“Promises made, promises kept.” That’s what President Donald Trump told his supporters at rally after rally — in Greenville, N.C., Montoursville, Penn., Green Bay, Wisc., Des Moines, Iowa, and on and on, from coast to coast. It was a stock phrase in his pitch to hold the presidency. By our count of his campaign promises, […]
A week after supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump a “clear and present danger” to the nation. The final vote was 232 to 197. While most Republicans rejected impeachment as unnecessary, vindictive or rushed, 10 of them broke with […]
The police response to the assault and vandalism of the federal Capitol building has unleashed a wave of comparisons to the summer Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C. President-elect Joe Biden said the restrained handling of the Trump supporters at the Capitol reflected unequal justice. His granddaughter had sent him a photo of row […]
After weeks of sharing baseless allegations that the voting system firms Smartmatic and Dominion Systems had manipulated the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News and Newsmax ran segments that debunked their own coverage. Media legal scholars say that move highlights the promise and the limits of the current guardrails against spreading false information. […]
President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden is back in the news. Hunter Biden put out a statement Dec. 9, saying that the U.S. attorney in Delaware is investigating his taxes. “I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately,” Biden said. Before […]
As members of the Electoral College certified Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, a popular social media post claimed that election results from 2008 show that Biden’s 2020 victory is simply not plausible. The Dec. 10 Facebook post makes the case this way: “Biden won more votes in 2020 than Obama did in 2008? […]
2020 has been a year much in need of truth, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we at PolitiFact want to voice our thanks to the people, projects and places that have helped us bring you the facts. No such list can be complete. Our work relies on literally hundreds of experts to tease out […]
As the virus surges nationwide, one by one, governors who once resisted calls for stricter coronavirus measures have relented. Since November, Republican governors in North Dakota, Utah and Iowa have imposed tighter limits on gatherings and mandated masks. But in a few statehouses, a raging virus is still seen as insufficient reason to dictate something […]
While President Donald Trump has been saying that the country is rounding the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, the government’s head of infectious diseases Anthony Fauci has said the opposite, warning that the country “is in for a whole lot of hurt.” “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into […]
Nowhere across the political map are Republicans more likely to pick up a U.S. Senate seat on Nov. 3 than in Alabama. Democrat Doug Jones holds office in the deeply red state courtesy of a special election that pitted him against a man accused of seeking a romantic relationship with an underage woman. Jones now […]
If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that science and politics can be a dangerous brew. The national press jumped on an Oct. 27 White House press release that, by some lights, claimed victory over the coronavirus. The release, under the banner of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, announced […]
At a September rally in Freeland, Mich., Trump described great success in reviving automotive jobs. He boasted that he wrangled a promise from Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japanese companies to expand in the U.S. “They announced five car companies are coming to Michigan,” Trump told the crowd. They aren’t coming — not five, […]