In Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first interview as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he made multiple incorrect or misleading statements, including about seed oils, an abortion drug and the notion that the U.S. has the “sickest population in the world.”
President Donald Trump incorrectly interpreted data shared by Elon Musk when he falsely claimed on Feb. 18 that “millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receive improper benefits from Social Security. In fact, only about 89,000 people aged 99 or older received benefits from Social Security last year.
President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have suggested without evidence that officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development may have siphoned off taxpayer money for themselves, echoing false social media claims about the former administrator’s net worth.
After U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump made several false and misleading statements about the conflict and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
President Donald Trump this month issued an executive order prohibiting discretionary federal funds from going to schools and colleges or universities that require students to get a COVID-19 vaccine. But there currently are no states that require the vaccines for students, and only a few colleges or universities continue to have such a mandate.
In several court cases, federal judges have temporarily blocked the Trump administration from broadly cutting or freezing federal spending. President Donald Trump claimed that the judges “want to try and stop us from looking for corruption” and “hold us back from finding all of this fraud.” But the court orders don’t stop investigations into corruption or fraud.
President Donald Trump made the exaggerated claim that federal office space is “occupied by 4%” of federal workers to bolster his argument for dramatically downsizing the federal workforce and demanding that most workers return to the office full time.
This week, New York City officials said the city had received two payments from the federal government as reimbursement for expenses the city incurred while providing services to migrants who arrived in New York, including $19 million for hotel expenses. But Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency, claimed, without evidence, that $59 million “meant for American disaster relief” was sent to “luxury hotels.”
Both the Biden and Trump administrations subscribed to Politico and other news services. But President Donald Trump and online posts have misleadingly claimed the media outlets were being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The payments from USAID and other federal departments or agencies were for subscriptions.
Days before he ordered, and then paused, new tariffs on U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, President Donald Trump argued that the U.S. does not need imported products such as crude oil and lumber from those countries. Experts told us it’s not that simple.
