Category: Fact Check

During his Aug. 23 speech at the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., blamed corporations for rising consumer goods prices. 

“The corporations say your prices are up only because their costs are up. They’re selling you a lie,” he said. “Prices are up because these corporations are scheming to drive them up.” 

He said that although “most companies are good companies,” the wholesalers and “food conglomerates that sit behind the supermarkets … are extorting families at the checkout counter. This is greedflation.”

There is evidence that corporate profits are rising faster than inflation. But this does not mean that corporate profits are inflation’s sole cause, economists say. And although corporations are contributing to inflation, experts said they do not see proof that widespread “scheming” is driving up consumer prices across the economy.

Are profits rising faster than inflation?

When we asked for evidence to support Casey’s claim, his campaign pointed us to data showing that corporate profits from 2020 to 2022 outpaced inflation. 

During 2024’s first quarter, corporate profits were nearly 1.4 times their level in 2019’s first quarter. By comparison, the consumer price index, which is calculated monthly, was about 1.2 times higher in January 2024 than it was in January 2019.

The campaign also pointed to news articles about two 2024 reports. 

The first was a January report by the left-leaning think tank Groundwork Collaborative. That report found that although rising costs for labor and other materials contributed to rising prices, “corporate profits drove 53 percent of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023” and about 34% of price increases since the start of the pandemic.

(The Groundwork Collaborative said it analyzed November 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis using the same approach that economist Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, used for his 2022 corporate profit and inflation analysis.) 

The second was a March Federal Trade Commission report on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the U.S. grocery supply chain. It said COVID-19 pandemic supply chain disruptions increased costs. However, it also noted that food and beverage retailers’ annual profits — or the amount they make above total costs — remain high, which the report said “casts doubt on assertions that rising prices at the grocery store” are because of retailers’ rising costs. 

“Some firms seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further hike prices to increase their profits, and profits remain elevated even as supply chain pressures have eased,” it said. 

Finally, the campaign shared news reports documenting examples of corporate executives talking about pricing actions during 2023 earnings calls.

Many factors contribute to rising consumer prices, economists say

That corporate profits have risen faster than inflation since early 2019 doesn’t mean that they caused inflation, or that corporate “scheming” was the primary reason. 

Rather, economists told PolitiFact that rising production costs — including rising wages, raw input costs and real estate prices — are high consumer prices’ primary causes.

“Roughly half of what consumers pay for food goes back to workers in the value chain — at the grocery store or restaurant, at the manufacturing plant, on the farm,” said Chris Barrett, agricultural and development economist at Cornell University. In other words, rising labor costs affect what consumers ultimately pay.

Joseph Balagtas, agricultural economics professor at Purdue University, said the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply-chain disruptions in 2020 that sparked high inflation through the summer of 2022. These snags increased production costs and the pandemic also altered consumer behavior. Another factor was fiscal and monetary policy that increased consumer demand. 

This aligns with PolitiFact’s previous reporting. In 2022, we reported that prices rose during the COVID-19 pandemic because of supply chain disruptions and, later, because Russia invaded Ukraine. 

For companies, higher prices, combined with initially steady labor costs, yielded higher profits in 2022. At the time, many Americans, who had received government pandemic stimulus payments, could pay higher prices, which discouraged companies from lowering them. 

Since then, the supply chain disruptions have resolved and stimulus payments have stopped, Balagtas said. “And as the causes of higher inflation have gone away, inflation has eased.” 

The year-over-year inflation rate has fallen from a peak of around 9% in summer 2022 to about 3% today.

A customer checks prices while shopping at a grocery store in Wheeling, Ill., Jan. 19, 2024. (AP)

Are corporations’ pricing decisions part of the picture?

Economic studies have cast doubt on corporate greed’s role in driving inflation. 

A 2024 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that corporations’ price markups — how much a product’s sale price exceeds its cost to the company — were not the recent inflation surge’s main driver. 

A 2023 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, however, found that markup growth contributed over 50% to inflation in 2021. Nevertheless, researchers concluded that the markups could be explained as ones taken “in anticipation of future cost pressures” rather than purely to extract profits. 

Most economists PolitiFact consulted were skeptical that corporate “scheming” or arbitrary price increases were inflation’s main driver, though they said corporate profit-taking could be contributing.

Timothy Richards, an economist and agribusiness professor at Arizona State University, said that industry in the U.S. is “too competitive for greedflation” to factor into rising prices. 

Companies set prices according to demand. So, if demand rises, companies will raise prices, Richards said. If higher prices generate profit, then competition is sufficiently robust that new companies will enter and begin serving the market, driving prices down. 

“All firms are currently experiencing declining willingness to pay as households come under cost-of-living pressures, so price increases are moderating across the board,” he said. “Maximizing profit is not against the law, nor would we want it to be against the law as it would mean firms would start making bad decisions.” 

Balagtas said blaming corporate greed for rising food prices, which he studies, was misguided. Food manufacturers and retailers “did not become more greedy in 2020-22 when inflation was higher, and they are not less greedy now that inflation has subsided,” he said.

Daniel Sumner, an agricultural and resource economics professor at the University of California, Davis, added that the bar is high for an allegation of “scheming” such as Casey’s. He said the senator’s claim would carry more weight if he cited specific details about the prices along with evidence such as “wiretaps, secret recordings or emails about the schemes and who is involved.” 

To that point, Casey’s campaign pointed to the Justice Department’s 2023 civil antitrust lawsuit against Agri Stats Inc. The department said Agri Stats harmed grocery stores and consumers by illegally “collecting, integrating and distributing competitively sensitive information related to price, cost and output among competing meat processors.” Agri Stats also occasionally, “encouraged meat processors to raise prices and reduce supply,” the Justice Department said.

The campaign also pointed to the Washington state attorney general’s successful price-fixing lawsuits against tuna companies and broiler chicken producers.

Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, said corporate profit-seeking is a portion of the rising prices, but not all of it.  Profit margins have been “uneven across sectors,” he said, with the overall rise around 2% but some sectors seeing 30% to 40% increases. In some of those outlier industries, the argument for blaming corporate action may be stronger, he said.

Still, Baker said the bulk of rising prices were because of rising wages and supply chain problems related to the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Barrett, of Cornell University, said evidence that corporate price markups are causing rising prices has “grown over time.” 

For example, his current research, which awaits peer review, suggests that “when counties or states enact grocery sales taxes, retail food prices go up by more than the tax increment,” he said. “(Companies) seize the opportunity to raise prices by a bit more than the tax requires, padding their profits.” 

Nevertheless, he said, corporations’ actions are often “not the main explanation” for rising prices, he said.

Our ruling

Casey said, “Prices are up because these corporations are scheming to drive them up.” 

This exaggerates what economists say is happening.

Corporate profits have increased faster than inflation since 2019, and some analyses point to a role for corporate greed. But most economists PolitiFact interviewed said that rising costs for goods and labor have been the primary drivers of inflation, which aligns with findings from studies by Federal Reserve regional banks. 

Although there are examples of some price-fixing lawsuits in recent years, broad “scheming” is hard to prove, especially the notion that anticompetitive behavior is widespread enough to explain economy-wide patterns.

Casey’s claim includes an element of truth but ignores other factors that would give a different impression. We rate the statement Mostly False.

PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

RELATED: Corporate profits do not drive inflation, but inflation boosts company profits

Nearly a dozen Massachusetts counties are on alert for cases of eastern equine encephalitis, a rare but often deadly virus transmitted by mosquitoes.

An Aug. 25 Instagram post tied the virus’s outbreak to a video it claimed showed a helicopter dropping mosquitoes from the sky.

“Odd as towns in #Massachusetts prepare to lockdown for the next few months because of deadly #Mosquitoes ??? Then there is this clip of a helicopter there dropping millions of them,” the post’s caption said.

The Instagram post is the same as one we found on TikTok with the same video and caption. It 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.)

Eastern equine encephalitis kills about 30% of infected humans and leaves others with neurological problems, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health on Aug. 16 announced the first human case of eastern equine encephalitis this year, an infected man in his 80s in Worcester County. Massachusetts first identified the virus in the state in 1938 and there have been 115 cases since then, the department said. Outbreaks typically occur in the state every 10 to 20 years. The most recent outbreak, in 2019 and 2020, had 17 cases and seven deaths, the department said.

The department said 10 communities are at critical or high risk for the virus and began a mosquito-spraying program. There are no “lockdowns” as the Instagram post claims, but some communities have issued voluntary evening curfews or closed public parks after sunset, angering some parents because these measures would hamper some school fall sports and activities.

In the video, the helicopter circled over an unknown location with a black substance trailing from it. Sticker text on the video said, “Helicopter dropping mosquitoes.”

Using a reverse-image search, we found numerous social media posts sharing the same video as far back as August 2023, including several that said mosquitoes were being dropped from a helicopter in Florida.

We also found a Sept. 8, 2023, fact-check from The Associated Press, that traced the video’s origin to an Aug. 27, 2023, TikTok post that shows it was shot in Miami. That video does not mention mosquitoes. The AP could not confirm the substance coming from the helicopter, but several experts told them it appeared to be blue smoke, possibly from a gender reveal party.

A TikTok video from 2023 shows the same helicopter video seen in the Instagram post.

Social media users who shared the video in 2023 tied it to a genetically modified mosquito program from Oxitec. That company has released mosquitoes in Florida to reduce the pest’s population there, but they aren’t released from the sky.

There are some mosquito programs that release the pests from helicopters. The Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project in Hawaii releases Wolbachia infected mosquitoes in elevated forest areas to reduce the overall mosquito population and save birds at risk of extinction, NPR reported in June. Wolbachia are naturally occurring bacteria that many mosquitoes already have, but when mosquitoes with two different strains mate, their eggs won’t hatch, the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency said.

But there are no mosquito release programs in Massachusetts, Department of Public Health spokesperson Ann Scales said.

“Massachusetts is not involved in any of the Oxitec work, and we are not aware of any projects where mosquitoes are released,” she said.

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed millions of mosquitoes released from a helicopter could be tied to an outbreak of eastern equine encephalitis, a deadly mosquito-borne virus.

The video shared in the post is from Miami in 2023, according to an Associated Press fact-check. There are no Massachusetts programs that involve releasing mosquitoes, a state Department of Public Health spokesperson said. The claim is False.

Former President Donald Trump called Vice President Kamala Harris a “copycat” for showing support for a no-tax-on-tips plan.

Trump said Harris’ stance conflicts with her voting record.

Trump campaigned on eliminating tip taxes June 9 during a rally in Las Vegas. On Aug. 11, Harris also endorsed the concept at a Las Vegas. With more than 22% of Nevada’s workforce employed by the service and hospitality industry, the issue of taxes on tips is of high interest in this battleground state. 

On Aug. 23 at a Las Vegas restaurant, Trump said: “Kamala cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.” 

Two days later, Trump unveiled an ad that said, “Harris and Biden have literally unleashed the IRS to harass workers who receive tips.” The ad shows a fearful homeowner as workers in suits arrive to comb through her house.

In August, we debunked a similar viral statement on Instagram about Harris and tipped income. Harris cast the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, but the law did not lay out a plan to send 87,000 agents after tipped workers. And a 2023 IRS proposal to replace programs for taxed tip compliance was never implemented.

IRS planned to hire more workers, but not all in enforcement

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act increased taxes on large corporations and gave an additional $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service. 

The claim that the IRS would hire 87,000 IRS agents came from a 2021 Department of Treasury report that said the IRS would use the $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to hire 86,852 full-time employees by 2031. 

But not all those jobs are for enforcement.

In 2023, the IRS used money from the Inflation Reduction Act to pay for 13,661 positions, including 495 for enforcement. From 2024 to 2030, the agency expects to hire about 32,500 more for enforcement. In total, for all jobs including enforcement, operations and taxpayer services, the IRS plans to hire about 53,000 employees from 2023 to 2030.

The agency has said it focuses enforcement against large corporations and wealthy taxpayers. The IRS said it had collected more than $1 billion from high-wealth taxpayers with past-due taxes since the law’s passage.

The Treasury Department previously said audits will not increase for households earning less than the $400,000 threshold. The median wage for waiters and waitresses is about $31,940, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — far below that threshold. 

The Trump campaign pointed to a March 2022 CBS report that low-income households with less than $25,000 in annual earnings are more than five times as likely to be audited by the IRS as everyone else. The data came from an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University that preceded President Joe Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act into law. 

Susan Long, TRAC’s co-director and a professor of managerial statistics at Syracuse University, told us that the higher audit rates were driven by the “IRS targeting low income families claiming an earned income credit — not anything directly related to tip income per se.” 

IRS proposed a new tip reporting program to replace existing programs

In February 2023, the IRS proposed a new tip reporting program that would let service industry employers report tips voluntarily to help with tax compliance. The Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement program aimed to use advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance. 

The proposal was intended to replace three tip compliance agreements that have existed since 1993. The agency never adopted it.

“Treasury and the IRS have no plans to move forward with the voluntary program and, as such, there are no new reporting or compliance components,” Treasury spokesperson Ashley Schapitl said. “We continue to carefully consider comments received in response to the proposed guidance.”

Erica York, a senior economist and research director with Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy, said the Inflation Reduction Act did not change the tax treatment of tips. 

“Tips have been reportable as income for decades and decades,” York said in an email. She pointed to a form from 1966 that reminded taxpayers to include tips when reporting their income.

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 “introduced more stringent rules for tip reporting in an effort to crack down on underreporting,” York said. (But York added that that law wasn’t the start of taxing tips.)

The IRS established agreements in the late 1990s and early 2000s for industries such as restaurants and casinos to enhance tax compliance among tipped employees and their employers through taxpayer education, instead of auditing.

​​A 2018 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration study found that of the employers with tip reporting agreements that filed 2016 tax year forms, 30% had projected unreported tips totaling close to $1.66 billion.

The Trump campaign pointed to news articles and the Americans for Tax Reform report that took a dim view of the tips compliance proposal.

But York also told us, “The new program wouldn’t change what tipped workers owe on their income.”

“My understanding is that the proposed program has been in development for a number of years, potentially dating back to this 2013 proposal from the IRS.”

Our ruling

Trump said Harris “cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.”

But his statement conflates and distorts two different policy proposals — one of which did not become reality — and misleadingly characterizes Harris’ position.  

In 2022, Harris cast a tiebreaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $80 billion for the IRS. Although the Treasury Department had previously said the money would be used to hire about 87,000 workers, that was not all for enforcement. And the law didn’t state the IRS would pursue tipped workers.

The agency is hiring enforcement workers, but fewer than Trump said. In 2023, there were 13,661 IRS workers who were funded through the Inflation Reduction Act including 495 for enforcement. From 2023 to 2030, the agency plans to hire about 32,500 for enforcement through the act. 

In 2023, the IRS proposed a new program for service industry employers to report tips voluntarily to aid tax compliance. But the IRS has no plans to proceed with that proposal. 

We rate his statement False. 

RELATED: No, Jacky Rosen didn’t say ending taxes on tips would hurt Nevada families

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 22 approved and granted emergency use authorization for updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines target the KP.2 omicron strain that began to spread widely in the spring. Variants closely related to that strain are behind most recent COVID-19 cases.

Dr. Jeffrey Barke, a California primary care physician, said the FDA had no right to grant emergency use authorization because the public health emergency declared for the pandemic expired in May 2023.

“Emergency use authorization requires two elements. There has to be an emergency. There isn’t. And there has to be no other available effective treatment. There is,” Barke said in an Aug. 23 Instagram video, wearing a T-shirt that said “Misinformation Superspreader.”

Barke is a founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors — an anti-vaccine group — the co-author of a book about childhood vaccines and a frequent guest on conservative media.

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

The Instagram post is wrong about the FDA’s ability to continue issuing emergency use authorizations for COVID-19-related products.

The FDA didn’t immediately return PolitiFact’s request for comment. But the public health emergency’s declared end doesn’t affect the agency’s authority to issue new emergency use authorizations for vaccines or drugs, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a May 9, 2023, news release.

That’s because the COVID-19 public health emergency and the COVID-19 emergency use authorization were declared by Health and Human Services under two distinct laws.

The health emergency — first declared in January 2020 and extended every three months until May 11, 2023 — was declared under Section 319 of the Public Health Service Act. Those emergency declarations last 90 days, but the HHS secretary can extend or end them early.

The Health and Human Services Department made an emergency use declaration for COVID-19 under Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, an FDA frequently asked questions webpage said.

That declaration allowed the FDA to grant individual emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, devices and treatments. 

To make an emergency use declaration, the health secretary must declare that circumstances exist that justify the authorization, such as a public health emergency or “significant potential” for a public health emergency.

An emergency use declaration doesn’t hinge on a public health emergency declaration and it can stay in effect after a public health emergency ends, the FDA said. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in February 2020 made an emergency use authorization declaration for COVID-19 that current Secretary Xavier Becerra amended in March 2023.

The emergency use authorization continues until the health secretary ends it. Existing product authorizations can continue, and new ones, such as the updated COVID-19 vaccines, can be issued as long as the declaration remains in effect.

We contacted Barke for evidence to support his claim. He asked, “Is there a current COVID emergency?” He referred us to an FDA webpage about emergency use authorizations.

That page said, “The ending of the COVID-19 PHE (public health emergency) will not impact FDA’s ability to authorize medical countermeasures for emergency use. Existing COVID-19 EUAs (emergency use authorizations) will remain in effect, and the agency may continue to issue new EUAs if the situation meets the criteria to do so.”

Barke’s Instagram post also claimed that the new vaccines shouldn’t be approved because there are other treatments available. He named ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in an email to PolitiFact.

Ivermectin, used to treat parasites in humans, is not FDA-approved to treat or prevent COVID-19 infection. The FDA granted an EUA for hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, to treat hospitalized patients for COVID-19 in March 2020, but revoked it in June of that year because of cardiac risks. Clinical trials showed hydroxychloroquine was not effective in treating or preventing COVID-19. Doctors can still prescribe either drug off-label for COVID-19.

The COVID-19 vaccines the FDA recently authorized target a new variant. The FDA grants emergency use authorization to products when there aren’t effective, approved and available alternatives. 

The claim that the FDA shouldn’t be able to approve the new COVID-19 vaccines because there is no public health emergency and that other treatments are available is False.

We’re entering the 2024 election cycle’s final lap, with almost two months until Election Day. PolitiFact is fact-checking the presidential and vice presidential candidates, and we’re also looking at statements from social media, pundits, President Joe Biden and key Senate races. 

Election years always bring out more readers and more interest in our fact-checks. The reaction to our coverage of this summer’s party conventions and nominee switcheroo was no different.

As this summer for the history books comes to a close, we rounded up our readers’ thoughts on our coverage. The feedback is lightly edited for length, clarity and style. Readers can email us fact-check ideas and feedback at [email protected].

Learn more about our election-year mission to hold politicians and pundits accountable to the truth and to share the facts so you can be an informed participant in the 2024 election.

Project 2025

We heard from many readers about our fact-checking on whether Democratic warnings about various planks of Project 2025 line up with former President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document and has distanced himself from some, but not all, of its ideas. 

On July 30, Harris said, “Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security.” Mostly False. 

One reader emailed us with a prediction that Trump will not be consistent with his actions.

“It is appalling to me that you would rate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s warnings about what Donald Trump would do to Social Security or Medicare based on what he *says* he will do while campaigning.

Have you read Project 2025? It was written by his backers at the Heritage Foundation and by his former cabinet members and there is evidence he is aware of it and will participate in its implementation based on steps he has attempted in line with it before, however he denies that he knows about it and that he would implement it.

Have you noticed the consistent, ongoing pattern of difference between what Trump says he did or will do and what he has actually done and does?

Really misleading fact-checking on this important topic, in my opinion.

I cannot believe that you are actually trying to insist that a pathological liar isn’t going to do what he said he’d do about Medicare and what Project 2025 wants to do. His multiple budgets show where his intent really is. He wants to win an election so like the serial liar he is, he’ll say anything. Shame on you for laundering his lies.”

(The Project 2025 document mentions Social Security 10 times, but none of those references addresses plans for cutting the program.) 

Social media users commented what they found to be important context about Project 2025:

“He openly supports parts of Project 2025 and literal dozens of Trump’s former team are contributors to it, but sure let’s give them the benefit of the doubt “

“What about the head of the Heritage Fund saying out loud that Trump will understandably distance himself from the project and this is purely a political move? Fact checking is one thing, but not giving all the context is misleading. Dem claims that Donald Trump’s Project 2025 are real and very much substantial.”

We rated a Harris claim that Project 2025 would restrict access to contraception and in vitro fertilization Mostly False. A reader called our fact-check “disingenuous” after seeing our Instagram post. 

“They absolutely threaten IVF when they talk about assigning personhood and legal rights for an embryo. Anyone who has gone through IVF can tell you this (including myself!) Also, the groups providing guidance for this project consider some hormonal contraception to be an abortifacient because it can affect the lining of the uterus and therefore prevent an embryo from implanting. My super religious IVF doctor considered IUDs (intrauterine devices) to be an abortifacient. This is not far-fetched thinking that will never come to fruition should project 2025 be put in place.”

On TikTok, we explained why Harris’ claim that a video captured Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, endorsing Project 2025 was False. (The video was from 2021, two years before Project 2025 was published.) A reader defended our post in the comments:

“All PolitiFact said is that this video is not proof. If you make a claim it needs to be able to be proved. We want honest politicians and I’m glad PolitiFact is being non-biased.”

A reader asked us to fact-check this line from Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention: Trump “plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.” We rated it Mostly False. When we got back to the reader, they responded:

“Thank you!

PS: I think in your fact check, it would be good to include additional context about who wrote the sections of Project 2025 that you quoted.

The section on USAID (United States Agency for International Development), which included the mention of a “pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children and Families” was written by Max Primorac, who served in the Trump administration as Mike Pence’s envoy to Iraq and as a deputy administrator at USAID. I think it is also important to note the context that Primorac in this section was not talking about an agency that affects abortion policy in the United States but rather affects U.S. foreign aid, so the word “national” is inaccurate as it is more of an international proposal. Specifically, he was proposing to replace the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment with an Office of Women, Children and Families and to eliminate all references to gender or gender equality. 

The section that talked about abortion data collection was written by Roger Severino, who was appointed by Trump as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.

I think in order to evaluate the truth of Harris’s statement in full context, it is important to note who wrote these words and their previous ties to the Trump administration.”

Debates

This reader criticized the framing and word choice that opened a story meant to inoculate voters with context and facts before the June 27 presidential debate. 

“I would ask that your fact checkers use the same standards with both candidates, and not parse data to be favorable or less favorable to one candidate over the other.

An example in your email thread below is concerning to me:

‘When former President Donald Trump discusses the cost of chicken and eggs, he has often been accurate. But Trump is also prone to exaggerating inflation’s wallop under President Joe Biden.

Biden acknowledges inflation in his speeches, but he often says wages have outpaced inflation — which all depends on when you start.’

Your language about former President Trump is accurate, but then you use a pejorative phrase (prone to exaggerating) while using the word WALLOP, which is an aggressive term pointed at President Biden. You also used the word OFTEN, leaving open the possibility that President Trump is also wrong at times on this topic. Inflation has greatly impacted all aspects of life for voters, from the price of groceries to the affordability of housing, so any candidate running for president should be robustly questioned on the topic and be held accountable for their part in helping or hurting the inflation challenge with their policies and decisions.

You did not use pejorative language when speaking about President Biden and used an “it depends” statement to provide potential room to soften any inaccuracies that President Biden may state this evening. We have records on important topics from 4 years of former President Trump and 3.5 years of President Biden, so there is a significant amount of time for comparison.

Please do not provide nuanced analysis of one candidate that allows for acceptable or misinterpreted inaccuracies, while calling out granular inaccuracies of the other. Words matter, and voters of all parties would appreciate and desperately need parity in your fact checking this evening. Both candidates are flawed and are inaccurate at times; just asking that you call it fairly on a level playing field.”

Others found our debate breakdown helpful.

“I just finished reading ‘2024 presidential debate fact-check: How accurate were Joe Biden, Donald Trump?’ Your summary by topic was VERY helpful and helped me make sense of the debate as I was having a hard time following the topics.”

One reader saw our coverage on the front page of The Dallas Morning News and left a voicemail saying: “It’s really helpful and I think it’s evenly and fairly reported. It’s extremely helpful in getting some accurate information out to the average voter.”

Conventions 

Our coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions broadly inspired some readers to support our journalism.

“Thank you for your stellar coverage of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. It is somewhat disheartening that speakers at the conventions don’t somehow manage ahead of time to themselves fact check the data they include in their speeches. Americans want to believe that what we’re hearing is accurate and conflicting data leads to mistrust. Your coverage and deciphering of the facts versus fiction has been tremendously helpful. I am now able to ignore the many annoying memes that pop up daily that so many people are fooled into believing are true facts. Again, thank you for your unbiased reporting and coverage during this tumultuous election campaign.”

“I read your fact check on the DNC last night and just HAD to donate $20. I said that I donated because you were honest, rational, and hard working. But, I forgot to mention what is perhaps the most important accolade — you are unbiased. Ideally honest encompasses unbiased but it is not universally true. Congrats. I trust you.”

PolitiFact in new places

We’re heartened by the response we’ve had from PBS News Hour viewers who have seen our team on the show and on the ground at conventions.  

“Atta Woman! I thought you gave an excellent presentation of last night’s debate.”

“Your appearance on PBS News Hour today was excellent … and super informative. You spoke clearly and to the point. I hope voters see much more of you during this election cycle. Cheers.”

We have new partnerships with WBUR radio’s “Here & Now” and Capital B.

Some notes of encouragement

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“Thanks so much for your efforts. Unbelievable the amount of lies told and misinformation. Even more unbelievable how many fall for this nonsense. Please keep up your efforts!”

“Keep doing what you’re doing PolitiFact. No sides, no speculation, just spitting hard truths at both sides of the aisle “

A reader sent us a message using our new texting service (Sign up for PolitiFact texts here): 

“Thank you so much! I don’t always agree with you but I value your being there!!! Keep up the work you’re doing!”

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Former President Donald Trump has given Vice President Kamala Harris the nickname “Comrade Kamala”, suggesting she is a communist. But he has not called her “Kamal Aroush” or said she is a man, as social media users have claimed. 

A screenshot purporting to be from Trump’s Truth Social account and shared on Threads contains a photo of Harris and another digitally altered image of her supposedly as a man. Text superimposed over the images reads, “Kamala Harris is a man.” The post also includes a screenshot of an X post that says, “Do you know this man…? His name is “Kamal Aroush.”

(Screengrab from Instagram Threads)

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.)

An X user also shared the screenshot with the caption, “First, he alleged that Kamala Harris wasn’t Black. Now he’s trying to convince people she’s not a woman. Donald Trump is the world’s worst person.” That post has more than 71,000 views.

But the screenshot is not on Trump’s official Truth Social or X accounts. We searched Google and the Nexis news database, but did not find any credible news reports about Trump posting about Harris being a man. 

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, told PolitiFact in an email that the post is fake. 

The image has been circulating since at least October 2020, when it was posted on a conspiracy theory blog.

We rate the claim Trump posted on Truth Social that Harris used to be a man named Kamal Aroush False. 

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

A $125 million trust fund is at the center of the debate surrounding how to deal with “forever chemicals” in Wisconsin. 

The trust fund was authorized as a part of the 2023-25 state budget, and signed into law in the summer of 2024 by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. 

But what that trust fund didn’t have was guidelines on how the money could be spent – something that Republican lawmakers say requires formal legislation. Evers vetoed the Republican-authored bill meant to provide that guidance, meaning that while money in the trust fund is available, it can’t be spent yet. 

Democrats say that the Joint Finance Committee could release the funding and allow the Department of Natural Resources to spend it. 

Republicans, however, have disputed that claim. 

In a May 13, 2024 news conference, state Sen. Jesse James, R-Altoona, along with several other Republican legislators, shared their plan to vote on veto overrides for several bills, including one meant to spend the money set aside in the PFAS trust fund to help address the growing number of contaminated communities.

James said the overrides were needed because the funding couldn’t be released another way. 

“A legislative committee cannot release funding,” he said. “It takes action by the Senate or the Assembly by a veto override session to get this to the original intent and scope of the legislation. You cannot do it within a committee within the Legislature.”

So basically, James is saying that the Joint Finance Committee wouldn’t have the ability to release the funding to address PFAS, even though the governor has repeatedly asked it to. 

Is he right? 

Releasing the funding is possible, but could lead to a lawsuit

When we reached out to James, his chief of staff, Victoria Casola, told us the senator “crossed some of his words while trying to describe the situation that the Joint Committee on Finance is in.” 

“Yes, technically a legislative committee (JFC specifically) can release the funds, but a legislative committee, including JFC, cannot override a veto,” she said in a May 23, 2024 email. 

She said that while an agency can submit a request for the release of money – such as the PFAS trust fund – releasing the funds after Evers’ veto would essentially rewrite the legislation, changing the legislative intent. 

“That is outside the authority of the committee to do so,” she said. 

But JFC has released money after a veto by the governor before, after changing parts of the plan for spending the money, so this isn’t really all that unprecedented.

Evers has already vetoed the legislation meant to guide how the PFAS money is spent, meaning that if the committee were to release the funding anyways, it could cause problems. 

According to a May 28, 2024 memo from the Wisconsin Legislative Council, the committee could release the money. But by doing so, the members could be opening themselves up to legal action.

“The degree of legal risk likely depends in part on the specific purposes for which DNR proposes to use the transferred funds in a given request,” the memo said. “Because it proposes to use transferred funds to implement programs that were proposed in vetoed legislation, (the committee) approval of DNR’s February 2024 request could be especially subject to challenge.”

Basically, releasing the money to fund grants similar to the ones proposed in the vetoed legislation could be seen as creating a new program without the approval of the whole Legislature. 

But the memo also points out that the Joint Finance Committee has recently modified some requests it approved to add conditions not expressly outlined in state statutes, and “even some that could be characterized as overriding a partial veto.” 

So while the committee could open itself up to legal action, there is recent precedent in which they have released funding with new terms. 

Tyler Byrnes, a fiscal researcher for the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, said that even though the budget created a PFAS trust fund, Evers vetoed the bill outlining how the money could be spent and clarifying legislative intent. 

“Although JFC could release the money, some might argue that the DNR doesn’t have the statutory authority needed to spend it,” he said in a June 13, 2024 email. “That is a question that’s subject to debate, and we’re not in position to say who might win that argument.”

Our ruling

James claimed that a legislative committee cannot release funding, but his staff later said he misspoke, and meant that the Joint Finance Committee of the Legislature cannot release the PFAS trust fund because Gov. Evers has already vetoed it. 

Looking at that first statement, made by James, he’s wrong because the Joint Finance Committee does have the ability to release funding – and does so routinely. 

But with the PFAS funding, the committee would be releasing money without a plan to spend it. And by releasing the funding, the members could actually face legal action because doing so would counteract the veto by Evers. So this case is a bit more complicated, but there is already a legislative precedent the committee has set for itself. 

We rate this claim Mostly False, because the statement contains an element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

 

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have a rare point of agreement in their otherwise bitter and divisive contest: It’s up to the government to cut high U.S. drug prices.

Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote in 2022 for legislation that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices for its more than 60 million beneficiaries. Before that, she was an aggressive regulator of the drug industry as California attorney general.

As president, Trump would likely retain Medicare price negotiations unless the pharmaceutical industry can come up with something more compelling that they’d put on the table, people close to him say. In his first term, he proposed various policies aimed at reducing prescription costs but had limited success with their implementation.

The drug industry could benefit, though, if Trump remains unable to advance such proposals.

“His efforts were largely fragmented and faced resistance from both the industry and lawmakers,” said Sergio Jose Gutierrez, a political strategist who has primarily worked with Democrats in the U.S. “The lack of a cohesive strategy and the limited ability to implement significant changes made his approach less effective compared to what a Harris-Walz administration could offer.”

The industry is increasingly under attack by lawmakers from both parties for drug prices most Americans regard as unreasonable, according to KFF polling, so the election outcome could be pivotal to drug companies’ fortunes. Their predicament is a sharp reversal from years past, when the companies enjoyed a reputation as being almost untouchable. For more than a decade, manufacturers successfully fended off proposals to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices before losing the battle two years ago.

The shift in their political standing shows up in pharmaceutical companies’ contributions to candidates. An industry that gave three or four times as much to GOP candidates as to Democrats in the 1990s and early 2000s is now hedging its bets. So far in the 2024 cycle, drug companies have given $4.89 million to Democrats and $4.35 million to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research group.

Harris has received $518,571 from the industry and Trump has received $204,748.

As California’s attorney general, she joined cases that resulted in nearly $7.2 billion (about $22 per person in the U.S.) in fines for drug companies.

Her vote to pass President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act paved the way not only for Medicare price negotiation but also an annual $2,000 cap on Medicare beneficiaries’ total drug spending and a $35 cap on their monthly insulin supplies.

“In the United States of America, no senior should have to choose between either filling their prescription or paying their rent,” Harris said Aug. 15 in her first joint appearance with Biden since he exited the presidential race.

She has promised to extend both the annual drug spending cap and the insulin price cap to all Americans with insurance, not just those on Medicare, if elected president.

Harris also backed a contentious policy that, in some instances, would empower the federal government to inject more competition into the marketplace by seizing the patents on some high-cost drugs developed with federal funds.

Doug Hart, 77, of Tempe, Arizona, has been spending about $7,000 annually on prescription drugs. A drug he takes to prevent blood clots will cost less under the Medicare price negotiations. The retired labor union president said the decrease will be considerable and it is one reason he backs Harris.

“The Republicans all voted against Medicare negotiation. Harris broke the tie in the Senate to allow it,” said Hart, who is a board member for the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans, which works to mobilize returned union members and activists on progressive issues.

Although Republicans as a party remain more friendly to the pharmaceutical industry, Trump has been willing to challenge GOP orthodoxy by taking action to combat high drug costs.

He sought during his administration to tie drug prices in Medicare to lower international prices, a proposal that the PricewaterhouseCoopers health research institute estimated would cost five drugmakers as much as $500 million a year. What was known as the “most favored nation” interim final rule was blocked because of legal challenges and later rescinded by the Biden administration.

Trump issued a rule setting up a path to import drugs from Canada and other countries. Florida this year became the first state to get federal approval to import some prescriptions from Canada. But the state has been stymied by pushback from Health Canada, the Canadian government department responsible for national health policy.

And on his campaign website, Trump posted a video in which he questioned whether childhood health problems are the result of “overprescription” of medications.

“Too often, our public health establishment is too close to Big Pharma — they make a lot of money, Big Pharma — big corporations, and other special interests, and does not want to ask the tough questions about what is happening to our children’s health,” he said. “If Big Pharma defrauds American patients and taxpayers or puts profits above people, they must be investigated and held accountable.”

Trump hasn’t said much about drug prices in his 2024 campaign, but allies and former advisers say he remains committed to knocking down prescription prices if reelected.

He would likely focus on increasing generic and biosimilar competition, importing drugs made in the U.S. but sold overseas back to the U.S., and capping out-of-pocket insulin costs, according to former Trump administration officials. Other goals may be lowering prices for drugs in the Medicare 340B program, which requires drugmakers to provide outpatient drugs at reduced prices to eligible health organizations that serve lower-income and uninsured patients.

“The No. 1 issue he cared about while I was in the White House, and I continue to hear him talk about, is lowering drug prices,” said Theo Merkel, a senior research fellow at conservative think tanks Paragon Health Institute and the Manhattan Institute. Merkel was also a special assistant in the Trump White House. “I’m confident that will be at the top of the agenda,” he added.

Catherine Hill, a spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, said the industry trade group looks forward to collaborating with any future presidential administration.

She criticized the Biden administration’s plan for Medicare price negotiation and Trump’s plan to align U.S. prices with those in foreign countries. This month, the administration announced new, reduced prices for 10 drugs in the program following negotiations between the federal government and drugmakers. The lower costs take effect in 2026.

“Previous price controls adopted by the Biden administration threaten to stifle that innovation,” Hill said. “Undermining intellectual property protections and borrowing other countries’ price controls will further undercut innovation and threaten patients’ access to medicine.”

This article was republished from KFF Health News.