aimed at protecting IVF. But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked it Feb. 28, saying it was a “vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far — far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF.”
“If you, the American people. send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.”
We continue to rate Biden’s promise to codify Roe v. Wade Stalled.
Biden called on Congress to help him achieve his 2020 campaign promise to codify Roe v Wade.
He can’t do it alone.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2022 to overturn Roe, ending nearly 50 years of federally protected abortion access.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023, which would prohibit governmental restrictions on access to abortion. But it has no Republican co-sponsors and didn’t advance.
We have been tracking Biden’s campaign promise to codify Roe v. Wade, one of about 100 promises on our Biden Promise Tracker. The lack of 10 Republicans to overcome an expected filibuster has stalled Biden’s efforts on codification. That lack of a path forward continued even after Democrats kept narrow control of the Senate in the midterms.
Prescription drugs
Americans pay more for prescription drugs than anywhere in the world.”
We rated a similar claim by Biden Mostly True.
American per capita spending on prescription drugs is nearly three times the average of other advanced, industrialized countries that comprise the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. A study by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization, found that, across all drugs, U.S. prices were 2.78 times higher than the prices in 33 OECD countries.
The gap was even larger for brand-name drugs, with U.S. prices averaging 4.22 times higher than those in comparison nations. The U.S. pays less than comparable nations for unbranded, generic drugs, which account for about 90% of filled prescriptions in the U.S., yet make up only one-fifth of prescription drug spending.
Researchers say factors including country-specific pricing, confidential rebates and other discounts can obscure actual prices, making comparisons harder.
Former Rep. George Santos was in attendance
Is former Rep. Georoge Santos really allowed to sit among the people who expelled him in December?
The short answer is yes.
PolitiFact Staff Writers Loreben Tuquero and Marta Campabadal Graus contributed to this report.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., delivered the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address from her kitchen table in Montgomery, Alabama. During her 17-minute rebuttal, Britt criticized Biden on immigration, the economy and crime.
“What we saw was the performance of a permanent politician who has actually been in office for longer than I’ve been alive,” said Britt, who is 42.
“Our families are hurting. Our country can do better. And you don’t have to look any further than the crisis at our southern border to see it,” Britt said. “President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, he halted construction of the border wall and he announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.”
“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis,” Britt continued. “He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.”
It’s unclear which specific 94 executive actions Britt was referring to. A few months into Biden’s administration, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute released a report detailing 94 immigration-related Biden executive actions. However, not all the actions were directly related to the border.
Here’s the context behind Britt’s claims.
Biden “suspended all deportations.”
On Biden’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security published a memo pausing the removals of certain people illegally in the U.S. for 100 days. Federal courts quickly stopped the pause.
The memo also acknowledged that because of resource constraints, and increased illegal border crossings, removals should be prioritized for people who posed a national security or public safety threat 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.
In September 2021, DHS released a second memo detailing similar guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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.
There have been more than 3.6 million removals, returns and expulsions from February 2021, Biden’s first month in office, to September 2023, based on Department of Homeland Security estimates.
Biden “halted construction of the border wall.”
On his first day in office, Biden issued a proclamation terminating the national emergency, former President Donald Trump used to divert Defense Department funding to build additional border barriers. However, in October 2023, the Biden administration resumed barrier construction using money Congress had previously appropriated. The administration also has spent millions on barrier repairs.
Immigration experts have questioned barriers’ effectiveness at reducing illegal immigration.
Instead of lowering the number of people crossing, barriers have prompted people mainly to try crossing at different parts of the border, David Bier, immigration studies director at the libertarian Cato Institute told PolitiFact in July 2023.
Biden “announced a plan to give amnesty to millions.”
“Amnesty” is a political term that can be defined narrowly as giving people in the U.S. illegally citizenship or broadly to mean any policy favorable to people in the U.S. illegally.
On his first day in office, Biden proposed the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 to provide a citizenship path for farmworkers and immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children and for beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status. House Democrats introduced the bill in February 2021, but it did not advance.
More recently, Biden said he would sign the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill into law if it reached his desk. That bill, which failed a vote in the Senate, did not include a path to citizenship for people living in the U.S. illegally.
Biden “chose to release” to the U.S. the man accused of killing Laken Riley
Britt also mentioned the killing of 22-year old University of Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley.
“This beautiful 22-year-old nursing student went out on a jog one morning, but she never got the opportunity to return home,” Britt said. “She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.”
Jose Ibarra, the man charged with Riley’s killing, illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in September 2022. Ibarra was paroled in, allowing him to be released into the U.S. to await further immigration proceedings, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Biden does not decide who is released into the country. Border officials decide whom to release into the U.S. because they lack enough resources to detain everyone who illegally crosses U.S. borders.
PolitiFact Staff Writer Samantha Putterman contributed to this report.
Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.
Summary
In his final State of the Union address prior to the November general election, President Joe Biden focused on Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the economy, reproductive rights, prescription drug costs and border security. Biden also criticized many of the policies of “my predecessor” — without naming former President Donald Trump. But he sometimes stretched the facts or left out important context.
Biden boasted that under his leadership “wages keep going up.” But over the entirety of Biden’s presidency, wages are down when adjusted for inflation.
Biden claimed that the more recent U.S. inflation rate of about 3% is the “lowest in the world!” But several nations reported lower rates than the U.S. in December.
He again claimed to have “cut the federal deficit by over one trillion dollars” — although declining deficits have mostly been the result of expiring emergency pandemic spending.
Biden said he had created a “record” 15 million new jobs. His 14.8 million new jobs is a record for any president in the first three years, but it’s not the highest job growth rate that any president has achieved in that period of time.
He suggested that “many” of the new jobs in U.S. semiconductor factories will be “paying $100,000 a year and don’t require a college degree.” But an industry trade group previously reported that only workers with bachelor’s or graduate degrees make that much.
Biden said that, “My policies have attracted $650 billion in private sector investment in clean energy [and] advanced manufacturing.” Those are announcements about intentions to invest, not actual investments.
Biden highlighted recent decreases in murder and violent crime rates, but neglected to mention that they are still coming down from their pandemic peak.
Biden omitted context of a Trump comment following an Iowa school shooting.
The president said billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of only 8.2%, but that’s a White House calculation that includes earnings on unsold stock as income.
Biden said that because of the Affordable Care Act, over 100 million people can no longer be denied health insurance due to preexisting conditions. But pre-ACA, employer plans covered many of those people and couldn’t deny policies.
Biden said he was “cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030.” That’s the U.S. goal, relative to 2005 emissions, but studies suggest current policies will not reduce emissions by that much.
Biden spoke to Congress on March 7.
Analysis
Wages
Biden boasted that “wages keep going up, inflation keeps coming down.” But over the entirety of Biden’s presidency, wages are down when adjusted for inflation.
Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 14.8% during Biden’s first three years in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But inflation ate up all that gain and more. “Real” weekly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 3.1% since Biden took office.
The inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers — who make up 81% of all employees in the private sector — and the inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings of all employees have both been on the rise for the last year and a half, with real weekly earnings rising 1.5% since hitting the low point under Biden in June 2022.
Inflation has also moderated greatly since hitting a peak increase of 9% for the 12 months ending in June 2022, the biggest such increase in over 40 years. The unadjusted Consumer Price Index rose 3.1% in the 12 months ending in January, the most recent figure available, and as Biden said, it has been trending down.
But looking at the entire three years of Biden’s presidency so far, the Consumer Price Index has risen a total of 18%.
Inflation
Biden claimed that inflation in the U.S. “has dropped from 9% to 3% – the lowest in the world!”
The year-over-year inflation rate was 3.1% in January, down from 9% in June 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that’s still higher than the 1.4% rate when Biden took office.
Furthermore, the current U.S. inflation rate is not the lowest of any country.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address during a joint meeting of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol on March 7 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
December data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that Italy — a member of the G7, a group of seven of the world’s most advanced economies — had a lower year-over-year inflation rate than the U.S. While the U.S. inflation rate was 3.3% for the 12 months ending that month, Italy’s was 0.6%.
Other countries with “advanced economies,” as defined by the International Monetary Fund, and millions of residents, including Denmark (0.7%), Lithuania (1.2%), Belgium (1.4%) and South Korea (3.2%), also had lower inflation rates than the U.S., as of December.
Even by the White House’s own calculations, which adjust for differences in how countries calculate inflation, Biden’s claim was inexact.
In a Jan. 11 post on the social media platform called X, the White House Council of Economic Advisers wrote that, as of November, the latest month with complete G7 data, “both core & headline U.S. inflation were among the lowest in the G7” — not the lowest.
That’s because Italy had a lower headline inflation rate than the U.S., according to the CEA’s post. Supporting documentation provided by the White House shows that Italy’s rate was 0.5% and the U.S. rate was almost 2.5%.
Headline inflation – unlike core inflation – factors in food and energy prices.
Deficits
Biden continues to misleadingly claim, as he did during his address, that’s he’s “already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion dollars.”
Budget deficits have declined from the record spending gap of $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020, the last full fiscal cycle before Biden took office. In FY 2021, the deficit was about $2.8 trillion; in FY 2022, it was almost $1.4 trillion; and in FY 2023, which ended Sept. 30, it was roughly $1.7 trillion.
But as we’ve explained several times, the primary reason that deficits went down by about $350 billion in Biden’s first year, and by another $1.3 trillion in his second, is because of emergency COVID-19 funding that expired in those years.
Budget experts said that if not for more pandemic and infrastructure spending championed by Biden, deficits would have been even lower than they were in fiscal 2021 and 2022.
As of February, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that under current law, the deficit would fall to $1.6 trillion in fiscal 2024, rise to $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025, then return to $1.6 trillion in fiscal 2027. “Thereafter, deficits steadily mount, reaching $2.6 trillion in 2034,” the CBO said.
‘Record’ Jobs
As he has done in recent speeches, Biden boasted that he has created a “record” 15 million new jobs in his first three years in office. He frequently adds on the campaign trail that that’s more than any president had created in three years or in the first four-year term.
“Fifteen million new jobs in just three years – a record, a record!” he said on Thursday night, right after saying “our economy is literally the envy of the world.”
He’s right on the new jobs — to a point.
Since Biden took office, the U.S. economy added 14.8 million jobs (not quite 15 million) — which is a record number of jobs, at least since 1939, for any president in his first three or four years in office, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that go back to January 1939.
But Biden isn’t accounting for population and job growth. Other presidents have seen a greater percentage increase.
The 14.8 million additional jobs under Biden represent a growth rate of 10.3%, as measured from January 2021, when Biden took office, through January 2024, the latest month for which data are available from the BLS. While impressive, the 10.3% growth rate isn’t as high as under some past presidents when there were fewer jobs.
In President Jimmy Carter’s only four years in office, from January 1977 to January 1981, the U.S. added 10.3 million jobs. That’s an increase of 12.8%. In Carter’s first three years, the U.S. added 10.1 million jobs, or 12.5%.
In President Lyndon Johnson’s only full term in office, from January 1965 to January 1969, the U.S. economy added 9.9 million jobs — a 16.5% job growth. In the first three years of that term, from January 1965 to January 1968, the U.S. added 7.2 million jobs, which was an increase of 12.1%.
In President Bill Clinton’s first term, from January 1993 through January 1997, the U.S. added 11.6 million jobs, an increase of 10.5%. That’s a slightly higher rate of job growth than in Biden’s first three years. But in Clinton’s first three years, the number of jobs increased by 7.8%, which is smaller.
However, the U.S. added a total of 22.9 million jobs in Clinton’s two terms, an increase of 20.9%, from 109.8 million jobs in January 1993 to 132.7 million in January 2001. It remains to be seen if job growth continues at such a pace under Biden in a second term, if he wins reelection.
Semiconductor Jobs
On multiple occasions, Biden has left the misleading impression that new jobs in U.S. semiconductor factories would pay above $100,000 annually for those without a college degree.
During his speech, he said: “Private companies are now investing billions of dollars to build new chip factories here in America, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Many of those jobs paying $100,000 a year and don’t require a college degree.”
In a 2021 report, the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade group, and Oxford Economics found that 277,000 people worked in the industry with an average salary of $170,000 in 2020. While the report said industry workers “consistently earn more than the U.S. average at all education attainment levels,” it noted that “average wages vary based on educational attainment.”
But only those with a bachelor’s degree ($120,000) or a graduate degree (over $160,000) had wages that topped six figures. Workers with a high school education or less could expect to earn a little more than $40,000. Those with at least some college experience could make $60,000, while earning an associate’s degree could increase that to $70,000.
According to the report, only 20% of semiconductor workers at the time had not attended college. Conversely, 56% of workers had a bachelor’s or graduate degree.
Clean Energy/Advanced Manufacturing Jobs
Biden boasted that, “My policies have attracted $650 billion in private sector investment in clean energy, advanced manufacturing, creating tens of thousands of jobs here in America.” But those are announcements about intentions to invest, not actual investments.
The policies Biden is referring to are mainly the CHIPS Act, which includes $39 billion to fund manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and $11 billion for semiconductor research and development, the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes an estimated $369 billion to combat climate change while also investing in “energy security,” the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and the bipartisan infrastructure law, which included $550 billion in new infrastructure spending.
The claim about the amount of private sector investment in clean energy and manufacturing that those policies have created is based on a White House tabulation of public announcements about investments, or as a White House press release puts it, “commitments to invest.”
“These are announced plans for investments,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, told us in a phone interview. “They may take years to happen, or they may not happen at all.”
“He makes it seem like the investments have happened already or that they are happening this year, and they are not,” Holtz-Eakin said. “They may not come to fruition. Market conditions change.”
And, he said, while $650 billion sounds like a lot of investment, with gross capital stock in the U.S. over $69 trillion, even if that amount were invested this year, “it wouldn’t exactly transform the economy.”
Crime
Biden highlighted the continued drop in murder and violent crime rates since he took office, but he left out some important context.
“Last year the murder rate showed the sharpest decrease in history,” Biden said. “Violent crime fell to one of its the lowest levels in more than 50 years.”
It’s true that there has been a sharp decline in murder and homicide rates recently.
The number of homicides was 10% lower in 2023 than in 2022, according to a January report from the Council on Criminal Justice, which gathered data from 32 participating cities.
And, as we’ve written before, a November report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association showed a 10.7% decline in the number of murders from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, 2023, compared with the same time period in 2022, in 69 large U.S. cities.
Similarly, violent crime has also gone down, according to the most recent data released by the FBI, and the Council on Criminal Justice report found that there were “3% fewer reported aggravated assaults in 2023 than in 2022 and 7% fewer gun assaults in 11 reporting cities. Reported carjacking incidents fell by 5% in 10 reporting cities but robberies and domestic violence incidents each rose 2%.”
But in both cases, the homicide and violent crime rates are higher than they were in 2019 — the year before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
While it’s unclear exactly why, there was a sharp increase in homicide and violent crime during the pandemic that may have been broadly due to the wide availability of guns and the insecurity brought on by the pandemic, according to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice.
While Biden was correct in pointing out a recent decrease in murder and violent crime, he didn’t account for the preceding increase during the pandemic.
Trump’s ‘Get Over It’ Comment
While speaking about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and other gun violence, Biden said, “Meanwhile, my predecessor told the NRA he’s proud he did nothing on guns when he was president. After another school shooting in Iowa recently, he said — when asked what to do about it — he said, ‘Just get over it.’”
But Biden omitted much of what Trump said after the Jan. 4 shooting at Perry High School in Iowa, where a 17-year-old student killed a sixth-grader and injured four other students and the principal.
The following day, at a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, Trump offered his “support and deepest sympathies” to the victims of the school shooting. “We’re really with you as much as anybody can be. It’s a very terrible thing that happened. It’s just terrible to see that happening,” Trump said. “That’s just horrible. It’s so surprising to see it here.”
He added, “But we have to get over it. We have to move forward. But to the relatives, and to all of the people who are devastated right now, to the point they can’t breathe, they can’t live, we are with you all the way.”
Taxes Paid by Billionaires
As he has said many times before, Biden claimed that billionaires pay an average federal tax rate of 8.2%, less than the rate paid by “a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse.” But that’s not the average rate in the current tax system; it’s a White House calculation that factors in earnings on unsold stock as income.
When looking only at income, the top-earning taxpayers, on average, pay higher tax rates than those in the income groups below them, as we’ve explained. Biden’s point — which he doesn’t make clear — is that the current tax system does not tax earnings on assets, such as stock, until that asset is sold, at which point they are subject to capital gains taxes. Until stocks and assets are sold, any earnings are referred to as “unrealized” gains.
The president has used the 8% figure to argue that wealthy households, those worth over $100 million, should pay a 25% minimum tax, as calculated on both standard income and unrealized investment income combined.
The problem with the current system, the White House has said, is that unrealized gains could go untaxed forever if wealthy people hold on to them and pass them on to heirs when they die.
Under what’s called stepped-up basis, the value of an asset is adjusted to the fair market value at the time of the inheritance. This wipes out any taxes on the unrealized gains that accumulated from the time the investor bought the asset and the time it was inherited.
When we wrote about this last year, Erica York, a senior economist and research manager at the Tax Foundation, explained that wealthy households can also borrow money against the assets they own “to consume their wealth without paying tax.” After the family member passes away, the assets can go to heirs, who won’t have to pay taxes on the unrealized gains. York referred to the strategy as “buy, borrow, die.”
Biden’s brief talking point leaves the misleading impression that billionaires are only paying 8% on average in federal taxes under the current tax system.
Preexisting Conditions
Biden said that because of the Affordable Care Act, “over 100 million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions,” claiming that Trump wants to repeal the ACA and take away this protection.
The 100 million figure is an estimate of how many Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid have preexisting conditions. But if the ACA were eliminated, only those buying their own plans on the individual, or nongroup, market would immediately be at risk of being denied insurance.
The ACA instituted sweeping protections for those with preexisting conditions, prohibiting insurers in all markets from denying coverage or charging more based on health status. Those protections were most important for the individual market. Even before the ACA, employer plans couldn’t deny issuing a policy — and could only decline coverage for some preexisting conditions for a limited period if a new employee had a lapse in coverage.
We last wrote about this issue in December, when Biden said “over 100 million people” had protections for their preexisting conditions “only” because of the ACA, a figure he also used during the 2020 campaign.
Again, those with employer plans did have protections before the ACA. The law’s broad protections would benefit people who lost their jobs or retired early and found themselves seeking insurance on the individual market. As of 2022, 20 million people, or about 6.3% of the U.S. population, got coverage on the individual market.
As for Trump, he has said he wants to get rid of the law, posting on social media in November that Republicans “should never give up” on terminating the ACA. Trump said he was “seriously looking at alternatives,” but he hasn’t provided a plan. And he never released one while he was president, either.
Given what Trump has backed in the past, he may well support a plan that wouldn’t be as comprehensive as the ACA and would lead to an increase in the uninsured and fewer protections for those with health conditions. But Biden makes the assumption Trump wouldn’t replace the ACA with anything at all.
Carbon Emissions
In one of his few, short references to climate change in the speech, Biden said, “I’m cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030.”
Biden is likely referring to the emissions target for heat-trapping greenhouse gases his administration set for the U.S. in April 2021 as part of rejoining the Paris Agreement, the international accord that ideally aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and from which Trump had officially withdrawn the country in 2019. The goal under Biden is to reduce American emissions by 50% to 52% from 2005 levels by 2030.
The Biden administration has made substantial progress in meeting the goal, most notably with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate legislation that includes investments in clean energy. But as we’ve written, when the president has previously claimed the U.S. is “on track” to achieve its Paris goal, estimates suggest existing policies will not quite get the country all the way there.
“Based on Congressional action and currently finalized regulations, we are not on track to meet 50-52% below 2005 by 2030,” Jesse Jenkins, who leads the Princeton Zero carbon Energy systems Research and Optimization Laboratory, told us in an email last April. Jenkins said then it was possible “the gap could be closed” once certain rules are finalized and others are proposed. The Biden administration, however, has recently announced or is reportedly planning changes that some say would weaken rules related to vehicle and gas power plant emissions.
In a January update, the research firm Rhodium Group estimated that under current policy, the U.S. will cut emissions 29% to 42% below 2005 levels in 2030.
A recent analysis by Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based climate-focused website, similarly projected that if Biden were reelected, the U.S. would get to a 43% reduction. That’s much higher than a second term for Trump — who, assuming he would undo Biden’s policies, would cut emissions by just 28% — but also still not to the full halfway mark.
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As president, Joe Biden saw the economy endure 40-year-high levels of inflation. But during his 2024 State of the Union address, he took a victory lap on the reduced inflation rate, job creation and other economic metrics.
“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” Biden said. “And we have. It doesn’t make the news, but in thousands of cities and towns the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”
We have found many of the claims he repeated to be accurate or close.
Biden said the U.S. has seen “15 million new jobs in just three years.” (Rounded, he’s correct; it’s about 14.8 million.) He said unemployment is “at 50-year lows.” (It was at 50-year lows in 2023 but has climbed marginally since then.) He said there are “800,000 new manufacturing jobs in America and counting.” (We rated a similar Biden statement Mostly True.)
He said, “The racial wealth gap is the smallest it’s been in 20 years.” (This is accurate by one measure but not by another.) And he said, “Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down.” (Wages adjusted for inflation are on track to return to where they were when Biden was inaugurated within a few months; for the past year-plus, wages have outpaced inflation.)
Three statements about inflation, consumer confidence and the deficit needed more context.
Biden: “Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% — the lowest in the world!”
The U.S. has lower inflation than most advanced industrialized nations, but it does not rank No. 1 internationally.
Biden is correct that year-over-year inflation has dropped from 9% in summer 2022 to a little above 3% today amid sharp interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
In December 2023, seven countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — Canada, Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and South Korea — had inflation rates lower than that of the U.S.
Twenty OECD member countries had higher inflation rates than the U.S., including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, each of which belongs to the G-7 of elite economies.
Biden: “Consumer studies show consumer confidence is soaring.”
It depends on the measure.
Two long-running consumer confidence measures are released by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board, a business membership and research organization.
Consumer confidence, as measured by the University of Michigan survey, has climbed sharply since bottoming out in summer 2022, when inflation reached 9%, a four-decade high. However, the rating under Biden remains lower than it was for four of the past five presidents at the same point in their tenures.
And for more than two years through December 2023, the survey’s consumer sentiment score was lower than it was in April 2020 — a startling finding, given that in April 2020 the unemployment rate was 13.2% and Americans were facing the uncertainty of a once-a-century pandemic.
Biden scores higher on the Conference Board survey, which has more questions based on the labor market than on inflation.
The labor market has been an economic strength on Biden watch. And the Conference Board survey shows consumer sentiment is now higher than it was under three of the previous four presidents at this point in their tenures.
Other surveys show a continuing sour public sentiment about the economy. For instance, a February Marquette Law School poll found that 35% of national respondents said the economy was “excellent” or “good,” compared with 65% who said it was “not so good” or “poor.”
Biden: “I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over a trillion dollars.”
This merits asterisks. The deficit — the difference between federal spending and federal revenues — fell by $1.4 trillion between 2021, Biden’s first year in office, and 2022, his second year. That was a larger decline than any in any previous one-year span.
However, this reduction stems largely from the phasing-out of pandemic era relief programs. Also, even at its reduced levels, the deficit remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic. The deficit in 2022 and 2023 under Biden was higher than in each of Trump’s first three years, partly because of bills such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan, a pandemic recovery measure.
In addition, the cumulative debt has continued to climb even though the deficit has narrowed.
Surprise guests are a feature of the president’s State of the Union address.
President Joe Biden’s March 7 speech had a big one, though not one invited by the president: former Rep. George Santos, who was seen mingling with his former Republican colleagues a little more than three months after the House expelled him.
This surprised some people. Is Santos really allowed to sit among the people who expelled him in December?
The short answer is yes, according to the Rules of the House of Representatives.
“Surprisingly to me, there is no bar in the rules, regulations, or precedents barring a former member from the floor generally, unless they are a lobbyist or someone advocating for particular individuals, groups or causes,” said Donald Wolfensberger, a congressional scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Another reason former members would be barred is if they have been convicted of a crime related to House activities. That doesn’t affect Santos — yet.
Santos faces criminal charges including wire fraud, false statements, identity theft and conspiracy, but his case has not gone to trial yet.
As Biden was getting into his limousine to be driven to the Capitol, CNN reported that Santos was initially seated in a section usually filled by current members. Chamber officials asked Santos to stand in the back of the chamber, and he complied, CNN reported.
Beyond floor access, Santos is allowed, as a former House member, to use parking, athletic and wellness facilities, administrative services, dining facilities, and access materials from the Congressional Research Service and the Library of Congress.
Former members may also use the frank — the right to send mail to constituents free of charge — for 90 days after leaving office. For Santos, who was expelled Dec. 1, 2023, that deadline has passed.
Wolfensberger added that the House speaker does have some discretion to direct the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms to bar people, including former members, from accessing the floor.
“In this case, the distraction factor alone would justify such an action to preserve and protect the dignity and decorum of the chamber,” Wolfensberger said.
Evangelical pastor Franklin Graham made a trip to Texas and, while there, he waded into the immigration debate.
“(Joe Biden) undid all of the policies that former President Donald J. Trump put in place,” Graham wrote in a Feb. 27 Facebook post. “As a result, over 10 million people have come across the border with no vetting, no plan, and no path.”
Days later, Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, shared a photo of himself shaking hands with Trump. “Look who I ran into at the border today! He was a great encouragement to many here,” he wrote.
The 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.)
Graham did not cite evidence for this claim and did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.
A November 2023 report by Pew Research Center estimated that “the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States reached 10.5 million in 2021.” But that figure includes people who have lived in the U.S. for years, even decades before Biden became president.
We have seen this 10 million figure cited before, with some articles attributing it to The Center Square, a conservative news outlet. The Center Square’s article appears to have based some of its numbers on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s nationwide encounters data, including for a number of months Trump was in office. The Center Square also said it based its analysis partly on information from a U.S. Border Patrol agent who wanted to remain anonymous.
But the encounters data represents stops at the border — not people. These numbers don’t tell us how many people now live in the United States after crossing the border illegally. For example, a person who has been stopped by border officials on three separate occasions would be counted as three encounters. People encountered by immigration officials can be turned away, detained in federal custody or released into the country.
The Customs and Border Patrol encounters data shows that from February 2021, Biden’s first full month as president, to January 2024, the month with the latest available data, immigration officials recorded nearly 8.8 million encounters nationwide.
There also have been more than 3.6 million removals, returns and expulsions from February 2021, Biden’s first month in office, to September 2023, based on Department of Homeland Security estimates.
There are no definitive numbers for how many people have entered the country illegally since Biden became president in January 2021. It is also hard to accurately measure the number of people who have illegally crossed the U.S. border because border authorities don’t stop everyone.
We rate the claim that “over 10 million people have come across the border with no vetting, no plan, and no path” during Biden’s presidency False.
PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this report
Vice President Kamala Harris did not reveal Democrats’ plan to bribe voters in the 2024 election, as social media posts claimed. A video of a speech she gave has been taken out of context.
“The federal work study program now allows students to get paid through federal work study to register people and to be nonpartisan poll workers,” Harris said in a Fox News clip shared Feb. 28 on Instagram. “As we know this is important for a number of reasons. One, to engage our young leaders in this process and activate them in terms of their ability to strengthen our community.”
Misleading and misspelled text under the video said, “Democrats using tax payer dollars to bribe voters.”
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 clip comes from Feb. 27 remarks Harris delivered to voting rights activists in Washington, D.C. In the full video, Harris did not say that students will be employed to register people for a specific political party. She said that poll workers would be “nonpartisan.”
Federal regulations bar federal work study funds from being used to support any political party.
A 2022 Education Department memo specified that although federal work study funds can be used for voter registration efforts, guidelines limit how.
Federal work study funds “cannot be used for employment by a Federal, State, or local public agency, or a private nonprofit organization, other than the institution, for work involving partisan or nonpartisan political activity, including party-affiliated voter registration activities, as this is expressly prohibited under 34 CFR 675.22(b)(5),” wrote Michelle Asha Cooper, then-acting assistant secretary for the Office of Postsecondary Education.
The department clarified in February that federal work study funds cannot be used for any voter registration activities that are “associated with a particular interest or group.”
We rate the claim that this video shows Harris saying Democrats would use taxpayer dollars to bribe voters False.
Although a recent viral video of Oklahoma high school students may turn your stomach, it doesn’t show children sucking on the toes of adults, as some social media posts have claimed.
“Disturbing video shows students at Deer Creek High in Edmond, Oklahoma, sucking on the toes of adults during a school fundraising event,” text above the video in a March 1 Instagram post says. “Every adult involved needs to be arrested.”
The video shows the blurred out heads of students bobbing above bare feet.
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What’s actually happening in the footage: students at Deer Creek High School in Edmond, Oklahoma, licking peanut butter off the feet of other students as part of a Feb. 29 fundraising event, The Oklahoman newspaper reported.
A statement from the Deer Creek School District, published online by a local Fox News affiliate, said the gimmick happened in an assembly during which “students volunteered to participate in various student-organized class competitions in the spirit of raising money” for a charity recipient.
And the students raised a lot of money: $152,830.38. Nevertheless, the school district apologized for permitting an event that it said, in hindsight, “failed to uphold the dignity of our students and the proud image of our community.”
The claim that video showed the students sucking adults’ toes, though, is False.
