Category: Fact Check

When former President Donald Trump said he’d let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO nations that didn’t pay for collective defense, he alarmed world leaders — and spurred President Joe Biden to imagine a world without the alliance.

Biden in February asked voters to contemplate this scenario — Trump winning the election and withdrawing the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“First of all, he doesn’t like NATO,” Biden said at a Feb. 21 campaign event. “He wanted to pull out of it completely. He has no notion of its importance.” 

Biden added, “Imagine what happens if this guy gets elected and steps out of NATO. Imagine what that does.”

Recent polls show Americans support NATO. And political observers say Trump’s comments have undermined NATO, which may obliquely help Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long wanted to weaken the alliance. But is pulling out Trump’s plan?

Some former Trump advisers have said Trump nearly removed the U.S. from NATO and that U.S. involvement in the alliance could be in jeopardy if he wins reelection. As a 2024 candidate, he’s again raising doubts about the organization’s merits, but he hasn’t said for sure whether he’d pull the U.S. out. 

We asked the Trump campaign for comment and didn’t hear back.

Experts cautioned against pinning Trump to a single position, given his unpredictability.

As president, “he didn’t follow through on everything he said he would do and changed his mind often,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

Case in point: In 2016, Trump repeatedly said that NATO was “obsolete” or “outdated.” 

As president, he remained skeptical of NATO but flip-flopped on its relevance. During an April 2017 press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump said NATO was doing more to fight terrorism and “it’s no longer obsolete.”

Here’s Trump’s history when talking about NATO and what it could mean for the alliance in a potential second term.

 “If it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO’’ 

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a news conference after a summit of heads of state and government July 12, 2018, at NATO headquarters in Brussels. (AP)

Trump’s position that allies should spend more has been fairly consistent since the 1980s.

In a 1987 interview with CNN’s Larry King, Trump said, “If you look at the payments that we’re making to NATO, they’re totally disproportionate with everybody else’s.” 

In his 2000 book, Trump wrote that exiting NATO would save the United States “millions of dollars” a year. 

He turned the observation into a threat as a presidential candidate.

“Either they have to pay up for past deficiencies or they have to get out,” Trump said at an April 2016 campaign stop in Racine, Wisconsin. 

“And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” he concluded.

At an August 2016 rally in Jacksonville, Florida, Trump framed the issue as a negotiator would, saying, “I don’t want to get rid of NATO, but you always have to be prepared to walk. It’s possible.”

He reenacted an interview with The New York Times for the crowd:

“They said, ‘What happens if one of these countries’ — take a smaller one that nobody in this room’s ever heard of — ‘gets attacked by Russia? Are you saying you’re not gonna protect ’em?’ I say, ‘Well, let me ask you: Have they paid? Have they paid?’ Right? ‘Have they paid?’”

Almost eight years later, Trump’s sentiment is similar. In February, Trump told supporters a similar anecdote about telling an unnamed NATO country leader that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO member country that didn’t “pay.” 

Some Trump allies dismissed Trump’s comments as off-the-cuff remarks. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who was former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, told Politico he did not take Trump “literally.”

Former Trump advisers said Trump wanted, or will, get out of NATO

Some fears that Trump would withdraw from NATO stem from comments by former Trump advisers.

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who is now a Trump critic, wrote in his 2020 book that during an August 2019 videoconference about U.S. assistance to Ukraine, Trump said, “I don’t give a s— about NATO.” Trump then ordered Pence to call NATO’s Stoltenberg to tell him the alliance should pay Ukraine $250 million in assistance for weapons, equipment, intelligence support and training to build up Ukraine’s military and to deter Russia. 

Trump has said he was tough on Russia, and some moves bear that out. For example, the additional $1.4 billion he sought in fiscal 2108 for the European Deterrence Initiative, which supports European military readiness to counter Russian aggression, was a 41% increase from the allocation during President Barack Obama’s final year in office. 

But rhetorically, he’s been friendlier to Russia than his predecessors. In June 2018,  he advocated for restoring Russia to the G-7 after it was expelled in 2014 over annexing Crimea. Also in 2018, Trump, against his advisers’ wishes, congratulated Putin on his reelection victory. Trump was inconsistent about whether he thought Russia meddled in the election, but he has said that he believes Putin’s denial of Russian involvement. 

Bolton told The Washington Post in a February story that he believes Trump will seek to kill the alliance.

“He’s never lost the desire to get out,” Bolton said.

Multiple former Trump advisers told Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security analyst, for Sciutto’s upcoming book that the United States may exit NATO if Trump wins reelection. Sciutto quotes John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, as saying Trump “saw absolutely no point in NATO.”

Ivo Daalder, a U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama, in a January essay for Politico pointed to Trump’s comments in 2020 to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which showed the former president saying the alliance was finished.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump said, according to French European Commissioner Thierry Breton. Trump then added, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”

When Trump said the U.S. remained committed to NATO 

At times, Trump spoke publicly about NATO’s importance in the context of wanting allies to spend more on their own defense. Member nations are expected to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, a show of military readiness, by 2024.

“I see NATO as a good thing to have,” Trump told The Washington Post’s editorial board in 2016. “No, I don’t want to pull (out of it).” 

As president, Trump kept his promise to ask allies to pay more for joint defense.

At a 2018 NATO summit, Trump said “the United States’ commitment to NATO is very strong” and then praised allies for putting up additional money.

In a 2019 speech at the Pentagon, Trump said, “We will be with NATO 100%, but as I told the countries, you have to step up.”

In 2014, after Russia illegally annexed Crimea, NATO country leaders agreed to the 2% GDP goal. As of July 2023, NATO reported that 11 of 31 member countries had met the goal: Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

NATO’s future could change under Trump, even if he doesn’t withdraw

In 2023, Congress passed legislation to ban a president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO. The legislation states that withdrawing from NATO would require approval by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate or an act of Congress.

Trump was vague about NATO in an “Agenda47” video, a reference to becoming the 47th president, posted on his campaign website in 2023: “Finally, we have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” 

Still, his comments made allied countries nervous.

“The very essence of NATO is America’s commitment to European security and its promise to defend its European partners,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “If Europeans lose faith in this commitment, the alliance will be, for all intents and purposes, dead — even if it appears America remains a member and it putters along in its Brussels headquarters.”

It would take more than tough talk to break NATO ties.

“Relationships between NATO members are pretty well institutionalized in defense, diplomatic, and economic networks and so can withstand a good amount of pressure,” Kavanagh said. 

RELATED: Why Donald Trump’s boast that he got ‘delinquent’ NATO allies to ‘pay up’ is misleading

Wisconsin’s prisons have been making big headlines over the last year for their lockdowns, rodent infestations and soaring staffing shortages. 

To improve prison conditions and attract more staff, state lawmakers passed a pay raise for state employees last summer that boosted starting wages for corrections officers to $33 an hour. Wages could be as high as $41 an hour depending on location and shift.

During a Feb. 11 appearance on WISN-TV’s “Upfront” program, Gov. Tony Evers claimed the pay raise is helping attract more people to the profession and producing record-high officer training classes.

“We’re having the largest classes of correctional officers we’ve ever had before,” Evers said.

However, Evers acknowledges that large class sizes haven’t yet solved the staffing shortages, saying, “We’re getting there.”

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections said its training program for correctional officers has had a spike in graduates over the past six months.

But is Evers correct that recent classes have been the largest ever? And, since Evers suggested they were making a major dent in shortages, we’ll touch on how the graduates stack up against soaring high vacancy rates.

Correctional officer training program sees increased graduates

People interested in becoming correctional officers must undergo a six-week training academy called the Facility Staff Training and Support Program before they can start security work at prisons across the state.

The program is held at the Department of Corrections’ training center in Madison or at local academies, which currently are held at Green Bay Correctional Institution and Dodge Correctional Institution.

A Feb. 21 graduation ceremony at Madison College for newly certified corrections officers had 214 graduates, according to the Department of Corrections.

In a Department of Corrections press release, Secretary Kevin Carr said that was the department’s largest graduating class since at least 1981. The previous graduating class on Dec. 15 had 144 graduates.

Graduate numbers have been increasing. In 2023, the state saw 568 graduates from multiple training classes, and in 2022, the total was 285 graduates, according to the Department of Corrections.

Department of Corrections data shows staffing shortages shrinking

Staffing vacancies for all state prisons reached a peak of 35% last August and have since been trending down, according to Department of Corrections data.

Shortages have been especially tight at Waupun and Green Bay Correctional Institutions, where inmates’ movement has been limited since March and June because of low staffing.

After the pay raise took effect in October, vacancies started trending down and currently sit at 26%. But that is still a relatively high vacancy rate for the prisons. Pre-pandemic rates consistently sat around 15% and didn’t go above 20%.

In his interview, Evers mentions the pay bump has helped statewide staffing shortages, but places such as Waupun—where the vacancy rate is 56%—are still struggling. 

Our ruling

During a TV interview, Evers claimed pay raises for correctional officers had led to “the largest classes of correctional officers we’ve ever had before.”

The governor acknowledged that conditions aren’t perfect yet and work remains to solve prison and staffing conditions.

In February, the Department of Corrections graduated its largest training class to date with 214 graduates and the last class had 144 graduates.  

And as graduating classes increase, staffing shortages at state prisons are trending down after peaking last summer.

We rate this claim True.

 

President Joe Biden has often touted that his administration has cut the federal deficit, sometimes communicating that record more accurately than others.

At campaign fundraisers in December and February, he told audience members that on his watch, the deficit fell by “$7 billion.”

The actual decline is more than $1 trillion, not billion. 

He used the more accurate figure in other appearances, including a Dec. 19 fundraiser in Bethesda, Maryland, and in Jan. 19 remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors at the White House.

Before Biden’s third State of the Union address, we wanted to take a deeper look into the reasons for the declining deficit.

Biden has presided over smaller deficits than the Donald Trump administration saw in its final year. However, Biden’s remarks omit important context about the unusual federal spending that both presidents approved to stabilize the country during the coronavirus pandemic. 

“President Biden has presided over declining deficits, but that’s because the deficit started staggeringly high because of the pandemic,” said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks federal spending. “If you compare the deficit to pre-pandemic levels, they are incredibly high. Some of that is still residual effects from the pandemic response and higher interest rates, but it is also from increased spending and decreased revenues.”

What is the deficit? What is the debt?

The deficit isn’t the same as the debt, although the terms are related.

The federal deficit is calculated by subtracting federal spending from federal revenue, primarily tax collections, for a given year. If revenue exceeds spending, there’s a surplus for that year; if spending exceeds revenue, there’s a deficit. (There hasn’t been a federal surplus since 2001.)

The national debt is the accumulation of all past deficits, minus any surpluses. 

A smaller deficit does not mean the federal debt has been reduced; only a surplus can do that. A smaller deficit means only that the debt grows more slowly than it did before.

So, the debt has continued to rise under Biden. When Biden entered office, the broadest measure of the federal debt stood a little below $27.8 trillion. Currently, it’s around $34.4 trillion, an increase of almost one-fourth in just more than three years.

The debt also rose under Trump, by about $7.8 trillion over his four years in office.

How big has the deficit been in recent years?

Biden has spoken mostly about the annual deficit, not the debt, so we’ll consider that metric. 

During Trump’s presidency, the deficit rose from $666 billion in 2017, his first year in office, to $984 billion in 2019, his third year.

But the coronavirus pandemic sent the annual deficit into record territory. In 2020, Trump’s fourth year, the deficit skyrocketed to $3.13 trillion, largely because of government stimulus payments, unemployment insurance expansions, business operation grants and increased funding for public health.

The deficit remained high in 2021, another significant pandemic year. That year, the newly elected Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided more money for the pandemic response. In 2021, the deficit fell but remained historically high, at $2.78 trillion.

The deficit declines were greater during Biden’s second and third years in office, as vaccines and therapies cut the risks associated with COVID-19 and the economy opened. The deficit was about $1.38 trillion in 2022 and $1.7 trillion in 2023.

The $1.4 trillion decline in the deficit from 2021 to 2022 was larger than any previous one-year reduction in the deficit. 

How much credit does Biden deserve for reducing the deficit?

Although Biden often touts the federal spending allocated in bills he’s signed — including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — he’s also tried to promote the argument that he’s been responsible with the public purse, most recently at the fundraisers.

The White House told PolitiFact that Biden deserves some credit for successfully tamping down the pandemic, which was aided by the administration’s embrace of vaccinations. 

Also, White House officials say that key legislation Biden signed, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, was written in a way to boost federal revenue enough to balance out the spending increases. The Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Biden signed in 2023 as a negotiated way to lift the debt limit, included spending curbs that were designed to reduce deficits from 2024 to 2033 by a collective $1.5 trillion, according to Congressional Budget Office projections.

However, the pandemic was an extraordinary historical occurrence that provoked an aggressive, and temporary, government response. The other bills Biden signed, although large in dollars, are phasing in their spending over a decade.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit public policy group, told PolitiFact that by their estimate, more than 80% of the reduction in the deficit under Biden can be explained by expiring or shrinking COVID-19 relief.

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.

The same pattern emerges when the deficit is compared with the U.S. gross domestic product, a common measure of the overall size of the economy. The deficit peaked at 14.7% of gross domestic product in 2020 and fell to 5.4% in 2022. That was still bigger than the highest pre-pandemic percentage under Trump, which was 4.6%.

After wildfires broke out in Texas, the largest in the state’s history, a familiar conspiracy theory began circulating online: Social media users are claiming the blaze was set intentionally using “directed energy weapons.”

A March 3 Instagram post shared side-by-side videos of a purported “directed energy weapon” attack and the Texas wildfires. The video on the left showed what appeared to be a flash of lightning with a green laser beaming down behind a house at night. The video on the right showed a Texas landscape covered in smoke and fire.

The video’s text says, “Could these two events be related?”

(Screengrab from Instagram)

Other Instagram posts also shared the green laser video and suggested it was related to the Texas wildfires.

One post’s caption read, “If this is actual footage … we’re looking at yet ANOTHER intentionally set fire courtesy of DEWS (directed energy weapons) and our lovely (government).”

Some X posts shared a clip of President Joe Biden discussing the Texas wildfires and claimed he said directed energy weapons were involved. We previously fact-checked social media posts that took this clip of Biden out of context. The president was discussing the need for buildings to be up to code to better withstand wildfires.

These posts were 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.)

In the week since fires broke out across the Texas Panhandle, more than 1 million acres of land have burned, and at least two people have been killed. The fires have also killed thousands of livestock animals, scorched fields of crops and destroyed hundreds of buildings.

Directed energy weapons are real and fire concentrated electromagnetic energy at light speed. Such weapons include high-energy lasers, high-power microwaves and radio frequency devices. The United States and other countries are researching using directed-energy weapons for military purposes, but there is no evidence they were used to ignite the Texas wildfires.

Authorities are still investigating how the Smokehouse Creek fire, which still burns, started. A Texas homeowner sued a utility company, blaming a downed power line, but officials have not determined a link. Hot weather, dry land and high winds have fueled the fire’s spread.

The green laser beam video predates these Texas fires. Reverse-image searches using Google Images found this video was shared online as early as Dec. 31, 2023. The account that appears to have first shared it is known for videos that claim to show paranormal or extraterrestrial activity.

Last year, social media users also claimed that directed energy weapons ignited fires that devastated Maui, Hawaii. There have been similar claims about fires in Canada and Russia. But all these claims are unfounded.

We rate the claim that the Texas wildfires were started by directed energy weapons False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Wildfires in the Texas Panhandle — including the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest in state history — have burned more than 1.3 million acres of land in late February and early March, killing thousands of livestock animals.

At least two people have been killed, along with thousands of cows and other animals, according to news reports. That has led some social media users to tie the fires to a long-running, baseless conspiracy theory that the nation’s food supply is under attack.

“Texas fire deliberate attack on our food supply?” read sticker text on a March 4 Instagram video.

The video shows a clip from the “American Journal” podcast, which is part of InfoWars, a website known for sharing misinformation and conspiracy theories. Host Harrison Smith said the recent wildfires are apparently “just another weird coincidence that happens to align perfectly with everything that the psychopathic, depopulationist, World Economic Forum globalist technocratic scumbags want.” (The World Economic Forum is a frequent conspiracy theory target.)

A caption on the Instagram post agreed, saying, “Working on a video going through every food supply incident the last two years. Sure, accidents do happen occasionally, but this is most definitely deliberate.”

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 notion that the fire may be a deliberate attack on the U.S. food supply plays into conspiracy theories that have spread for more than two years that globalists are intentionally attacking farms and food production facilities in the U.S. to starve people.

PolitiFact has debunked such claims on several occasions, most recently a claim that falsely alleged 12 million chickens died in a Texas egg farm fire that was set on purpose. That fire was a “noncriminal accident,” authorities there said, and the number of chickens that died was far fewer than 12 million, the egg farm’s CEO said.

(Instagram screenshot)

Although the cause of the Texas wildfires has yet to be officially determined, there’s been no evidence presented by state authorities that shows they were set intentionally. 

“Texas A&M Forest Service law enforcement investigators are working in coordination with local law enforcement, and the cause of these fires is under investigation at this time,” Erin O’Connor, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a March 5 email to PolitiFact.

One homeowner whose property was destroyed in the fires has sued Xcel Energy, one of its subsidiaries and a contractor, alleging that a fallen utility pole that wasn’t properly maintained started the Smokehouse Creek fire.

David Anderson, a Texas A&M agricultural economics professor, said the fires aren’t part of a plot to hurt the U.S. food supply.

“Fires happen out on the Great Plains in the spring, especially when it rains the prior fall, causing a lot of grass to grow,” Anderson said. “In winter, the grass freezes and dries down, creating a fuel load for a fire to burn.”

Combined with high winds that move through the Plains in the spring, he said, “you get wildfires.”

Whatever the Texas wildfires’ cause, experts we spoke with said they didn’t expect to see a big effect on the nation’s food supply or consumers.

“These fires will have no effect on the nation’s food supply. They will have no effect on beef prices to consumers,” Anderson said.

A large percentage of Texas cattle are in the Panhandle, but most of those are confined in feedlots and dairies, Anderson said.

“No feedlots or dairies have been hit by these fires. The cattle that have been impacted are beef cows out on ranches grazing rangelands,” said Anderson, noting that’s a “small percentage” of beef cows in the state.

Darren Hudson, a Texas Tech University agricultural and applied economics professor, said any loss of cattle will have some effect on beef prices as the U.S. cattle inventory is at its lowest level since the 1950s.

“I do not think the impact will be enough to ‘damage’ the U.S. food supply,” Hudson said. 

Hudson pointed to cattle prices that have remained flat since the fires started. That shows “the market is not anticipating much impact at this time,” he said.

Matt Stockton, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln agricultural economics professor, said there is certainly “economic devastation for those in Texas who have lost their cattle.” 

Speculation about how a disaster like this may affect the industry and consumers is often overstated, he said.

“Of course it will have an effect, but the industry is large and has ways to compensate,” Stockton said.

Stockton said the affected area is relatively minor in terms of the whole industry, and other meat products, such as poultry and pork, could be increased quickly if needed.

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed the Texas wildfires were set intentionally to damage the nation’s food supply.

The fires’ cause remains under investigation, but authorities have not tied them to foul play. A homeowner sued a utility company, alleging that a downed power line started the Smokehouse Creek fire. 

Meanwhile, the fires may devastate the ranchers they affect, but they’ll have little impact on the nation’s food supply or consumer prices, agricultural economics experts said. We rate the claim False.

Can Texas elected officials outlaw something that doesn’t exist? Social media users baselessly claim Texas might be the first state to get rid of so-called “chemtrails.”

“BREAKING: Texas could become the first state to outlaw ‘chemtrails’ with a new petition that is collecting signatures to ask state representatives to pass laws banning dangerous atmospheric aerosol spraying,” read the text of a screenshot in a Dec. 18 Facebook post.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

The 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’ve debunked several claims about “chemtrails,” a conspiracy theory that claims that the condensation trails behind aircraft are part of a secret, large-scale program to poison the atmosphere with toxic chemicals. The U.S. Air Force and scientists say chemtrails are not real.

In the Facebook video, a man read an excerpt from a Jan. 19, 2023, article in  The People’s Voice, a site known for spreading misinformation. The article said, “Texas is set to become the first state to potentially outlaw the spraying of aerosolized particulate matter into the skies — a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails.’” 

The article links to a petition by Clean Texas Skies, a group asking state legislators to pass legislation to prohibit “aerosolized spraying” without testing and approval from public representatives. The petition did not use the word “chemtrails” but used other language from the chemtrails conspiracy theory, saying that the trails behind airplanes are part of a covert U.S. military operation. Some chemtrails theories posit the spraying means to reduce people’s life expectancy or sterilize them, control people’s minds or control the weather. 

The petition included photos of what it said were “crisscrossing bands of substances and particulates” in the sky, claiming that the condensation trails formed by passing jet planes are thin and disperse quickly, but the trails in the photos are heavy and spread out.

According to the National Weather Service, contrails don’t necessarily disperse quickly; how quickly they fade hinges on how much humidity is in the atmosphere. The more humid the atmosphere, the longer the contrail will last. NASA’s Earth Observatory said some contrail clusters have lasted up to 14 hours.

Crisscross condensation trail vapor patterns are found in areas with heavily traveled air space and an atmosphere conducive to the formation of contrails, the National Weather Service said. 

“Persistence of contrails is neither an indication that they contain some kind of chemical, nor that it is some kind of spray,” the agency said.

A U.S. Air Force fact sheet said, “There is no such thing as a ‘chemtrail.’ Contrails are safe and are a natural phenomenon. They pose no health hazard of any kind.”

We rate the claim that a Texas petition to outlaw “aerosolized spraying” is evidence of chemtrails Pants on Fire! ​

Wisconsin holds its presidential primary April 2. That’s long after many states hold their contests, including 15 states on March 5, Super Tuesday.

But you might have seen recent ads on Instagram or Facebook that give the impression that Wisconsin’s primary is much earlier — or at least the deadline to register to vote in it.

“There are less than two weeks until the deadline to register to vote in Wisconsin,” says one ad found Feb. 29 on Instagram.

Another post advertised a few days later on Facebook read: “Deadline rapidly approaching to register to vote in Wisconsin.”

The ads are sponsored by Voto Latino, “a civic engagement organization focused on educating and empowering a new generation of Latinx voters,” according to its website. 

The nonprofit also advocates for liberal policy positions, such as paid sick leave and access to abortion.

But as some online commenters pointed out, Wisconsin has “same-day” registration, meaning voters are able to register at the polls on April 2 — which is well over two weeks away. 

Let’s clear up the deadlines to register to vote in the April presidential primary election in Wisconsin. 

Deadline to register to vote online or via mail is March 13

Voto Latino, which did not respond to an inquiry for this PolitiFact, seems to be referring to the deadline to register to vote online or by mail. Another video ad clarifies they’re talking about registering online.

The deadline to register to vote online or mail a registration form before the April 2 election is March 13 — which was, at the time one of Voto Latino’s ads was circulating, less than two weeks away.  

According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, you can register online or by mail up to 20 days before the election. 

If you have a driver’s license or ID card issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, you can register online at myvote.wi.gov. 

Or, you can mail your local clerk a voter registration form, which you can also start filling out at that website.

But registering later at your clerk’s office, or at the polls, is still an option

But those two options, which have an upcoming deadline, aren’t your only chances to register to vote in the April primary. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission says you can also register in-person at your local clerk’s office “up until the Friday before the election at 5:00 p.m. or close of business, whichever is later.” For this election, that date is March 29.

Or, you can register at your polling place on Election Day. Polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. in Wisconsin. 

Just remember to bring proof of residence with you — that can be a driver’s license or state-issued ID card if it has your current address, or a document like a lease, utility bill or bank statement.

Bottom line: There are chances for you to register to vote all the way until April 2, or any Election Day in Wisconsin. 

Our ruling 

Recent social media ads sponsored by Voto Latino say Wisconsin’s voter registration deadline is “less than two weeks” away or “rapidly approaching.”

The ads give a false sense of urgency where there really is none. Voters who miss the “rapidly approaching” deadline might be led to believe they don’t have another chance to register.

There is a March 13 deadline to register online or by mail. But there are two additional ways to register: at your clerk’s office through March 29, or at the polls April 2. The ads don’t disclose those options.

Our definition of Mostly False is “the statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” 

That fits here.

 

Apple in December released Journal, a new digital journaling app that lets users  write about their days or special moments and add  photos, audio recordings and video if they wish.

Since then, some social media users have written down privacy concerns about how their information might be shared with others.

A Feb. 29 Facebook post shared an image with the word ALERT in red and three flame emojis at the top. It warned about the privacy risk in a setting in the Journal app.

The post said a setting called “Discoverable by Others” in the app “lets anyone near you know your FULL NAME and EXACTLY where you’re geo-located.”

“This is messed up big time. Share with your friends if they’re iPhone. Very scary stuff!!” the post continued.

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 multiple other social media posts sharing the same image or making similar claims about the Journal app.

But the posts are wrong about what information iPhone users can see when using Journal and about how the app works. PolitiFact debunked similar privacy concerns in December about Apple’s NameDrop feature, which some people falsely said let strangers steal contact information just by placing one iPhone next to another.

(Facebook screenshot)

People who use the Journal app, which is available for free on devices running on iOS 17.2 or later, can start by adding a text journal entry and decide what other information, such as location or photos, to add. The entries are visible to no one else and are encrypted when stored in iCloud. As extra protection, users can require  two-factor authentication or Face ID to see the entries.

If the user enables Journaling Suggestions in the app, it will “intelligently group moments and events” to provide personalized suggestions, according to an Apple webpage about privacy.

One aspect of the personalized suggestions is at the root of the social media claims that Journal will tell strangers you’re nearby. But that’s not how the app works.

Journaling Suggestions uses Bluetooth to detect how many iPhones and contacts are near you and may prompt you to write a journal entry. But that information isn’t personalized, and isn’t shown to you or anyone. And you won’t see a list of your friends who are nearby, or strangers, as the social media post claims. 

It’s done “without storing which of these specific contacts were around. This information is used to improve and prioritize your suggestions,” Apple’s website said. 

Essentially, if you have this feature enabled and attend an event, say a concert that many other people with iPhones were at, you may get a prompt later to write a journal entry about the concert. No iPhone user using Journal, friend or stranger, will get a prompt telling them your name, and that you are nearby, either.

Journal users can turn off “Prefer Suggestions with Others” and “Discoverable by Others” in their privacy and security settings under Journaling Suggestions. Doing so means you won’t get prompts based on the number of nearby iPhones, and your phone location won’t be used to help other Journal users get similar prompts.

So, Journal users, write this down. The app does not tell people, even those you know, who you are and where you’re at. The claim is False.

Get ready: In the 2024 presidential race, the candidates will talk about the economy. A lot.

We know because it’s already happening.

Incumbent President Joe Biden has touted the rapid growth of jobs on his watch. His predecessor and front-runner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, has focused on the four-decade-high inflation that peaked in the summer of 2022. 

Biden argues the economy has turned the corner on inflation. Trump, who leads former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley comfortably, counters that residual inflation continues to inflict economic pain. 

Voters are listening.

When the Quinnipiac University poll asked respondents in February for what they thought was the most urgent issue facing the country, 20% said the economy — a close second behind preserving democracy at 21%. Among Republicans, 24% chose the economy (second to immigration at 35%) while 24% of independents picked the economy, making it their top issue.

With the Super Tuesday primaries coming this week, PolitiFact decided to look at a few common economic talking points in the presidential race. We compared the nation’s economic performance not just under Biden and Trump but also under their three predecessors: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

No president is all-powerful on economic matters. The severe but relatively brief interruption the coronavirus pandemic caused also makes comparisons tricky. And beyond the numbers are intangibles, such as leadership qualities.

There’s no simple answer for who has been the better economic steward. On the numbers, Biden has some advantages over Trump, and vice versa. Other economic statistics show both presidents putting up impressive numbers during their first three years in office. (Looking at the first three years in office was the fairest comparison, as Trump’s fourth year was walloped by the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden’s fourth year is just 2 months old.)

Biden’s best argument: a fast rise in jobs, manufacturing growth

In January, Biden highlighted that Trump was the first president to oversee a net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover, who was in office when the Great Depression hit — but failed to mention the 2020 pandemic caused the nosedive.

When excluding the pandemic year of 2020, we found that the economy under Biden added jobs at a faster rate than under Trump — and faster than any of Biden’s recent predecessors. 

Under Biden, U.S. employment is now 10% above what it was when he was sworn in. Ranking second after three years is Clinton, with almost 8%, followed by Trump with 4.4%. Both Obama and Bush had fewer jobs filled after three years than they had on their first day in office.

Biden benefited from favorable timing. He was inaugurated January 2021, as the pandemic started receding. Although the jobs recovery began under Trump, Biden was blessed with a steady flow of Americans moving back into jobs that had been hampered during the pandemic. 

Still, the simple return of workers sidetracked by the pandemic doesn’t explain all the job gains on Biden’s watch, even though Trump has tried to make that case. Employment data through Biden’s first three years in office significantly exceeds where the workforce stood before the pandemic.

Given that job creation was leveling off during Trump’s last few months in office, “it was not inevitable that we would get the huge bounceback we saw under Biden,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. Biden’s American Rescue Plan, a pandemic recovery bill passed weeks after Biden took office, “was a huge deal here.”

Another factor in the expanding labor market — though one that’s become a political two-edged sword — has been higher immigration rates under Biden. This has helped fuel the economy, according to analyses by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and others, even as it lets critics discuss chaos at the border.

Biden has emphasized the growth of manufacturing jobs when touting bills he’s signed into law, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

The data shows that manufacturing jobs have grown by about 6.5% since Biden took office. Trump ranks second at 3.4%, followed by Clinton at 2.5%. Three years into their terms, Obama and Bush had both overseen losses in manufacturing jobs.

Trump’s best case: inflation, wage growth, gasoline prices

Biden and Trump have dueling messages on inflation, which peaked north of 9% in summer 2022. Economists generally blame pandemic-era supply chain problems, with Biden’s aid package exacerbating the rise in prices.

Biden has emphasized how much inflation has dropped.

“Wages are rising. Inflation is down,” Biden said in a Feb. 12 speech in Washington, D.C., to the National Association of Counties. The following day, Biden applauded the release of new inflation statistics showing that prices had risen by 3.1% in the year ended January 2024, about one-third of the 2022 peak level. It remains a bit above the 2% that the Federal Reserve wants to see before lowering interest rates.

The biggest reasons inflation has eased, economists have told us, are factors that the administration doesn’t control: Federal Reserve rate hikes, an oil price decline and a slowdown in China’s economy.

Inflation did not hamper Trump. During his first three years in office, Trump saw wages outpace inflation — the opposite of Biden.

For Biden, the data is improving, but that picture depends heavily on the time frame used. 

If you start with Biden’s first day in office, prices have risen faster than wages — never a good sign for a president seeking reelection. 

“In 2021 and 2022, people went to work and fell further behind,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum. “They are not over it, despite the gains in 2023.”

However, wage growth on Biden’s watch is on pace to exceed price growth within a couple of months. Also, wages have outpaced inflation for more than a year now, and wages have also outpaced inflation since Jan. 2020, the final month before the pandemic. 

One difference between the Biden and Trump economies is data showing that the wage increases under Biden have been especially robust for poorer people.

Trump could make plenty of accurate claims about the pain of inflation. However, he has exaggerated how much prices have risen for bacon, overall food and gasoline. 

In December, Trump said gasoline prices “are now $5, $6, $7 and even $8 a gallon.” We rated that claim Mostly False, since just a few gasoline stations nationally had prices that high. The nationwide average per-gallon price at the time was $3.14.

Gasoline prices have been unusually high under Biden, although they’ve dropped from their $5-per-gallon peak. That decline has stemmed from increased production, including in the United States, and the oil market’s realignment after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, which drove Western nations to restrict purchases of Russian oil.

Today, gasoline prices remain about one-third higher than they were when Biden took office. That’s a bigger percentage increase after three years than under Clinton, Bush or Trump. Obama fared worse; gasoline prices were 89% higher at his three-year mark.

Where Biden and Trump have similar success stories: unemployment rates, GDP, stock market

On several key metrics, Biden and Trump both have records to celebrate.

In June 2023, Biden touted the low unemployment rate on his watch, saying that it has been “below 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years in American history.” We rated this Mostly True. Unemployment has remained low partly because companies have more jobs to fill than available applicants; that has drawn some Americans back to work.

However, Trump also oversaw low unemployment rates. During Trump’s first three years in office, the unemployment rate averaged 4%; during Biden’s first three years, which included a few months when unemployment was still settling down after pandemic job losses, the average has been 4.2%.

Meanwhile, a measure called the “misery index” adds the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. 

After spiking when inflation was highest in summer 2022, the metric has fallen to a level lower than it was under Clinton, Bush and Obama at the end of year three. Trump’s misery index was lower at this point in his presidency, but Biden’s current level is lower than it was when Trump left office.

Biden has also trumpeted the growth in the most basic measurement of economic output: gross domestic product, or the collective value of all goods and services made in the U.S.. In January he called a 3.1% expansion in the economy during the fourth quarter of 2023 “good news for American families and American workers. That is three years in a row of growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up on my watch.”

If you ignore the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the annual GDP growth rates under the two most recent presidents have been similar, ranging from about 2% to 3%. That range was also typical under Obama’s presidency and for much of Bush’s, except for the two toughest years of the Great Recession, 2008 and 2009.

Meanwhile, Biden has recently taken to touting the stock market’s health, saying on X, “The stock market going strong is a sign of confidence in America’s economy.”

As president, Trump often trumpeted stock market gains, although he’s dismissed the gains under Biden as helping only rich people (incorrectly — more than half the public owns stocks.)

Either way, both presidents have overseen rising share prices. During Trump’s first three years, the S&P 500, a broad stock market gauge, rose by 1,050 points. In Biden’s first three years, it has risen by 988 points. (Since Jan. 20, 2024, the S&P has risen an additional 287 points.)