Category: Fact Check

As former President Donald Trump petitions the courts to be held legally immune for his actions as president, he’s begun comparing presidents and police officers.

In a Jan.19 Truth Social post, Trump argued that “a president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him/her to properly function.” He added that immunity is needed even for “events that ‘cross the line,’” though he didn’t specify what he meant. 

“You can’t stop police from doing the job of strong & effective crime prevention because you want to guard against the occasional ‘rogue cop’ or ‘bad apple,’” he wrote in all caps. “Sometimes you just have to live with ‘great but slightly imperfect.’” Police officers are protected against lawsuits related to their official actions, called “qualified immunity.”

Without “complete & total presidential immunity,” Trump wrote, “the authority & decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped & gone forever.”

Trump repeated the argument at a Jan. 20 Manchester, New Hampshire, rally and the following night in Rochester, New Hampshire, shortly before the state’s first-in-the-nation Republican primary.

A three-judge federal appeals panel is considering Trump’s immunity request. Regardless of that panel’s decision, the case could go before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Legal experts told PolitiFact that whatever the judicial ruling, Trump’s suggestion that he’s seeking what police officers already have is flawed.

“What Trump seeks goes far beyond” the protections police officers have, said Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor.

Trump’s campaign did not answer an inquiry for this article.

What is qualified immunity?

The legal protection that police officers and other government officials are afforded is known as “qualified immunity.” It is intended to protect officers conducting official duties not only from being held financially liable for their actions but also from being forced to face trial over those actions.

But as the “qualified” denotes, this type of immunity is not all-encompassing for key reasons:

• It applies to civil cases, not criminal charges. “It has nothing to do with criminal liability,” said Joanna C. Schwartz, a UCLA law professor. If officers are charged with a crime, as happened with the officers in the 2020 death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, they can stand trial.

• In civil cases, accused officers have to invoke qualified immunity as a defense, and the judge may or may not grant them protection. The accused officer can still be pursued in a civil lawsuit if the judge decides that that officer acted incompetently or knowingly violated the law.

“If an action is deemed in direct violation of constitutional rights or illegal as known and understood by a reasonable person, qualified immunity would generally not apply,” said Jillian E. Snider, a retired New York City police officer and a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. 

Schwartz said the qualified immunity defense “is very strong, but it is not insurmountable.”

What kind of immunity is Trump seeking?

Trump’s lawyers have said in court that they are seeking much broader immunity than what police officers receive.

Trump “seeks full immunity, not just ‘qualified’ immunity,” Somin said. “And he is seeking immunity for criminal conduct, not just civil violations.”

During oral arguments Jan. 9 before the three-judge federal panel, one judge asked Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, whether the president should, hypothetically, be immune from prosecution for ordering U.S. Navy commandos to assassinate a political rival.

Sauer said that unless the president had been impeached first, such a prosecution would be invalid. 

In his rallies and Truth Social post, Trump didn’t mention the caveat about impeachment, saying instead that presidents should have “complete & total presidential immunity.’

Even Karen M. Blum, an emeritus professor at Suffolk University Law School and self-described longtime critic of qualified immunity, said that qualified immunity has firmer legal support than what Trump seeks.

“Trump’s argument that no matter what, the president should be immune from any and all liability, civil or criminal, is not supported by any constitutional jurisprudence known to me,” Blum said.

EXETER, N.H. — Suspenseful music. Darkened video of hordes of people running. An ad from pro-Donald Trump political action committee MAGA Inc. depicts a U.S. under attack.

“Drug traffickers, rapists, poisoning our country,” the narrator says.

The 30-second ad airing across New Hampshire calls former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley “too weak, too liberal to fix the border.” 

Trump has intensified his rhetorical attacks on Haley as the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary approached.

The ad makes several claims about Haley’s immigration record. 

“Nikki Haley refused to call illegals criminals,” the narrator says, followed by a clip of Haley speaking in 2015. 

“We don’t need to talk about them as criminals, they’re not,” Haley says in the clip. 

The narrator adds, “Haley even opposed Trump’s wall, and Haley repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals.”

We’ve previously rated the claim that Haley opposed Trump’s wall False. But when voter Robert McCowen told us during a Haley rally here in Exeter, New Hampshire, that he watched the ad and wanted to know the full context behind Haley’s comments, we decided to explore the rest.

“I think they twisted that,” said McCowen, who said he is voting for Haley.

Examining Haley’s 2015 comments in full, we found MAGA Inc. took Haley’s 2015 comments out of context and incorrectly characterized Haley’s record on amnesty for immigrants.

Haley’s comments about immigrants and criminality

One month after Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign with an anti-immigrant tone,, Haley participated with several Republican governors in a panel by the Aspen Institute, a public policy think tank.

Trump captured widespread headlines for saying Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

In that context, the Aspen Institute moderator acknowledged that Haley comes from a family of Indian immigrants. “How does that inform your thinking on the immigration debate, and what do you feel about the tone of the immigration debate as it’s recently turned?” the moderator asked. 

Haley started her answer by saying the U.S. is “a country of laws,” a sentiment she has repeated on the 2024 campaign trail. “We have to always be a country of laws,” she said. “So, it’s incredibly frustrating for people to see the illegal immigrants coming across. It really is astonishing that, after all these years, D.C. can’t figure out how to build a wall.”

She said despite the U.S. being “a country of immigrants,” people, such as her parents, “resent when people come here illegally.”

“But, let’s keep in mind, these people that are wanting to come here, they want to come for a better life, too. They have kids, too. They have a heart, too. So, we don’t need to be disrespectful,” Haley said. “We don’t need to talk about them as criminals; they’re not. They’re families that want a better life and they’re desperate to get here. What we need to do is make sure that we have a set of laws that we follow and that we go through with that.

“So, I think that some things have been said that have been unfortunate and wrong. But I think we also need to remember, especially, for all of us, I say, for Republicans … tone and communication matter. And people matter. And we don’t need to talk about this in a cold-hearted way.”

Although crossing the U.S. border illegally is a crime, being in the U.S. without authorization is a civil offense.

Haley’s campaign responded to the MAGA Inc. ad in a Jan. 8 press release: “The 2015 comments reflect Haley’s belief that not every illegal immigrant is a hardened criminal, but they still have to follow the law.”

Haley’s stance on amnesty for immigrants

When we asked MAGA Inc. for evidence behind the ad’s claim that Haley “repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals,” the group pointed us to Haley’s comments during the Dec. 6 Republican primary debate in Alabama.

Moderator Elizabeth Vargas addressed Haley: “You have pledged to catch and deport all migrants who are here in this country illegally. But then you said in Londonderry, New Hampshire, last month that you will not deport those who are working and paying taxes rather than feeding off the system. Which is it?”

Haley responded that all of the people who have illegally entered the U.S. under Biden must be deported. She said everyone else, an estimated 11 million people, have to be evaluated by circumstance: “How long have they been here? … Have they paid taxes? Have they been working?” she said.

Haley was vague about what would happen to the people with jobs. At a Nov. 2, 2023, campaign event in Londonderry, N.H., she said, “If they’re actually trying to be productive and have a job, and have a record that we can look at, then we can look at what happens.”

As we have fact-checked claims about amnesty, we have learned this term has no single definition. “Amnesty” can be defined narrowly to mean giving people in the U.S. illegally citizenship or broadly to mean any policy favorable to people in the U.S. illegally.

Although she has not put forth a clear deportation plan, Haley’s comments show she is open to establishing a system for shrinking the population of people illegally in the U.S. However, it’s not accurate to say she has repeatedly pushed for amnesty, as the ad claims. 

When she speaks about this issue, she hasn’t mentioned specific policies. Instead, she has said that if she becomes president, she will prioritize deporting immigrants who recently came to the U.S. over people who have lived in the country for a long time. This is something most presidents do because of limited deportation resources.

During the Londonderry, New Hampshire, event, she vaguely referred to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that prevents deportation for people who came to the U.S. illegally as children, but she said she wasn’t interested in discussing it until Congress tackles more substantial immigration reform.

“You want to talk about DACA? You do immigration reform, and then we’ll talk about DACA,” Haley said. “It’s not the other way around. You have to have the carrot and the stick.”

Our ruling

A MAGA Inc. ad said, “Nikki Haley refused to call illegals criminals” and “repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals.”

The ad takes Haley’s 2015 comments out of context. Haley was responding to a question posed a month after Trump announced his presidential campaign and said immigrants from Mexico are “rapists” “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime.” Haley was asked how being from an immigrant family informed her thoughts on immigration. She responded that people who want to come to the U.S. should follow laws but that “we don’t need to talk about them as criminals.”

Haley also hasn’t pushed for programs that would give people in the U.S. illegally a path to citizenship or legal status. Instead, she has said she would prioritize deporting people who illegally crossed the border under Biden, over people who have lived in the U.S. for years and are “actually trying to be productive and have a job.” 

We rate the ad’s claims False.

Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to Waukesha County on Jan. 22, 2024 — the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision that was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. 

Harris spoke of “extremists” who have since proposed and passed laws that would “criminalize doctors and punish women” providing or receiving abortions. 

She specifically took aim at Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, who – shortly after Harris made her remarks – held a public hearing in the state Capitol on a new proposal to ban abortions after 14 weeks. 

But something Harris said about the history of the matter caught our attention: 

“In this beautiful state of Wisconsin, after Roe was dismantled, extremists evoked a law from 1849 to stop abortion in this state,” she said.

After the Supreme Court decision, Planned Parenthood and major health systems stopped providing abortion services, citing the reversal to a “a 173-year-old state law.”

But is Harris right that state lawmakers had a hand in putting that ban back into effect?

In short, no.

Let’s take a look.

Overturning of Roe v. Wade effectively put 1849 ban back in place

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to an abortion, it “effectively put back into place the state’s original abortion law,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported at the time. 

Attorneys for supporters and opponents of abortion access had long acknowledged that overturning Roe would put back into effect the 1849 ban. 

Still, there was immediate legal uncertainty and challenges. 

Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said he believed the 1849 law was in effect because lawmakers never repealed it.

Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, sued over the 1849 ban, arguing it was unenforceable because it conflicts with measures that state lawmakers had passed in subsequent years. 

A December 2023 ruling in that case said the ban applied to feticide, not abortions, and put back in place laws that allow abortions in Wisconsin up to 20 weeks. 

The case was appealed and is expected to reach the state Supreme Court.

So, there were some questions over whether the law still stood, and whether it was enforceable – and the situation could change again, pending what higher courts could do. 

But one thing is clear: Contrary to what Harris said, Republican lawmakers didn’t have to lift a finger to put the 1849 provisions back into effect. That happened on its own. 

In contrast, other states had passed so-called “trigger” laws — abortion-banning bills, approved in the past, that would take effect if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned. That included Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

Wisconsin did not have a “trigger” law, though the effect was the same, we previously reported.

PolitiFact Wisconsin reached out to the vice president’s office for additional evidence to support her claim, but did not receive a response by deadline.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have, however, proposed more restrictions on abortions since then, including the 14-week ban announced before her visit. 

Our ruling

In remarks in Big Bend, Wisconsin, Vice President Kamala Harris said that “after Roe was dismantled, extremists evoked a law from 1849 to stop abortion in this state.”

After the decision, the defunct 1849 ban went back into effect, and has since been the subject of lawsuits.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin didn’t play a role in reinstating that ban, though they have proposed other measures that would tighten abortion access. 

We rate her claim False. 

 

Social media will not let one Kentucky lawmaker live down what he said was an “inadvertent” error when filing a bill intended to strengthen the state’s anti-incest law.

“Kentucky Republican introduces bill to legalize sex with first cousins,” read what looks like a screengrab of a headline shared Jan. 17 on Instagram.”‘Survivor’ winner and Kentucky Republican lawmaker Nick Wilson wants to legalize sexual relations with first cousins as one of his flagship legislative issues in the 2024 session,” the words in the screengrab continued, crediting Newsweek for the information.

Wilson — 2018 winner of CBS’ “Survivor: David vs. Goliath,” reality TV competition — did file legislation that proposed this change. But the state representative from Williamsburg quickly withdrew the legislation, acknowledged it as a mistake and, on Jan. 17, refiled a new draft that left intact the language barring sex between first cousins.

The headline in the Jan. 17 post came from Raw Story, which has since updated its story with a note that Wilson retracted the bill and said the omission was unintended. 

But some social media posts made days later continued to excoriate Wilson’s proposal. “Sick,” read a caption on one such post made Jan. 19. 

The 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.)

A web-archived version of House Bill 269 shows that Wilson’s original Jan. 16 bill struck the phrase “first cousin” from the list of family members with whom the law says it would be illegal to engage in sexual contact.

Wilson withdrew the bill a day later, writing in a Jan. 17 Facebook post that “first cousins” was mistakenly removed from the list of relationships considered incest.

“During the drafting process, there was an inadvertent change, which struck ‘first cousins’ from the list of relationships under the incest statute, and I failed to add it back in,” Wilson wrote, noting that he planned to refile a bill with the phrase restored.

Wilson said the bill was intended to add the phrase “sexual contact” to the list of activities prohibited between blood relations. Until now, the law prohibited only “sexual intercourse” and “sexual deviate intercourse” between those relatives.

Wilson reintroduced House Bill 289 on Jan. 17 with first cousins included as familial relations considered as incest.

The claim that a Kentucky lawmaker “wants to legalize sexual relations with first cousins” is misleading. Wilson said his bill language was submitted in error — he quickly withdrew it and submitted a new bill that aims to strengthen the state’s incest laws, not loosen them. We rate the claim False. 

“What a bunch of malarkey!” begins a robocall to New Hampshire voters that sounds like the voice of President Joe Biden.

But the entire call can be summed up with one of Biden’s often repeated words: malarkey.

The robocall sent two days before the New Hampshire primary is fabricated. Biden did not record the call, his campaign confirmed.

“We know the value of voting Democratic when our votes count,” says the recording, obtained by NBC News. “It’s important that you save your vote for the November election. We will need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.”

The recording included a phone number people could call if they wanted to be removed from the call list.

That number was the cellphone of Kathleen Sullivan, a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair. Sullivan is the treasurer of Granite for America, a political action committee encouraging Democrats to write in Biden’s name on the New Hampshire ballot.

Sullivan told PolitiFact that on Jan. 21 — two days before the primary — she received about a dozen calls from phone numbers she didn’t recognize. Sullivan said she spoke to one of the callers and the person told her about receiving the robocall. 

Sullivan contacted the state attorney general and filed a complaint Jan. 22. The attorney general’s office issued a statement the same day announcing that it is investigating the call, which it said was “artificially generated based on initial indications.”

The press release said the calls “appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters,” and instructed voters to disregard the call’s message. The press release said voting in the primary does not mean a voter cannot vote in the general election.

In New Hampshire, it is a felony  to knowingly use fraudulent or misleading information to deter or prevent someone from voting.

“Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign,” said a statement by Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

The attorney general encouraged people who received the robocall to email the Justice Department’s Election Law Unit ([email protected]) and provide the date and time of the call and any other relevant information.

Biden’s name will not be on the primary ballot because the Democratic National Committee decided that in 2024 South Carolina would, for the first time, hold the first primary. Not only has New Hampshire traditionally had that first-in-the-nation spot on the primary calendar, but there is also a New Hampshire law requiring the state to set its primary first. Ultimately, New Hampshire law required that a Democratic primary be held Jan. 23, but the party will not use it to allocate the state’s delegates for the presidential nomination.

Ahead of the 2024 elections, an expert told PolitiFact that deepfakes, generated images and voice cloning could be used to imitate political candidates and target other politicians, voters and poll workers. Experts have also warned that foreign adversaries can use new generative artificial intelligence tools to conduct influence operations more efficiently and effectively. The new tools make it easier and cheaper to fabricate content such as political messages, profile photos, video footage and audio.

Our ruling

A robocall sounds like Biden telling Democrats not to vote in the New Hampshire primary.

The Biden campaign said the president did not record the call. The New Hampshire attorney general is investigating and said the call seems to be artificially generated.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

RELATED: How generative AI could help foreign adversaries influence U.S. elections

RELATED: Trump’s misleading claim that Haley is seeking Democrats to ‘infiltrate’ New Hampshire’s GOP primary

MANCHESTER, N.H. – After a few sporadic campaign events in New Hampshire in the days leading up to the state’s Jan. 23 primary, Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race, saying there was “no clear path to victory” for him.

DeSantis said he was sticking to his commitment to back the Republican Party’s nominee and endorsed former President Donald Trump’s campaign, saying that the majority of Republican primary voters want to give Trump another chance. 

“I have had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci,” DeSantis said. “Trump is superior to the current incumbent Joe Biden.”

In recent days, the DeSantis campaign repeatedly changed his schedule, leaving it unclear whether he would return to New Hampshire or drop out. On Saturday, he alerted the media and supporters that he would hold a meet-and-greet at a Manchester restaurant Sunday evening, only to cancel it a few hours before. Television crews and photographers were beginning to set up at The Farm Bar and Grille restaurant shortly before DeSantis posted his exit video on X, which started with, “Greetings from Florida.”

“We left it all out on the field,” DeSantis said Jan. 21. “If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews I would do it.” 

DeSantis’ dropping out left Trump and his onetime ally and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley as the remaining main Republican candidates seeking to oust President Joe Biden from office.

Haley, after hearing the news about DeSantis dropping out, told supporters at a campaign event that DeSantis had been a “good governor,” and said the race is now “one fella and one lady left.” 

“Do you want more of the same or do you want something new?” she said.

Trump spent the last few days before New Hampshire’s election in front of thousands of loyal fans at boisterous rallies across the state and generally ignoring local media. Haley sought to persuade voters at smaller events. She told to local and national media outlets that they should ditch the “chaos” of Trump and put her, a younger person with business bookkeeping experience in the White House.

Trump sticks to entertaining his supporters 

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gesturing to the crowd Jan. 20, 2024, after speaking during a campaign event in Manchester, N.H. (AP)

As the polling front-runner, Trump dedicated his attention to friendly and loyal fans who  ignored frigid temperatures and crowded into his rallies across the state. Hundreds of Trump supporters started to line up more than five hours before his rally in Manchester, standing outdoors in single-digit-degree weather while vendors hawked MAGA T-shirts and hats. 

He skipped an invite from WMUR-TV, the local ABC affiliate and PolitiFact partner, to take questions during their Sunday “Closeup” morning show. Haley appeared on the show and answered policy questions related to taxes and Social Security.

Trump’s rallies serve dual purposes: attack his primary rivals, Democrats and Biden while entertaining his supporters. 

Trump at his rallies repeated many inaccurate and misleading talking points about his own electoral record and his rivals’ stance on border security and Social Security retirement age eligibility.

Haley intensifies attacks against Trump, uses data to characterize the U.S. in disarray

Republican presidential candidate and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley meets voters Jan. 17, 2024, after a rally in Rochester, N.H. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

Haley’s more low-key events — compared with Trump’s rallies — aimed to win support from Republican and undeclared voters, many who were listening to her stump speech for the first time.

“How many of you are hearing me for the first time?” Haley asked voters in Peterborough, New Hampshire. “All of you. Well, it’s great to see you. I’m glad you’re here.”

Haley has focused on in-person events in New Hampshire after forgoing New Hampshire debates scheduled by WMUR and CNN. During her speeches in cities and small towns across the Granite State, Haley paints a picture of a country in disarray, and her leadership as its hope for success.

“It’s a tough time right now in the country,” Haley said in Peterborough before sharing grim statistics about students’ low proficiency in math and reading, illegal border crossings under Biden and fentanyl’s dangers. 

One voter at Haley’s Peterborough rally told PolitiFact that she wanted Haley to win the primary, but would back Trump if Haley didn’t succeed.

Politics at the Red Arrow diner and midnight voting 

Donald Trump greets supporters April 27, 2023, at the Red Arrow Diner after his rally in Manchester, N.H. (AP)

Democrats Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and Marianne Williamson also were on the ground vying for attention, but drawing little compared to the Republicans.

Phillips has been a regular at the Red Arrow Diner, a longtime must-stop for national politicians and candidates, including Haley. When politicians sit at the counter, the diner installs a plaque showing who sat there — including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who ran in past cycles and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who dropped out of the 2024 Republican race months ago. In 2023, Chris Christie left a note for Asa Hutchinson on a check at the diner “Asa — I warmed them up for you. I owe you a call. Will get you this weekend. The oatmeal was great! Chris Christie.”

RELATED: Fact-checking Haley’s New Hampshire claims on fentanyl, education, Trump’s stance on retirement age

RELATED: Trump’s misleading claim that Haley is seeking Democrats to ‘infiltrate’ New Hampshire’s GOP primary

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential primary race Jan. 21 in a video posted to X. The post included a quote that DeSantis attributed to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. 

“‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.’ – Winston Churchill,” DeSantis’ X post said. 

The problem? Churchill didn’t say this, despite the quote being repeatedly attributed to him. DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to our request for comment.

The International Churchill Society’s website includes the quote DeSantis used and a similar version in a list of “quotes falsely attributed to Winston Churchill.”

“We can find no attribution for either one of these, and you will find that they are broadly attributed to Winston Churchill. They are found nowhere in his canon,” the group said on its website.

Another article from the organization says it found no mention of the quote after searching “fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers.”

Churchill did speak about success, but not in the context DeSantis presented. Churchill, for instance, said: “Success always demands a greater effort,” according to the International Churchill Society.

Historian Richard Langworth, who has written multiple books about Churchill, wrote in a 2019 article that Churchill “never said” the quote. 

“Winston Churchill has become something of the king of fake quotes — a phenomenon the Internet has pushed to the extreme,” the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College said online after agreeing that it was not Churchill who made the statement.

PolitiFact has previously fact-checked multiple quotes misattributed to Churchill. 

Our ruling

DeSantis said Churchill said, “success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

But the International Churchill Society, the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College and a Churchill historian say that Churchill didn’t say that.

We rate DeSantis’ attribution False.

Copy Chief Matthew Crowley contributed to this report.

RELATED: All of our fact-checks of Ron DeSantis

MANCHESTER, N.H. —If you’ve been following PolitiFact’s journey in New Hampshire, you may have noticed we haven’t covered a rally for former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner. That’s because PolitiFact was denied press access to two of his rallies this week. We’ll try again for Trump rally access this weekend as a new PolitiFact team rotates in.

Although we’ve been shut out of his rallies, we’ve still been listening to Trump. Our fantastic political team has been covering his claims as Senior Correspondent Lou Jacobson and I hotfoot it from one live New Hampshire campaign event to the next. 

Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman examined Trump’s misleading claim that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is seeking Democrats to “infiltrate” next Tuesday’s Republican primary election. (Registered Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary.) And Staff Writer Samantha Putterman checked a Trump ad falsely claiming, “Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82% of Americans.” (Haley’s plan wouldn’t affect current beneficiaries or Americans anywhere close to retiring, let alone 82% of the U.S. population.)

A personal note: I’ve been working at PolitiFact for a little over a year now. This culture of teamwork and dedication to getting voters the facts even when challenges arise is one of the things I’ve come to love most about our newsroom. If you want to help our team sort fact from fiction in 2024, please consider donating to our nonprofit newsroom. 

Lou and I started our third day of fact-checking in New Hampshire by visiting the WMUR-TV office. We then headed down the street to an event for Democratic candidate Dean Phillips at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. 

As we walked, we found some leftover signs for entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who suspended his campaign Monday after finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses. 

Leftover Vivek Ramaswamy signs in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Ellen Hine/PolitiFact)

There were fewer people at this event than we saw yesterday at Ron DeSantis’ Hampton town hall and Nikki Haley’s campaign stop in Rochester. But the room where Phillips spoke was so small, it felt even more packed than the others. Supporters stood in the front with signs while guests and media filled the chairs, stood along the walls and sat on the floor. 

Supporters for Democratic candidate Dean Phillips. (Ellen Hine/PolitiFact)

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran as a Democratic candidate for president in 2020, introduced Phillips to discuss his vision for the future of artificial intelligence. 

Former Democratic candidate Andrew Yang, left, and current candidate Dean Phillips, right. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

Philips compared inaction on AI policy now to inaction on climate change a century ago. AI “can be beautiful, but it also has great risks,” Phillips said. “It’s going to disenfranchise this economy. It’s going to be disruptive in ways that we can actually anticipate. But if we do nothing now, which is what is happening right now in Washington, nothing.” 

But President Joe Biden issued an executive order in October for the “safe, secure, and trustworthy development” of AI. His administration has also secured voluntary commitments from 15 A.I. companies to safely develop the technology. And in Congress, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law has held several hearings concerning AI. 

Phillips pivoted to pitching himself as an alternative to Biden in the upcoming primary. (He has polled between 6% and 28% against Biden among New Hampshire Democrats in recent weeks.) Phillips criticized the Washington establishment and touted his record for bipartisanship, claiming, “I come to you as the second most bipartisan member of the entire United States Congress.”

The Minnesota Democrat seemed to be citing his scorecard from the Common Ground Committee, a nonpartisan organization that scores elected officials on their bipartisanship. Phillips is tied with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., for the second-highest score behind Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev.

After Phillips’ speech, we decamped to WMUR to do some writing. Lou checked claims from Haley’s Rochester event while I edited a video for our TikTok and wrote this newsletter. 

Around 4:30 p.m., we headed down to the WMUR studio. Lou was filming a live segment based about three policies DeSantis has proposed that the U.S. Supreme Court has frowned upon in the past. We first noticed DeSantis mentioning these proposed policies at Tuesday night’s CNN town hall and heard a few of them again Wednesday at his campaign event in Hampton. 

Lou filming a live TV hit with our New Hampshire partner, WMUR-TV. (Ellen Hine/PolitiFact)

After stopping for a proper dinner this time (if you don’t know about our Slim Jim feast, read more here), we were back to New England College for Nikki Haley’s CNN town hall. We weren’t the only media outlet in the press room, but the in-person media attendance was pretty sparse. 

Haley took voter questions about conflict in the Middle East, climate change and her past comments about Trump and Biden’s ages. Most of her answers consisted of political rhetoric and opinions, the kind of things we don’t fact-check. 

Moderator Jake Tapper pressed Haley on her comments from earlier this week that the United States has “never been a racist country.” Tapper noted that Haley’s home state of South Carolina seceded from the Union and “fought a war to defend the enslavement of Black people.” 

Haley defended her comments, and when pressed by Tapper, said, “I refuse to believe that the premise of when (the Founding Fathers) formed our country was based on the fact that it was a racist country to start with.”

This is the second time in less than a month that Haley’s comments about American history have landed her in hot water. She received blowback after a December town hall when she didn’t cite slavery as a cause of the Civil War. (She later said that “of course the Civil War was about slavery.”)

“Whatever individual people fought for can become complicated, but there’s no doubt that the Confederacy was founded on the basis of protecting enslavement,” William Alan Blair, a Penn State University historian and author, told PolitiFact for our primer on the Civil War’s causes and run-up. 

As we’ve fact-checked candidates from the campaign trail this week, one throughline has become clear: DeSantis, Haley and Phillips are all trying to appeal to voters who don’t want to see a Biden-Trump rematch. These three have taken swings at their own parties, and pitched themselves as candidates who would bring fresh perspectives and major changes to Washington. 

Attendees could grab this sign at Dean Phillips’ Manchester event. (Ellen Hine/PolitiFact)

If you’ve made it this far, I want to hear from you, readers: What do you think about a possible Trump-Biden rematch in 2024? Email me at [email protected]. 

If you are down on your financial luck, a new social media post claiming you’re eligible for up to $6,400 from Congress to cover basic needs may sound appealing.

A Jan. 15 Facebook video claims low-income Americans can access a new 2024 congressional  subsidy to help pay for everything from rent to groceries. The post features a video that appears to be a CNN broadcast with the caption: “Claim your part today: It is the financial relief 33.5 million Americans have been waiting for!”

“The new subsidy announced by Congress this January is giving $6,400 worth of credits to low- income Americans, including zero-dollar health care, which should allow them to afford essentials such as groceries, gas and rent,” a narrator said. 

In the video, a woman makes a phone call and talks to an operator about claiming this subsidy. “The $6,400 credits are real. so I can help you qualify for that quickly,” the operator said. The post links to a website where visitors are asked to provide personal information.

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 could not find any such subsidy passed by Congress when we reviewed LegiScan, a website that tracks bills through the legislative process. The website associated with the post, americasavingplan.com, is not maintained by the federal government, and we could not find evidence of any such CNN broadcast.

Scams online are as old as the internet itself, but this post is part of a new wave that targets low-income people and offers enticing, but nonexistent, government subsidies. In recent weeks, PolitiFact has checked many similar claims promising to connect low-income earners with financial assistance from the government or to help with credit card debt. Such claims often use the same $6,400 figure and buzzwords such as “zero-dollar healthcare.”

Online scammers employ these schemes to extract money from unsuspecting people or use personal details, such as Social Security numbers, to steal people’s identities. 

The government has noticed this trend, and agencies such the Federal Trade Commission have tips for spotting and reporting scams. 

“Offers of free money from government grants are scams,” the commission said. “Scammers make big promises. They might say you can get free money or a grant to pay for education, home repairs, home business expenses, household bills, or other personal needs.”

We rate the claim that Congress has passed a $6,400 subsidy for low-income Americans False.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., has been campaigning aggressively in New Hampshire, hoping to convince Democratic voters that a new face is needed to keep the party in control of the White House in 2024.

In a series of events in the state on Jan. 18, Phillips, who is challenging incumbent Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, traveled with entrepreneur and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate-turned-independent Andrew Yang. The two discussed the promise, and potential pitfalls, of artificial intelligence.

In a packed room at the University of New Hampshire, Manchester, Phillips said AI “can be beautiful, but it also has great risks. It’s going to disenfranchise this economy. It’s going to be disruptive in ways that we can actually anticipate.”

Philips compared relative inaction on AI policy now with inaction on climate change a century ago. “We had 100 years to prepare for climate change,” Phillips said. “We knew 100 years ago what would happen by burning fossil fuels.”

PolitiFact checked with several academics who have studied the history of climate change science and found that the reality was not so clear cut. 

“In principle, the effects of burning fossil fuels were known” by a century ago, “but this was not widely known or recognized,” said Ben Lieberman, a historian at Fitchburg State University and co-author of “Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present.” Only later in the 20th century did this knowledge begin to amass, Lieberman said.

The first inklings in the scientific community emerged in the 1850s, said John Brooke, an emeritus professor of history at Ohio State University and author of “Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey.” Then, in 1896, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius wrote a paper explaining how industrial carbon dioxide emissions could spur a warming trend that would become known as the greenhouse effect.

So, in theory, the world has had more than a century to prepare for significant climate change, said Joshua P. Howe, an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Reed College and author of “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming.”

“There was a lot that was still unknown, but if the sentiment was that we have known about this at least in broad terms for a long time, that’s right,” Howe said.

However, other historians cautioned that it took more time for this knowledge to coalesce and gain wide acceptance.

“Understanding the earth’s heat budget and infrared radiation was in its infancy,” said James R. Fleming, an emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Colby College and author of “Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control.”

“This was pre-computer, and hypothetical,” Brooke said.

Even after another scientist, Guy Stewart Callendar of England, echoed Arrhenius’ argument in the late 1930s, “he was ignored, because warming was not yet an obvious problem,” Brooke said.  

By the 1950s, hard evidence linking carbon burning to climate began to amass, with Charles David Keeling’s measurements of carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. (Keeling’s students included Al Gore, the future vice president, Democratic presidential nominee and climate change campaigner.) Climate change merited a mention in President Lyndon Johnson’s policy agenda in 1965.

Nevertheless, it took years for the complicated interactions of atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase global temperatures notably.  Only when the temperature climb accelerated earnest in the 1970s did scientists and policymakers began paying serious attention, experts said. 

PolitiFact Audience Engagement Producer Ellen Hine contributed to this article.

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