Category: Fact Check

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

Vice President JD Vance has said White House adviser Elon Musk has made “mistakes” in his work with the Department of Government Efficiency. But social media posts are sharing what experts said is a manipulated audio clip that purports to be Vance making much harsher remarks about Musk. The vice president’s spokesperson called the clip “100% fake.”

---

Full Story

In an interview with NBC News aboard Air Force Two on March 14, Vice President JD Vance said that White House adviser Elon Musk has made “mistakes” in his role with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has been tasked with reducing the federal workforce and government spending.

“Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake. I’m accepting of mistakes,” Vance told NBC News. “I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes,” the vice president said.

More recently, viral social media posts have shared a purportedly “leaked” audio clip of Vance expressing much harsher criticism of Musk and his work with DOGE. Experts told us the clip is “likely inauthentic,” and Vance’s spokesperson said it is “100% fake.”

A March 23 Instagram reel that has received nearly 87,000 likes is titled, “LEAKED JD VANCE AUDIO ON ELON MUSK 3/23/25,” and shows side-by-side photos of Musk and Vance. The voice on the reel, which sounds somewhat like Vance, says, in part: “Everything that he’s doing is being criticized in the media. And he says that he’s helping, and he’s not. He’s making us look bad. He’s making me look bad. … He has the audacity to act like he is an elected official. I am an elected official. I am the important one in this situation, not him.”

The social media posts do not provide the source of the recording — a sign that the content of the posts is not authentic.

Newsweek reported that the bogus audio clip appeared to originate from the account Joseiitalia on TikTok, where it received 1.5 million views, and was shared to X where it received more than 500,000 views.

‘A Growing Trend of Fabricated Leaks’

We asked GetReal Labs, a company that analyzes manufactured content, whether it could determine the authenticity of the recording. Emmanuelle Saliba, chief investigative officer at GetReal, told us in a March 24 email, “Our team conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the audio. We tracked down the highest-quality version available, isolated the voice and removed background noise. Based on our review,  we believe the audio is likely inauthentic. 

“The cadence and intonation are not consistent with Vice President Vance’s typical speech patterns. In addition, although we have not performed a full biometric analysis, the identity of the voice in the audio does not sound like Vance,” Saliba said. “The unusually low audio quality — a common trick to conceal evidence of manipulation/synthesis — is also highly suspicious.”

Responding to the social media posts, the vice president’s spokesperson, William Martin, said in a March 23 post on X, “This audio is 100% fake and most certainly not the Vice President.”

Saliba told us, “Audio deepfakes are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and there’s a growing trend of fabricated leaks targeting high-profile politicians and journalists,” including Donald Trump Jr. and James Waterhouse of the BBC. “In both cases, the manipulated audio was traced back to Russian Telegram channels,” she said. 

We recently wrote about social media posts sharing a fake audio clip of Trump Jr. generated using artificial intelligence.

---

Sources

Gomez, Henry J. “Vance discusses Elon Musk’s ‘mistakes’ and ‘incremental progress’ on the economy in NBC News interview.” 14 Mar 2025.

Jaffe, Alan. “Posts Share Bogus Audio of Donald Trump Jr. Supporting Arms for Russia, Not Ukraine.” FactCheck.org. 27 Feb 2025.

McFall, Marnie Rose. “Is ‘Leaked’ JD Vance Audio on Elon Musk Real? What to Know.” Newsweek. 24 Mar 2025.

Saliba, Emmanuelle. Chief investigative officer, GetReal Labs. Email to FactCheck.org. 24 Mar 2025.

Tuquero, Loreben. “Audio of a BBC reporter making a snide comment about the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting is fake.” Poynter. 13 Mar 2025.

Source: FactCheck

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made several unsupported or misleading claims about the measles vaccine, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said is safe and “the most important tool to prevent” the disease. Meanwhile, a measles outbreak in Texas continues to expand. 

• Kennedy said that the “vaccine wanes about 4.5% per year.” Although antibody levels can fall, there’s no evidence that overall vaccine protection declines that quickly. It would mean thousands of vaccinated people should have contracted measles in the latest outbreak.

• The health secretary made the unsupported claim that the measles vaccine leads to “deaths every year” and misleadingly said it causes “all the illnesses” of the disease. The vaccine can cause some similar symptoms but is much safer than getting measles. 

• Kennedy misleadingly said the measles vaccine “does not appear to provide maternal immunity.” Evidence suggests that vaccinated mothers pass fewer protective antibodies on to their babies than previously infected moms, but in both cases this protection wanes before the infant’s first year. The best way to ensure babies don’t contract measles is to vaccinate everyone around them.

The measles vaccine, which is part of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine, is highly effective, according to the CDC. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles, likely for life — and even one dose is 93% effective. As with any medical product, the MMR vaccine is not 100% safe. But the vast majority of people experience no or only mild and temporary side effects, and getting the vaccine is much safer than getting measles. As we’ve recently reported, measles is an extremely contagious viral disease, which can be deadly or cause long-term health issues.

During the interview, which was held at a fast-food restaurant chain and aired on March 11, Kennedy continued to downplay the seriousness of a measles outbreak that is expanding, although he did say the vaccine stops “the spread of the disease” and said the government should “encourage” but not “force” vaccination. There are now more than 300 cases.

MMR Vaccine Waning

Minimizing the current outbreak, Kennedy emphasized that measles outbreaks happen every year — incorrectly adding that there are sometimes “hundreds” of them — and he placed partial blame on the MMR vaccine.

“Part of that is that there are people who don’t vaccinate, but also the vaccine itself wanes,” he said, of why there are outbreaks every year. “The vaccine wanes about 4.5% per year. So that means older people are essentially unvaccinated. They aren’t — their immune system is not protected.”

That’s wrong. The measles vaccine offers strong and long-lasting protection against the virus. Although some studies show that the concentration of measles antibodies in vaccinated people decreases over time, overall vaccine immunity is not waning that quickly. If it were, far more vaccinated people would get measles.

Furthermore, older vaccinated people aren’t the ones contracting measles. Most people 65 years and older had measles as children and also lived during a time when they would have had measles exposures afterward. This means their measles immunity is likely quite robust.

Outbreaks primarily occur because not enough people are vaccinated. Rarely, vaccinated people can develop infections, but they typically do not get as sick and are not driving spread of the disease. A 2024 systematic review found that only about 10% of vaccinated people who get infected because of waning immunity passed the virus on to anyone at all — a “remarkably low” rate that cannot sustain an outbreak.

As of March 20, 95% of the measles infections so far this year are among people who are either unvaccinated or with an unknown vaccination status, according to the CDC. In Texas, where an outbreak began in January and is thought to have spread to neighboring states, out of the 309 cases identified, only two are vaccinated people, as of March 21. In New Mexico, only four of the 42 cases are in vaccinated people. There are four probable cases in Oklahoma, all of them in unvaccinated people. Most of the infections, according to CDC data, have been in people 19 years old or younger.

“In Texas and a growing number of states across the country, declining vaccination rates are fueling a staggering increase in measles illnesses, measles hospitalizations, and the first death from the disease in years— all primarily among unvaccinated populations,” Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement on March 5. A day later, New Mexico reported that an unvaccinated adult who died also tested positive for measles.

It is not entirely clear what Kennedy meant when he said that “the vaccine wanes” about 4.5% per year, or what his source is for such a statement. We reached out to HHS to ask for support for his claim, but we didn’t hear back.

Dr. Michael Mina, an infectious disease expert who previously was a professor at Harvard School of Public Health, told us that if Kennedy was referring to clinical protection provided by the vaccine, that would be “just wrong.”

“If we had 4.5% waning, then, you know, everyone who is an adult would be susceptible” to measles, he said, since at that rate it would take only about 22 years to reach zero protection — and there would be thousands of measles cases in vaccinated people in the latest outbreak alone. “And that’s just not what we see.” (The first of two doses is given at 12 to 15 months.)

A number of studies show that the concentration of measles antibodies does begin to drop as more time elapses after vaccination, including a study in Slovakia that reported an average annual decline in measles antibodies of 4.8% in people 10 to 33 years old after a second dose.

But it’s not necessarily clear what antibody level is protective, and circulating antibodies aren’t the only way the immune system protects against the disease.

There are long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow, Mina said, which serve as a kind of “cushion of protection.” Although total antibody levels may decline over time, the smaller amount of antibodies produced by these cells can last decades, and may on its own provide sufficient protection. Calculations based on total antibody level declines, then, may overestimate when a person would become susceptible to measles infection due to antibody waning.

In addition, unlike the coronavirus, Mina said, the measles virus infects much more slowly, traveling through lymph nodes, which are full of immune cells. If the measles virus “bumps up against even a few anti-measles” cells, he said, “those cells will rapidly expand and defeat the virus.” As a result, measles immunity may still be very strong even in a person whose measles antibodies have fallen substantially.

Other studies, using modeling or case data that reflect what happens during outbreaks, have found that vaccine protection against measles does wane, but is much slower and less significant than Kennedy claimed.  

A 2024 study in England, for example, used a mathematical model to reproduce the way that measles spread in England between 2010 and 2019, using scenarios that did or didn’t include waning. Waning was needed to explain the number of cases in vaccinated people, but it was very slow — about 0.04% per year.

“So the protection remains around 99% 20 years after vaccination,” Alexis Robert, a mathematical modeler in infectious disease dynamics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the corresponding author of the study, told us in an email. 

A 2023 study in France similarly concluded protection from the vaccine waned 0.22% per year, while a study in Germany found that “only a small percentage (maximum 1%) of cases could be ascribed to waning immunity.”

Robert noted that the Slovak study’s 4.8% per year of antibody waning could be misleading, as the authors also estimated that at around 30 years of age, only about 10% of people vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine would have antibody levels below the threshold of protection — “a far better” level of protection than what the 4.8% number might suggest.

Indeed, Robert said that although there are differences in the various studies, “all converge towards a very high and long-lasting immunity brought by measles vaccines,” especially after two doses. “The vast majority of adults who received two doses of vaccine in their childhood will therefore have protection against measles infection,” he said.

Waning of vaccine protection may become a larger issue in the future. This is because as widespread vaccination has eliminated measles, people have not had as many subsequent exposures to the disease that can boost immunity. 

In fact, although it is often stated that measles infection provides more durable immunity than vaccination — a claim Kennedy repeated to Hannity — Mina said it isn’t clear that’s necessarily true. It could be that the regular measles exposures that have occurred while measles continued to circulate is what makes natural immunity appear longer-lasting, not the infection itself.

Many people born in the 1980s and ‘90s have only been vaccinated and have not been exposed to measles, since they grew up in an era with few measles infections. For this reason, it’s possible that when today’s 30- and 40-year-olds are 50 or so, their measles immunity will be low enough that it would be a good idea to recommend a measles booster, Mina said. But right now, there simply aren’t “big measles outbreaks happening amongst 40-year-olds who are vaccinated.”

No Evidence the MMR Vaccine Causes Deaths ‘Every Year’

In addition to being highly effective, the MMR vaccine is also very safe. According to the CDC, although mild side effects are expected with any vaccine, most people who receive an “MMR vaccine do not have any serious problems with it.”

“Getting MMR vaccine is much safer than getting measles, mumps, or rubella,” the agency adds. 

Speaking of informed choice and emphasizing that no one should be forced to take a vaccine, Kennedy told Hannity, “There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes — it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, etcetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information, encourage them to vaccinate.”

There isn’t evidence that the measles vaccine causes “deaths every year.”

“There have been no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people,” the Infectious Diseases Society of America website says. “There have been rare cases of deaths from vaccine side effects among children who are immune compromised, which is why it is recommended that they don’t get the vaccine.”

According to a 2015 article by the CDC that reviewed historical information and epidemiological data on deaths following vaccination starting in the early 1990s, there were at least six case reports of deaths linked to the MMR vaccine in severely immunocompromised people. The CDC does not recommend the vaccine for people who are immunocompromised, have a history of life-threatening allergies, are pregnant, or have had other health complications such as bruising or bleeding easily.

The study was prompted by online claims about deaths from the vaccine that misused the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. As we’ve explained numerous times, VAERS encourages reports of any health event that occurs after vaccination. But VAERS reports aren’t vetted for accuracy and don’t mean that a vaccine caused a particular problem. The system is commonly exploited by people who want to mislead others about vaccine safety.  

“A review of the VAERS data reveals that many of the death reports for MMR vaccine involved children with serious preexisting medical conditions or were likely unrelated to vaccination (e.g., accidents),” the study said. “These complete VAERS reports and any accompanying medical records, autopsy reports and death certificates have been reviewed in depth by FDA and CDC physicians and no concerning patterns have emerged that would suggest a causal relationship with the MMR vaccine and death.”

Misleading Claim on Side Effects

As for Kennedy’s claim that the vaccine “causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes,” that’s misleading. Because the MMR vaccine uses a weakened but live measles virus, sometimes the vaccine can cause a mild rash or fever. But the virus is attenuated and does not pose the same risk of complications caused by the wild virus and a natural infection.

Research also shows that measles infections have short- and longer-term effects on the immune system that can make people susceptible to other infections for several years after recovery — an effect that does not occur with vaccination.

As we’ve explained, even a mild case of measles makes patients feel miserable. According to the CDC, children with measles commonly develop ear infections or have diarrhea; as many as 1 in 20 develop pneumonia and 1 in 5 unvaccinated patients are hospitalized. For every 1,000 children who catch measles, 1 will develop encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, which can cause permanent disability, and around 1 to 3 will die.

In contrast, as the CDC explains, the most common side effects of the measles vaccine are pain at the injection site, fever, a mild rash, and swollen glands in the cheeks or neck. Other less common side effects include a temporary disorder that affects the body’s ability to stop bleeding, known as immune thrombocytopenic purpura. It’s not life-threatening and occurs less often than with a measles infection.

Rarely, the vaccine can cause febrile seizures, with approximately 1 case in 3,000 to 4,000 doses, but they are not associated with long-term effects. Serious allergic reactions to the vaccine occur “extremely rarely,” the CDC says.

There have been three reported cases of measles inclusion body encephalitis, a serious brain swelling caused by measles in people with a weakened immune system, in vaccinated people, according to the CDC. In one of the three cases, “the measles vaccine strain was identified as the cause.”

A Cochrane review published in 2021 concluded there’s no evidence of an association between MMR vaccines and encephalitis. The risk of febrile seizure and ITP are “very small,” it said.

While there are a few case reports of an eye condition called optic neuritis following a measles vaccine, it is very rare and doesn’t cause blindness. As a 2016 case report notes, in the previous 30 years, there had only been six case reports of the condition following measles vaccination.

“It should be stressed that this is a temporary clinical situation, which resolves after administration of a high dose of corticosteroid in the initial phase of the therapy,” the report reads.

In contrast, measles infection is a leading cause of blindness in children, and the disease can harm people’s eyes and vision in several ways, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Maternal Immunity 

As part of his lengthy criticism of the MMR vaccine, Kennedy also discussed maternal immunity, or the transfer of protective antibodies to a baby through the placenta or breast milk.

“One of the problems is it does not appear to provide maternal immunity,” he told Hannity, referring to the MMR vaccine. “You don’t want a very — 1-year-old kid getting measles. That’s very dangerous. They were protected by breast milk, and by maternal immunity. And women who get vaccinated do not provide that level of maternal immunity that the natural measles infection did.”

Studies have found that previously infected mothers tend to transfer more antibodies and protect their infants longer than vaccinated mothers. That’s because their antibody levels are usually higher, which could be due to living in an area where measles is endemic, which periodically boosts immunity. But that doesn’t mean that vaccinated mothers offer no protection, nor does it mean that it would be better for infants to get immunity from infected mothers, as that would require measles virus to be circulating.

While the protection from a vaccinated mother’s antibodies “may not be quite as long lasting as from mothers who have been infected,” Robert said, “infants in vaccinated populations are protected by the high levels of vaccination around them.”

“The best way to avoid infants being exposed to measles is to maintain low to no circulation of measles, which is achieved with high vaccine coverage,” he added.

Dr. Natasha S. Crowcroft, a senior technical adviser for measles and rubella for the World Health Organization and a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied measles maternal immunity, echoed that advice, noting that “any infant” can get measles when exposed and suffer “devastating complications,” including a fatal progressive brain disorder. “The best way to protect infants too young to be vaccinated is by everyone else being vaccinated against measles,” she told us in an email.

In the U.S., the recommendation is for babies to receive their first MMR shot between 12 and 15 months of age and a second shot between ages 4 to 6. Doses are not typically given before 1 year because maternal antibodies can prevent younger babies from responding fully to the vaccine. But during an outbreak or for international travel, babies should get an extra, early dose starting at 6 months of age (a second dose can also be given earlier to children older than 12 months).

Crowcroft said that breastfeeding can transfer some antibodies, but the amount is “much smaller” than the transfer through the placenta that occurs before or during birth.

“The antibody levels for the infant fall over time regardless of breastfeeding, and they fall below what we consider to be protective levels a little earlier in infants born to vaccinated mothers compared with infants born to mothers who previously survived measles,” she said.

A measles infection during pregnancy is associated with increased risk for the mother and the fetus, including miscarriage and stillbirth, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Legal experts say there is nothing to President Donald Trump’s claims that several of former President Joe Biden’s pardons are “VOID” because they were signed via autopen.

White House lawyers during the George W. Bush administration said the use of an autopen is perfectly legal, and constitutional scholars say that nothing in the Constitution even requires pardons to be signed anyway. And, they note, pardons cannot simply be overturned by a subsequent president.

Trump is correct that pardons would be invalid if, in fact, as he has claimed, any pardons were signed by a staffer without Biden’s knowledge or consent. But Trump has offered no evidence of that.

Trump has repeatedly invoked the autopen issue in the last several days. As NPR explains, autopen is “a generic name for a machine that duplicates signatures using real ink, making it easy for public figures to autograph everything from correspondence to merchandise in bulk. They are printer-sized machines with an arm that can hold a standard pen or pencil, and use it to replicate the programmed signature on a piece of paper below.” Trump acknowledged that he himself uses an autopen, but “only for very unimportant papers.”

In a post to Truth Social on March 17, Trump claimed that some pardons issued by Biden were “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen.” He specifically put members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol on notice that “they are subject to investigation at the highest level.”

Biden’s Late-Term Pardons

On Jan. 19, a day before he left office, Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons for members of Congress who served on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, staff of the committee and law enforcement officials who provided testimony to the committee. (Preemptive pardons are extended to people who have not been formally charged with a crime and are meant to shield them from potential prosecution.) That day, Biden also preemptively pardoned Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and several of Biden’s family members.

Biden has used an autopen in the past, albeit rarely, according to a 2024 CNN story that said staffers flew legislation to South Korea and St. Croix to ensure Biden could personally sign the bills. We could not independently confirm whether the pardons in question were signed via autopen.

Trump has said that members of the Jan. 6 committee — including Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee, and then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republicans on the committee — illegally “destroyed evidence and deleted everything” and “they should be punished.” (As we have written, claims that the committee destroyed “all the evidence” are wrong.)

But legal scholars say there are several problems with Trump’s claim that using an autopen would nullify these pardons. For starters, they say, presidents don’t need to sign pardons for them to be official.

Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.” It makes no mention of needing a signature to issue pardons, which stands in contrast to the Constitution’s requirement that a president sign a bill in order to make it a law.

“Nothing in the Constitution requires the president to sign pardons by hand,” Jeffrey Crouch, a professor at American University and author of the book “The Presidential Pardon Power,” told us via email.

A 2024 ruling in a case before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. On the question of whether a signature is required for a president to exercise clemency, the court said, “The answer is undoubtedly no. The plain language of the Constitution imposes no such limit, broadly providing that the President ‘shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.’ … The constitutional text is thus silent as to any particular form the President’s clemency act must take to be effective.”

Moreover, Crouch said, “The practice of using an autopen to sign presidential pardons seems perfectly legitimate.”

Indeed, other presidents have used an autopen. Former President Barack Obama was believed to be the first to use it to sign legislation in 2011 when, while in France, he used an autopen to extend the Patriot Act. Then-Rep. Tom Graves, a Republican, wrote Obama a letter asking him to confirm that the bill was “presented” to him “prior to the autopen signing.” We couldn’t find that the White House responded.

A White House Legal Opinion

Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, told us that the White House Office of Legal Counsel “has opined, based on the original understanding of ‘sign,’ that the president can delegate the act of signing. So autopens are fine.”

In 2005, the White House Office of Legal Counsel, at the request of then-President George W. Bush, looked into the issue. After a review of the Constitution and other legal opinions, it concluded “that the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.”

“We emphasize that we are not suggesting that the President may delegate the decision to approve and sign a bill, only that, having made this decision, he may direct a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to the bill,” Howard C. Nielson Jr., deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in the legal opinion.

And that gets to the second issue Trump raised: whether Biden was aware of or had instructed a subordinate to approve the pardons.

In a press conference on March 17, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The president was begging the question that I think a lot of journalists in this room should be asking about whether or not the former president of the United States who I think we can all finally agree was cognitively impaired. … But the president was raising the point that did the president [Biden] even know about these pardons? Was his legal signature used without his consent or knowledge? … So I think it’s a question that everybody in this room should be looking into because certainly that would propose perhaps criminal or illegal behavior if staff members were signing the president of the United States’ autograph without his consent.”

In interviews after his Truth Social post, Trump argued that Biden was “grossly incompetent” and that pardons he signed in his final days in office were “null and void because I’m sure Biden didn’t have any idea that it was taking place.” He acknowledged that ultimately, whether the pardons are illegitimate is “not my decision. That’ll be up to court.”

However, neither Trump nor Leavitt has offered any evidence that Biden did not know about or approve the pardons.

“The president can’t delegate the decision of whether to sign, or whether to grant a pardon,” Roosevelt said. “A pardon granted without the president’s knowledge is invalid. But there’s no reason to think that’s what happened here—Biden spoke publicly about the pardons.”

Biden’s Public Comments

While we could not find that Biden spoke publicly about the Jan. 19 pardons after they were issued, he did share publicly, in the days preceding the pardons, that he was considering them.

In an interview on Jan. 5, for example, USA Today’s Susan Page asked Biden, “Some of your supporters have encouraged you to issue preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci, who Trump has threatened to target. Will you do that?”

“Well, a little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions,” Biden said. He said that in a post-election conversation with Trump, “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores.” But Biden said Trump did not commit to that.

And during remarks on Jan. 10, a reporter asked what pardons Biden was considering in his last 10 days in office.

“One is that it depends on some of the language and expectations that Trump broadcasts in the last couple of days here as to what he’s going to do,” Biden said. “The idea that he would punish people for not adhering to what he thinks should be policy as related to his well-being is outrageous, but there is still consideration of some folks, but no decision.”

Those comments are consistent with a Biden statement released by the White House on Jan. 20 explaining some of his 11th-hour pardons.

“Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy,” Biden stated. “Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.

“In certain cases, some have even been threatened with criminal prosecutions, including General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and the members and staff of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” Biden said. “These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”

Members of the Jan. 6 committee acted with “integrity and a commitment to discovering the truth,” Biden said. “Rather than accept accountability, those who perpetrated the January 6th attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6th for partisan gain, and seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions.”

“Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances,” Biden stated, explaining that this was his reason for issuing the preemptive pardons. “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”

Trump can’t simply revoke pardons issued by Biden, experts told us.

“A completed pardon is not able to be revoked,” Crouch said. “If it was, then any sitting president could try to revoke pardons granted by their predecessors. A president who can undo the clemency decisions of their predecessors would weaken the clemency power for every president.”

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

In 2017, President Donald Trump expressed admiration for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drug suspects. But social media posts have falsely claimed that Trump has ordered Duterte’s release from the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity. We could find no response from Trump regarding Duterte’s arrest.

---

Full Story

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by police in Manila on March 11 and was flown to The Hague, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

A March 12 ICC press release said the court “found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Duterte is individually responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crime against humanity of murder, allegedly committed in the Philippines” between November 2011 and March 2019.  

ICC judges “found that there was an attack directed against a civilian population pursuant to an organisational policy while Mr Duterte was the head of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), and pursuant to a State policy while he was the President of the Philippines. Moreover, there are reasonable grounds to believe that this attack was both widespread and systematic: the alleged attack took place over a period of several years and resulted in thousands of deaths,” the press release said.

The ICC charges refer to Duterte’s anti-drug war during his years as mayor of Davao and as Philippine president, when more than 6,000 suspects were killed without trial by Duterte’s police during anti-drug operations.

Duterte has said he did not authorize extrajudicial killings, but he “openly threatened drug suspects with death and ordered law enforcers to shoot suspects, who threaten them with harm,” the Associated Press reported in a 2022 article.

Duterte’s war on drugs drew the admiration of Donald Trump during his first term as president. The New York Times reported that Trump told Duterte in a 2017 phone call, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that,” Trump said.

But since Duterte’s extradition to the Netherlands by the ICC, social media posts have fabricated claims about Trump’s response to Duterte’s arrest.

A March 13 Facebook post falsely claimed, in part, “President Donald Trump has reportedly signed an executive order demanding the immediate release of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte from the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Sources close to the White House claim that Trump, calling Duterte ‘a great friend and a tough guy,’ acted swiftly after Duterte’s arrest.”

The post went on to wrongly claim there was an “Executive Order 2025-03: Restoration of Justice for Allied Leaders,” saying that it “declares that the ICC has ‘no right to meddle in the affairs of strong leaders doing their jobs.’ The document allegedly mandates that U.S. forces stationed in Europe ‘extract and return’ Duterte to the Philippines within 48 hours, threatening economic sanctions against the Netherlands if the ICC fails to comply.”

Another Facebook post — which includes an image of Trump with Duterte generated with artificial intelligence — refers to the same fictional executive order and claims it calls for the deployment of “a specialized unit of U.S. Navy SEALs” to the Netherlands to extract Duterte “with all necessary equipment, firepower, and authority to get the job done.”

But there is no record of any such executive order or presidential action by Trump related to Duterte’s arrest. One red flag in these posts is the number of the supposed EO: “2025-03.” That’s not how executive orders are numbered. The Federal Register publishes all executive orders, and they are easily searchable through the American Presidency Project’s website. 

In addition, we could not find any reports of Trump issuing a statement in response to the ICC arrest of the former Philippine president. We reached out to the White House for comment on the social media claims but did not receive a response.

The Philippines-based fact-checking website Vera Files debunked similar social media claims that were misleadingly presented as if they were from a BBC News report. Vera Files said, “There are no verified records of Trump or any other official U.S. government agency” expressing support for Duterte following his arrest.

---

Sources

Gomez, Jim. “Drug killings leave agony, savage facet to Duterte’s legacy.” Associated Press. 29 Jun 2022.

Gomez, Jim. “Philippine ex-leader Duterte is being flown to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.” Associated Press. 11 Mar 2025.

Guinto, Joel. “Philippines’ Duterte in The Hague after ICC arrest over drug war.” BBC. 12 Mar 2025.

International Criminal Court. Press release. “Situation in the Philippines: Rodrigo Roa Duterte in ICC custody.” 12 Mar 2025.

Reuters. “What happened in Philippine drug war that led to Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest?” 11 Mar 2025.

Sanger, David E. and Maggie Haberman. “Trump Praises Duterte for Philippine Drug Crackdown in Call Transcript.” New York Times. 23 May 2017.

Vera Files. “FACT CHECK: Trump statement on Duterte arrest FAKE.” 18 Mar 2025.

White House. Presidential Actions. whitehouse.gov. Accessed 19 Mar 2025.

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Following the release of the latest jobs report on March 7, President Donald Trump suggested that his administration — which has been in office since Jan. 20 — is responsible for significant job growth. The growth in February was steady, but to support his claims, Trump made several misleading statements about the economy he inherited.

The February jobs report delivered on expectations, saying that the economy added 151,000 jobs — slightly below the forecasted 160,000. The unemployment rate was 4.1%, up marginally from 4% in January.

Economists described the report as showing a generally steady labor market for now, with Brookings Institution fellow and University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers calling the report “splendidly dull.”

We’ll unpack three of the claims Trump made on March 7 during his remarks from the Oval Office about the report.

• The president compared the 9,000 new auto manufacturing jobs in February to a loss of more than 27,000 jobs in President Joe Biden’s last year — ignoring that there was a net gain of those jobs over Biden’s entire term. He also suggested that his tariff policy was responsible for the new jobs, but Trump’s tariffs had not yet been enacted in the period covered by the jobs report.

• He claimed to be “presiding over a brand-new domestic manufacturing boom after major collapse under Biden,” but an expert told us he’s been in office for too short of a time to have effected any major economic change. And the data show there was a net gain in manufacturing jobs during Biden’s administration.

• Trump cherry-picked data to misleadingly claim that “1 in every 4 jobs created in America was a government job” in Biden’s last two years as president, while “93% of all job gains” during the first full month of Trump’s second term “were in the private sector.” During Biden’s entire presidency, about 11% of the jobs added were government jobs, the vast majority of which were state and local government jobs.

Auto Manufacturing Jobs

Trump highlighted gains in auto manufacturing jobs, saying, “in a single month, 9,000 new auto jobs. You haven’t heard that in a long time. After autoworkers lost more than 27,000 auto jobs in the final year of Biden.”

Trump’s figures are correct, but over Biden’s entire term, auto manufacturing jobs went up.

While there hasn’t been monthly job growth since July, over Biden’s term, motor vehicle and parts jobs went up by 47,000. Employment in January was 9,900 higher than the pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

And while Trump claimed that before the February increase, there hadn’t been such a large one-month jump “in a long time,” there were larger one-month increases under Biden. The February jobs report showed an increase since January of 8,900 jobs in the manufacturing of motor vehicles and parts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was an increase of 28,400 jobs in that sector between October and November 2023.

!function(e,n,i,s){var d=”InfogramEmbeds”;var o=e.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];if(window[d]&&window[d].initialized)window[d].process&&window[d].process();else if(!e.getElementById(i)){var r=e.createElement(n);r.async=1,r.id=i,r.src=s,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,”script”,”infogram-async”,”

Also, just because the one-month increase happened while Trump is in office doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s responsible for it, Alan Tonelson, a longtime analyst of U.S. manufacturing policy who blogs at RealityChek, told us in a phone interview.

The kinds of decisions that result in jobs are long-term decisions, Tonelson said, using the example of new factories, which take time to build.

Trump, though, claimed that his tariff policies had already affected the February job numbers. He said the reason for the one-month gain was “largely” because car companies “think things are happening, so they’re already geared up. In some cases, they had rooms in their plants, or they had empty plants that they were able to put into use quickly because they see — because of the tariffs. They don’t want to be dealing with other places,” he said, mentioning Mexico and Canada.

When we asked the White House about the president’s claim, it provided examples of auto companies making announcements about new plants or production. But most of the plans began before Trump took office, and it’s unclear if any of them led to new jobs in February.

The White House pointed to production at a Georgia Hyundai plant. Construction of the vehicle and battery manufacturing plant was announced in 2022, and it began producing electric cars in October. However, the CEO, José Muñoz, has pointed to Hyundai’s investment in U.S. production over the last few years as insulation from potential tariffs from the Trump administration.

The White House also pointed to two announcements of plants opening — for electric batteries and electric vehicles — but the projects were in the works well before Trump’s election.

It also cited a $1.5 million Michigan Economic Development Program grant that is anticipated to create 144 jobs manufacturing hydrogen fuel cells and plans for a Chicago-area assembly plant to reopen in 2027. Plans to reopen the assembly plant were announced shortly after the company’s chairman met with Trump and months after a pressure campaign from the United Auto Workers. But neither of those projects has produced jobs yet.

And the White House pointed to the same March 3 Reuters story that the president appeared to reference in his address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, when he said that Honda had announced it would build a new plant in Indiana. But after that address, Honda told a news station in Indianapolis: “Honda has made no such announcement and will not comment on this report. The Honda Civic has been made in our Indiana Auto Plant since the facility opened in 2008 based on our longstanding approach to build products close to the customer. We have the flexibility to produce products in each region based on customer needs and market conditions.”

So, it’s unclear if Honda is planning to change its Indiana operations due to tariffs, but no jobs associated with any potential change would have been included in the February report, either.

It remains to be seen what impact Trump’s tariff policies might have on the auto industry. So far, 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel imports went into effect on March 12, with the EU and Canada immediately implementing retaliatory tariffs. Broad 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, including on vehicles, are largely on hold until April 2.

Some industry watchers have been skeptical of the benefits from tariffs for the auto industry. “Ultimately, in a global automotive business that relies on a large and complicated supply chain, higher tariffs will only challenge further an industry already wrestling with high costs and small margins,” Cox Automotive wrote in an early February analysis.

Manufacturing Jobs

The president also said, “Our administration is presiding over a brand-new domestic manufacturing boom after major collapse under Biden.”

But the data don’t support that claim.

Trump said, “During the last year, the Biden administration saw a loss of more than 110,000 manufacturing jobs. … During the first full month in office, we’ve not only stopped that manufacturing collapse, but we’ve begun to rapidly reverse it and get major gains. We created 10,000 manufacturing jobs in February alone. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”

There was a 20,000 gain in manufacturing jobs in November, so it has only been a few months since there has been such a one-month increase.

Trump is correct about the net loss over Biden’s last year — it was 111,000 — but again, over Biden’s four years, manufacturing jobs went up by 610,000. In January, there were almost 12.8 million manufacturing jobs, 12,000 more than in February 2020, before the pandemic.

!function(e,n,i,s){var d=”InfogramEmbeds”;var o=e.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];if(window[d]&&window[d].initialized)window[d].process&&window[d].process();else if(!e.getElementById(i)){var r=e.createElement(n);r.async=1,r.id=i,r.src=s,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,”script”,”infogram-async”,”

Factory construction also reached the highest level in more than 50 years in 2024, according to a report from Moody’s Analytics.

Forbes wrote last year that Biden-era policies, including the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, “spurred an influx of foreign direct investment and a surge in factory construction. But the anticipated jobs have taken a while to materialize in great numbers and will not arrive until after his presidency ends.”

When Trump touted the “brand-new domestic manufacturing boom,” he said that it had been “confirmed” by the ISM and S&P manufacturing surveys, which are conducted by private companies that survey purchasing managers to provide an indicator of economic conditions.

The surveys did report expansion in manufacturing.

The S&P survey reported that “February survey data indicated an acceleration in the rate of US manufacturing sector expansion.” However, it said there was “some evidence” that the growth was “partially driven by advanced purchases ahead of likely price increases and possible supply disruption related to further tariff impositions in the coming months.”

The ISM for February said that the sector “expanded for the second month in a row in February after 26 consecutive months of contraction.” Many survey respondents reporting uncertainty and volatility due to tariffs.

“Manufacturing, generally speaking, is cyclical,” Tonelson said. “Manufacturing is quite export heavy,” so it depends on what’s happening in other countries, too.

But, overall, Tonelson said, “I don’t think that one can make any reasonable conclusion about booming of anything after just about a month and a half. In terms of manufacturing jobs, we’ve only got one month of data on President Trump’s watch this time.”

Public vs. Private Jobs

Trump also used cherry-picked statistics when comparing government and private-sector jobs added under him and Biden.

“Under the final two years of Biden, 1 in every 4 jobs created in America was a government job. That’s a tremendous percentage,” he said. “But under the first full month of President Trump, which we haven’t even gotten started yet, an incredible 93% of all job gains were in the private sector.”

It’s true that about one-quarter, or roughly 26%, of the jobs added in Biden’s last two years in office were government jobs, which includes positions in federal, state and local government. However, during Biden’s entire presidency, about 11% of the jobs added were government jobs — including some jobs that were lost, but quickly regained, during the pandemic. And about 9 in 10 of the government jobs gained were at the state and local level, which Biden had no direct say in.

Measuring from June 2022, when total employment finally surpassed the pre-pandemic high in February 2020, about 22% of the increase in employment was government jobs. Again, roughly 90% of the jobs were in state and local government.

It’s also misleading to compare one month of private-sector job growth at the start of Trump’s second term — about 93% of the jobs gained in February were private-sector jobs, as Trump said — to a much longer period under Biden.

For instance, in December, one of Biden’s final months in office, only 11% of all jobs added were government jobs. A month before that in November, it was about 6.5%. There were also a few months during Biden’s last two years in office when there was an increase in total jobs but a decline in government jobs.

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

The return of astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore after an extended stay on the International Space Station has been the subject of competing claims about the actions of the Trump and Biden administrations in bringing them home.

White House adviser Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company aided the astronauts’ return, said he had offered last year to bring the two astronauts home much sooner but the Biden administration declined for “political reasons.” NASA and space experts, including the two astronauts themselves, dispute that the decision was based on politics.

In a press conference on March 4, NASA officials said safety, budget concerns about a separate mission to retrieve the astronauts and a desire to keep a crew on the space station were the reasons driving the decision to have Williams and Wilmore return with a SpaceX crew, which is expected to land on Earth today.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly claimed that he expedited the return of the astronauts after making a personal appeal to Musk. The mission to return the two astronauts has been in the works since late last summer, and the timeline for their return is roughly in line with that plan.

We’ll lay out what we know about the mission and the role the Biden administration, Musk and Trump may have played in it.

A Delayed Return

Williams and Wilmore left Earth on June 5, 2024, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on a mission that was supposed to last eight days. The purpose of the mission was to evaluate if the spacecraft could be used for regular astronaut rotation missions. However, shortly after liftoff, the Starliner experienced multiple helium leaks, which caused the return mission to be halted until further testing could be conducted.

Although the helium leaks stabilized after arrival, problems with the thrusters convinced NASA to send the Starliner aircraft back to Earth empty. That’s when Musk came into the picture, as NASA and SpaceX officials huddled last summer to determine a plan to return the astronauts.

In August 2024, NASA announced that it would be using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring back the astronauts in February 2025. In September, the mission launched Crew-9 with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who successfully reached the International Space Station on Sept. 29. The capsule was launched with two empty seats for the crew, including Williams and Wilmore, to return in February, after being replaced on the space station by astronauts from Crew-10. NASA officials said late February was the earliest the crew could return on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.

In recent months, Musk and Trump have claimed the Biden administration decided to leave the astronauts on the space station until after the November election to avoid bad publicity.

Trump and Musk Comments

During a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity on Feb. 18, Trump said he gave Musk the “go-ahead” to accelerate a mission to retrieve the astronauts, claiming that they had been abandoned on purpose by former President Joe Biden to avoid political backlash. Trump said, “They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden. He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space. … He didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?”

It was not the first time Trump had made such an accusation. On Jan. 28, Trump took to Truth Social to post, “I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”

During the Hannity interview, Musk claimed that at Trump’s request “we are accelerating the return of the astronauts, which was postponed, kind of, to a ridiculous degree,” saying that “they were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”

In response to Musk’s claims, several astronauts took to X to refute the idea that the astronauts were purposefully abandoned. Andreas Mogensen, a former SpaceX astronaut from Denmark, posted: “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.” In response to Mogensen, Elon replied: “You are fully retarded. SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons. Idiot.”

Mogensen responded by stating, “Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla. You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

The White House has not responded to our inquiry about Trump’s and Musk’s claims.

Williams and Wilmore Weigh In

In an interview on CNN with Williams and Wilmore on Feb. 13, host Anderson Cooper asked if they felt abandoned by the Biden administration.

“We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore said from the space station, which orbits the Earth and acts as a science laboratory. “I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human space flight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those. So if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to prepared and committed like what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”

Williams reiterated that “Butch and I knew this was a test flight” and “that we would probably find some things [wrong with Starliner] and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise.”

As for the prospect of sending up a SpaceX flight just to bring them back earlier, Wilmore said, “We would never expect to come back just special for us, or anyone, unless it was a medical issue or something really out of the circumstances along those lines.”

In a news conference from the space station on March 4 with Williams, Wilmore and NASA’s Nick Hague — one of the two astronauts who arrived via a SpaceX capsule in September — Wilmore said he had no reason to doubt Musk’s claims about an offer to bring them home earlier, though Wilmore said he was not privy to such an offer.

“We have no information on that though, whatsoever,” Wilmore said. “That’s information that we simply don’t have. So I believe him, I don’t know all those details, and I don’t think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.”

Asked about the claims of political motivations for their extended stay, Wilmore said that Musk and Trump may have information “that we are not privy to.”

But, he said, “from my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short.”

Hague added that “when I launched in in late September, our planned return date was the end of February, and given the amount of training that’s required to get a crew ready and the complexities associated with getting a spacecraft ready to launch and operate in space, targeting a March return is pretty much on target.”

NASA’s Explanation

Several leaders at NASA said they were unaware of Musk’s offer to bring the astronauts home sooner.

Bill Nelson, who served as NASA administrator last summer when the decisions about what to do about Williams and Wilmore were being made, told the Washington Post that the option of an earlier return “certainly did not come to my attention.” Nelson said, “There was no discussion of that whatsoever. Maybe he [Musk] sent a message to some lower-level person.”

In the March 4 NASA news conference, NASA officials were asked repeatedly about Musk’s claim that he offered to bring Williams and Wilmore home earlier, and what went into the decision officials ultimately made.

Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said, “I think there may have been some conversations that I wasn’t part of.” But he said the option to fly a separate mission to the space station to retrieve the astronauts was “ruled out pretty quickly.”

“When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early, those were always options, but we ruled them out pretty quickly, just based on how much money we’ve got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station,” Bowersox said. “They’re an important part of maintaining the station, so we like to keep our crews up there.”

Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said after the determination was made that Williams and Wilmore should not return on the Boeing Starliner, NASA officials met with SpaceX officials and considered “a wide range of options” and ultimately decided to attach the astronauts to the previously scheduled Crew-9 mission.

“When we looked at the situation at the time, we had a Crew-9 launch in front of us, it made sense to take the opportunity to bring Crew-9 up with just two seats and have Butch and Suni fill in and do the rest of the long duration mission,” said Dana Weigel, manager of NASA’s International Space Station Program.

“We thought the plan that we came up with made a lot of sense, and that, especially for Butch and Suni we know they’re experienced astronauts, they’re great in space,” Bowersox said. “We knew they’d be great additions to the crew and we knew that for most astronauts, spending extra time on orbit’s really a gift. And we thought they’d probably enjoy their time there. So we thought it was a good way to go … for a lot of reasons.”

Also at the NASA press conference was Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of building flight reliability at SpaceX, but he declined to provide specifics about Musk’s offer to bring the astronauts home earlier.

Gerstenmaier said SpaceX was “always ready to support NASA in any way we can.” He said NASA and SpaceX “collectively” came up with “the idea of just flying two crew up on Crew-9, having the seats available for Suni and Butch to come home, and that’s what NASA wanted, and that fit their plans. That allowed them to use Suni and Butch in a very productive manner, make them part of the crew on board station and make really a seamless integration and keep the science going on station and keep pushing research.”

Trump’s Role in the Mission

NASA officials said Trump’s involvement did not expedite the mission that would bring the astronauts home.

Again, Williams and Wilmore, along with members of Crew-9, were waiting to hand off to Crew-10 before leaving the space station for home. But Crew-10’s mission was originally delayed in December 2024 to “give the teams time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission,” according to Reuters. In a statement released in December, NASA wrote, “NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 now is targeting no earlier than late March 2025 to launch four crew members to the International Space Station.” (Originally, Crew-10 was supposed to launch in late February.)

But in February the agency announced that “NASA and SpaceX are accelerating the target launch and return dates for the upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station.”

The agency, in collaboration with SpaceX, was able to move up the launch by adjusting the original plan to fly a new Dragon spacecraft and instead fly a previously tested Dragon spacecraft called Endurance. Endurance has flown four missions to the station, including the Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 flights. NASA stated the decision was made by “mission management” and joint teams were working to complete assessments on the previously flown craft to ensure it “meets the agency’s Commercial Crew Program safety and certification requirements.”

NASA said the change also “will allow SpaceX, which owns and operates the Dragon fleet, to complete the new spacecraft’s interior build and perform final integration activities, while simultaneously launching Crew-10 and returning Crew-9 sooner.”

Asked if Trump’s call on Musk to expedite the mission played a factor, Stich, the program manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said that when the schedule for upcoming space missions was laid out, based on when a capsule was ready and a launch pad freed up, “we ended up with March the 12th. And so it really was driven by a lot of other factors. And we were looking at this before some of those statements were made by the president and Mr. Musk.”

Bowersox said Trump’s comments “added energy to the conversation” but didn’t affect the decisions NASA made.

“I can verify that Steve had been talking about how we might need to juggle the flights and switch capsules a good month before there was any discussion outside of NASA,” Bowersox said. “But the president’s interest sure added energy to the conversation, and it’s great to have a president who’s interested in what we’re doing.”

Crew-10 reached the space station on March 16, and Williams and Wilmore — along with Hague and Gorbunov — have since left the space station aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule. They are expected to land off the coast of Florida on March 18.

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

As President Donald Trump has sought to secure rights to Ukraine’s minerals as compensation for U.S. aid to fight the Russian invasion, he has repeatedly overstated the amount of aid provided by the U.S. compared with Europe and exaggerated the extent to which European assistance – unlike U.S. aid — is in the form of guaranteed loans.

“Europe has given $100 billion. The United States has given $350 billion,” Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22. “But here’s worse — Europe gave it in the form of a loan, they get their money back. We gave it in the form of nothing, so I want them to give us something for all of the money we put up.”

Trump made similar claims throughout February — during the swearing in for Tulsi Gabbard as the director of National Intelligence, at a joint press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and in an Oval Office appearance with French President Emmanuel Macron.

He also made the claim in a heated Feb. 28 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had come to the U.S. to sign the minerals deal.

“Europe, as you know, gave much less money, but they had security, it was in the form of a loan. They get their money back and we didn’t,” Trump told Zelenskyy near the start of the roughly 45-minute meeting, which ended acrimoniously.

Zelenskyy left the U.S. without signing the deal, and on March 3, the Trump administration suspended all military aid to Ukraine.

We’ll lay out the facts about how U.S. aid to Ukraine compares with aid supplied by the European Union and European countries.

Amount of Aid

Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told us in an email that “Trump’s citation of $350 billion is double what Congress has appropriated.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Congress has passed five spending bills to provide support to Ukraine, totaling about $174.2 billion, as we’ve explained before in fact-checking this and other claims Trump has made about Ukraine and Zelenskky. Each of those five measures passed with bipartisan support.

And, according to a report from the special inspector general who is overseeing the U.S. support for Ukraine, a total of $182.75 billion has been made available for the broader response.

Not all of that money has been distributed, though. And, as we’ve written before, a chunk of it used for purchasing weapons and providing military training has stayed in the U.S.

“Notably, military aid funds [about $66 billion] remain in the U.S. and are invested in U.S. military production,” Marianna Fakhurdinova, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told us in an email. She said that about half of that amount “goes to US companies to replenish weapons sent to Ukraine from existing stocks,” and half goes to companies in the U.S. that manufacture weapons for Ukraine.

Contrary to Trump’s claims, Europe has provided more in aid than the U.S. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization that tracks funding for Ukraine, the U.S. has so far allocated about $121 billion compared with about $140 billion from Europe.

The Kiel Institute’s figures are lower than what the U.S. Congress has appropriated because the institute only includes direct, bilateral aid. It also shows figures for what additional amounts have been committed, but not yet allocated. There’s not much more that the U.S. has committed, but Europe has committed another $122 billion.

A February fact sheet from the European Union said the EU and its member states had provided about $145 billion since the start of the war, and then in February, the EU committed up to $54 billion for recovery and reconstruction.

Loans

As for Trump’s claim that Europe provided its aid to Ukraine in the “form of a loan, they get their money back,” that’s an exaggeration. Only a portion of European aid is in the form of loans.

It’s true that most of the bipartisan U.S. spending agreements for Ukraine aid were given in the form of grants, according to the Congressional Research Service, except for the most recent appropriation.

In the 2024 emergency supplemental appropriations bill, about $9 billion of the assistance was provided as loans.

Fakhurdinova pointed out that “the first half of this loan [$4.7 billion] was forgiven by President Biden in November, so President Trump has power over the other half of these funds.”

Also, as we noted above, some of the U.S. military aid never left the U.S., since it was provided to U.S. companies to produce or replenish weapons.

As for the EU, about 35% of the $145 billion it had appropriated from the start of the war through January was provided as “highly concessional loans,” according to the EU fact sheet.

“The ‘highly concessional’ nature of these loans refers to their long maturities and subsidized interest rate costs through the EU budget,” Cancian told us, citing a November paper from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. Aid packages from the EU have included, for example, a 10-year grace period and a 35-year repayment period.

It’s also notable that the Vienna Institute’s paper said, “The emerging consensus is that Ukraine’s debt is not likely to be sustainable and, consequently, that significant debt relief will have to be negotiated.”

Separate from any of the other aid provided by the U.S. or Europe, the G7 — which includes the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K. — agreed in 2024 to provide $50 billion in loans to support Ukraine.

The loans are to be paid back with the profits from frozen Russian assets, according to the Treasury Department, and the U.S. has the same terms as the rest of the G7 countries.

The U.S. portion of the loan is $20 billion, which was disbursed in December.

Trump has a point that a larger percentage of European aid has been in the form of loans, compared with the U.S., but most of the aid from Europe hasn’t been structured as loans.

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Summary

In his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term, President Donald Trump distorted the facts on fraud, immigration, aid to Ukraine, the economy, autism and more.

• Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” However, the DOGE website currently states that the department has only generated $105 billion in savings, and only purports to provide evidence to support $19.8 billion of that total. It’s unclear how much, if any, of that is related to fraud.

• The president read data purportedly showing that millions of dead individuals were incorrectly labeled as alive in the Social Security database, and misleadingly claimed that “money is being paid to many of them.” Social Security Administration internal audits show that the number of dead recipients still being sent benefits is likely in the thousands, not the millions.

• In talking about aid to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion, Trump inflated U.S. aid by about double when he claimed that the U.S. has “spent perhaps $350 billion,” and he wrongly claimed Europe had spent only $100 billion. European aid is larger than that from the U.S.

• Trump exaggerated when he claimed to have “inherited … an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare” from his predecessor. Economic growth was strong, and inflation had fallen significantly.

• He also wrongly said that inflation was “perhaps” the worst in history under President Joe Biden, and he ignored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while claiming that the Biden administration “drove up” prices on energy, groceries and other necessities.

• Trump misleadingly claimed that “not long ago” just 1 in 10,000 children had autism. Estimates that low are from many decades ago, before the definition and awareness of the condition expanded.

• He misleadingly said Biden’s administration had “closed more than 100 power plants.” According to the Department of Energy, the total number of electric power plants increased by 2,187 from 2020 to 2023. Coal- and petroleum-powered plants decreased.

• While talking about building up America’s military might, Trump claimed that “now we have the technology” for an air defense system to protect the U.S. like Israel’s Iron Dome. But that technology has not been developed yet, and weapons experts question its feasibility for protecting the entire U.S.

• Trump repeated his unsupported claim that “people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country,” and he exaggerated when he again claimed that under Biden “21 million people poured into the United States.”

• The president misleadingly lumped Canada in with Mexico as a significant source of fentanyl in the U.S., claiming those countries have “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before.” Less than 1% of fentanyl seized by border officials comes through Canada.

• In pushing for more oil and natural gas drilling, Trump, again, falsely claimed that “we have more liquid gold under our feet” than all other nations. There are several countries that have larger estimated oil and natural gas reserves than the U.S.

• He repeated his false claims that 38,000 American lives were lost during construction of the Panama Canal and that Panama had ceded control of the canal to China.

While this address, coming early in a new term, technically isn’t a State of the Union address, Trump’s March 4 speech was longer than any prior SOTU, clocking in at an hour and 39 minutes, as measured by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Analysis

DOGE Savings

Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency, led by White House adviser Elon Musk, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” However, the most recent update on DOGE’s website from March 2 reports that the department has only created an estimated $105 billion in savings thus far. Although Trump ticked off several examples of what he called “appalling waste” found by DOGE, it’s unclear if any of the savings touted by DOGE are related to actual fraud.

We also cannot verify DOGE’s savings figure, as the department has not yet uploaded evidence of each transaction it has conducted. The website includes a “Wall of Receipts” described as “a subset of contract, grant, and lease cancellations, representing ~30% of total savings.”

However, the “subset” of transactions listed on the website does not meet this 30% threshold. In total, DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” lists about $19.8 billion in estimated savings, which is less than 19% of the $105 billion in total savings claimed by the department. Of this $19.8 billion in savings, $8.9 billion comes from the cancellation of contracts, $10.3 billion comes from the termination of grants, and $660 million comes from the termination of government leases.

DOGE has faced scrutiny for inflating and miscalculating the savings figures posted on its website. The New York Times reported that DOGE deleted hundreds of transactions previously posted to its “Wall of Receipts” and also found that DOGE incorrectly claimed credit for canceling government contracts that had already been terminated before Trump entered office. Other errors by DOGE identified in media reports include a typo mislabeling $8 million in savings as $8 billion and triple-counting the cancellation of a single contract.

Speaking about DOGE’s efforts on Feb. 11, Musk said, “We will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

Trump went on to cite a Government Accountability Office report that estimated annual fraud losses to the government of between $233 billion and $521 billion. But we could not verify how much, if any, of the DOGE savings identified to date includes instances of fraud. Rather, most of the savings appears to be related to spending that it deemed wasteful.

Overstating Social Security Fraud

In a Feb. 16 post on X, White House adviser Elon Musk shared a screenshot of a spreadsheet denoting that the Social Security database categorizes nearly 21 million people over the age of 99 as alive. Trump read the data from Musk’s post during his speech and misleadingly claimed that “money is being paid to many of” the centenarians still listed as alive.

As we’ve written, internal audits conducted by the Office of Audit in the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General have identified that millions of deceased individuals were still listed as living in the Social Security database. However, the number of dead recipients still being sent benefits is likely in the thousands, not the millions. 

In total, the SSA distributed payments to 89,106 individuals aged 99 and older in December 2024.

A July 2023 report published by the Office of Audit found that there were 18.9 million people with Social Security numbers born in 1920 or earlier with no record of their deaths. The vast majority of these records are clearly outdated, as the Pew Research Center estimated that there were only 101,000 Americans who were 100 and older in 2024. 

However, very few of these dead individuals incorrectly labeled as alive still receive Social Security benefits. Among this group of 18.9 million, the report found that only 44,000, or 0.2%, were still receiving Social Security benefits. The report did not specify how many of these benefit payments were believed to be improper. A portion of the 44,000 recipients were likely living Americans over the age of 103 who continued to receive payments in July 2023.

The Office of Audit provided a more specific estimate of improper payments to deceased individuals in a November 2021 report. That report concluded that the “SSA issued approximately $298 million in payments to about 24,000 deceased beneficiaries in suspended payment status.” The report also noted that while the SSA did recover some of the funds, $214 million of the improper payments remained unaccounted for. 

In a statement published on Feb. 19, Lee Dudek, the newly appointed acting commissioner of the SSA, explained that the data posted by Musk does not reveal millions of dead individuals who continue to receive benefits.

“I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” he said. “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

In September 2015, the SSA began a process that automatically designates individuals aged 115 and older as deceased and ends payments to them.

Exaggerating Ukraine Aid

Trump repeated a claim he’s made frequently in recent weeks – telling the joint session of Congress that “we’ve spent perhaps $350 billion” to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion since 2022, while Europe has spent $100 billion. Those figures are wrong.

As we’ve written before, the total amount that Congress has appropriated since 2022 is $174.2 billion. According to a report from the special inspector general who is overseeing the U.S. support for Ukraine, the U.S. has made a total of $182.75 billion available for the broader response.

Figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization that tracks funding for Ukraine, show that the U.S. has so far allocated about $121 billion compared with about $140 billion from Europe. Additionally, the institute shows that Europe has committed another $122 billion that hasn’t yet been allocated, while the U.S. has committed another $5 billion. The institute’s figures include direct, bilateral aid.

We didn’t get an immediate response from the White House to an email asking where Trump had gotten his numbers.

What Trump Inherited

Trump exaggerated the state of the economy when he took office earlier this year, and he misleadingly placed the blame for higher consumer prices solely on the Biden administration.

“As you know, we inherited, from the last administration, an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare,” Trump said. “Their policies drove up energy prices, pushed up the cost of groceries, and drove the necessities of life out of reach for millions of Americans. We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country — they’re not sure.”

As we wrote in January, before Trump began his second presidential term, he inherited a “resilient economy that has grown by at least 2.5% every year since he left office in early 2021,” as well as a “post-pandemic jobs boom that has driven the unemployment rate well below the historical norm.”

We also noted that inflation “has come down significantly” from the annual inflation rate of 9.1% in June 2022. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that was “the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981” — not in history, as Trump said. Most recently, the Consumer Price Index increased 3% for the 12-month period ending in January.

It’s also wrong to suggest that Biden administration policies alone increased prices on energy, food and other consumer goods. As we’ve also written, economists primarily blame the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain disruptions that followed and rising labor costs, among other reasons, for the dramatic price increases while Biden was president.

Autism

Shortly after introducing DJ Daniel, a 13-year-old who was diagnosed six years ago with brain cancer, Trump cited two autism prevalence figures that need context.

“Our goal is to get toxins out of our environment, poisons out of our food supply, and keep our children healthy and strong,” the president said. “As an example, not long ago — and you can’t even believe these numbers — 1 in 10,000 children had autism. 1 in 10,000. And now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong. 1 in 36 — think of it. 

“So we’re going to find out what it is and there’s nobody better than Bobby and all of the people that are working with you,” he continued, referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “to figure out what is going on.”

Trump made nearly identical remarks about the autism rate on Feb. 13 when swearing in Kennedy as the new health secretary.

Trump’s higher figure of 1 in 36 is correct. That’s the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest estimate, in 2020, of the number of U.S. children who have been identified with autism. 

The 1 in 10,000 number, however, is decades old — and isn’t directly comparable to today’s figure. As we’ve explained before, some studies in the 1960s and ’70s estimated autism affected about 1 to 5 in 10,000 kids. But these studies used a much more stringent definition of autism. Awareness and recognition of autism has also dramatically improved since then.

Much of “what is going on,” then, is actually a broader clinical definition of autism capturing more mild cases, along with better awareness. There may be a slight true increase in the condition, researchers say, in part due to known risk factors, including parents having children at older ages and more babies surviving birth complications. Autism is largely a genetic disease.

Kennedy and others around him have previously used the same or similar statistics to falsely suggest that vaccines may be behind the surge in autism diagnoses. Numerous studies have failed to find any link between autism and vaccines.

Power Plants

Trump said the Biden administration had “closed more than 100 power plants.” That’s misleading. The number of electric power plants went up by 2,187 since the last full year of Trump’s first administration to 2023, according to the latest data from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.

The number of power plants fueled by coal did decrease by 57 plants, from 284 in 2020 to 227 in 2023. Plants powered by petroleum and other fossil gas also declined by 23 plants. But the number of other types of electric power plants, including natural gas and renewable energy, went up.

In April 2024, a rule finalized by the Biden administration to limit the pollution from existing coal power plants required those plants, and any new natural gas-fired power plants, to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032, if they intend to operate after 2039. The rule was contested by some Republican states and industry groups, but in October the Supreme Court decided that the rule could go into effect while legal cases work their way through the courts. During his campaign, Trump promised to kill Biden’s power plant rules.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently advocated for the need for coal-fired power plants, Bloomberg reported. In February, the EIA reported that electricity generators plan to retire about 8 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity this year.

During his address to Congress on Tuesday night, Trump said, “We are opening up many of those power plants right now.”

Golden Dome Defense System

Trump said he is focused on “building the most powerful military of the future,” and one of the first steps will be building a “Golden Dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland.”

“Ronald Reagan wanted to do it long ago,” Trump said, “but the technology just wasn’t there, not even close. But now we have the technology. It’s incredible, actually. And other places, they have it. Israel has it. Other places have it, and the United States should have it too, right?”

But the technology for the U.S. isn’t there yet.

Trump said repeatedly during his campaign that during his presidency the U.S. would develop a missile defense system similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. Israel has used that air defense system since 2011 to shoot down short-range rockets fired from neighboring Gaza. Israel’s Iron Dome, along with its Arrow 3 system — an air defense system that can intercept ballistic missiles — and with help from the U.S. and others, shot down nearly 300 drones and missiles launched at Israel by Iran in April 2024.

Israel’s system, developed by an Israeli company and the U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon, can detect and intercept “a variety of shorter-range targets such as rockets, artillery and mortars,” Raytheon’s website explains. The system can target threats launched from 2.5 to 43.5 miles away.

But “against the normal threats to U.S. security, the Iron Dome is not a useful system,” Stephen Biddle, adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told us when we wrote about this issue last year. “Iron Dome is designed to deal with short-range threats, especially unguided rockets,” not long-range ballistic missiles that could be launched by China, Russia or North Korea.

“If the North Koreans launched intercontinental ballistic missiles at the U.S., an Iron Dome would not be able to intercept reentry vehicles,” explained Biddle, referring to the parts of intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying warheads back into Earth’s atmosphere before hitting a target.

The defense technology company Lockheed Martin is apparently working on a “Golden Dome” system that Trump referred to in his remarks to Congress, and the Pentagon is seeking proposals from other defense contractors. The Lockheed Martin website says, “[W]e will bring in the best and brightest of American innovation to rapidly develop game-changing tech – like space-based interceptors and hypersonic defenses – that will ensure America’s Golden Dome stays well ahead of adversary threats.”

But the Golden Dome technology is still being developed, and defense experts are skeptical that a missile defense system will be able to protect the entire U.S.

Immigration

Trump made several misleading and unsupported claims about immigration.

Trump began by boasting that after declaring a national emergency on the southern border and cracking down on illegal immigration, by February, his first full month in office, apprehensions of those crossing the border illegally “were by far the lowest ever recorded.”

Although U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not yet released its official February apprehensions data, the agency reported via X on March 1 that February “saw just 8,326 encounters at the Southwest border—the lowest documented by U.S. Border Patrol.” That eclipses the figure of 11,127 in April 2017, Trump’s third full month in office during his first term — and previously the lowest month going back to at least 2000. However, it’s not the lowest “ever recorded.” Government data going back to 1925 shows entire years in the 1920s and 1930s that were close to the February figure.

Trump went on to say that under Biden, “there were hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month.” Illegal immigration did soar through most of the years Biden was in office, with apprehensions by Border Patrol averaging about 150,000 per month. Apprehensions reached a monthly high of 251,178 in December 2023.

But the numbers dropped dramatically after Biden enacted emergency measures in June 2024 to restrict asylum eligibility for those illegal border-crossers. Between July and December, the last full month under Biden, apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally averaged about 55,000 per month. That’s lower than the average during the last few months of Trump’s first term.

We should note that after tough talk on immigration in the 2016 campaign, the number of apprehensions plummeted in the first few months of Trump’s first term as well, what some referred to as “the Trump Effect.” After that dip in the months immediately after he took office, apprehensions of illegal border-crossers steadily increased over the next two years, reaching a peak of 132,856 in May 2019. The figures then began to steadily decline again, going to 16,182 in April 2020 at the height of the pandemic.

Trump also made his oft-repeated but unsupported claim that “people from mental institutions and insane asylums were released into our country.” As we have written, immigration experts in the U.S. and in countries in South America where Trump has alleged that kind of activity have told us they have seen no evidence of that.

And finally, Trump claimed that “over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States.” As we have written, that’s double the total number of people caught trying to enter the country illegally (7.3 million, which includes repeat attempts), those who came to legal ports of entry without authorization to enter (1.2 million), and the estimated number who evaded capture (2 million). Comprehensive Department of Homeland Security data on the initial processing of these encounters show that 2.9 million were removed by CBP and 3.2 million were released with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or given other classifications, such as parole.

Fentanyl Smuggling

While talking about his reasons for putting new 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, Trump claimed that both countries have “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens.” But comparing Canada to Mexico is misleading.

No one knows exactly how much illicit fentanyl comes into the U.S. each year because comprehensive data is not available. U.S. Customs and Border Protection does publish drug seizure statistics, which are often used as a proxy for how much gets into the country undetected.

The 43 pounds of fentanyl seized by authorities at the northern border in fiscal year 2024 is more than the 2 pounds seized in fiscal 2023 and the 14 pounds seized in fiscal 2022. But that is significantly less than the 21,148 pounds of fentanyl seized by officials at the southwest border with Mexico during the 2024 fiscal cycle.

As we’ve written, for at least the last three full fiscal years, the amount of fentanyl captured coming into the U.S. from Canada has made up less than 1% of the fentanyl seized nationwide by the Border Patrol and the Office of Field Operations.

‘Liquid Gold’

Trump repeated a false claim about the oil and natural gas reserves in the U.S.

“As you’ve heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far,” Trump said. “And now, I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”

As we’ve written before, Trump is wrong. The Brookings Institution has noted that while “estimating reserves is an inexact science and methodologies differ,” the U.S. generally ranks between ninth and 11th in the world in the size of its crude oil reserves, and it ranks fourth or fifth in recoverable natural gas reserves.

And although Trump would like oil and gas companies to do more drilling, it’s worth noting that oil and gas production in the U.S. already reached new record levels in 2024.

Panama Canal

Trump wrongly repeated his claims that 38,000 American lives were lost during construction of the Panama Canal and that Panama had ceded control of the canal to China.

The canal was “built at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure, 38,000 workers died building the Panama Canal. They died of malaria. They died of snake bites and mosquitoes. Not a nice place to work,” Trump said.

As we have written, Trump grossly overstates the number of American lives lost building the canal. About 7,600 people died during the more than decade-long American phase of the construction of the Panama Canal, which started in 1904, according to Noel Maurer, an associate professor of international affairs and international business at George Washington University, and co-author of the book, “The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal.”

Most of those deaths weren’t Americans, Maurer told us via email. “Rather, about two-thirds of them were either West Indian (mostly from Barbados), and a smaller unknown share of Spanish laborers who were hired at the start of construction.” In total, fewer than 1,000 Americans died due to accident or infectious disease during the canal’s construction phase, he said.

Trump also continued to falsely suggest that China has been operating the canal.

The canal “was given away by the Carter administration for $1 but that agreement has been violated very severely,” Trump said. “We didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”

It’s not accurate to say the canal was given to China. A Hong Kong-based company managed ports at either end of the canal, which has raised concerns among some in the U.S., including the head of U.S. Southern Command, who last year warned Congress the ports could be used by the Chinese military as “points of future multi-domain access.” But canal experts and Panamanian officials have said China had no involvement in operation of the canal.

And in any case, as Trump noted in his speech, an American investment group led by BlackRock has agreed to purchase both ports owned by the Hong Kong company.

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Here’s our fact-check of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in video form.

The video, produced by FactCheck.org Social Media Manager Josh Diehl, is based on our article on the president’s March 4 speech.

Our staff found that Trump made exaggerated, misleading or unsupported claims about finding fraud in government spending, including in Social Security; U.S. versus European aid to Ukraine; the state of the economy when he took office; the closure of power plants; fentanyl coming across the border with Canada; the Panama Canal — and more. We had written about many of these claims before.

For more details, see our full article: “FactChecking Trump’s Address to Congress.”

---

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

Source: FactCheck

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

Social media posts, some pointing to comments by podcaster Joe Rogan, are spreading unsupported claims that members of the Patriot Front are federal agents and that the group disbanded after the recent leadership change at the FBI. But days after Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI director, the Patriot Front had two public rallies, and its website refutes the claims.

---

Full Story

The Patriot Front has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist hate group” that splintered off from another organization, Vanguard America, following the “Unite the Right” rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12, 2017. On the second day of that rally, counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed and dozens were injured when Alex Fields Jr., a white nationalist, drove his car into the counterprotesters.

The Anti-Defamation League says the Patriot Front “falls into the alt right segment of the white supremacist movement but presents itself as a ‘patriotic’ nationalist group.” George Washington University’s Program on Extremism identifies the group’s founder as Thomas Rousseau, and says the organization is “known for its propaganda campaigns, including distributing flyers, staging marches, and defacing public art, all aimed at spreading its white nationalist message.”

But social media posts have made other, unsupported claims about the membership and current status of the Patriot Front.

Some posts have shared a clip from podcaster Joe Rogan’s March 5 show, in which Rogan repeats a previous, unfounded claim he’s made that the Patriot Front members are federal agents. “Where’s the fat people? They’re all wearing the same uniforms. … These are feds,” Rogan says, referring to the khaki pants, dark blue jackets and masks most members wear at their public rallies. Rogan also wrongly claims, “the day after Kash Patel gets in [as FBI director], they disband.”

Rogan made similar claims during his Feb. 28 show with guest Elon Musk, an adviser to President Donald Trump. On that episode, Rogan showed a screengrab of a Dec. 16 Substack article with the headline, “Shocker: ‘Patriot Front’ Disbands One Day After FBI Director Chris Wray Resigns — Updated.”

Rogan suggested that the Patriot Front members were actually undercover FBI agents, and they “disbanded” after the change in the bureau’s leadership.

Wray resigned in January, and Patel was confirmed on Feb. 20.

That same day, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah pushed these ideas, retweeting an X post that said, “Who wants to bet ‘Patriot Front’ disappears now that Kash Patel has been confirmed as Director of the FBI?” Lee added the comment: “I hope @Kash_Patel fires the ‘Patriot Front’ wing of the FBI before tomorrow morning.”

But the Patriot Front did not disband after the leadership change. Two days after Patel’s confirmation, one chapter of the group marched around the Iowa Capitol Complex in Des Moines, and other members rallied near the Massachusetts State House in Boston, according to local news reports.

The Patriot Front responded to Rogan’s claims in a post on its website on March 3, saying, “Patriot Front discussed on The Joe Rogan Experience by Rogan and Elon Musk. In the video, Rogan justifies his ‘fed’ accusation by referencing the high level of fitness standards and organization in PF. Rogan then proceeds to claim that Patriot Front disbanded, showing a substack post based on an article published by a satirical website.”

The Patriot Front post later says, “Rogan and other social media influencers will have to invent increasingly elaborate narratives to justify PF’s continued activity despite their misinformed claims that PF has disbanded.”

It’s worth noting that the FBI has extensive investigative records on the Patriot Front. We asked the FBI for comment on the claims made by Rogan and others but did not receive a response.

We also reached out to Rogan for any other evidence that federal agents are members of Patriot Front or that the group recently disbanded, but we did not get a response.

---

Sources

Anti-Defamation League. “Patriot Front.” Accessed 6 Mar 2025.

Farrar, Molly. “White supremacist group marches in downtown Boston with ‘Reclaim America’ banner.” Boston.com. 23 Feb 2025.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Records: The Vault. “Patriot Front.” Accessed 6 Mar 2025.

George Washington University. Program on Extremism. “Patriot Front.” Accessed 6 Mar 2025.

PBS News. “Man who drove into Charlottesville protest, killing Heath Heyer, convicted of first-degree murder.” 7 Dec 2018.

Pelley, Scott, et al. “FBI Director Christopher Wray on why he’s resigning and the threats facing America.” CBS News. 12 Jan 2025.

Southern Poverty Law Center. “Patriot Front.” Accessed 6 Mar 2025.

Tucker, Eric. “Trump loyalist Kash Patel is confirmed as FBI director by the Senate despite deep Democratic doubts.” Associated Press. 20 Feb 2025.

Source: FactCheck