Trump has spent the last year boasting of his accomplishments while mocking the record of his predecessor, Joe Biden. But much of this bluster has been based on misinformation, which he again fell back on during his State of the Union address.

Here鈥檚 a closer look at the facts:

THE ECONOMY

CLAIM: 鈥淲hen I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy.鈥�

THE FACTS: Not quite. Voters were unhappy with high inflation in the 2024 election, but the U.S. economy was far from stagnant. The U.S. gross domestic product rose 2.8% in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. That鈥檚 a stronger pace of growth than the 2.2% achieved last year during the start of Trump鈥檚 second term. ___

TRUMP: 鈥淚ncomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.”

THE FACTS: Not so. After-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, rose just 0.9% in 2025, down from 2.2% in 2024, Biden’s last year in office. The annual gain in Trump’s first year is the smallest since 2022, when inflation soared and caused Americans鈥� inflation-adjusted income to drop.

Wages and salaries are the largest component of incomes, and their growth has slowed as companies have sharply slowed hiring. Workers typically command smaller wage gains in such an environment.

INVESTMENT

CLAIM: 鈥淚 secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.鈥�

THE FACTS: Trump has that he鈥檚 secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House鈥檚 own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America鈥檚 biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

JOBS

CLAIM: 鈥淢ore Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.鈥�

THE FACTS: Yes, but the number of Americans with jobs always rises as the population grows. The relevant figure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, which has fallen significantly in the last quarter-century, partly because the workforce is aging and more people are retired. The proportion of Americans with jobs peaked at 64.7% in April 2000, and was 59.8% in January.

The unemployment rate is a low 4.3%, but was lower when Biden left office in January 2025, at 4%. During Biden’s presidency, the rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.4%.

FOREIGN WARS

CLAIM: 鈥淢y first 10 months I ended eight wars.鈥�

THE FACTS: This statistic, which Trump frequently cites, is highly exaggerated.

Although he has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact as he makes it seem. In at least two instances of peace he claims credit for achieving, there were no wars to end: no fighting between Serbia and Kosovo, and friction rather than fighting between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The other wars Trump counts as those that he has solved were between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand. His influence varied in those conflicts.

TARIFFS

CLAIM: Tariff revenues are 鈥渟aving our country, the kind of money we鈥檙e taking in.鈥�

THE FACTS: Though Trump has imposed massive tax hikes on imports, they鈥檙e not sizable enough to make a dent in the government鈥檚 annual budget deficits. Nor have the tariffs corresponded with manufacturing job gains.

Before the Supreme Court struck down Trump鈥檚 tariffs based on an emergency declaration, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that his new taxes would raise $3 trillion over 10 years, or $300 billion annually.

That鈥檚 not enough to cover the cost of his $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, including additional interest cuts, that favored companies and the wealthy. Nor is it enough to pay down an annual budget deficit that last year was $1.78 trillion.

___

CLAIM: 鈥淭ariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax.鈥欌��

THE FACTS: Not likely. Under Trump, tariff revenues have swelled 鈥� to $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 from $77 billion the year before. But the import taxes accounted for less than 4% of federal revenue. Income taxes and payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare account for 84%.

MEDICINE

CLAIM: 鈥淚 took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That鈥檚 a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more.鈥�

THE FACTS: . Although the Trump administration has taken steps to lower drug prices, cutting them by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications.

Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California鈥檚 Schaeffer Center, said in August that this claim is 鈥渢otal fiction鈥� by the president. He agreed that it would amount to drug companies paying customers, rather than the other way around.

CRIME

CLAIM: 鈥淟ast year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline. Think of it in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years.鈥�

THE FACTS: Trump takes credit for a significant decrease in violent crime during 2025, claiming the murder rate in the U.S. dropped to its lowest in 125 years. But this is misleading. Crime had already been trending down in recent years.

released in January by the independent Council on Criminal Justice, which collected data from 35 U.S. cities on homicides, showed a 21% decrease in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025.

The report noted that when nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900.

FBI reports for and show significant reductions in violent crimes.

Crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides increasing over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. But violent crime dropped to when Biden was president.

IMMIGRATION

CLAIM: 鈥淲e will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.鈥�

THE FACTS: Trump has actually taken steps to restrict who can emigrate to the U.S., often in the name of protecting national security.

He suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and in October resumed the program but only in limited numbers for white South Africans.

Trump has also on who can travel or emigrate to the U.S. from nearly 40 countries around the world. Many of those countries are in Africa.

TAXES

CLAIM: “With the great big beautiful bill, we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security.鈥�

THE FACTS: Though the president frequently says his big tax cut bill means no tax on Social Security, that’s not true for everyone. Not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction, which lasts until 2029.

Those who won鈥檛 be able to do so include the lowest-income seniors who already don鈥檛 pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold. The deductions also phase out as income increases.

ELECTIONS

CLAIM: 鈥淚鈥檓 asking you to approve the Save America Act to stop illegal aliens and other who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. The cheating is rampant in our elections.鈥�

THE FACTS: He and his allies have never produced evidence of rampant election cheating. Experts say voter fraud is , and very few noncitizens ever slip through the cracks.

For example, a recent review in Michigan identified 15 people who appear to be noncitizens who voted in the 2024 general election, out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast in the state. Of those, 13 were referred to the attorney general for potential criminal charges. One involved a voter who has since died, and the final case remains under investigation.

1776

CLAIM: 鈥淭he revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.

___

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak, Paul Wiseman, Christopher Rugaber, Elliot Spagat and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

___

Find AP Fact Checks here: .

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� President Donald Trump uttered a dizzying number of false statements in his epically long weekend speech, to an audience that didn’t seem to mind at all.

He got the unemployment rate wrong. He misstated his winning margin in the election. He reprised some of his most frequently told fictions and dusted off old ones, even going back to the size of his inauguration crowd.

A look at some of his words in his two-hour-plus speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday:

UNEMPLOYMENT

TRUMP: “We’re down to 3.7 percent unemployment, the lowest number in a long time.”

THE FACTS: The unemployment rate is 4 percent. It was 3.7 percent in September.

___

DIVERSITY VISAS

TRUMP: On the diversity visa lottery program: “They send us the people they don’t want.”

THE FACTS: A persistent falsehood . “They,” meaning other countries, do not select citizens for the U.S. program. Foreigners decide on their own to apply for it. They must meet education or skills benchmarks to apply and those who are tentatively selected through the lottery must pass background checks before being confirmed.

Trump attributed similar characteristics to migrant caravans from Central America, suggesting governments try to get rid of their bad people by putting them in caravans for the U.S. Again, migrants are self-selected, not told to march to the U.S.

___

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team has “13 of the angriest Democrats in the history of our country.”

THE FACTS: Mueller is a longtime Republican and party affiliation cuts both ways 鈥� or no way at all 鈥� in the varied background of the team. Some have donated campaign money to Democrats. The team is not known to be particularly or historically angry.

___

[custom_gallery]

CROWD SIZE

TRUMP on what he considers false reporting about his crowd sizes: “They did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. You take a look at those crowds. …We had a crowd, I’ve never seen anything like it. … There were people (from) the Capitol down to the Washington Monument.”

THE FACTS: The National Park Service released dozens of photos of the crowd gathered for his inauguration ceremony and it was clear from them that crowds did not extend to the Washington Monument from the Capitol. Large swaths of empty space were visible on the National Mall.

The park service also released photos from President Barack Obama’s two inaugurations, showing that his 2009 event far outstripped the number of people who attended Trump’s inauguration.

It released the photos in response to news media requests made through the Freedom of Information Act after Trump and his aides accused news organizations of framing or timing photos and video to make it look like not many people came.

___

JAMES COMEY

TRUMP: “Every single Democrat said Comey should be fired” for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails late in the campaign. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer “called for his resignation many times.”

THE FACTS: Not true. Democrats did not universally 鈥� or even broadly 鈥� call for Comey to be fired despite their anger over his decision to go public before Election Day with news that the FBI had renewed its investigation of Clinton’s handling of her emails. Several Democratic lawmakers did want him out, but they were a distinct minority.

Schumer said he had lost confidence in Comey but did not urge his removal, telling Bloomberg 91欧美激情 he wanted to speak with the FBI chief “to restore my faith.” The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, also held off on asking for Comey to step down, while musing: “Maybe he’s not in the right job.” Trump fired him months later.

___

GREEN NEW DEAL

TRUMP: “No planes, no energy. …Perhaps nothing is more extreme than the Democrats’ plan to completely take over American energy, and completely destroy America’s economy through their new $100 trillion dollar Green New Deal. …It would end air travel.”

THE FACTS: He’s ignoring the actual provisions of the plan, which would not ban air travel or end traditional sources of energy. The plan, backed by some liberal Democrats but greeted cautiously or opposed by others in the party, does call for a drastic drop in greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

Trump is extrapolating from a fact sheet that initially accompanied the plan, then was disavowed and withdrawn by its sponsors. It proposed building high-speed rail at a scale “where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

___

2016 ELECTION

TRUMP, on his Electoral College win: “We didn’t get to 270. We got 306.”

THE FACTS: Trump misstates the Electoral College vote in his 2016 presidential race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. The official count was 304 to 227, according to an Associated Press tally of the electoral votes in every state.

___

CHINA-TRADE

TRUMP: “We’ve lost so much money with China 鈥� $500 billion a year. And on trade, it’s such a disaster. It’s $507 billion a year. China 鈥� just one country. We lose with everybody, almost. But China is one country 鈥� $507 billion, for many years.”

THE FACTS: He’s off by several hundred billion dollars on the trade deficit with China . Trump typically ignores one part of a trading relationship, services, and considers only the other part, goods. Even by that measure, he’s wrong. On goods alone, the U.S. ran a trade deficit of $382 billion with China last year, not $507 billion. That was up from nearly $376 billion in 2017.

The U.S. is strong on services and ran a $40 billion surplus with China on that form of trade in 2017. So the actual trade deficit with China that year was $335 billon.

___

HEALTH CARE

TRUMP: “We have some great private coverage. And we have initiated some incredible plans, like the new cooperative plan, where you get better insurance than Obamacare for a fraction of the cost.”

THE FACTS: He’s glossing over the limitations of his administration’s expanded health care options , which involve both short term and association plans. They offer lower premiums than comprehensive plans such as those under the Affordable Care Act but cover less.

Short-term plans don’t have to take people with medical conditions or provide benefits such as coverage for maternity, mental health, prescription drugs and substance abuse treatment. Association health plans do have to accept people with pre-existing medical conditions, but they don’t have to cover the full menu of 10 “essential” kinds of benefits required by Obamacare.

Gary Claxton of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation says short-term plans may turn out to be more costly than Trump administration officials suggest. The plans now cover up to 90 days, but if insurers expand them to offer up to 36 months’ coverage, the companies will be taking on more risk. “You’ll have to pay more up front because there’s a longer time during which you could get sick,” he said.

___

MIDTERM ELECTIONS

TRUMP: “We were given no credit. I can’t go and campaign for all of the people in the House. There’s too many.”

TRUMP, on his endorsement of Florida candidate for governor, Ron DeSantis: “I said, ‘Ron, Don’t make me do this, Ron.’ ‘Sir, I can win.’ Alright, Ron, here we go. Because I know if he loses 鈥� which almost never happens when I endorse someone, almost never. Only one time, that was because it was done in the middle of the day of the election… But we very rarely lose.”

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong to suggest that almost every candidate he endorsed and campaigned for in the November midterm elections 鈥� except for perhaps one 鈥� won.

Two Republicans whom Trump strongly backed in their Senate races 鈥� Montana’s Matt Rosendale and West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey 鈥� lost to Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Joe Manchin, respectively. Trump had visited Montana four times and West Virginia three times to rally voters. Trump also campaigned for two other Senate losers: incumbent Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada and Leah Vukmir in Wisconsin.

In the House, Republican Rep. Jason Lewis lost his race in Minnesota to Democrat Angie Craig, whom he had defeated by 2 percentage points in 2016. Trump endorsed Lewis and campaigned for him.

___

VETERANS

TRUMP, on the Choice program for veterans: “I got that approved after 44 years of being unable to get it approved for our veterans.”

THE FACTS: False. Congress approved the private-sector Veterans Choice health program in 2014 and President Barack Obama signed it into law. Trump is expanding it .

___

TRUMP: “We are taking care of our veterans like they have never been taken care of before. We just got them Choice so they can now go see a doctor. Now they can go see a doctor instead of waiting on line for weeks and weeks and weeks.”

THE FACTS: Veterans still must wait for weeks.

While it’s true the VA recently announced plans to expand eligibility for veterans in the Veterans Choice program, it remains limited due in part to uncertain money and longer waits.

The program currently allows veterans to see doctors outside the VA system if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles to a VA facility. Under new rules to take effect in June, veterans will have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes.

But the expanded Choice eligibility may do little to provide immediate help.

That’s because veterans often must wait even longer for an appointment in the private sector. Last year, then-Secretary David Shulkin said VA care is “often 40 percent better in terms of wait times” compared with the private sector. In 2018, 34 percent of all VA appointments were with outside physicians, down from 36 percent in 2017.

Choice came into effect after some veterans died while waiting months for appointments at the Phoenix VA medical center.

___

SHUTDOWN

TRUMP: “I flew to Iraq 鈥� the first time I left the White House, because I stayed at the White House for months and months because I wanted the Democrats to get back from their vacations from Hawaii and these other places.”

THE FACTS: Trump actually left the White House plenty of times during the “months and months” surrounding the partial government shutdown that began Dec. 22.

Besides his trip to Iraq and Germany on Dec. 26-27, Trump traveled to the Mexican border town of McAllen, Texas, on Jan. 10. On Jan. 14, he also went to New Orleans to address the American Farm Bureau. He’s left the White House during the five-week shutdown for meetings at Camp David and the Capitol.

Shortly before the shutdown began, he traveled to Philadelphia to watch the Army-Navy football game (Dec. 8), visited Kansas City for a law enforcement conference (Dec. 7), attended former President George H.W. Bush’s funeral at the Washington National Cathedral (Dec. 5), participated in the G-20 summit in Argentina in late November; and hosted “Make America Great Again” rallies in Mississippi with Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith (Nov. 26). He hosted a dinner on Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� President Donald Trump laced his State of the Union speech with puffed-up numbers and partial truths Tuesday as he hailed an “economic miracle,” warned of human traffickers flooding across the border and appeared to place Afghanistan in the Middle East instead of where it is, Asia.

Trump used information selectively in claiming a drop in drug prices not seen in half a century and promised the nation it would see bountiful benefits from a trade deal that hasn’t been approved, might not be and in any event makes only modest changes from the status quo.

For her part, Democrat Stacey Abrams reflected a recent and misleading talking point by her party when she slammed the Trump administration for choosing to “cage children” at the border, ignoring a practice also employed by the Obama administration to hold migrant children in facilities with chain-link fencing.

Here’s a look at some of the statements from State of the Union night:

MIDDLE EAST WARS

TRUMP: “Our brave troops have now been fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years.”

THE FACTS: Trump exaggerated the length of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan began in October 2001, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was in March 2003. The U.S. has been at war for a bit more than 17 years.

Also, he refers to fighting in the Middle East. Iraq is in the Middle East, but Afghanistan is in south and central Asia.

FOOD STAMPS

TRUMP, describing progress over the last two years: “Nearly 5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps.”

THE FACTS: The number of people receiving food stamps actually hasn’t declined that much.

Government data show there were 44.2 million people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program in 2016, before Trump took office. In 2018, there were 40.3 million people participating in SNAP. That’s a decline of 3.9 million, not the 5 million that Trump talked about.

The number of people participating in the SNAP program peaked in 2013 and has been going down since that time.

Trump’s last budget proposed cutting SNAP by $213 billion over 10 years. The administration also has been pushing to give states more flexibility in implementing the program, including tightening work requirements for recipients.

ABRAMS-ECONOMY

ABRAMS: “The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living.

THE FACTS: The economy is doing better in the wake of the Trump administration’s tax cuts than Abrams suggests. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, briefly fell to a five-decade low last month. And average hourly pay is running ahead of inflation.

BORDER WALL

TRUMP: “These (border) agents will tell you where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down … San Diego used to have the most illegal border crossings in our country. In response, a strong security wall was put in place. This powerful barrier almost completely ended illegal crossings … Simply put, walls work and walls save lives.”

THE FACTS: It’s a lot more complicated than that.

Yes, Border Patrol arrests in the San Diego sector plummeted 96 percent from nearly 630,000 in 1986 to barely 26,000 in 2017, a period during which walls were built. But the crackdown pushed illegal crossings to less-patrolled and more remote Arizona deserts, where thousands died in the heat. Arrests in Tucson in 2000 nearly matched San Diego’s peak.

Critics say the “water-balloon effect” 鈥� build a wall in one spot and migrants will find an opening elsewhere 鈥� undermines Trump’s argument, though proponents say it only demonstrates that walls should be extended.

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2017 that the U.S. has not developed metrics that demonstrate how barriers have contributed to border security.

TARIFFS

TRUMP: “We recently imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods 鈥� and now our treasury is receiving billions of dollars.”

THE FACTS: This is misleading. Yes, money from tariffs is going into the federal treasury, but it’s largely coming from U.S. businesses and consumers. It’s not foreign countries that are paying these import taxes by cutting a check to the government.

His reference to money coming into the treasury “now” belies the fact that tariffs go back to the founding of the country. This revenue did not start with his increased tariffs on some goods from China.

Tariffs did produce $41.3 billion in tax revenues in the last budget year, according to the Treasury Department. But that is a small fraction of a federal budget that exceeds $4.1 trillion.

The tariffs paid by U.S. companies also tend to result in higher prices for consumers, which is what happened for washing machines after the Trump administration imposed import taxes.

TRADE-NAFTA

TRUMP: “Our new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement 鈥� or USMCA 鈥� will replace NAFTA and deliver for American workers: bringing back our manufacturing jobs, expanding American agriculture, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring that more cars are proudly stamped with the four beautiful words: MADE IN THE USA.”

THE FACTS: It’s unlikely to do all those things, since the new agreement largely preserves the structure and substance of NAFTA. In addition, the deal has not been ratified and its chances in Congress are uncertain.

In one new feature, the deal requires that 40 percent of cars’ contents eventually be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour 鈥� that is, in the United States, or Canada, but not in Mexico. It also requires Mexico to pursue an overhaul of labor law to encourage independent unions that will bargain for higher wages and better working conditions for Mexicans.

Still, just before the agreement was signed, General Motors announced that it would lay off 14,000 workers and close five plants in the United States and Canada.

Philip Levy, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a trade official in Republican President George W. Bush’s White House, says: “President Trump has seriously overhyped this agreement.”

DRUG PRICING

TRUMP: “Already, as a result of my administration’s efforts, in 2018 drug prices experienced their single largest decline in 46 years.”

THE FACTS: Trump is selectively citing statistics to exaggerate what seems to be a slowdown in prices. A broader look at the data shows that drug prices are still rising, but more moderately. Some independent experts say criticism from Trump and congressional Democrats may be causing pharmaceutical companies to show restraint.

The Consumer Price Index for prescription drugs shows a O.6 percent reduction in prices in December 2018 when compared with December 2017, the biggest drop in nearly 50 years. The government index tracks a set of medications including brand drugs and generics.

However, that same index showed a 1.6 percent increase when comparing the full 12 months of 2018 with the entire previous year.

“The annualized number gives you a better picture,” said economist Paul Hughes-Cromwick of Altarum, a nonprofit research organization. “It could be that something quirky happened in December.”

Separately, an analysis of brand-name drug prices by The Associated Press shows there were 2,712 price increases in the first half of this January, as compared with 3,327 increases during the same period last year.

The size of this year’s increases was not as pronounced. Both this year and last, the number of price cuts was minuscule. The information for the analysis was provided by the health data firm Elsevier.

WAGES

TRUMP: “Wages are rising at the fastest pace in decades, and growing for blue collar workers, who I promised to fight for, they’re growing faster than anyone else thought possible.”

THE FACTS: This is an unsupported statement because the data on hourly wages for private workers only go back to 2006, not decades.

But data on wages for production workers date back to 1939 鈥� and Trump’s claim appears to be unfounded.

Average hourly earnings for production and non-supervisory workers are up 3.4 percent over the past year, according to the Labor Department. Those wage gains were higher as recently as early 2009. And they were averaging roughly 4 percent before the start of the Great Recession in late 2007.

There are other ways to track wage gains 鈥� and those don’t work in Trump’s favor, either.

Adjusted for inflation, median weekly wages rose just 0.6 percent in 2018. The gains in weekly wages were 2.1 percent in 2015.

ABRAMS-MIGRANT CHILDREN

ABRAMS, in the Democratic response: “We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart.”

THE FACTS: The cages that Abrams mentions are actually chain-link fences and the Obama administration used them, too.

Children are held behind them, inside holding Border Patrol facilities, under the Trump administration. As well, Obama’s administration detained large numbers of unaccompanied children inside chain link fences in 2014. Images that circulated online of children in cages during the height of Trump’s family separations controversy were actually from 2014 when Obama was in office.

Children are placed in such areas by age and sex for safety reasons and are held for up to 72 hours by the Border Patrol.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general visited five detention facilities for unaccompanied children on the Texas border with Mexico in late June, during the height of the furor over family separations, and found they appeared to comply with detention standards. The government watchdog reported that cleanliness was inconsistent but that the children had access to toilets, food, drinks, clean bedding and hygiene items.

At the height of the family separations, about 2,400 children were separated. Since then, 118 children were separated. Immigration officials are allowed to take a child from a parent in certain cases 鈥� serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.

That policy has long been in place and is separate from the now-suspended zero-tolerance Trump administration policy that saw children separated from parents only because they had crossed illegally.

MINORITY UNEMPLOYMENT

TRUMP: “African-American, Hispanic-American and Asian-American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.”

THE FACTS: What he’s not saying is that the unemployment rates for all three groups have gone up since reaching record low levels.

Black unemployment reached a record low, 5.9 percent, in May, but rose to 6.8 percent in January.

Latino unemployment fell to 4.4 percent, its lowest ever, last October, and Asian unemployment fell to a record low of 2.2 percent in May. But Latino and Asian unemployment also have increased, in part because of the government shutdown, which elevated unemployment last month.

The African-American rate is still nearly double the jobless rate for whites, at 3.5 percent.

The most dramatic drop in black unemployment came under President Barack Obama, when it fell from a recession high of 16.8 percent in March 2010 to 7.8 percent in January 2017.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

TRUMP: “Human traffickers and sex traffickers take advantage of the wide open areas between our ports of entry to smuggle thousands of young girls and women into the United States and to sell them into prostitution and modern-day slavery.”

THE FACTS: His administration has not supplied evidence that women and girls are smuggled by the “thousands” across remote areas of the border for these purposes. What has been established is nearly 80 percent of international trafficking victims cross through legal ports of entry, a flow that would not be stopped by a border wall.

Trump distorts how often trafficking victims come from the southern border, according the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative , a global hub for trafficking statistics with data contributed by organizations from around the world.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline, a venture supported by federal money and operated by the anti-trafficking group Polaris , began tracking individual victim records in 2015. From January through June 31, 2018, it tracked 35,000 potential victims. Of those, there was a near equal distribution between foreigners on one hand and U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents on the other.

Most of the labor trafficking victims were foreign, and most of the sex trafficking victims were U.S. citizens. Of foreign nationals, Mexico had the most frequently trafficked.

ECONOMY

TRUMP: “In just over two years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom 鈥� a boom that has rarely been seen before. There’s been nothing like it. … An economic miracle is taking place in the United States.”

THE FACTS: The president is vastly exaggerating what has been a mild improvement in growth and hiring. The economy is healthy but not nearly one of the best in U.S. history.

The economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.8 percent last spring and summer, a solid pace. But it was just the fastest in four years. In the late 1990s, growth topped 4 percent for four straight years, a level it has not yet reached under Trump. And growth even reached 7.2 percent in 1984.

Almost all independent economists expect slower growth this year as the effect of the Trump administration’s tax cuts fade, trade tensions and slower global growth hold back exports, and higher interest rates make it more expensive to borrow to buy cars and homes.

WOMEN IN WORKFORCE

TRUMP: “All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before.”

THE FACTS: Of course, there are more women working than ever before. But that’s due to population growth 鈥� and not something that Trump can credit to any his policies.

The big question is whether a greater percentage of women is working or searching for a job than at any point in history. And on this count, women have enjoyed better times.

Women’s labor force participation rate right now is 57.5 percent, according to the Labor Department. The rate has ticked up recently, but it was higher in 2012 and peaked in 2000 at roughly 60 percent.

ENERGY

TRUMP: “We have unleashed a revolution in American energy – the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world.”

THE FACTS: True, if “we” means Trump and his recent predecessors. It’s not all to Trump’s credit. The government says the U.S. became the world’s top natural gas producer in 2013, under Barack Obama’s administration.

The U.S. now leads the world in oil production, too, under Trump. That’s largely because of a boom in production from shale oil, which also began under Obama.

TRUMP, citing legislation in New York and Virginia in calling on Congress to ban late-term abortion: 鈥淎nd then we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth.鈥�

THE FACTS: That鈥檚 not what Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said.

Northam told a radio interviewer that he supported state legislation that would allow late-term abortions and noted that the procedures were usually done if the fetus had severe deformities or wasn鈥檛 viable. Describing a hypothetical situation, he said if a woman were to desire an abortion as she鈥檚 going into labor, the baby would be delivered and 鈥渞esuscitated if that鈥檚 what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue鈥� between doctors and the mother.

Some Republicans said that showed Northam, a Democrat, was supporting infanticide.

The governor鈥檚 spokeswoman said Northam, a pediatric neurologist, was only trying to describe the 鈥渢ragic or difficult circumstances鈥� involved in a late-term abortion.

___

Contributed by Associated Press writers Hope Yen, Josh Boak, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Ellen Knickmeyer and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� A look at one of President Donald Trump’s statements from his State of the Union address on Tuesday night and how it compares with the facts:

TRUMP: “All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before.”

THE FACTS: Of course, there are more women working than ever before. But that’s due to population growth 鈥� and not something that Trump can credit to any his policies.

The big question is whether a greater percentage of women is working or searching for a job than at any point in history. And on this count, women have enjoyed better times.

Women’s labor force participation rate right now is 57.5 percent, according to the Labor Department. The rate has ticked up recently, but it was higher in 2012 and peaked in 2000 at roughly 60 percent.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� A look at one of Democrat Stacey Abrams’ statements from her response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night and how it compares with the facts:

ABRAMS: “We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st century immigration plan but this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart.”

THE FACTS: The cages that Abrams mentions are actually chain-link fences and the Obama administration used them, too.

Children are held behind them, inside holding Border Patrol facilities, under the Trump administration. As well, Obama’s administration detained large numbers of unaccompanied children inside chain link fences in 2014. Images that circulated online of children in cages during the height of Trump’s family separations controversy were actually from 2014 when Obama was in office.

Children are placed in such areas by age and sex for safety reasons and are held for up to 72 hours by the Border Patrol.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general visited five detention facilities for unaccompanied children on the Texas border with Mexico in late June, during the height of the furor over family separations, and found they appeared to comply with detention standards. The government watchdog reported that cleanliness was inconsistent but that the children had access to toilets, food, drinks, clean bedding and hygiene items.

At the height of the family separations, about 2,400 children were separated. Since then, 118 children were separated. Immigration officials are allowed to take a child from a parent in certain cases 鈥� serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.

That policy has long been in place and is separate from the now-suspended zero-tolerance Trump administration policy that saw children separated from parents only because they had crossed illegally.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� A look at one of Stacey Abrams’ statements from her response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night and how it compares with the facts:

ABRAMS: “The Republican tax bill rigged the system against working people. Rather than bringing back jobs, plants are closing, layoffs are looming and wages struggle to keep pace with the actual cost of living.

THE FACTS: The economy is doing better in the wake of the Trump administration’s tax cuts than Abrams suggests. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, briefly fell to a five-decade low last month. And average hourly pay is running ahead of inflation.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source

President Donald Trump passed one around on Twitter in recent days, and it showing spending on Medicaid rising for years in the future under the stalled Republican health care bill. You’d never know from his chart’s mountain-climbing line , or his rhetoric, that the bill would inflict deep cuts in the program.

A drawing can be made to show what the person making the display wants people to see, even using correct numbers, but in a way that obscures reality. Similarly, Vice President Mike Pence had a chart onstage weeks ago showing how enrollment under the Obama-era health law fell far short of predictions. That’s only because Pence and his chart ignored the estimated 12 million low-income people covered under the overhaul’s Medicaid expansion.

Trump’s tweet came during a week of tussling over the Senate Republican health bill, a White House cheerleading session for U.S. energy and assertions by the president on trade 鈥� subjects producing a variety of statements that call for scrutiny.

A sampling:

TRUMP: “For many, many years, the United States has suffered through massive trade deficits. That’s why we have $20 trillion in debt. So we’ll be changing that.” 鈥� Remarks Friday in meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and aides.

THE FACTS: Trump’s comments suggest he could use a refresher in how the economy works. Trade deficits are not why the U.S. has nearly $20 trillion in national debt.

Because the U.S. imports more than it exports, it has a negative trade balance, or a deficit. Of course, many of the goods that the U.S. imports are popular with consumers so a deficit isn’t necessarily negative. Americans may buy coffee from Central America, electronics from China, cars from South Korea and jeans sewn in Turkey.

The national debt is a separate thing. It’s the debt accumulated from budget deficits year after year, when the federal government must borrow because it spends more than it collects in taxes. The total public debt outstanding is $19.8 trillion.

If Trump seeks to reduce that figure, he would probably need to do some combination of cutting spending, increasing tax revenues and fueling significantly faster economic growth.

___

TRUMP: “Democrats purposely misstated Medicaid under new Senate bill – actually goes up.” 鈥� tweet Wednesday, with chart.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, White House senior adviser: “These are not cuts to Medicaid, George. This slows the rate for the future and it allows governors more flexibility with Medicaid dollars because they’re closest to the people in need.” 鈥� Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

THE FACTS: The stalled Senate bill would cut Medicaid 鈥� by phasing out ex-President Barack Obama’s expansion of the program and reducing over time the number of people who can be on it.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the program would cover 15 million fewer people by 2026, a 16 percent reduction. Although Trump and Conway are correct that Medicaid spending overall would continue to rise, and at a slower rate than projected, the effect would be a significant cut in the program.

Governors would have more flexibility, but they also would have to dig deeper into their state budgets to make up missing money from Washington or scale back the program.

The Republican emphasis on spending growth is a sleight of hand that both parties resort to when it suits their political purposes.

Obama’s law slowed the growth of Medicare spending, primarily by reducing projected payment increases to hospitals and other providers, and Republicans roundly denounced that as the cut that it was.

___

TRUMP: “Our new American Energy Policy will unlock MILLIONS of jobs & TRILLIONS in wealth. We are on the cusp of a true energy REVOLUTION.” 鈥� tweet Friday.

THE FACTS: It’s hard to see how any government policy could yield the results Trump predicts. Despite a recent boom, the energy sector employs fewer workers than it did a decade ago. The Labor Department said there are 655,300 jobs in mining coal and extracting oil and natural gas, down from a peak of 1.18 million jobs in 1981. And a report in January from the authoritative Energy Information Administration shows that the entire energy generation sector – including solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear and bioenergy – employs 2 million people.

___

TRUMP: “As you all know, I approved the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline in my first week. Thousands of jobs, tremendous things are happening.” 鈥� remarks Thursday on energy.

THE FACTS: His timing is off and his boast about jobs leaves out the fact that almost all the employment is temporary.

In his first week, Trump signed orders asking TransCanada to resubmit its application to build Keystone XL and requiring the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider its earlier refusal to grant an easement needed to finish the Dakota Access project. Both projects had been blocked by the Obama administration and Trump undoubtedly revived them, but his Jan. 24 orders did not approve them. That came later.

The U.S. government estimated Keystone XL will create 42,100 jobs directly and indirectly in the U.S. for up to two years. Once the pipeline is complete, operating it would support an estimated 50 jobs. The recently completed Dakota Access pipeline is expected to support several dozen permanent jobs.

___

TRUMP, on how he braced for trouble when he revived the pipeline projects: “I thought I’d take a lot of heat. I didn’t take any heat. I approved them and that was it. I figured we’d have all sorts of protests. We didn’t have anything.” 鈥� remarks on energy.

THE FACTS: Hundreds of authorities went into the Standing Rock protest camp in late February, clearing it out and arresting 46 people. Trump is wrong to say there were no protests. But they were much diminished by the time he took his action. Protesters had declared victory in December when the Army Corps ruled against the easement, freezing the project. The Standing Rock Sioux, the tribe at the center of the protests in North Dakota, told demonstrators through the winter that it was time to go home.

___

TRUMP: “The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” 鈥� tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: This convoluted accusation of fake news from The Washington Post sideswipes Amazon for supposedly not paying “internet taxes,” which are not really a thing. In any event, Amazon.com collects state sales taxes in all 45 states that have such taxes, as well as the District of Columbia, according to its website. State governments have sought to capture sales taxes lost to internet retailers, though they have struggled with a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that retailers must have a physical presence in a state before officials can make them collect sales tax.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, without the involvement of Amazon.com Inc.

___

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN, R-Wis.: “They want government-run health care. Government-run health care is collapsing as we speak. It’s not working.” 鈥� Fox 91欧美激情 interview on Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Obama’s overhaul is not government-run health care like many other economically advanced countries have, but a U.S.-style hybrid involving the government, private companies and individuals.

His law kept the system centered on private insurance companies, doctors in private or group practice and employer-subsidized coverage, with new subsidies for private insurance and an expansion of the government-financed Medicaid program that’s been in place since 1965.

Obama introduced more standards and controls, like the prohibition on denying insurance to sick people, which Republicans want to maintain. Most Democrats are not pushing for a single-payer system of universal coverage with the government paying for the care.

___

REP. KATHY CASTOR, D-Fla.: “Most children in the country receive their basic medical care through Medicaid. And if a child is born with a complex condition or, God forbid, your child is diagnosed with childhood cancer, it’s Medicaid that makes sure that you not live a life of poverty.” 鈥� remarks to media Tuesday.

THE FACTS: More children are covered by private insurance than by Medicaid. Employer-based and other private plans cover 54 percent of children and Medicaid covers 39 percent, according to 2015 statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Also, Medicaid is not designed as an escape from poverty. The health coverage is generally only a safety net for those who are on it. It doesn’t catch low-income people who suddenly face catastrophic costs driving them into poverty. They have to be poor to qualify for Medicaid.

___

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-Ky.: “President Obama, I thought, was trying to do the best for people. He really did try to help get more people health care. It didn’t work but I don’t think he was trying to kill people.” 鈥� Fox 91欧美激情 interview Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Obama did more than try to expand health care. Millions of Americans gained coverage either through the health care law’s insurance exchanges 鈥� most of it subsidized 鈥� or through the expansion of Medicaid in states that opted to do so with additional federal money. The uninsured rate dropped to a historic low, about 9 percent.

It’s also premature to conclude that the law “didn’t work,” as Paul asserted. Premiums have risen, in some states dramatically, and coverage choices have dwindled in many areas. But the most recent assessment by the Congressional Budget Office found that the law’s exchange markets are “stable” overall. And Republican governors who have adopted Obama’s Medicaid expansion are lobbying to preserve it.

___

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, White House spokeswoman, on why she thinks the Congressional Budget Office is credible on matters involving revenue and spending but not reliable in predicting 22 million people would lose coverage under the Republican bill: “The CBO is a budget office … We don’t always agree that it does a great job predicting coverage.” She added: “I think when they focus on the budget side, that’s probably a good thing.” 鈥� briefing Tuesday.

THE FACTS: She’s cherry-picking. It’s a Washington ritual to talk up favorable findings from the CBO and talk down negative ones.

She likes the office’s budget projections because they anticipate a cut in the deficit and health-related taxes as a result of the legislation. She dislikes the nonbudget projections that anticipate a substantial rise in the uninsured.

But the two cannot be unlinked: A law’s effects on the budget can only be forecast if analysts make assumptions on how that law changes people’s behavior. The expectation that fewer people would buy health insurance under the Republican bill is central to measuring the bill’s impact on federal finances.

The CBO is highly respected on Capitol Hill for its impartiality, and its projections, while sometimes far off, are considered more reliable than those by other analysts. But that doesn’t stop partisans from assailing the office’s credibility when it suits them 鈥� Democrats did the pummeling when they didn’t like CBO forecasts on Obama’s law.

As Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina put it earlier this year: “We like the CBO when they agree with us. When they don’t, they’re a bunch of losers.”

___

SEN. PAT ROBERTS, R-Kan., reaching for an analogy to illustrate how difficult it is to negotiate health care: “Once in Glacier National Park I saw two porcupines making love. I’m assuming they produced smaller porcupines. They produced something. It has to be done carefully. That’s what we’re doing now.” 鈥� after GOP luncheon Wednesday.

THE FACTS: He is correct, porcupine mating is tricky and potentially prickly. But, unlike lawmakers, porcupines have their mission figured out.

Porcupine spines are an intimidating mechanism to protect the animals from predators. But when it comes time to mate, they have the ability to let down their defenses, said Duke University biologist Stuart Pimm. Courtship rituals can be aggressive but when the animals have negotiated the art of the deal, the females relax and reposition their quills.

It’s not entirely different from people, Pimm said. “We humans are quite capable of arming ourselves with the most ferocious weaponry but I don’t take my broadaxe to bed with me.”

___

Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Seth Borenstein, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Andrew Taylor in Washington; Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

Source