For the month of July, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Customers was unchanged from June. This has triggered a war of words between Democrats, who crow about “zero percent inflation” for July, and Republicans, who say the Democrats are now trying to “deny there’s inflation.” Both have a point.
The reconciliation bill passed by Congress will affect prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries. Democrats and Republicans offer opposing views on how it will affect seniors. We’ll explain what the bill would do.
FBI agents searched the home of former President Donald Trump in Florida on Aug. 8 looking for presidential records and classified materials that were improperly removed from the White House. Social media posts claiming the FBI search was politically motivated have been swirling online, despite there being no evidence that President Joe Biden “had his department of justice’s FBI raid” Trump’s home, as one viral post claimed.
Three stimulus payments have been sent to Americans to ease the economic impact of the pandemic. Social media posts are now sharing a false claim about a new, $40,000 federal stimulus loan. But it’s a marketing ploy. The bottom of the web page says, “This is not a government program nor is it government aid, this is an advertorial for a loan service.”
Both political parties are spinning the facts on whether the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act would raise taxes.
President Joe Biden claimed in a July 20 speech that growing up in Delaware near oil refineries gave him cancer. Posts on social media misinterpreted that to mean he currently has cancer. A White House spokesperson said Biden was referring to a skin cancer that was removed before he became president.
The most recent statistical measures of how the U.S. has changed since the president took office.
Q: Is the Biden administration selling crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to other countries?
A: The oil is sold to eligible companies that make the highest offers. Some of the companies are U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, and some that purchased oil have then exported a portion to buyers overseas. Exports increase the global supply and still help with U.S. gas prices, experts told us.
President Joe Biden quoted the Supreme Court majority opinion on ending the constitutional right to abortion in remarks he made on July 8. Social media posts falsely claim he mistakenly read teleprompter cues. A White House press secretary told us Biden intentionally said “end of quote” and then said “repeat the line” for emphasis, and the full, live remarks support that explanation.
“Liberal world order” is a decades-old term referring to a system of global cooperation. A Biden administration adviser used the term to explain why gasoline prices are tied to the war in Ukraine. But social media posts use the adviser’s comments to misleadingly claim Biden is pushing a “new liberal world order” to make Americans pay “high gas prices forever.”