Americans entered 2021 after a tumultuous post-election season filled with lawsuits and falsehoods about the 2020 election. Just six days into the new year, as the nation prepared to pass the baton from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden, we saw an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol. Statements about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack […]
Shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, supporters of President Donald J. Trump breached the U.S. Capitol, turning the seat of American democracy into the scene of an unforgettable crime. Inside, lawmakers had been preparing to count the Electoral College votes that would bring Trump’s presidency to a close. Outside, the rioters erected a hanging […]
In November, President Joe Biden signed into law a major infrastructure bill, Democrats sought to deflect criticism over inflation, and the nation argued over rules related to COVID-19 vaccines and critical race theory. At PolitiFact, we are thankful for reader feedback. Here’s a selection of reader reactions sent via email and on our Facebook page, […]
According to the official certified results, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election by 80,555 votes, flipping the state from a Donald Trump victory in 2016. According to Trump, there’s no way that happened legitimately. “The election was rigged,” Trump wrote in an Oct. 27 letter to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. […]
The United States is closer than ever to providing COVID-19 vaccines to 28 million people who so far have been unable to access protection from the pandemic that has upended their lives: children ages 5 to 11. People in that age group were at the center of Food and Drug Administration discussions Oct. 26 when […]
After Joe Biden won the election in Nevada in 2020, Donald Trump’s allies cried fraud. And they had the poster child of an example: a man who said he felt “disbelief” after discovering that someone cast a ballot in his dead wife’s name. “I was surprised because she passed away three years ago,” Donald Kirk […]
President Joe Biden used a CNN town hall to sell voters on his efforts to get Congress to pass infrastructure and social spending packages that he says would help average Americans with child care and education. Despite the long legislative process and disagreements among Senate Democrats over the price tag, Biden expressed optimism that they […]
A GOP political group aligned with Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell has launched ads attacking Democrats in battleground states over their party’s social spending bill. The ads by the One Nation group try to link Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire to the “liberal spending […]
Nearly one year after Joe Biden won the presidential election, some Republicans still stand by the falsehood that the election was stolen. One of their arguments is that state officials improperly changed election policies due to the pandemic. That’s what Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., repeated in an Oct. 10 interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox […]
The COVID-19 misinformation emanating from a Texas hospital this week was coming from one of its high-profile patients: Republican gubernatorial candidate Allen West. West announced Oct. 9 that his wife Angela West tested positive for COVID-19 and that he was experiencing symptoms. West said chest X-rays showed COVID pneumonia and he was later admitted to […]
Senate Democrats have proposed legislation that aims to restore the civil rights-era Voting Rights Act that has been weakened by recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is named for the Georgia congressman, civil rights leader and voting-rights champion who died in 2020. The legislation is more narrow in scope […]
The last weeks of summer brought closure to major political story lines in the United States: The military pulled out of Afghanistan, and a GOP-led review of ballots in Arizona’s largest county affirmed President Joe Biden’s win. The events brought out a lot of claims to fact-check — with thoughtful reader critiques and compliments along […]