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Just Facts Daily https://www.justfactsdaily.com Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:33:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Study Undercuts Claim That More School Spending Helps Student Achievement https://www.justfactsdaily.com/study-undercuts-claim-that-more-school-spending-helps-student-achievement https://www.justfactsdaily.com/study-undercuts-claim-that-more-school-spending-helps-student-achievement#respond Tue, 06 Jan 2026 15:00:35 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13366 By James D. Agresti January 6, 2026

Credit: Inside Creative House/Shutterstock.com In a 2020 statement about public school budgets, “over 500 of the top education experts in the U.S.” declared:

Research is abundantly clear that money matters for student achievement and other important life outcomes, and this is especially the case for low-income students.

Recent research from the Brookings Institution bulldozes that assertion. Conducted by PhD economist Sarah Reber and predoctoral fellow Gabriela Goodman, the research examined the latest data before the steep declines in student achievement since the Covid-19 school closures and found that:

“substantial increases in per-pupil spending over time have often been met with stagnant academic achievement.”

“school spending in some states is more than twice that in others, yet average per-pupil spending is only weakly related to test scores and graduation rates.”

“economically disadvantaged students in higher-spending states don’t achieve better outcomes compared to their counterparts in lower-spending states.”

The study’s authors often present their results in scholarly measures like standard deviations, but they published one very revealing chart that is crystal clear. It plots the average per-pupil spending in each state versus the average test scores for disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students:

The chart above shows large variations in spending between the states but no clear pattern of test scores and a barely detectable overall association. Moreover, the full association is even less perceptible because the authors excluded New York from the trend lines because it is a “high-spending, low-outcome outlier.” The power of this chart is that it displays both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students. Plotting these groups in isolation can make tiny differences in test scores appear substantial by simply zooming up on them, thus masking the big picture. In opposition to the “top education experts” who declare that higher spending is “especially” helpful for “low-income students,” the study found:

Economically disadvantaged students in high-spending states are exposed to much higher levels of school spending, but they do not have better test scores. To take one example, average spending in Texas was about $10,000, compared to around $18,000 in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, but average scores for economically disadvantaged students in all three states are similar.

Because association does not prove causation, no observational study can accurately measure the effects of increased education spending. However, these results plainly show that doubling and tripling spending is either ineffective or so completely overwhelmed by other factors that it fails to create a visible pattern across all 50 states. Like all social science studies, this one has limitations, but as documented below, the study is methodologically sounder than those cited by the “top education experts.” The main weakness of the study is that the authors haven’t published their raw data or responded to Just Facts’ requests for the data. This is a red flag that they may be hiding something. Spending & Performance Trends Contrary to a drumbeat of media stories decrying funding cuts to K–12 schools, the national average inflation-adjusted spending per public school student has risen by 25 times since 1920:

According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education, governments spent an average of $18,614 for every student enrolled in public K-12 schools during the 2020–21 school year. Furthermore, this figure omits three significant categories of education expenses:

State government administration
Unfunded pension liabilities for government employees
Post-employment non-pension benefits (like health insurance)

Recent scientific surveys show that Americans vastly underestimate how much money is spent on public schools. For example, a survey commissioned in 2021 by the journal Education Next and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University found that U.S. adults on average estimate that their local public schools spend $8,719 per student each year. This was less than half of the real amount. Similarly, a survey commissioned by Just Facts in 2019 found that 53% of voters thought the average spending per public school classroom was less than $150,000 per year. At the time, the actual figure was about $313,000, or more than twice what most people believed. Although these figures are averages, they are also indicative of school districts with large populations of minorities and poor students. Since the early 1970s, school districts with high portions of minority pupils have spent about the same amount per student as other districts. This is shown by a broad range of studies conducted by the left-leaning Urban Institute, the conservative Heritage Foundation, Ph.D. economist Derek Neal, and the U.S. Department of Education. Likewise, a study published in 2025 by Education Next found that school districts with high portions of poor students spend about 2.5% more per pupil than other districts and have done so since at least 1994. From the time that the U.S. Department of Education was founded in 1979, the average inflation-adjusted spending per public school student has more than doubled. Yet, the national average math and reading scores for 17-year olds in the National Assessment of Educational Progress haven’t increased over this period and may even have fallen because:

assessments on 17-year-olds haven’t been conducted since 2012.
younger students experienced substantial declines in math and reading over recent years, particularly in the wake of school closures and other ill-informed reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In short, comprehensive measures show no indication that large expansions of public school spending have improved student performance. Opposing Studies The 500 “top education experts” who allege that “money matters” use four hyperlinks to support that claim. Three of the links lead to the same study, and all them cite the work of the same lead author: Northwestern University professor and PhD economist Kirabo Jackson. The Brookings Institution study repeatedly notes that its findings are at odds with a 2024 meta-analysis coauthored by Jackson. The Brookings scholars state that some of this disconnect may be due to the fact that “most of the studies” in Jackson’s meta-analysis are “based on older data,” but there are deeper issues. Jay P. Greene, a PhD who specializes in education research, authored a 50-page analysis of Jackson’s research on school spending and found a “number of serious flaws” in his “evidence and arguments,” including but not limited to the following:

Jackson’s work is “riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and ambiguities….”
One of his key studies is “not robust to reasonable changes in model specification, data source, or outcome selection.”
Jackson’s meta-analyses are “not based on a complete and unbiased set of studies.”
He “claims” to “‘employ quasi-experimental methods to isolate causal impacts’,” but the studies he uses don’t actually do that.

Greene summarizes Jackson’s work by describing it as “unscientific” and more akin to “advocacy than expert opinion.” Conclusion The performance of K–12 schools has major consequences for the well-being of children, as well as the fabric of the nation. The father of the U.S. public education system, Horace Mann, was well aware of these stakes. In 1841, he declared that public schools are “the greatest discovery ever made by man,” and if they were “worked with the efficiency” of which they are capable:

nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.

Reality has played out very differently than Mann predicted. Even though inflation-adjusted spending per public school student has risen by about 41 times since 1885, and public schools are now spending an average of about $376,000 per classroom per year:

only 37% of U.S. residents aged 16 and older can correctly answer a question that requires basic logic, addition, and division.

only 20% of the college-bound high school students who take the ACT exam meet its college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math, and science).

two-thirds to three-quarters of all young adults in the U.S. are unqualified for military service because of poor physical fitness, weak educational skills, illegal drug use, medical conditions, or criminal records.

15-year-old U.S. students rank 31st among 37 developed nations in math, even though the U.S. spends an average of 31% more per K-12 student than other developed nations.

Public schools cannot be logically blamed for the entirety of those outcomes, but they undoubtedly play a significant role in them. This is because they are among the central competencies that public schools purport to instill, and K–12 students spend more time in school each year than any other single waking activity over these formative years of their lives. Exploding the mantra that more funding is needed, recent research and decades of data show that multiplicative increases in public school spending have failed to substantially help children.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/study-undercuts-claim-that-more-school-spending-helps-student-achievement/feed 0 40 Examples of Fake News in 2025 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/40-examples-of-fake-news-in-2025 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/40-examples-of-fake-news-in-2025#respond Mon, 29 Dec 2025 21:37:16 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13327 By James D. Agresti December 29, 2025

Credit: Ole.CNX/Shutterstock.com For the purpose of media accountability, Just Facts has summarized 40 misleading claims spread by journalists, commentators, and so-called fact checkers during 2025. Each example quotes a specific media outlet, but the vast bulk of these falsehoods and half-truths were spread by multiple news sources, and some were propagated by dozens. 1: Climate Change & Biodiversity Loss An Associated Press article published by PBS in December claimed that “climate change” is making “biodiversity loss worse.” In fact, a prestigious scholarly journal published a study in October that found “extinctions related to climate change have not significantly increased over the last approximately 200 years.” Just Facts documented similar facts more than a decade ago. 2: Food Stamps & Inflation PolitiFact claimed that a Republican bill to reform Food Stamps “would bar increases to monthly SNAP benefits” for “inflation” and “in effect become cuts.” In fact, the Republican bill barred presidents from increasing SNAP benefits above and beyond the rate of food inflation, like Biden did for the first time in the history of the program. As detailed by the Government Accountability Office, the Biden administration raised SNAP benefits by “21 percent compared to the previous inflation-adjusted” amounts without adequate “economic analysis,” “disclosure,” or “documentation.” 3: Obamacare for Illegal Immigrants CNN’s chief “fact checker,” Tom Foreman, claimed that Democrats didn’t demand Obamacare benefits for illegal immigrants in exchange for ending the government shutdown. The alleged evidence for this, he said, is that “the law itself says” that the “only people who could get” these benefits are “ ‘lawfully present in the United States’.” In fact, the Democrat bill to reopen the government would have given about $91.4 billion of Obamacare benefits to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens over the next 10 years and multiples of that thereafter. Like virtually every other major media outlet, CNN denied that reality by misportraying aliens who have been granted a temporary reprieve from deportation as legal immigrants. This included DACA recipients and millions of people that Biden illegally paroled into the country. The Biden administration even admitted that “DACA is not a form of lawful status” before making these illegal immigrants eligible for Obamacare benefits. 4: Violent Crime in Washington, D.C. Reporting on President Trump’s takeover of the District of Columbia police force, ABC News claimed:

The president declaring an emergency, saying crime in D.C. is spiraling out of control, even though the district’s official figures showing violent crime recently hitting a 30-year low, down 26 percent since last year, numbers the president has baselessly called phony.

In fact, the “district’s official figures” aren’t a record of all violent crimes but exclude crimes not reported by the public to the police and crimes not reported by the police to the federal government. Thus, the FBI explicitly warns against “making any direct comparison” of such crime data over time because:

changes in police procedures, shifting attitudes toward crime and police, and other societal changes can affect the extent to which people report and law enforcement agencies record crime.

Murder is the best-measured and most violent crime, and FBI data show that the 2024 murder rate in D.C. was 83% higher than in 2012 and five times the average for all metropolitan areas in the nation. 5: Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies ABC’s David Muir repeatedly claimed that health insurance premiums were going to “skyrocket” unless Republicans went along with Democrats’ plans to renew the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. In fact, Obamacare recipients paid an average of $74 per month for health insurance during 2025, and when the enhanced subsidies expire in 2026, they will pay just $159. The reason this figure is so low is because the original Obamacare subsidies will remain. Under these, taxpayers bear 83% of the premium costs, while Obamacare recipients pay an average of just 17%. The much larger premium payments showcased by media outlets are outliers who comprise less than 0.1% of the U.S. population, are nearly old enough to receive Medicare, and have incomes that exceed four times the federal poverty level. 6: Motive of the Minneapolis Child Killer The New York Times claimed that the “motive” of the transgender shooter who murdered two children at a Catholic school in Minneapolis “is a mystery.” In fact, the shooter wrote in his journal and on his gun messages that accord with the grievances and agendas of leftists, such as:

“Kill Donald Trump”
“Free Palestine”
“Defend equality” (with a trans pride flag)

7: Motive of Charlie Kirk’s Assassin CNN’s Kaitlin Collins claimed that “law enforcement hasn’t laid out a direct motive” for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In fact, the official charging document recorded that Tyler James Robinson “intentionally selected Charlie Kirk because” of his “belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk’s political expression.” Moreover, the charging document detailed the following facts which specify the precise nature of Robinson’s motive:

“Robinson’s mother explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left — becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”
“Police interviewed Robinson’s roommate, a biological male who was involved in a romantic relationship with Robinson.”
Robinson texted the roommate that he killed Kirk, a leading conservative, because, “I had enough of his hatred.”
“Each round in the rifle contained an etched inscription,” one of which says, “Hey Fascist! Catch!”

8: Shunning Democratic Values The New York Times claimed that JD Vance “shocked attendees at the Munich Security Conference” by telling them to stop shunning “far-right parties.” In fact, Vance told these European leaders to stop shunning “our shared democratic values” and learn from the “living memory of many of you in this room” that the Europeans who “censored dissidents,” “closed churches,” and “cancelled elections” were “not” the “good guys.” This refers to the Nazis and Soviets who killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. 9: Nazis & Free Speech Margaret Brennan of CBS News claimed that “free speech was weaponized” in Nazi Germany to “conduct a genocide.” In fact, free speech was censored in Nazi Germany to conduct a genocide. In the words of Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, “National Socialism” (a.k.a Nazism) outlawed free speech to place itself “beyond the possibilities of criticism.” To drive that point home, Goebbels added that “the right to criticize” can “be granted only to the wiser people over the more stupid ones and never the other way around.” 10: Global Warming The New York Times claimed that the “burning of fossil fuels is dangerously heating the planet.” In fact, broad measures of human and environmental welfare related to global warming have remained stable or improved for the past 30–170 years, contrary to predictions that they would have radically degraded by now. These include but aren’t limited to:

11: Birthright Citizenship ABC’s David Muir claimed:

Tonight, one of the president’s executive orders is on hold. A federal judge indefinitely blocking his attempt to end birthright citizenship, the judge ruling that the president’s executive order barring citizenship to children born to undocumented or temporary immigrants, quote, “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment.”

In fact, the 14th Amendment only grants birthright citizenship to the children of people who are “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” The U.S. Senator who created this language introduced it in the Senate by stating that it doesn’t include the children of “foreigners, aliens,” “ambassadors,” “an Indian belonging to a tribe,” and anyone not subject to the “full and complete jurisdiction” of the United States, “that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” 12: Deportations Under Biden & Trump BBC reporter Brandon Drenon claimed that “deportations under Biden” in the federal government’s 2024 fiscal year exceeded Trump’s “record” from his prior term. In fact, Trump deported twice as many illegal immigrants in his record year than Biden in the 2024 fiscal year. Also, Trump’s deportations over his entire first term doubled Biden’s over his entire term:

The BBC, many other media outlets, and AI engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Grok all got this fact wrong because they used a false definition of “deportations” that inflated Biden’s figures by 5 times. 13: Social Security Benefits for Illegal Immigrants New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker claimed that “immigrants here illegally do not collect Social Security.” In fact, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration estimated that 700,000 illegal immigrants worked in 2010 by using Social Security numbers obtained with “fraudulent birth certificates.” Unless this fraud is rooted out, such people are already collecting or will collect Social Security benefits. 14: Illegal Immigrant Tax Filings Reporting on the Trump administration’s plan to use IRS data to enforce laws against illegal immigration, CNN claimed that “millions of undocumented immigrants register with the IRS and pay billions of dollars in federal taxes each year.” In fact, nearly all “undocumented immigrants” who registered with the IRS did so to claim refundable child tax credits, a form of cash welfare. On net, these tax filers received at least $4.0 billion more in welfare than they paid in taxes during 2010. 15: Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens Reporting on President Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, NBC News claimed “there is no evidence” that non-citizens vote in “significant numbers.” IN FACT, a rigorous study conducted by Just Facts found that roughly 1.0–2.7 million non-citizens illegally voted in 2024. Furthermore, repeated attempts to debunk the study epically failed, including those by NPR, the New York Times, the BBC, Snopes, and a cadre of scholars. 16: Illegal Immigrant Crime The View’s Sunny Hostin claimed that “immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes in this country than actual American-born citizens.” In fact, only legal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, and that’s because they must pass a criminal background check in order to immigrate. Illegal immigrants avoid this vetting and are much more likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens. Yet, the media continually promotes studies that claim the opposite based on fatal flaws. 17: “Assigned at Birth” The Washington Post claimed that “sex is widely understood to refer to a label assigned at birth based on one’s anatomy that may or may not match a person’s gender.” In fact, sex isn’t “assigned at birth” but is genetically determined at fertilization except in rare cases of congenital disorders. Before the word “gender” was appropriated by transgender activists, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defined it as a “Syn.” (synonym) for “sex” that refers to “distinctions in grammar” between “males or females.” 18: Transgender Athlete Advantages Reporting on males who compete in female sports, CNN claimed that they take “medication to keep testosterone at nearly undetectable levels in order to qualify.” In fact, a study published by the journal Sports Medicine in 2020 found that “strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected” by the testosterone suppression meds that males use to compete in female sports. Hence, this gives them a “major performance” advantage and also has “safety implications” for the females they compete against. Likewise, a 2021 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that lean body mass and muscle area “in transwomen remain above those” of biological women “even after 36 months of hormone therapy.” Summarizing such evidence, a 2024 paper in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports concluded that the Olympic Committee’s framework for transgender competitors “does not protect fairness for female athletes.” 19: Rights of Athletes PBS White House reporter Laura Barrón-López claimed that President Trump’s Executive Order banning men from women’s sports is “targeting the rights of trans people.” In fact, Trump’s order protects the rights of female athletes who have lost victories and scholarships to males, been forced to undress in front of them, and were exposed to male genitals in locker rooms. This “unwanted” exposure of “sexual body parts” meets the definition of “sexual violence” from a CDC study. 20: “Gender-Affirming Care” PolitiFact claimed that a Republican budget bill blocks federal funds for “gender-affirming care,” while using that term 19 times in a single article. In fact, “gender-affirming care” is a euphemism for castrations, mastectomies, and other actions that maim healthy organs, disrupt natural development, and have unknown-to-unfavorable impacts on physical and mental health. 21: Energy Prices In August, Time magazine published a commentary by a former Biden Treasury advisor named Anisha Steephen headlined “Americans’ Energy Costs are Rising. You Can Blame Trump and Big Tech.” In fact, when Time published the commentary, average energy prices had fallen by 3% since Trump entered office.

Although journalism standards give commentators “wide latitude” to express their views, this is not a license to butcher facts. In the words of New York Times deputy editorial page editor Trish Hall, “the facts in a piece must be supported and validated. You can have any opinion you would like, but you can’t say that a certain battle began on a certain day if it did not.” 22: Ponzi Schemes & Social Security In response to Elon Musk calling Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” PolitiFact claimed that “Social Security’s structure, oversight and safeguards make it fundamentally different from a Ponzi scheme.” In fact, if a private corporation operated a pension system structured like Social Security, it would be illegal under laws that prohibit Ponzi schemes. 23: Covid-19 Lessons Learned In a commentary published by the New York Times about the Covid-19 pandemic, scientist Siddhartha Mukherjee claimed that the “collection and dissemination of facts during a pandemic” is “best controlled through validated, state-endorsed channels.” In fact, such channels got the facts diametrically wrong on at least a dozen life-or-death aspects of the pandemic, including the:

contagiousness of Covid-19.
fatality rate of Covid-19.
futility of lockdowns and their harms.
inefficacy of masks and their negative side effects.
negligible risks of Covid-19 to children.
potency and longevity of naturally acquired immunity.
perils of placing people with Covid-19 into nursing homes.
mantra that Covid-19 was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
flaws and dangers of Covid mRNA vaccines.
failure of Covid mRNA vaccines to improve all-cause mortality.
dangers of getting repeated Covid vaccine boosters.
life-saving benefits of using ultraviolet air disinfection in places like nursing homes and hospitals.

24: Covid Vaccines In a commentary published by the New York Times, nine former directors and acting directors of the CDC asserted that Covid vaccines “saved millions of lives.” To support that last claim, they link to a thinly documented study based on a “computer model” from a group called the Commonwealth Fund. Left unstated by the study’s authors and these former CDC directors is that model-based studies:

“provide only theoretical evidence” and should not be used “as evidence to inform or change policy measures,” as warned by Public Health England, the UK equivalent of the CDC.

rely “upon a host of simplifying assumptions” and “cannot be fully” representative of the real world, as admitted by scholars who conducted a similar study published by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

“produce highly uncertain numbers,” and therefore, “modellers must not be permitted to project more certainty than their models deserve; and politicians must not be allowed to offload accountability to models of their choosing,” as explained by 22 scholars in the journal Nature.

Contrary to such fatally flawed studies, large gold-standard randomized controlled trials showed no evidence that the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines saved more people than they killed. 25: Childhood Covid Vaccination Reporting on RFK Jr.’s announcement that the CDC is removing Covid-19 vaccines from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children, CNN claimed that “experts say the shift will have devastating consequences….” In fact, only 13% of children were given the latest Covid vaccine, and the Biden administration repeatedly violated the FDA’s safety and efficacy standards when approving them for young children. Moreover, they did this even though the clinical trials:

found adverse reactions to the vaccines, including fevers up to 105.4 ºF, eye-rolling seizures, convulsions, limping, and a “severe” decline in white blood cells that creates the “risk of overwhelming infection.”

did not enroll enough children to show any clinically meaningful benefits like preventing severe Covid-19, hospitalization, or death.

excluded children apt to have serious adverse reactions to the vaccines.

failed to report the absolute efficacy rates of the vaccines, which a medical journal explains can “mislead and distort the public’s interpretation of Covid-19 mRNA vaccine efficacy and violate the ethical and legal obligations of informed consent.”

would need to be at least 400,000 times larger/longer to determine if the vaccines save more toddlers and preschoolers than they kill.

26: Record National Debt The New York Times claimed that the national debt is “on track to overtake” its “record” share of the U.S. economy from “1945, after a world war and the Great Depression.” In fact, the national debt broke that record in 2020 during the pandemic and is still higher than the 1945 level. The Times, however, excludes a major portion of the debt, a fact that it buries in a hyperlink under a chart in the article.

27: National Debt Drivers PolitiFact claimed that “tax cuts were the biggest of four types of legislation that have added to the federal debt since 2001.” In fact, PolitiFact used a study that puts all tax cuts into one bucket while splitting the added spending into three buckets. Placing the added spending into one bucket, the study shows that it accounts for 61% of the added debt. Furthermore, most “tax cuts” are actually “tax evens” that correct for bracket creep, which consumes an ever-growing share of people’s incomes over time. That’s why despite the passage of numerous “tax cuts,” the portion of the U.S. economy consumed by federal taxes has been roughly level for eight decades, while the portion of the U.S. economy consumed by federal spending has grown from 3% in 1930 to 23% in 2023 — almost entirely due to social programs:

28: Positions of Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders PolitiFact claimed it is “false” that Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders are “communists.” In fact, Sanders and Mamdani have embraced major elements of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the official Law of the Soviet State. For examples, either or both of them have expressed support for:

seizing the means of production.
abolishing private health insurance.
banning private ownership of guns and housing.
universal government-provided childcare and pre-kindergarten.
a 32-hour workweek.
government-mandated paid family and medical leave.
government-funded college for all.

Mamdani and Sanders haven’t endorsed darker aspects of communism like “depriving the bourgeoisie” of the ability to vote, outlawing “freedom of speech” for “the foes of socialism,” and having “the exploiter classes in the country” “liquidated.” However, the Law of the Soviet State explains that such policies are not “according to the plan” of communism and are “not a matter of the proletarian dictatorship in general” but things that “developed spontaneously during the course of the struggle.” In other words, Mamdani Sanders favor utopian communism without the despots and gulags, although that is what communism has typically descended into throughout history. 29: Judge Hannah Dugan Guardian columnist Moira Donegan claimed that the domestic violence proceedings against an illegal immigrant in the courtroom of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan “had to be abruptly halted” because ICE attempted to arrest him, and therefore, “the victims, who were present in the courtroom, did not get their chance to see justice served.” In fact, Dugan was fully responsible for that injustice. As documented in the criminal complaint against her:

ICE agents notified courthouse officials that they wouldn’t arrest the illegal immigrant “until after the completion of the scheduled hearing,” and this is “standard practice.”

when Dugan was informed that ICE was planning to arrest the illegal immigrant, she interrupted the proceedings of another case she was hearing, confronted the ICE agents in the hallway outside her courtroom, and “ordered them to report to the Chief Judge’s office.”

Dugan then went back into the courtroom and told the illegal immigrant and his attorney to leave through a back door typically reserved for jury members and official business.

Dugan’s actions baffled an attorney for the state and the state’s Victim Witness Specialist because the “case had not yet been called, and the victims were waiting.”

In short, The Guardian blamed ICE for the actions of Dugan, who skipped the illegal immigrant’s hearing without notifying the state officials or the victims, wasting their time and depriving them of their day in court. 30: Warrants to Detain Illegal Immigrants Moira Donegan of The Guardian also claimed that “Judge Dugan asked the ICE agents to leave, and pointed out that they did not have the correct warrants.” In fact, ICE had the correct warrant. Federal law empowers ICE to apprehend and detain illegal aliens with administrative warrants, which is exactly what ICE had. Dugan demanded a judicial warrant, which was unnecessary to carry out the arrest. 31: “Black Lives Matter” Plaza Reporting on the Trump administration’s decision to remove the massive “Black Lives Matter” mural from a street near the White House, USA Today claimed that BLM “protesters” were “forcibly removed from the area with smoke canisters” in 2020 so Trump could “pose for photographs at a nearby church.” In fact, an investigation conducted by the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior found that the “protestors” were violent, their removal had nothing to do with Trump, and the tear gas was deployed by police who were under the authority of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. 32: Manufacturing Jobs NBC’s Kristen Welker claimed that the “economy” added “nearly half a million manufacturing jobs under former President Biden.” In fact, population- and lockdown-adjusted manufacturing jobs fell by 2.8% during Biden’s presidency:

33: Crime Narratives The New York Times claimed that “outrage over” the murder of Iryna Zarutska is “part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by ‘American carnage”.” In fact, people of all political stripes highlight horrific crimes to bolster various narratives. The difference is that some crimes are common while others are rare, including about:

18,816 murders per year.
1,415 murders of white people by black people per year.
629 murders of black people by white people per year.
611 murders by non-citizen immigrants per year.
26 murders of transgender people per year.
2 murders of black people by police officers per year.

With disregard for those facts, the New York Times and other media outlets have consistently focused on and exaggerated the least common of these crimes while whitewashing and downplaying those that are widespread. 34: Capitol Security on J6 Uncritically quoting the spokesman of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House during the J6 riot, CNN “fact checker” Daniel Dale claimed that the Speaker “is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.” In fact, the official Capitol Police timeline of the J6 riot shows that the House Sergeant at Arms, who is under the authority of the Speaker and is responsible for Capitol security, “denied” a request for “authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event.” 35: DOGE & Social Security Reporting on the actions of DOGE, a New York Times headline claimed, “A Diminished Social Security Work Force, and Its Customers, Feel the Strain.” In fact, the article underlying the headline focused on anecdotes while ignoring comprehensive measures of Social Security performance that improved under DOGE, including the number of claims processed, phone call answer rates and wait times, callbacks, disability determination processing times, and successful online transactions. 36: Doge Data Access Dangers In an interview with PBS, a Yale professor and former Treasury worker named Natasha Sarin claimed that DOGE auditing the IRS taxpayer database raises “real concerns about this type of data being accessed by our adversaries and being used against us.” In fact, Sarin:

admitted that all IRS customer service representatives have access to the database.
failed to mention that China hacked substantially more dangerous data during the Obama administration.
failed to mention that an IRS contractor stole and leaked thousands of tax returns, including Donald Trump’s, during the first Trump administration.

37: Existence of Antifa The View’s Whoopi Goldberg claimed, “No one has found antifa.” In fact, The Nation — which is the “leading liberal magazine” in the U.S. — published a glowing profile of “antifa” that reported:

Organizers from anti-fascist research and news site Antifa NYC told The Nation: “Antifa combines radical left-wing and anarchist politics, revulsion at racists, sexists, homophobes, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes, with the international anti-fascist culture of taking the streets and physically confronting the brownshirts of white supremacy, whoever they may be.”

Using such rhetoric, antifa members repeatedly assaulted Trump supporters. For those reasons and others, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness classified antifa as a domestic terror threat in 2017. 38: Obamacare & Medicare Dr. Vin Gupta of NBC News claimed that Obamacare “didn’t change anything more broadly about Medicare.” In fact, Obamacare progressively cuts Medicare payment rates for many healthcare services over coming decades, thus shifting these costs onto other patients. Per Medicare’s Trustees, this will likely cause “withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market” and “severe problems with beneficiary access to care,” as is already the case with Medicaid. 39: Death Penalty Deterrence PBS claimed that “data points” don’t “show a connection between capital punishment and safer communities.” In fact, studies with large datasets show strong connections between the death penalty and murder deterrence. For example, studies in the American Law and Economics Review, Journal of Law and Economics, and Journal of Applied Economics have found that:

each death penalty execution deters multiple murders.
shorter time periods from death penalty sentencing to execution deter more murders.
the death penalty’s deterrent effect is stronger where it is imposed more frequently.

It is impossible to objectively prove whether the death penalty deters murder because association does not prove causation, but dose-dependent associations like those found in the studies above are strong but not foolproof evidence of cause-and-effect relationships. 40: NIH Drug Development While skewering the Trump administration for cutting the budget of the National Institutes of Health, 60 Minutes’ Sharyn Alfonsi claimed that a “Journal of the American Medical Association study found that between 2010 and 2019, 99% of FDA-approved drugs had ties to research funded by the NIH.” In fact, the study found that “NIH has made limited contributions” to the “clinical development” of FDA-approved drugs, amounting to 9.8% to 10.7% of “estimated industry” spending on clinical trials. The study notes that most NIH funding of drug research occurs in the preclinical phase, but it doesn’t provide any facts about the efficacy of such research. However, a study published by the journal Nature in 2012 found that 89% of 53 prominent peer-reviewed preclinical studies on cancer drugs were not reproducible. The paper summarizes the implications of this finding by declaring:

Although hundreds of thousands of research papers are published annually, too few clinical successes have been produced given the public investment of significant financial resources.

Conclusion Despite broadcasting an avalanche of fake news in 2025, media figures cast themselves as paragons of truthfulness. For example, CNN reporter Jim Acosta claimed that “journalists exist to seek the truth” and are the “defenders of the people.” And when President Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, a spokesperson for the Times declared, “We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor.” The actual record, rigorously documented above, shows otherwise.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/40-examples-of-fake-news-in-2025/feed 0 The Actual Facts on Enhanced Obamacare Subsidies https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-enhanced-obamacare-subsidies https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-enhanced-obamacare-subsidies#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:49:08 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13279 By James D. Agresti December 9, 2025

Credit: Heather A Phillips/Shutterstock.com Supporters of Obamacare are alleging that the pending expiration of its enhanced subsidies would be a “catastrophe” and “devastating.” Such claims are contradicted by the core facts of the matter, which the press has largely ignored. Among them:

Obamacare recipients are paying an average of $74 per month for health insurance, and if the enhanced subsidies expire, they will pay an average of $159.

The much larger payments showcased by Democrats and the media are outliers who comprise less than 0.1% of the U.S. population, are nearly old enough to receive Medicare, and have incomes that exceed four times the federal poverty level.

Before the enhanced subsidies were enacted, Obamacare recipients paid an average of 17% of the costs of their insurance premiums, while taxpayers picked up the rest of the tab. These original Obamacare subsidies will remain if the enhanced ones expire.

If the enhanced subsidies expire, the average Obamacare premium payment of $159 will still be less than the standard $203 premium payment for Medicare Part B.

The enhanced subsidies are currently providing an average of $14,680 per year in welfare to 60-year-old couples with incomes of $125,000, regardless of how much wealth they have in IRAs, real estate, and other assets.

If the enhanced subsidies are permanently renewed, Obamacare will cost each U.S. household an average of more than $80,000 over a lifetime to subsidize insurance for about 6% of the nation’s population.

Background In 2010, Congressional Democrats and President Obama enacted two laws that are collectively known as the “Affordable Care Act,” or “Obamacare,” for short. Among its many provisions, Obamacare created “exchanges” to sell taxpayer-subsidized private health insurance to people with incomes up to four times the federal poverty guidelines. These vary depending on the size of the household, and four times the federal poverty line for a family of four is currently $128,600. The Obamacare exchanges began operating in 2014, and the Congressional Budget Office projected that 26 million people would join them by 2018. However, the actual figure turned out to be 10.6 million, or 59% lower than projected. In 2021, Congressional Democrats and President Biden enacted a law that significantly increased Obamacare subsidies in 2021 and 2022. The law stated this was a “temporary” measure, and the Biden administration said it was meant to “deliver immediate relief to American families bearing the brunt” of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the Democrats and Biden extended the enhanced subsidies for another three years in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Instead of making the enhanced subsidies permanent, a time limit was included to control the costs of the bill in order to gain the support of moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin. Limiting the costs of the Inflation Reduction Act also allowed Democrats to prevent a Republican filibuster. This was done via a budget process called “reconciliation,” which allows the Senate to pass bills with a simple majority vote if they are projected to reduce the federal deficit. Hence, Democrats boasted that the act would “make a historic down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation.” However, the act is increasing deficits because its green energy and Medicare prescription drug provisions are costing far more than projected, eclipsing the bill’s original estimated deficit reduction of $300 billion. Currently, about 21.4 million people are receiving Obamacare subsidies, or 6% of the nation’s population. Average Premium Payments Senate Democrats and media outlets have persistently declared that letting the enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire would be disastrous. For just a few examples among many:

Chuck Schumer alleges this would “raise healthcare rates for American families to OBSCENE levels.”
Mark Kelly and Dick Durbin claim it would cause healthcare costs to “skyrocket,” as did ABC, CNN, and MSNBC on 10 occasions during six primetime news shows over just two days.
Cory Booker says it would be “devastating.”
Amy Klobuchar says it would put an “enormous strain” on family budgets.
Chris Murphy says it’s an “oncoming catastrophe.”
Elizabeth Warren says this is a “crisis.”

In reality, Obamacare recipients are paying an average of $74 per month for health insurance, and if the enhanced subsidies expire, they will pay an average of $159. These vital facts are from KFF (the Kaiser Family Foundation), which estimates that yearly premium payments for Obamacare recipients will rise “from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026.” The same KFF analysis is the primary source of the common talking point that Obamacare “premiums will double” or “more than double.” This reveals that Democrats and the media are well aware of this source. Yet, Google News shows a total of two results which mention that the average premium payment will rise from $74 per month to $159. Reports of the annual figures tally to 26, but most of these are small outlets, and some of the major media players present the costs in a deceitful manner by not stating that these are annual payments instead of monthly ones. Because health insurance premiums are typically quoted, billed, and paid on a monthly basis, most people will assume they are monthly figures. In the words of the Medicare Rights Center:

The monthly premium for health insurance is the point of comparison most familiar to consumers and the one that most influences consumers’ choice of plan.

Yet, a recent CNN article reports that the “premiums enrollees pay will more than double, from $888 to $1,904, on average, next year, KFF found.” This ambiguity is not a fluke but a pattern. CNN’s lead “fact checker,” Tom Foreman, misled viewers in an October broadcast of Inside Politics by reporting three examples of “dramatic” Obamacare premium increases without stating that they were yearly figures instead of monthly ones. Likewise, CBS reported that the “cost of premiums for people who buy their insurance through the ACA marketplaces could more than double, rising from an average of $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026, according to a Sept. 30 analysis by KFF.” Reinforcing the idea that those are monthly figures, the article states two paragraphs later that “premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to surge next year.” And WCVB, an ABC television station that bills itself as “Boston’s News Leader,” reported that “KFF estimated the average premium payment would increase 114% from $888 to $1,904 without expanded subsidies.” Here again, there was no mention that these are annual payments, not monthly ones. Twenty-two paragraphs later, the article presented figures that careful readers could use to deduce that the earlier figures were annual ones. Such journalism, combined with the rhetoric of Democrats, hides and distorts the fact that Obamacare recipients will pay an average of only $159 per month for health insurance if the enhanced subsidies expire. This is less than the standard $203 monthly premium payment for Medicare Part B. The reason why the average payment will be so low is because the original Obamacare subsidies will remain. Under these, taxpayers bore 83% of the premium costs, while Obamacare recipients paid just 17%. Outliers Beyond ignoring and misreporting the average premium payments, Democrats are also highlighting and twisting specific cases that are far outside the norm. For a prime example, Chuck Schumer claims that “because of the Republicans,” “the average 60-year-old couple making $85,000 a year” could see their health insurance “premiums increase” by $25,700 to $27,000 per year. In reality, those figures don’t apply to the “average 60-year-old couple” but to less than 1% of them who receive Obamacare, have no dependents, make more than four times the federal poverty line, and choose to stick with Obamacare after taxpayers stop paying for the bulk of it. Citing a CNBC article, Amy Klobuchar claims that “early retirees” like Bill & Shelly Gall “can’t afford” an “extra $15K a year” for health insurance if the enhanced subsidies expire. What Klobuchar fails to reveal is that the Galls collect government pensions of $127,000 per year, have an IRA, and retired at the ages of 58 and 50. If the enhanced subsidies are renewed, they will also receive $15,000 of Obamacare handouts per year. Such outliers constitute 1% of the people who receive Obamacare and well under 0.1% of the U.S. population. Welfare For the Wealthy Obamacare subsidies take the form of refundable tax credits, which are a type of welfare. Under the expanded subsidies, people with incomes of up to about $300,000 can receive these handouts. There are also no asset limits on Obamacare subsidies, which means that people with millions of dollars in stocks, bonds, and real estate can also receive this welfare. Thus, financial planners counsel such individuals on how to maximize Obamacare subsidies by avoiding IRA conversions and not selling assets. On average, the enhanced subsidies currently provide $14,680 per year in welfare to 60-year-old couples with incomes of $125,000, regardless of how much wealth they have amassed. At lower income levels, the Congressional Budget Office has documented that Obamacare created dynamics which:

allow “some people to maintain the same standard of living while working less.”
make work “less attractive” by providing benefits that decline with rising income.
increase taxes and thus “induce some workers to supply less labor.”

Taxpayer Costs The Congressional Budget Office estimates that permanently renewing the enhanced Obamacare subsidies will cost taxpayers about $350 billion over the next 10 years. Over the average U.S. life expectancy of 78.4 years, this amounts to $2.7 trillion. All told, the original and enhanced Obamacare subsidies cost about $136 billion in 2025. If this spending continues, it will cost taxpayers $10.7 trillion over a lifetime. This is an average of more than $80,000 per U.S. household to subsidize insurance for about 6% of the nation’s population. Most working taxpayers who foot the bill for Obamacare and have health insurance via their employers also pay the costs of their own insurance. This is because these expenses are ultimately taken out of their other compensation, a major cause of wage stagnation. Employees who receive employer-provided health insurance also receive a subsidy because this benefit isn’t taxed like other forms of compensation. However, the exemption typically saves employees about one-third of the costs of their premiums, as opposed to 87% for Obamacare recipients. Summary Obamacare was enacted with claims that it would make healthcare “affordable,” reduce budget deficits, “save families an average of $2,500 per year on insurance premiums,” not cause anyone to lose their doctors or insurance plans, and improve life expectancy. None of these promises have panned out. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Democrats significantly increased taxpayer funding for Obamacare recipients while claiming that this would only be “temporary.” Now, they are trying to make it permanent while ignoring and distorting the primary facts of the matter. Instead of exposing this deceit, major media outlets are helping to propagate it.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-enhanced-obamacare-subsidies/feed 1 The Actual Facts on Taxpayer-Funded Healthcare For Illegal Immigrants https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-taxpayer-funded-healthcare-for-illegal-immigrants https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-taxpayer-funded-healthcare-for-illegal-immigrants#comments Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:35:00 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13208 By James D. Agresti November 7, 2025

Credit: Medical-R/Shutterstock.com Overview Vice President JD Vance claims that the “far left faction of Senate Democrats shut down the government because we wouldn’t give them hundreds of billions of dollars for health care benefits for illegal aliens.” President Trump takes this a step further by alleging that Democrats “want to spend $1.5 trillion on illegal immigrants and destroy health care for everyone else.” On the other side of the aisle, Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer claims that under their bill to open the government, “not a single federal dollar goes to providing health insurance for undocumented immigrants.” Likewise, the Democratic National Committee blames the shutdown on Republicans’ refusal to “negotiate about Americans’ health care.” Contrary to Democrats and certain “fact checkers,” Senate Democrats are demanding significant amounts of taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants in exchange for opening the government for merely one month. Contrary to Republicans, healthcare for illegal immigrants, even under the broadest definition of that term, accounts for less than 13% of the Democrat bill that would enact their demands. Contrary to the figures quoted by nearly everyone, the Democrat bill would cost multiples of what is commonly reported. This is because it creates permanent welfare benefits, but politicians and journalists are only citing the cost estimates for the next 10 years. Background The federal government is now partially shut down because Democrats and Republicans are at an impasse. House Republicans passed a funding measure that largely maintains the status quo for two months so that the parties have time to negotiate, but Senate Democrats effectively filibustered it. This stalled the bill in the Senate, even though it received 55 out of 100 votes, including all but one of the Republicans, two Democrats, and one Independent. Senate Democrats wrote and voted for a competing bill that would open the government for just one month in exchange for:

entrenching a temporary Covid-era handout that increased Obamacare subsidies.
repealing “health care provisions that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including provisions that reduced Medicaid funding.”

The Democrat bill would cost taxpayers about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. This is the standard timeframe that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) uses to estimate the costs of mandatory spending bills. Such laws permanently enact spending which continues every year into the future unless congress and the president pass new laws to change the status quo. To pass either bill will require 60 votes due to Senate rules. A majority could also employ the nuclear option to do away with the filibuster, but that would destroy a long-standing principle that requires senators to reach a level of consensus before passing certain bills. “Lawfully Present” One of the keys to understanding how Democrats funnel welfare to illegal immigrants is explained in a 2015 federal appeals court ruling that struck down President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally place four-to-five million illegal immigrants above the law. The ruling states:

The “Attorney General,” who is under the authority of the President, has certain powers to deem unauthorized immigrants as “lawfully present in the United States.”

Although a “grant of lawful presence” is “not an enforceable right to remain in the United States and can be revoked at any time,” it “removes” a prohibition against receiving “federal public benefits” and “thereby makes otherwise ineligible persons eligible to qualify” for them.

In short, a “grant of lawful presence” can allow illegal aliens to receive welfare, but it doesn’t transform them into legal immigrants. “Legal Fiction” Likewise, a 2022 federal appeals court ruling explains that grants of “parole” — which President Biden gave to millions of inadmissible aliens — don’t confer “legal status”:

But when an alien is granted parole, immigration authorities temporarily allow the alien access to the country while his or her application for admission is pending, though the alien is explicitly not considered “admitted” while in this condition. … Put another way, parole creates something of legal fiction; although a paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country, the legal status of the alien is the same as if he or she were still being held at the border waiting for his or her application for admission to be granted or denied.

In other words, such aliens are not legal immigrants and are only allowed into the U.S. under a “legal fiction” that pretends they aren’t really in the country. “Fact Checkers” With broad disregard for the facts of this matter, so-called fact checkers have repeatedly conflated grants of lawful presence or parole with legal status. For example:

CNN’s chief fact checker, Tom Foreman, argues that Democrats aren’t trying to give Obamacare to illegal immigrants because “the law itself says” that the “only people who could get” it are “lawfully present in the United States.”

Daniel Dale, another CNN fact checker, admits that “Democrats are trying to reverse” provisions of the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) that “took away some combination of Obamacare subsidies and Medicare eligibility from various immigrant groups,” but “it’s important to emphasize that these immigrants with parole” have “permission to be in the U.S.”

PolitiFact’s Maria Ramirez Uribe claims that “Democrats want to restore access to certain health care programs to legal immigrants who will lose access under the Republican tax and spending law.”

Leonardo Cuello, a research professor and PhD legal scholar at Georgetown University, alleges that repealing the BBB won’t “increase or reinstate” healthcare benefits for “undocumented immigrants” but for “lawfully present immigrants.”

All of those statements fail to reveal that the aliens in question aren’t legal immigrants but the beneficiaries of executive decisions that grant them a temporary reprieve from deportation. Illegal Bulk Paroles Furthermore, the vast bulk of parolees, particularly under Biden, were let into the U.S. by distorting a federal law that allows for temporary entries of inadmissible aliens “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.” “Case-by-case” doesn’t mean letting them in by the millions, which is what Biden did. Twenty states filed a lawsuit against Biden’s bulk parole of inadmissible aliens, but the case was dismissed by a federal judge on the basis of standing, a legal doctrine that prohibits lawsuits unless plaintiffs can prove that they suffered a direct personal injury. The litigation continued but wasn’t resolved before Biden left office. Even if the courts had ultimately sided with Biden on the issue of standing, this wouldn’t make his actions legal. Biden used the same argument when he tried to illegally transfer student loan debts to taxpayers. This was struck down by the Supreme Court in a 6–3 ruling, but the minority of justices sided with Biden’s claim that the plaintiffs didn’t have “standing” to challenge his actions. DREAMERS Another revealing example of how Democrats give welfare to illegal immigrants involves DACA recipients, commonly called DREAMERS. This group of 800,000 people was deemed “lawfully present” by a mere memo from Obama’s Attorney General in 2012. Ten years later, Biden formalized the memo with a regulation while admitting that “DACA is not a form of lawful status but DACA recipients are considered ‘lawfully present’ for certain purposes.” At the outset of DACA, Obama unilaterally decided to make them eligible for Medicare and Social Security but not Obamacare. Thus, numerous politicians, media outlets, and “fact checkers” insisted that these illegal immigrants couldn’t receive Obamacare. That was until Biden unilaterally decided to make them eligible. Trump has since rescinded Biden’s edict, and the BBB explicitly bans future presidents from doing what Biden did, but the Democrat bill would repeal this section of the law. Yet, Democrats deny that they want to give healthcare to illegal immigrants, and “fact checkers” are helping them spread this falsehood. The Actual Amounts A Trump White House report titled the “Democrat Plan to Fund Healthcare for Illegal Immigrants” alleges that about $195 billion of Democrats’ demands for reopening the government consist of taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits for “illegal immigrants and non-citizens over the next decade.” Importantly, the term “non-citizens” is broader than “illegal immigrants,” which is how Republicans are misleadingly framing the issue. In detail, the Democrat bill would repeal “Subtitle B of title VII” of the BBB. This part of the bill contains the following provisions that limit healthcare handouts to aliens. Unless Democrats rescind them, CBO estimates that over the next 10 years they will save taxpayers about:

$91.4 billion by preventing illegal immigrants and other non-citizens like temporary workers from receiving Obamacare benefits. (This is section 71301 of the BBB.)

$34.6 billion by preventing states like California from using a tax kickback scheme to obtain more federal money for Medicaid, which is fungible and can be used to fund comprehensive Medicaid coverage for illegal immigrants, as California does for 1.7 million aliens. (Section 71117 of the BBB.)

$28.2 billion by ending an Obamacare provision that gives extra federal money to states like California for emergency room services and childbirths for illegal immigrants. (Section 71110 of the BBB.)

$27.3 billion by preventing illegal immigrants and other non-citizens from receiving special Obamacare benefits given to poor people who are typically ineligible for Medicaid due to their immigration status. (Section 71302 of the BBB.)

$6.2 billion by preventing illegal immigrants and other non-citizens like refugees from receiving comprehensive Medicaid. (Section 71109 of the BBB.)

$5.1 billion by preventing illegal immigrants and other non-citizens from receiving Medicare benefits for elderly people. (Section 71201 of the BBB.)

In total, these figures amount to $193 billion that the Democrat bill would give to illegal immigrants and other non-citizens over the next 10 years. This is 13% of the $1.5 trillion that Democrats are demanding in exchange for keeping the government open for just one month. All of the figures above are far beneath the full costs of the Democrat bill because they involve changes to mandatory programs. This means the spending will continue endlessly into the future unless congress and the president pass new laws to repeal these provisions.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-actual-facts-on-taxpayer-funded-healthcare-for-illegal-immigrants/feed 1 Slanders That Inspire Murder https://www.justfactsdaily.com/slanders-that-inspire-murder https://www.justfactsdaily.com/slanders-that-inspire-murder#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:59:27 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13106 By James D. Agresti September 18, 2025

Shutterstock: Charlie Kirk. Credit: Maxim Elramsisy In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, many people are condemning “political violence,” including prominent Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Gavin Newsom. However, these individuals and their colleagues have repeatedly spread falsehoods that can inspire people to commit murder by misleading them to believe that their very lives are in danger. Such fictions have also been widely spread by the upper echelons of media and academia. Despite what some claim, this is not a case where both sides are guilty. Even ChatGPT, which often draws from left-leaning sources, failed to produce a single legitimate example of a comparable false claim from a leading Republican or conservative. Moreover, icons of the left have embraced a moral code that allows for such slander if it advances their agenda. Criticism & Culpability When people openly criticize each other—a common occurrence in politics—there’s always a chance that a third party will use those words as a license for violence. On the other hand, countless misdeeds wouldn’t be exposed and stopped were it not for public criticism. Even in cases where such critiques provoke lethal violence, more lives may be saved than if the critics remained silent and let the wrongs continue. This is a major purpose of the First Amendment. Under legal standards, critics are not generally liable for violent actions provoked by their words. However, the legal and moral case for blame arises if they make direct calls for violence or maliciously or recklessly mislead others to believe that certain people pose a serious threat to their lives. This is a very real danger given that a 2024 scientific survey sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services found that 14.6 million non-institutionalized, non-homeless adults in the U.S. say they have a “serious mental illness.” These include 9.4% of young adults aged 18 to 25, who are more likely to commit murder than people of any other age groups. Yet, leading Democrats, media outlets, and scholars have spread such murder-inspiring slanders on hundreds of occasions. These involve, but are not limited to, the following five categories of falsehoods. #1: Bloodbath In the months leading up to the shooting of Donald Trump and the killing of Corey Comperatore in 2024, hundreds of media outlets and Democrat officials alleged that Trump threatened lethal violence because he said, “If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.” In reality, Trump used the term “bloodbath” to describe the effects of Biden’s policies, particularly on “car manufacturing,” not as a violent threat. This is unmistakable from the 38-second clip of what Trump said. Yet, one day after the Butler shooting, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz poured fuel on the fire by declaring that Trump “contributed” to “violent rhetoric” because he said “it’s going to be a bloodbath” if “I don’t get elected.” And one day after that, President Biden claimed that he never said anything that could “incite” violence against Trump while simultaneously accusing Trump of threatening “a bloodbath if he loses.” To those who gullibly believe such fictions, they are a license for violence because they mislead people to fear that Trump and his supporters are plotting to kill them. #2 Transgenderism Another group of falsehoods with potential to inspire murder involves transgenderism, an issue that fervently motivated the person who assassinated Charlie Kirk. Inflammatory rhetoric of this nature was spread by the likes of U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D–MA), who stated that “the far-right justices of the Supreme Court endorsed hate” because they didn’t overturn Republican laws that ban “life-saving care” for “trans youth.” Similarly, Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of conducting a “cruel crusade against trans kids” by enacting laws that ban the use of surgeries and drugs to transgender children. In reality, no credible evidence shows that such practices save lives, despite what Democrats and institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics stridently assert. This is clear from a 2023 paper about transgenderizing drugs and surgeries in the journal Current Sexual Health Reports, which documents that:

“systematic reviews” have found “the risk/benefit ratio of youth gender transition ranges from unknown to unfavorable.”
“three recent papers examined the studies that underpin the practice of youth gender transition and found the research to be deeply flawed.”
“results of long-term studies of adult transgender populations failed to demonstrate convincing improvements in mental health, and some studies suggest that there are treatment-associated harms.”

These findings are corroborated by:

a 2023 investigation in the British Medical Journal which found that transgendering children with drugs and surgeries is not “evidence-based.”
a 2025 paper in the Journal of Sexual Medicine which found that “gender-affirming surgery, while beneficial in affirming gender identity, is associated with increased risk of mental health issues....”
at least 9 studies which have found that puberty blockers given to youth significantly interfere with their bone development.

Thus, Republicans enacted policies to protect children from the harms of those practices, as have the nations of Britain, Finland, and Sweden. With no regard for the facts or the dangers of her rhetoric, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed “anti-trans fervor fueled by extreme Republicans” for the “death” of a high schooler “from a brutal assault in their high school bathroom.” In reality, the student died of suicide. Spreading another false narrative that could lead people to violently lash out, President Biden’s Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, claimed in 2023 that “26 transgender Americans” “were killed this year” and that “no one should face violence” for “being themselves.” In reality, 26 killings is 0.14% of the 19,000 people who are murdered per year, and 1% of the adult population claims to be transgender. That means the general U.S. population is about seven times more likely to be murdered than people who identify as transgender. Such slanderous claims also animated the killer of three children and three staff at the Christian Covenant School shooting in Nashville during 2023. #3 Fascism & Nazism Accusations of fascism and Nazism—which were etched on the ammunition of Charlie Kirk’s assassin—are another major category of murder-inspiring falsehoods from high-profile Democrats and journalists. The following bullet points contain some lurid examples:

MSNBC’s Jen Psaki asked California Governor Gavin Newsom, “Is Donald Trump a fascist?” and then nodded in agreement as Newsom replied, “I know it’s a loaded word, but when you say you’re ‘gonna be dictator on day one,’ look up the definition of fascism, the characteristics of a dictator, an authoritarian.”

The “dictator on day one” accusation was widely reported by the media, lending credence to Newsom’s claim. But in reality, Trump said that he is “not going to be a dictator” “except for day one” to “close the border” and “drill, drill, drill.” The interviewer replied, “That sounds to me that you’re going back to the policies when you were president,” and Trump said, “That’s exactly right.”

Cal Berkeley professor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich claimed that Donald Trump used “the language of fascism” by “describing immigrants as not humans, but animals.”

That accusation was also widely reported by the media, but in reality, Trump used the word “animals” to describe murderous illegal aliens like “MS-13” gang members—not immigrants in general. This context is obvious from simply watching the video of what Trump said.

The 2024 Democratic Party Platform asserts that Donald Trump “called white supremacist and openly-antisemitic Charlottesville protesters ‘very fine people’.”

In reality, Trump called them “very bad people” and said that the “very fine people” were those who showed up to “innocently” protest—“not” the “neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.” Yet, the media and Democrats widely alleged that Trump “praised white supremacists” as “very fine people.”

A slew of prominent media outlets and Democrats accused Donald Trump in 2020 of threatening to “dominate protestors” during a speech in which he called for law and order amid widespread riots. This led U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR) to declare, “The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens.”

To unhinged extremists who genuinely believe Wyden, this is all the justification they need to wage a literal war against Trump and his supporters. In reality, however, Trump stated in the speech that he is an “ally of all peaceful protesters,” “we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob,” and governments have a duty to protect “innocent people” from “professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters.”

U.S. Congressman Dan Goldman (D–NY) stated on MSNBC, “There’s no question that Donald Trump has visions, as we saw from his video with the ‘Unified Reich,’ which was completely knowing and intentional inclusion in that video—let’s be real here—he is paving the wave to become a Vladimir Putin or to become an Adolf Hitler or a Kim Jong-un.”

Once again, the media participated in this hoax by widely reporting that Trump posted a video containing the text “Unified Reich,” a supposed reference to Hitler and Nazism. In reality, the words are practically invisible in the video, which was made from a generic vintage newspaper template that costs $21. The phrase in question appears in a blurred headline from 1914 that read, “German Industrial Strength Significantly Increased After 1871 Driven by the Creation of a Unified Reich.” The word “Reich” simply means “the territory or government of a German state,” and the headline dates to World War I, predating the outset of the Nazi Third Reich by two decades. With callous disregard for the truth and the safety of Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris said that Trump “highlighted language from Nazi Germany,” and President Biden said, “It’s the language of Hitler’s Germany.” After this uproar, the creator of the template was asked, “Did you ever think this template would be the center of so much controversy when you made it?” He replied, “I wouldn’t have dreamed of it. It’s really strange. This is just a template.” Most of those falsehoods (and others like them) appear on a Wikipedia paged titled “Donald Trump and fascism.” These slanders are further amplified by Big Tech companies like Google, which presents the Wikipedia page as the first result for a search on Donald Trump and fascism. In short, a colossal Democrat/media ecosystem is broadly popularizing murder-inciting misinformation. #4 Racism Charges of racism are another massive group of lethally provocative falsehoods spread by prominent progressives. For example, the most-visited news site in the nation, the New York Times, has published these racially charged untruths:

Black people face “increasing terror” from white people on “a daily basis.”

In reality, black people are 2 to 3 times more likely to murder white people than vice-versa.

“All Black people pretty much, we need guns to protect ourselves” from “white people” and the “police.”

In reality, black people are about 13 times more likely to be murdered by blacks than by whites and are about 4,000 times more likely to be murdered by blacks than by police.

The man who shot Trayvon Martin told a 911 dispatcher, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

In reality, the Times chopped and spliced the 911 tape, and the man only said “He looks black” in reply to the dispatcher asking, “OK, and this guy—is he white, black, Hispanic?”

It is unclear if the police shooting of “unarmed black teenager” Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was “unjust.”

In reality, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice had already investigated this matter and reported physical evidence, forensic evidence, and witness testimony which proved that Brown, who was 6-foot-4 and roughly 300 pounds, brutally attacked the officer, and the officer shot Brown in a clear-cut case of self-defense.

“Black people suffer disproportionately from police brutality,” and “many police officers see black men as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.”

In reality, police are 42% less likely to use lethal force when arresting blacks than when arresting whites, and police are more likely to fatally shoot whites than blacks given how frequently each group engages in behaviors that warrant the use of lethal force. Such fictions have provoked the slayings of police officers in cases like these:

Before Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered New York City policemen Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in 2014, he posted on Instagram: “I’m Putting Wings On Pigs Today. They Take 1 Of Ours….. Let’s Take 2 of Theirs #ShootThePolice, #RIPErivGardner and # This may be my final post.”

During a 2016 “Black Lives Matter” protest in Dallas, TX in which the crowd chanted the slanderous mantra, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” Micah Johnson killed five white police officers while declaring that he wanted to kill white people, especially white cops.

Ten days later, Gavin Eugene Long shot six Baton Rouge, Louisiana police officers, killing three of them and leaving behind a suicide note which stated, “I must bring the same destruction that bad cops continue to inflict upon my people,” meaning people of color.

Beyond specific murders, multiple criminologists have found that such narratives spurred a “Ferguson Effect” that is the most likely cause of a 20% nationwide surge in murder after the death of Michael Brown and a 35% surge after the murder of George Floyd. The last of those surges translates to an additional 11,000 murders in the wake of Floyd’s death, despite the absence of evidence that racism played any role in the case. Although association doesn’t prove causation, this deluge of murders accords in time and place with progressives’ false accusations of systemic racism and no other identifiable causes. #5 Climate Change Another incendiary realm of fabrications spread by leaders of the left involves climate change. For a poignant example, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder wrote a 2024 piece for the New Yorker in which he accused Trump and JD Vance of being murderous fascists because of their energy and climate policies. While admitting that “Hitler was obsessed with coming ecological catastrophe,” Snyder flips that around by alleging that “the new fascists” like Trump and Vance “will kill by a politics of catastrophe, a deliberate acceleration of global warming, and its exploitation in the service of the politics of us and them.” Likewise, George Washington University law professor Donald Braman co-authored a 2024 paper for the Harvard Environmental Law Review in which he calls for prosecuting fossil fuel companies for “homicide” because “fossil fuel-induced global warming has killed many thousands of Americans and, if it continues unabated, may kill millions.” Such claims—also spread by the likes of NPR, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres—are undercut by wide-ranging climate-related measures that have remained stable or improved for the past 30–170 years, contrary to predictions that they would have radically degraded by now. These include but aren’t limited to:

Apocalyptic predictions about the future are all based on models, a class of studies that are notoriously unreliable. This fact is routinely ignored by those who spread tales of climate doom. An academic paper aptly summarizes the situation:

Model-based “analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision that is illusory and can fool policymakers into thinking that the forecasts the models generate have some kind of scientific legitimacy.”

“The argument is sometimes made that we have no choice—that without a model we will end up relying on biased opinions, guesswork, or even worse. … This might be a valid argument if we were honest and up-front about the limitations of the model. But often we are not.”

That lack of honesty, which comes from the halls of academia and is amplified by Democrats and the media, provides ample reasons for fanatics to slay people who don’t subscribe to the notion that climate change is going to annihilate humanity. Not Both Sides A common refrain is that both sides of the political aisle are guilty of inciting political violence. Thus, Just Facts asked ChatGPT to “provide 5 compelling examples of false claims from prominent conservatives that could easily incite people to commit murder by misleading them to believe that certain people pose a serious threat to their lives.” Despite multiple follow-up requests, ChatGPT failed to produce a single example that met those criteria. Instead, it produced statements that are not from prominent conservatives, are not false, or don’t mislead people to believe that others pose a serious threat to their lives. Here are the five examples that ChatGPT provided while describing them as “compelling” and “well-sourced”:

Alex Jones alleged that “high-ranking Democrats were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria” called “Comet Ping Pong.”

Jones is not a “prominent conservative” but a fringe conspiracy theorist who has been described as a crackpot and liar by prominent conservatives like Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro, although Trump once told Jones in 2015, “Your reputation is amazing.” Nevertheless, there is no equivalence between Jones and the eminent Democrats, major media outlets, and scholars cited above. Moreover, Jones apologized for getting this story wrong, something that none of the perpetrators of the above falsehoods have done.

ChatGPT alleges that Donald Trump falsely described “Central American migrant caravans” in 2018 as an “invasion” and said that “many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border.”

ChatGPT claims this is false because “immigrants (including undocumented ones) commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens, and no terrorist infiltration was documented.” Beyond the fact that these claims don’t directly debunk Trump’s statement, the first one is based on fatally flawed studies promoted by the media, and the second one is pointless because the caravans were stopped in Mexico under pressure from Trump.

ChatGPT alleges that “Trump and allies claimed—without evidence—that the 2020 election was stolen,” which led to the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.

In fact, Trump cited evidence of this from a PhD-vetted study published by Just Facts, and Biden’s DOJ prosecuted him for doing so. Moreover, an attempt by USA Today to debunk the study fell completely flat. Charges of a stolen election are clearly inflammatory, but they don’t lead people to believe that their lives are in danger, and none of the J6 rioters committed murder, attempted murder, arson, or fired a gun. Despite this, Democrats falsely accused J6 rioters of murdering Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, another inciteful fiction.

ChatGPT alleges Trump “falsely claimed that doctors ‘execute’ newborn babies after failed abortions.” ChatGPT says this is because “infanticide is illegal in all states,” “there is no evidence of systematic post-birth killings,” and “situations of life-limiting fetal anomalies are sometimes misrepresented in this rhetoric.”

ChatGPT relies on PolitiFact for those claims, but the documented facts are that:

most late-term abortions are not for medical reasons,
roughly 3–16% of them result in live births, and
99% of House Democrats voted against a bill to prosecute any abortionist who “intentionally” “kills a child born alive” after an abortion or fails to give them medical care.

Democrats claimed that they opposed the bill because it was redundant with another federal law to protect newborns who survive abortions, but that law doesn’t have any penalties for breaking it.

ChatGPT’s final example is that Newt Gingrich said, “We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in sharia they should be deported.”

This is Gingrich’s opinion, not a false allegation. In sum, none of ChatGPT’s “compelling” and “well-sourced” examples meet the criteria of being false, murder-inspiring, and from leading conservatives. Because AI chatbots are programmed to treat untrustworthy sources like PolitiFact and Wikipedia as reliable, they are another large component of the misinformation machine that stokes political violence against conservatives. Moral Frameworks The lopsided nature of murder-inspiring slanders from progressives versus conservatives accords with the philosophies of each side. On the left, Vladimir Lenin gave a speech in 1920 in which he declared that “we reject ethics” based on “God’s commandments” and “our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests” of advancing Communism. Lenin’s doctrine was also embraced by Saul Alinsky, the influential leftist who was the topic of Hillary Clinton’s 1969 college thesis. In his famed book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky wrote that the “ends justify almost any means,” and the “most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.” In other words, these iconic leftists considered it immoral to let ethics get in the way of what they wanted. This stance permits and even embraces slander. On the right, slander is strictly forbidden by the Bible’s ninth commandment against giving “false testimony against your neighbor.” Thus, Albert Einstein noted in 1940—while Nazis were vilifying Jews—that “only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth.” In contrast, Einstein was disappointed that Germany’s “universities” and “newspapers” were quickly “silenced.” This certainly doesn’t mean that conservatives or Christians always tell the truth or that progressives or atheists always lie, but it does provide a plausible explanation for the glaring difference in how often they spread murder-inciting slanders. Summary In response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, prominent Democrats have widely condemned political violence. However, the same people—in concert with leading media outlets and prestigious scholars—have incessantly spread falsehoods that could inspire murder by misleading people to believe that they will be slain unless they strike first. Those slanders include, but are not limited to, hundreds of allegations that:

Trump threatened a violent bloodbath if he lost the election.

Republicans are killing children by banning the use of surgeries and drugs to transgender them.

Trump is a fascist who promised to “be dictator on day one,” vilified “migrants” as “animals,” praised “white supremacists” as “very fine people,” spewed “Nazi” rhetoric about a “Unified Reich,” and declared “war against American citizens.”

white people and police officers “disproportionately” murder black people and see them as “expendable figures on the urban landscape.”

Republicans and fossil fuel executives are murdering millions of people through climate change.

Some of these claims are so blatantly false that they raise serious questions about brazen dishonesty and radical confirmation bias among the influential people who spread them. Many people say this is a two-sided affair, but the left-leaning ChatGPT failed to produce a single example of murder-inciting demagoguery from leading conservatives. Meanwhile, such examples flow like a river from the highest levels of the Democratic Party, the media, and academia. That pronounced disparity may be caused by different moral frameworks, one which accepts slander, while the other forbids it. Given the importance and strength of the First Amendment, effective solutions to this situation will likely not come from government censorship but from efforts to name and shame the perpetrators, instill good character, and master the skills to separate fact from fiction.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/slanders-that-inspire-murder/feed 1 Energy Prices During the Trump & Biden Administrations https://www.justfactsdaily.com/energy-prices-during-the-trump-biden-administrations https://www.justfactsdaily.com/energy-prices-during-the-trump-biden-administrations#respond Tue, 09 Sep 2025 16:23:44 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13063 By James D. Agresti September 9, 2025

Credits: Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock.com, Philip Yabut/Shutterstock.com Overview Prominent Democrats are alleging that energy prices are surging due to the policies of President Trump. These claims are fabricated, exaggerated, and lacking context that completely reverses their implications. The Big Picture The simplest falsehood about this matter comes from Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer, who claims that “energy prices are soaring” in “Trump’s America.” Likewise, Time magazine published a commentary by a former Biden Treasury advisor named Anisha Steephen headlined “Americans’ Energy Costs are Rising. You Can Blame Trump and Big Tech.” To the contrary, average energy prices have fallen by 3% since Trump entered office in January 2025:

In stark contrast, energy prices rose by 34% during Joe Biden’s presidency. This occurred even though Biden depleted 38% of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce gas prices. During Trump’s first term, energy prices rose by 7% before falling dramatically due to Covid-19 lockdowns and then rebounding to a 3% increase before Biden took office. After removing the rest of the Covid rebound from the outset of Biden’s tenure, energy prices still rose by 28% during his presidency. Because association does not prove causation, none of these facts prove that Trump or Biden are responsible for those outcomes. However, the 21% general inflation that occurred under Biden was largely due to policies enacted by Biden and congressional Democrats. In short, Schumer’s and Steephen’s criticisms of Trump are patently false and actually applicable to Biden’s presidency. This is a classic example of projection, a nefarious propaganda technique. Piped Natural Gas While energy prices are down overall, some types of energy are up, particularly those whose retail prices significantly lag the factors that drive them. For example, the retail price of piped natural gas purchased from utilities has risen by 9% since Trump entered office. Exaggerating that increase by a factor of six, Cal Berkeley professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich claims that “household gas prices” have risen “by 56%” since “Trump took office.” Reich’s source for the 56% figure is an article in The Guardian by a “climate reporter” named Dharna Noor, who declares that “household gas prices have risen by a stunning 56%” since “Donald Trump re-entered the White House.” Noor then casually mentions that “gas prices rose by 8%” over the prior year, the implications of which will be clear in a moment. Noor’s source for both figures is a “fact sheet” titled “Trump’s Unfolding Energy Crisis” from a group called Climate Power, a “strategic communications organization focused on winning the politics of climate” and “electing climate champions.” Their sheet states that “natural gas prices rose 56%” since “Trump took office.” After that, Climate Power partially lets the cat out of the bag by writing that “residential gas prices rose 8%” in “the year-over-year comparison between May 2024 and May 2025.” The hyperlink in that sentence leads to a dataset which reveals the full truth: piped natural gas prices plummet every winter and soar every summer:

As explained by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the retail “price of natural gas is much higher in the summer” due to the following factors:

Residential consumer prices for natural gas have two major components: costs incurred to buy wholesale natural gas and the related transportation and distribution charges. Because the fixed costs are spread over the smaller volumes used by customers in warm weather, residential natural gas prices are usually highest in the summer and lowest in the winter on a per unit basis when all charges are combined.

Thus, the government agency that measures the consumer price index seasonally adjusts the data on natural gas prices so the real rate of inflation is evident. Beyond failing to cite this relevant data, none of the facts about seasonality are disclosed by Reich, The Guardian, or Climate Power. Worse still, Google’s Gemini AI completely inverts the facts of this matter by stating the following:

The claim that retail utility-piped natural gas prices rise in the summer and fall in the winter is incorrect. In most cases, the opposite is true: natural gas prices are highest in the winter and lowest during the spring and fall.

Beyond those half-truths and outright falsehoods, none of these sources reveal that the wholesale price of natural gas has declined by 23% since Trump entered office:

So why are retail prices up 9 percent? Per the Energy Information Administration, “residential and commercial prices often reflect the cost of gas purchased many months ago” because utilities:

“are regulated by the state regulator, and rate changes may significantly (by a year or more) lag changes” in the utility’s “costs of purchasing natural gas.”
“have several different ways to ensure adequate supplies of natural gas for the winter,” such as “buying and storing natural gas for the upcoming winter as early as April.”
“purchase gas ahead of time for later delivery” by using “futures contracts” to “lock in a certain price for the utility and help shield the company from fluctuations in the spot market.”

In summary, the 9% (not 56%) increase in natural gas retail prices during the first six months of Trump’s term is mainly due to events that occurred during the Biden administration. Moreover, the wholesale price of natural gas has declined by 23% since Trump entered office, while it rose by 52% during Biden’s tenure. Residential Electricity Reich, The Guardian, and Climate Power, as well as California governor Gavin Newsom, also try to pin on Trump a “10%” rise in residential electricity prices since January. Similarly, House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries says that “electricity prices are skyrocketing.” Climate Power, the source of their talking point, says on the first page in the first sentence of its “fact sheet” that “household electric bills are up 10 percent nationally since Trump took office.” It then stealthily reveals on the sixth page that “electricity prices were 6% higher” than in the same month of the prior year. Here again, all of these sources leave out vital context provided by the Energy Information Administration, which explains that:

electricity prices are “usually highest in the summer when total demand is high because more expensive generation sources are added to meet the increased demand.”
the prices “residential consumers pay for electricity lag changes in wholesale spot prices in a way that is similar to natural gas.”

In other words, the 6% (not 10%) increase in residential electricity price in the first six months of Trump’s term is due to Biden-era causes. With disregard for those facts and no evidence to support its claims, The Guardian alleges, “Among the reasons for the increase are Trump’s new tariffs, as well as his undercutting of inexpensive renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.” These claims are refuted by the fact that:

the wind and solar subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which were passed to “supercharge clean energy development,” are still widely in effect.
it takes an average of about 25 months for solar and wind farms to become operational after they are approved, a long lag time that far predates Trump’s second term.

Furthermore, the notion that wind and solar are “inexpensive” is a fiction. Summary Average energy prices have fallen by 3% since Trump entered office, and the wholesale price of natural gas has declined by 23%. However, retail natural gas prices have increased by 9%, and residential electricity has risen by 6%. In both of these cases, the primary price drivers date back to Biden’s presidency.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/energy-prices-during-the-trump-biden-administrations/feed 0 The Track Record of the CDC https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-track-record-of-the-cdc https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-track-record-of-the-cdc#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2025 16:22:09 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=13039 By James D. Agresti September 2, 2025

Credit: Tada Images/Shutterstock.com While the Trump administration is carrying out mass firings at the CDC, and top CDC officials who were slated to be fired are resigning, Democrats are accusing President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of endangering public health by undermining this government agency. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for instance, torches Trump for “purging the CDC leadership” and says of Trump and RFK, “These fools can’t be trusted with your health.” Likewise:

Senator Patty Murray says that RFK has “taken utterly reckless steps to dismantle our public health infrastructure,” and “we should all be deeply disturbed by the resignation of highly qualified CDC officials whose work quite literally saves lives.”

President Biden’s HHS Secretary, Xavier Becerra, declares that “three leading scientists at the CDC who resigned” were “essential public health leaders who helped our country get out of the pandemic.”

Senator Andy Kim alleges that the CDC was the “gold standard” that “set the mark for the rest of the world” but is now in “shambles from what Trump and Kennedy have done.”

In reality, however, the CDC issued reams of unscientific pronouncements that killed and harmed multitudes of people during the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes but isn’t limited to the following 12 examples: 1) The CDC denied that Covid-19 was mainly transmitted through tiny airborne particles called aerosols, even though:

the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published a statement signed by 239 scientists documenting “more than enough supporting evidence” that C-19 is “airborne” and proper “control measures” are “needed” to deal with this reality.
at least 20 studies showed that aerosols play a dominant role in the transmission of all infectious respiratory microbes, including SARS-CoV-2.

2) When the CDC finally stopped minimizing the threat of airborne transmission in 2021, CDC officials engaged in a cover-up to hide the fatal consequences of their fecklessness and allowed countless preventable deaths to continue in high-risk settings like nursing homes. 3) In 2021, the CDC told school officials to impose “physical distancing” requirements of “at least 6 feet,” “require universal and correct use of masks,” “closely and regularly monitor the numbers of students, teachers, and staff with Covid-19,” and consider closing “classrooms or schools” that have “an active outbreak,” even though Sweden had already:

kept its schools open with 1.95 million children the prior spring without class-size reductions, masking, or vaccines.
experienced zero child Covid deaths over this period.
had an ICU admission rate for teachers that was half that of other professions.
experienced no difference with Finland in the incidence of C-19 infections among school-aged children, even though Finland closed its schools.

4) In 2022, the CDC claimed that “Covid-19 is a leading cause of death in children,” even though:

the CDC’s own data showed that 1% of all deaths of children in the U.S. involved C-19, or one out of every 145,936 children during the first 19 months of the pandemic.
in 2021, the journal Nature Medicine published a study of children who “died from” C-19 as opposed to “those who died of another cause but were coincidentally infected with the virus,” and the study found that C-19 took the lives of two out of every million children in England during the first year of the pandemic.
children in the U.S. were five times more likely to die of drowning and 36 times more likely to die of accidents than the real Covid death rate of two in a million.

5) The CDC called for “universal masking” down to the age of “2 years,” even though:

eight scientists—led by a former Biden Covid advisor—warned the CDC in 2021 that its mask guidance was littered with “serious errors.”
an analysis of CDC mask studies published by the American Journal of Medicine in 2023 found that “the level of evidence generated was low and the conclusions were most often unsupported by the data.”
no gold standard study ever found that masks save lives.
dozens of studies show that masks cause significant harms.

6) The CDC falsely portrayed exercising while masked as risk-free and downplayed the level of cardio-pulmonary stress that it creates. 7) The CDC made it very difficult for readers to see how they were distorting mask studies by creating “science briefs” with unclickable footnotes and failing to link to the vast majority of sources they cited. Thus, inquisitive readers had to take note of the footnote numbers, scroll down to the bottom of the CDC webpage to locate the source, conduct a separate search for the source, and then scroll back up to the location where they were reading. In a typical academic journal, all of this can be done with a few simple clicks. 8) The CDC alleged that Covid-19 was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” while more than 50% of Covid deaths were occurring among the fully vaccinated. 9) The CDC claimed that “Covid-19 vaccines have undergone” the “most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history” and recommended them to “all children, including children who have already had Covid-19,” even though the vaccine clinical trials:

did not enroll enough children to show any clinically meaningful benefits like preventing severe Covid-19, hospitalization, or death.
needed to be 400,000 times larger/longer to determine if the vaccines save more toddlers and preschoolers than they kill
excluded children who were apt to have serious adverse reactions to the vaccines, but some still experienced fevers up to 105.4 ºF, eye-rolling seizures, convulsions, limping, and a “severe” decline in white blood cells that creates the “risk of overwhelming infection.”

10) The CDC claimed without evidence in June 2022 that “our cells break down mRNA from these vaccines and get rid of it within a few days after vaccination,” even though:

three months before that, the journal Cell published a study which “detected vaccine mRNA collected in the GCs [germinal centers] of LNs [lymph nodes] on days 7, 16, and 37 postvaccination, with lower but still appreciable specific signal at day 60.”
the study did not look beyond 60 days, so the mRNA may remain even longer.

11) The CDC claimed in 2023 that “everyone age 6 months and older” should receive “an updated Covid-19 vaccine” to prevent “death,” even though:

no clinical trial found that mRNA Covid vaccines save more lives than they take.
naturally acquired immunity creates strong and lasting protection against serious harms of the disease.
Covid deaths enduringly plunged after nearly everyone caught the disease, not when vaccines were deployed.

12) The CDC told summer camp operators in 2021 to:

require staff and campers down to “2 years old” to “wear masks at all times, except when eating and drinking or swimming.”
make campers play “sports and athletic activities” in the “outdoors” while “wearing a mask” and “staying at least 6 feet away from others.”
“provide physical guides, such as tape on floors or sidewalks and signs on walls, to ensure that staff and campers remain distanced.”
“ask campers and staff who are not fully vaccinated” to “provide proof of a negative viral test taken no more than 1–3 days before arriving at camp,” “engage in a 2-week prearrival quarantine,” and then “stay home and self-quarantine for a full 7 days after travel.”
“notify the health department immediately following a positive test result” and quarantine the “infected person” in “an isolation room.”
“quarantine for 14 days” “anyone else who was within 6 feet of the infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.”

None of these CDC failures were a result of “evolving science” but of callous disregard for readily available facts. As a result, countless people were killed and harmed physically, financially, educationally, and emotionally. Meanwhile, others who defied the CDC’s proclamations—which were adopted and enforced by governments and corporations—were fired, censored, arrested, and denied access to schools, supermarkets, hospitals, and streets. Revealing that those debacles were not just due to a few years of poor leadership, nine former directors and acting directors of the CDC back to 1977 recently penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which they:

accuse RFK of “endangering every American’s health,”
tout the CDC as the “world’s pre-eminent public health agency,” and
assert that Covid vaccines “saved millions of lives.”

To support that last claim, they link to a thinly documented study from a group called the Commonwealth Fund based on a “computer model.” Left unstated by the study’s authors and these former CDC directors is that such model-based studies:

“provide only theoretical evidence” and should not be used “as evidence to inform or change policy measures,” as warned by Public Health England, the UK equivalent of the CDC.

rely “upon a host of simplifying assumptions” and “cannot be fully” representative of the real world, as admitted by scholars who conducted a similar study published by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

“produce highly uncertain numbers,” and therefore, “modellers must not be permitted to project more certainty than their models deserve; and politicians must not be allowed to offload accountability to models of their choosing,” as warned by 22 scholars in the journal Nature near the outset of the pandemic.

Using such weak evidence to make definitive claims is exactly what the CDC did throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The fact that a long line of former CDC directors are doing the same lends credence to Trump, RFK, and others who say that the agency is in dire need of a housecleaning.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-track-record-of-the-cdc/feed 6 Communist Positions of Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders https://www.justfactsdaily.com/communist-positions-of-zohran-mamdani-and-bernie-sanders https://www.justfactsdaily.com/communist-positions-of-zohran-mamdani-and-bernie-sanders#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:53:23 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12912 By James D. Agresti July 10, 2025

Credits: lev radin/Shutterstock.com and LiamMurphyPics/Shutterstock.com Overview PolitiFact, a so-called “fact checker,” claims it is “false” that New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont are “communists.” PolitiFact also alleges that calling them communists is “a red scare tactic.” PolitiFact’s article, written by Ella Moore and Amy Sherman, relies heavily on the opinions of “experts” and is bereft of primary sources on the doctrines of communism. It also downplays and ignores pivotal statements of Mamdani and Sanders. The actual facts of this matter show that the defining positions of Mamdani and Sanders accord with key elements of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the official Law of the Soviet State. This is important because communism is notoriously associated with widespread poverty and the trampling of rights assured by the U.S. Constitution. “Communism” & “Democratic Socialism” Mamdani and Sanders reject the label “communist” and differentiate themselves as “democratic socialists,” a narrative that PolitiFact uncritically repeats. That argument falls apart in light of the fact that the Law of the Soviet State (1938) refers to the USSR as a “socialist democracy” more than 40 times. Likewise, a Harvard University Press book about communism explains that “the Russian Social Democrats, better known to history as the Bolsheviks, decided in November 1917 to call themselves ‘Communists’.” The word “Bolshevik” literally means “one of the majority,” and Bolsheviks were members of the “Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party.” In short, Communists’ descriptions of themselves as members of a “socialist democracy,” “Social Democrats,” and “Social-Democratic” are virtually identical to Mamdani’s and Sanders’ descriptions of themselves as “democratic socialists.” Given that the meaning of words can differ over time and place, this doesn’t constitute proof that Mamdani and Sanders are communists, but the verbal distinction they draw between “communism” and “democratic socialism” is tenuous. Democracy & Government Control PolitiFact claims that, unlike communists, Mamdani “hasn’t called for eliminating democracy” and doesn’t favor “government takeover of private property and control of industry.” Contrary to the notion that communism opposes democracy, the Communist Manifesto calls for winning “the battle of democracy” so that government controls all “communication,” “property,” “transport,” “factories,” “credit,” and “agriculture.” In perfect accord with that goal, Mamdani is a self-described “proud member” of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which calls for using “democracy” to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.” Mamdani isn’t merely a run-of-the mill DSA member but delivered the keynote speech at their 2023 National Convention. Leaving no doubt about his view of democracy, Mamdani stated during a 2021 DSA conference that “the end goal” is “seizing the means of production,” which “we firmly believe in.” He also urged his colleagues to not abandon this issue and other positions that are “correct” and “right” even though “we do not have” a “groundswell of popular support” for them “at this very moment.” Although Sanders has been praised by a New York Times Magazine contributor for “almost single-handedly” spurring the membership and political “boom” of DSA, he isn’t a member of the group and said in 2015 during his first run for president, “I don’t believe government should own the means of production.” But back in the 1980s before he was elected to national office, Sanders proposed using politics (i.e., democracy) to achieve “public ownership of significant parts of the economy.” And back in 1970s, Sanders explicitly and repeatedly called for government to seize large sectors of the economy, including “banks and major industries,” “gigantic” energy companies like “Exxon,” “drug companies,” “private electric companies without compensation to the banks and wealthy stockholders who own the vast majority of stock in these companies,” and all “the major means of production.” In stark contrast to Marx, Mamdani, and pre-national Sanders, the founders of the U.S. explicitly rejected “a pure democracy” where a majority can seize private property and use the power of government to do most anything they want. Conversely, the Soviets demanded this and approvingly called it “the dictatorship of the proletariat, a new Soviet democracy for all the toilers.” James Madison, the “father of the Constitution” and primary author of the Bill of Rights, emphasized in the Federalist Papers that “such democracies” are “incompatible with personal security” and have “been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.” That is why Madison stated near the outset of the Constitutional Convention that their mission was to “frame a republican system” of government to protect the rights of individuals from the will of the majority. In accord with this principle, the founders created a democratic constitutional republic with strong checks on the power of government in order to “guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.” The Law of the Soviet State scorns that system as “bourgeois democracy” and claims that “Soviet democracy and the Soviet state are a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic.” That was pure propaganda because all of the actual power in the Soviet Union was in the hands of a few elites. However, the point remains that communism and democracy aren’t mutually exclusive, and democracy can be used in totalitarian ways that have been embraced by Mamdani and Sanders. Small Business PolitiFact claims that Mamdani’s positions are “not akin to communism” since he “does not call for getting rid of private ownership” and because “one of the goals included on his website is to ‘make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business’.” Here again, PolitiFact displays a weak understanding of communism and distorts the views of Mamdani. First, the Soviet Constitution “permits the small private economy of individual peasants and handicraftsmen based on their personal labour.” Second, the full context of Mamdani’s quote cited by PolitiFact shows that it only applies to “small businesses,” similar to the Soviet Constitution. Healthcare There is no daylight between Mamdani, Sanders, and the Soviet Constitution on the issue of healthcare. Mamdani has written, “We need to abolish private insurance, institute single-payer & nationalize the medical supply chain immediately.” Likewise, Sanders has incessantly called for “Medicare for All—not some, or a few, or most” but “ALL.” Sanders has also asserted dozens of times that “healthcare” is a “right,” a claim rooted in the Soviet Constitution, which declares a “right” to “medical” care. Meanwhile, the U.S. Constitution, which Sanders swore to uphold, doesn’t specify or countenance even a single social program, much less call them “rights.” Instead, it recognizes inalienable rights that shall not be infringed like “life,” “liberty,” and “freedom of speech.” Moreover, what Sanders and the Soviets call a “right to healthcare” is actually an entitlement to get in line for services that government rations through “waiting lists, gatekeeping, and limiting individuals’ choices,” as documented in the Encyclopedia of Health Economics. Sanders alleges that “every other major country recognizes” healthcare as a “right,” which is far from true. And even among nations that do so, they ultimately derived this doctrine from the Soviet Union, which was the “first country in the world to provide health services to the entire population as a public service paid from the state treasury.” Banning Guns Spurning the right to keep and bear arms in the U.S. Constitution, Mamdani posted to X in 2022, “We need to ban all guns.” That position is further to the left of the Soviet Union, which had very strict gun control but not a total ban. Per a 1973 Library of Congress report, “acquisition and possession of firearms in the Soviet Union are subject to severe restrictions and limitations imposed by the State.” Landlords and Capitalists The Soviet Constitution praises the “overthrow of the landlords and capitalists” and declares that “the bulk of the dwelling houses in the cities and industrial localities, are state property.” Likewise, DSA calls for overthrowing the “capitalist class,” and Mamdani starred in a 2021 video for the Gravel Institute in which he called for the full government takeover of housing. In this video, he stated:

We’re facing an unprecedented wave of evictions and foreclosures that will crash straight into millions of struggling families across the country. … At the root of all of this suffering is that the fact that in this country, housing is treated as a commodity, not a right. … If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing. In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.

Tempering that position in his mayoral race, Mamdani’s campaign website says that “he will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants” while forcing landlords to make more repairs. If they don’t do this and demonstrate “consistent neglect for their tenants,” Mamdani promises to “take control of their properties” in the “most extreme cases.” Food The Soviet Constitution mandates “public enterprises in collective farms and cooperative organizations,” and the Law of the Soviet State explains that the “Soviets began to control the activity of various organs concerned with food supply and to employ revolutionary measures (of confiscation and requisition) in the struggle with speculation, and so forth.” Likewise, Mamdani says that he “will create a network of city-owned grocery stores” that won’t “pay rent or property taxes.” This will provide them with a competitive advantage that could drive out private supermarkets, especially since grocery store profit margins averaged only 1% to 3% during 2018 to 2023. Childcare The Soviet Constitution guarantees “a wide network” of “nurseries and kindergartens.” Likewise, Sanders calls for “universal childcare and pre-kindergarten,” and Mamdani says that he “will implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years.” This enables government to indoctrinate children from the cradle, as was done in the Soviet Union. Transportation The Soviet Constitution declares that “rail, water and air transport” are all the property of government. Taking that a step further, Mamdani’s campaign website says that “he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus.” In other words, he also wants to socialize the demand, not just the supply. 32-Hour Workweek The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “the reduction of the working day to seven hours.” Similarly, Sanders has proposed legislation to mandate “a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay” and says this “is not a radical idea.” Paid Maternity & Sick Leave The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “pre-maternity and maternity leave with full pay and the “right to maintenance” in “the case of sickness.” Likewise, Sanders wants government to provide workers with “at least twelve weeks of paid family and medical leave” “after a new birth, to care for a sick loved one, or if they themselves are ill.” Sanders alleges this will only cost workers “$1.61 a week,” a claim reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 promise that “hospital insurance” (i.e., Medicare Part A) would cost “no more than $1 a month” per worker. Adjusted for inflation, $1 in 1964 equals $10 in 2025, but the Medicare payroll tax is now unlimited and costs workers 2.9% of their wages up $200,000/year and 3.8% thereafter. Workers who earn $1 million/year pay about $3,000/month for this tax. Paid Vacations The Soviet Constitution declared a “right” to “annual vacations with full pay.” Likewise, Sanders wants government to “guarantee all workers” “paid vacation.” Retirement The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “maintenance in old age.” Likewise, Sanders says that government should grant everyone the “right to a secure retirement.” Higher Education The Soviet Constitution declares a “right” to “education” that is “ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges.” Likewise, Sanders says that “public education for all—from childcare and pre-kindergarten through college” should be a “right.” Conclusion Beyond the broad affinity of Mamdani and Sanders for communist policies, they are also quick to impugn the U.S. and its largely free market economy, even though it provides the highest average standard of living in the world. For example, Sanders condemns the U.S. for allegedly having “the highest rate of childhood poverty of nearly any major country on earth.” In reality, Sanders is using misleading data, and even the poorest 20% of people in the U.S. consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. Conversely, the nation that provided the exemplar for much of Sanders’ and Mamdani’s agenda was wracked by poverty. As documented in the academic serial work Quality of Life in the Soviet Union, the “living standard” there in 1976 “was roughly one third that of the United States.” Mamdani and Sanders haven’t endorsed darker aspects of communism mentioned in the Law of the Soviet State, like “depriving the bourgeoisie” of the ability to vote, outlawing “freedom of speech” for “the foes of socialism,” and having “the exploiter classes in the country” “liquidated.” However, the Law of the Soviet State explains that such policies are not “according to the plan” of communism and are “not a matter of the proletarian dictatorship in general” but things that “developed spontaneously during the course of the struggle.” Sanders said something very similar after he traveled to the Soviet Union in 1988 for a diplomatic trip/honeymoon. In the wake of this, he held a press conference in which he praised and critiqued various aspects of the Soviet Union while making this telling comment:

At least some of the people that we met, from some of their lips, I was very impressed by their desire to become a democratic society and move fully into some of their early visions of their revolution—what their revolution was about in 1917. They understand in many ways that they have had an abysmal history since then, and they want to go back to some of their early visions, and we certainly wish them well in that.

In summary, Sanders is in favor of utopian communism without the despots and gulags, although that is what communism has typically descended into throughout history. Only by twisting and ignoring the doctrines of communism and the words of Mamdani and Sanders can PolitiFact conclusively assert that they are not communists. Instead, the facts are clear that Mamdani and Sanders have embraced many fundamental aspects of communism detailed in the Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the Law of the Soviet State.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/communist-positions-of-zohran-mamdani-and-bernie-sanders/feed 2 No, Biden Didn’t Deport More Illegal Immigrants Than Trump https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-biden-didnt-deport-more-illegal-immigrants-than-trump https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-biden-didnt-deport-more-illegal-immigrants-than-trump#respond Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:17:04 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12825 By James D. Agresti June 10, 2025

Credit: Copyright Lawrey/Shutterstock.com Overview Many media outlets are reporting that President Biden deported more illegal immigrants than President Trump in both his first term and at the pace of his current one. For example:

Reuters immigration reporter Ted Hesson claims that Trump is “deporting people at a slower rate than Biden’s last year in office.”
Newsweek politics reporter Dan Gooding claims that Trump is “on track to deport half the number of migrants removed during former President Joe Biden’s last full fiscal year in 2024.”
BBC reporter Brandon Drenon claims that “deportations under Biden” in the federal government’s 2024 fiscal year exceeded Trump’s “record” from his prior term.
A local CBS News report claims that “Trump deportation numbers” are “lower than” the “Biden administration.”
PBS republished an article by Diana Roy of the Council on Foreign Relations which claims that the “Trump administration deported fewer people in February 2025 than the Joe Biden administration did in February the previous year.”

Those statements are based on a false definition of “deportations” that turns reality on its head. In fact, the federal government stopped publishing official data on deportations nearly 30 years ago, but journalists are using another measure in its place that creates an extremely misleading impression. In contrast, the modern measure that reflects the actual definition of deportations shows that Trump deported illegal immigrants at more than twice the rate of Biden. Defining Deportations Prior to 1997, the word “deportation” was strictly defined by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as the “formal removal of an alien from” the United States. This differed from an “exclusion,” which meant the “formal denial of an alien’s entry,” including those who recently entered and were physically on U.S. soil but had not established roots. This legal principle, which is crucial to enforcing immigration law, has been explained by the Supreme Court in multiple rulings which state that:

an immigrant’s “presence on Ellis Island” does “not count as entry into the United States,” and he can be “treated” for “constitutional purposes” as “if stopped at the border.”

a recent illegal entrant staying in the U.S. with her father is “still in theory of law at the boundary line and had gained no foothold in the United States.”

a person “whose right to enter the United States is questioned under the immigration laws is to be regarded as if he had stopped at the limit of its jurisdiction, although physically he may be within its boundaries.”

The difference between deporting an illegal immigrant who has been living in the U.S. and expelling one who recently entered is vital because illegal immigrants with a foothold in the country have significant legal protections that recent border crossers do not. This makes it much harder to remove them. It’s also considerably more difficult to apprehend them because they are scattered throughout the general population instead of traveling in groups near the border. Nevertheless, Congress passed a law in 1996 that did away with the “deportation” and “exclusion” designations. Up to this point, INS published data going back more than 100 years with separate figures for the number of aliens “deported” and “excluded.” But starting in 1997, INS consolidated all of those figures—including the historical data—into a single measure called “formal removals” and wrote:

Removals include those actions known as deportation and exclusion prior to the revision of law that was effective April 1, 1997.

With disregard for that fact, journalists are now misreporting data on “removals” as if they were “deportations.” This is extremely misleading because the bulk of removals are not deportations but people apprehended near the border by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and “turned over” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “for detention and removal.” Per the Congressional Research Service, CBP is mainly “responsible for border security,” while ICE is mainly “responsible for enforcing immigration laws in the U.S. interior.” In 2024, the highest year for removals in the Biden administration, only 18% of all removals were arrested by ICE, while the rest were arrested by CBP near the border. In other words, 82% of what the media counts as deportations are not. President Obama coyly admitted this when taking flak from his allies for “deporting” more immigrants than President Bush. During a 2011 meeting with Hispanic media outlets, a reporter from AOL Latino asked Obama why he has “been deporting much more immigrants than the previous administration did in eight years,” and he replied:

The statistics are actually a little deceptive because what we’ve been doing is with the stronger border enforcement we’ve been apprehending folks at the borders and sending them back. That is counted as a deportation, even though they may have only been held for a day or 48 hours, sent back—that’s counted as a deportation.

Contrary to Obama, that’s not counted as a deportation by anyone informed about the situation, and higher numbers of removals aren’t necessarily a sign of “stronger border enforcement.” As detailed in an extensive Congressional Research Service report about this issue, it’s more about legal processes than anything else. Moreover, better border enforcement can lead to fewer removals by reducing the number of people who attempt to cross the border. Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security acknowledged this in 2015 when he attributed fewer removals that year to a “lower level of attempted illegal migration at our borders.” Actual Deportations Despite the deletion of “deportations” from the law, ICE still measures a metric that accords with the strict meaning of the word and partly demonstrates how a president enforces immigration laws. It’s called “interior removals” and is defined by ICE as follows:

An individual removed by ICE who is identified or apprehended in the United States by an ICE officer or agent. This category excludes those apprehended at the immediate border while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States.

Data on interior removals, obtained from two ICE reports, show that Biden (2021–2024) averaged 53% less deportations per year than Trump (2017–2020):

The transitions between the datasets and presidencies have slight offsets because the annual datasets begin on the first day of the federal fiscal year (October 1), while presidential inaugurations take place four months later on January 20. Deporting Criminals Another important measure of immigration enforcement is the number of convicted criminals deported. The Biden administration claimed to be focused on this goal. Hence, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D–MD) recently criticized Trump while claiming that the Biden administration removed the illegal immigrants “who should not be here.” Beyond the fact that the Biden administration failed to remove the illegal immigrants who murdered Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Rachel Morin, it also deported an average of 53% fewer convicted criminals per year than the Trump administration:

The reduced numbers of criminal deportations under Biden are particularly shocking given the concurrent rise of illegal immigrants who entered the country without any vetting for criminality. These “gotaways”—or people who are detected by Border Patrol but not apprehended—swelled to 6.1 times the pre-Biden average by 2023:

Yet, prominent Democrats insisted that the “border is secure” throughout this period, including VP Kamala Harris, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and others. Summary An array of media outlets are reporting the polar opposite of the truth by claiming that Biden deported more illegal immigrants than Trump. This narrative is rooted in a falsehood that government data on “removals” is equivalent to “deportations.” The designation of “deportations” was eliminated by a 1996 law, but ICE still records a metric that accords with the actual meaning of the word. It’s called “interior removals,” and this measure shows that Trump deported illegal immigrants and convicted criminals at more than twice the rate of Biden. Biden’s lower numbers occurred even though the number of unvetted immigrants pouring into the U.S. sextupled under his watch.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-biden-didnt-deport-more-illegal-immigrants-than-trump/feed 0 Misinformation About the Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan https://www.justfactsdaily.com/misinformation-about-the-arrest-of-judge-hannah-dugan https://www.justfactsdaily.com/misinformation-about-the-arrest-of-judge-hannah-dugan#comments Mon, 05 May 2025 14:37:25 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12717 By James D. Agresti May 5, 2025

Credit: Scripps News Group/TMJ4 Prominent Democrats are accusing President Trump of violating the law because his administration arrested Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge who allegedly helped an illegal immigrant evade ICE. U.S. Senator Cory Booker, for example, declared that “Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault” on the “rule of law” because the “FBI took the extreme and dangerous step” of “arresting a sitting judge” as part of “Trump’s playbook for punishing judges when they don’t fall in line.” Similar statements were issued by Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared independent socialist who caucuses with the Democrats. In reality, the FBI’s charging document attests that multiple people witnessed Judge Dugan help an illegal immigrant avoid arrest, a potential crime under three federal laws. Two of these statutes appear on the first page of the criminal complaint, and the third was identified by Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky. The immigrant, a Mexican citizen named Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was deported in 2013 but snuck back into the U.S. and was slated to appear in Dugan’s courtroom on three counts of domestic violence. The official criminal complaint against Flores-Ruiz documents that he purportedly strangled a man and punched him “in the face and body with a closed fist approximately 30 times” and struck a woman “in the forehead and arm with a closed fist before shoving her into the kitchen, causing her to fall.” Thus, the broadsides of Booker and the other high-profile progressives bear no resemblance to the facts of this case. Beyond those generalities, other critics of Trump have made specific allegations about this case that are at odds with the available facts. The Legal Process For instance, Thom Hartmann, “the nation’s #1 progressive talk show host,” reported:

Federal agents, without even having the decency of a signed warrant, stormed into Judge Hannah Dugan’s courtroom on Friday morning and dragged her away like a common criminal. No warning, no legal process, no respect for the law that she had spent a lifetime upholding.

Hartmann’s statement is deceitful on three levels:

Dugan wasn’t arrested in her courtroom but “in the parking lot of the Milwaukee County Courthouse, before she entered the building,” according to a “senior law enforcement official” who spoke with NBC News.

Federal warrants are not public, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries signed a criminal complaint against Dugan the day before her arrest, and neither Dugan nor her attorney has claimed that she was arrested without a signed warrant.

Dugan appeared in court at 10:30 AM about two hours after her 8:30 arrest and was advised of her “rights,” “charges, penalties, and fines,” all of which is clear legal process.

Clarity of the Charges A similar fiction about this case was spread by U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Dexter (D–OR), a medical doctor who claims to bring “data-driven pragmatism to her work as a lawmaker.” While appearing on MSNBC, Dexter said that Dugan was “taken into custody without clarity of what the charges or what infraction there has been.” To the contrary, the charging document provides 13 pages of details about Dugan’s charges and infractions. MSNBC viewers, however, were left with the opposite impression because none of the three MSNBC hosts who were interviewing Dexter corrected her. This includes Michael Steele, Symone Sanders-Townsend, and Alicia Menendez. Justice Not Served In The Guardian, columnist Moira Donegan wrote that the domestic violence proceedings against Flores-Ruiz “had to be abruptly halted” because ICE attempted to arrest him, and therefore, “the victims, who were present in the courtroom, did not get their chance to see justice served.” In fact, Judge Dugan is fully responsible for that injustice. As documented in the criminal complaint against Dugan:

the ICE agents notified courthouse officials that they wouldn’t arrest Flores-Ruiz “until after the completion of the scheduled hearing,” and this is “standard practice.”

when Dugan was informed that ICE was planning to arrest Flores-Ruiz, she interrupted the proceedings of another case she was hearing, confronted the ICE agents in the hallway outside her courtroom, and “ordered them to report to the Chief Judge’s office.”

Dugan then went back into the courtroom and told Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to leave through a back door typically reserved for jury members and official business.

Dugan’s actions baffled an attorney for the state and the state’s Victim Witness Specialist because “Flores-Ruiz’s case had not yet been called, and the victims were waiting.”

In short, The Guardian blamed ICE for the actions of Dugan, who skipped Flores-Ruiz’s hearing without notifying the state officials or the victims, wasting their time and depriving them of their day in court. The Correct Warrant Perhaps most importantly, Judge Dugan and others have stated that ICE didn’t have the correct type of warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz. As detailed in the charging document:

Dugan asked if the ICE officer “had a judicial warrant,” and the officer replied, “No, I have an administrative warrant.”

Dugan then asserted that the officer “needed a judicial warrant,” and the officer replied that he “was in a public space and had a valid immigration warrant.”

Dugan then “asked to see the administrative warrant,” and the officer “offered to show it to her.”

Similarly, Wisconsin State Representative Ryan M. Clancy declared on NPR that ICE “did not have a real warrant signed by a real judge,” so Dugan “acted accordingly” and “just stood up for our community here.” Likewise, Moira Donegan of The Guardian wrote that “Judge Dugan asked the ICE agents to leave, and pointed out that they did not have the correct warrants.” In reality, ICE had the correct warrant. Per the federal law that governs the “apprehension and detention of aliens,” an “alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States” on a “warrant issued by the Attorney General.” Because the attorney general is not a judge, this is not a judicial warrant but an administrative warrant. In the plain words of a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, “ICE enforcement functions” normally “do not involve judicially issued warrants” but “administrative removal warrants.” This gives ICE the “authority to arrest the person named in the warrant, so long as the officer locates the person in a public, non-REP [reasonable expectation of privacy], location. For example, the person is located walking down a public sidewalk.” As the charging document explains, the “public areas of buildings such as the Milwaukee County Courthouse” are an ideal place to make such arrests because “law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located” and the “wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint,” and thus, be “unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual.” Dugan intensified the risk of injury by helping Flores-Ruiz escape, and federal agents arrested Flores-Ruiz after he “sprinted down the street” outside the courthouse. Dugan’s Actions Another false statement about this matter comes from Brian Krassenstein, a businessman, social media personality, and ardent Trump critic. According to Krassenstein, the “Dugan arrest is a complete joke” because:

“Administrative warrants don’t authorize agents to bust into private spaces like a courtroom without consent.”

“According to the government’s own documents, after the hearing ended, Judge Dugan allegedly pointed Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer toward a non-public jury door, a back exit used by staff and jurors.”

“Quietly telling someone, ‘Take the jury door instead,’ isn’t a crime, unless you lie, threaten, or physically block agents.”

Krassenstein’s claims are misleading in four respects:

ICE was waiting until after the hearing to arrest Flores-Ruiz in a courthouse hallway, which is a public space, as the chief judge of the courthouse admitted.

Multiple witnesses state that the hearing hadn’t “ended” but was skipped by Dugan without informing state officials or the victims.

Dugan didn’t “quietly” tell Flores-Ruiz to “take the jury door” but “commanded” him to do so in a “stern” voice, using her authority as a judge.

Dugan ordered an ICE officer and other federal agents to “leave the courthouse,” and when they refused to do so, she “demanded” that they go to the chief judge’s office, directing them away from the hallway that Flores-Ruiz used to escape after Dugan sent him through the jury door.

Therefore, Dugan’s actions arguably violate federal laws against:

obstructing “compliance” with any legal “civil investigative demand” of federal “departments, agencies, and committees.”

concealing a person from “discovery and arrest” under “any law of the United States” while knowing that a “warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person.”

knowingly concealing or shielding “from detection” an illegal alien “in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”

Summary Contrary to the claims of Democrats and progressives who are criticizing President Trump for the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan:

several witnesses say they saw Dugan help an illegal immigrant escape ICE, a potential crime under three federal laws.

the illegal immigrant was charged with three counts of domestic violence and was thus a potential threat to the public.

Dugan denied the alleged victims their day in court, wasting their time and that of the state officials who were present for the case.

the correct warrant was issued for the arrest of the illegal immigrant, and ICE executed it in the proper manner.

Dugan wasn’t arrested in her courtroom but in the courthouse parking lot.

the charges against Dugan were clear, and the standard legal processes were followed for her arrest.

Dugan’s actions increased the risk of injury to federal agents, the public, and the illegal immigrant.

]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/misinformation-about-the-arrest-of-judge-hannah-dugan/feed 5 Overlooked Treasury Report Supports Musk’s Warning About Federal Deficits Sinking the U.S. https://www.justfactsdaily.com/overlooked-treasury-report-supports-musks-warning-about-federal-deficits-sinking-the-u-s https://www.justfactsdaily.com/overlooked-treasury-report-supports-musks-warning-about-federal-deficits-sinking-the-u-s#respond Wed, 12 Mar 2025 15:33:27 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12592 By James D. Agresti March 12, 2025

Credit: ChatGPT Overview Elon Musk recently stated that “rich people” should “be caring more” about federal deficits because “if the ship of America sinks,” “we all sink with it.” This may seem like hyperbole, but a widely overlooked report from the U.S. Treasury shows it is a likely scenario unless major changes are made. The Treasury report, quietly released in January, shows that if the federal government reported its finances in the same manner that large corporations are required by law to report theirs, the primary measure of federal red ink wouldn’t be $36 trillion in national debt but $143 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 85% of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding. It also equates to an average burden of $1.1 million on every household in the nation. Unlike other measures of federal finances that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government assets, the figure of $143 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and accounts for the value of the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the full federal financial burden on today’s Americans. Complete v. Incomplete Accounting Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury to publish an annual report that details the government’s “overall financial position.” In addition to the national debt, the “Financial Report of the United States Government” also includes the government’s explicit and implicit financial commitments, such as:

federal employee pensions and other retirement benefits like healthcare.
environmental liabilities like contaminated nuclear sites.
unfunded obligations for social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Such “fiscal exposures,” as explained by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “represent significant commitments that ultimately have to be addressed.” Hence, GAO stresses that ignoring them can “make it difficult for policymakers and the public to adequately understand the government’s overall performance and true financial condition.” Although the Treasury published the report almost two months ago on January 16, Google indicates that no prominent politician or major media outlet has explicitly mentioned it. Meanwhile, the same people have frequently cited the national debt and federal deficit, which are incomplete measures of the federal government’s red ink. The national debt and federal deficit are mainly based on cash accounting, which is the simplistic process of counting money as it flows in or out. Thus, liabilities like pension benefits for federal workers aren’t measured until they are actually paid, which is often decades after they are promised. In contrast, the Treasury report mainly uses accrual accounting, which measures financial commitments as they are made. This is how the federal government requires large corporations to report their finances. In the words of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which is tasked by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create private-sector accounting rules, accrual accounting is the “most relevant and reliable” way to measure the financial health of pension plans. The same applies to other retirement benefits like healthcare. The accounting rule that governs such benefits explains that “a failure to accrue” implies “that no obligation exists prior to the payment of benefits.” Since an obligation does exist, failing to account for it “impairs the usefulness and integrity” of financial statements. The Grand Total A methodical tally of accrual accounting data in the Treasury report shows that the federal government has amassed $143 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations beyond the value of its commercial assets. This reflects the government’s finances at the close of its 2024 fiscal year on September 30, 2024. The primary components of this burden, which are unpacked below, include:

$28.3 trillion in publicly held national debt.
$17.2 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.
$105.8 trillion in unfunded social insurance obligations.

These figures tally to $151.3 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. Offsetting this is $7.9 trillion in commercial assets owned by the federal government, leaving a grand total shortfall of $143 trillion. Numbers in the trillions are hard to conceive, so it’s revealing to place them in context. The figure of $143 trillion amounts to 85% of the net wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $169 trillion. This includes all of their assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and even consumer durable goods like automobiles and furniture. The government’s $143 trillion shortfall also amounts to:

$421,108 for every person living in the U.S.
$1,085,022 for every household in the U.S.
4.9 times annual U.S. economic output (GDP).
28 times annual federal revenues.

Publicly Held Debt The simplest major item quantified by the Treasury report is the publicly held debt, which is $28.3 trillion. This is the money the federal government owes to non-federal entities like individuals, corporations, state governments, and foreign governments. Publicly held debt is a partial measure of the national debt that excludes $7.1 trillion the federal government owes to federal programs like Social Security and Medicare. The Treasury report also details these intergovernmental debts and consolidates them with the items below. Liabilities Pension and other retirement benefits are a large part of compensation packages for government employees. With these generous benefits included, civilian non-postal federal employees receive an average of 17% more total compensation than private-sector workers with comparable education and work experience. Postal workers receive even greater premiums ranging from 25% to 43%. In 2023, federal, state, and local governments spent $2.4 trillion on employee compensation, costing each household in the nation an average of $18,328. The Treasury report shows that the federal government currently owes $15.0 trillion in pensions and other benefits to federal employees and veterans that are not accounted for in the publicly held national debt. To pay the present value of these benefits will require an average of $113,451 from every household in the United States. The Treasury reports other liabilities of the federal government, such as:

$134 billion in accounts payable.
$666 billion in environmental and disposal liabilities.
$106 billion in insurance and guarantee program liabilities.

Altogether, the Treasury records $17.2 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt. Social Security & Medicare A similar but far more expensive situation exists with social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This is because—contrary to popular belief—these programs don’t save workers’ taxes for their retirements. Instead, they immediately spend the vast majority of those taxes to pay benefits to current recipients. Thus, they are called “pay-as-you-go” programs. In stark contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains, “Federal law requires that private pension plans operate as funded plans, not as pay-as-you-go plans.” The reasons for this, as explained by the American Academy of Actuaries, are to increase “benefit security” and ensure “intergenerational equity.” Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, have levied multiplicatively higher tax burdens on succeeding generations of Americans, thus creating severe generational inequity. And unless retirement ages are raised or benefits are reduced in some other way, taxes will need to be increased again to keep the programs solvent. Musk recently referred to this situation when he called Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and said, “When you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations.” Federal actuaries measure the unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare in several different ways, but only one of them approximates accrual accounting. This is called the “closed-group” unfunded obligation, which is the money needed to cover the shortfalls for all current taxpayers and beneficiaries in these programs. In the words of Harvard Law School professor and federal budget specialist Howell E. Jackson, the closed-group measure “reflects the financial burden or liability being passed on to future generations.” These burdens are $49.8 trillion for Social Security and $53.9 trillion for Medicare. Placing these figures in context:

Social Security’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $272,237 from every person who currently pays Social Security payroll taxes.
Medicare’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $201,932 from every U.S. resident aged 16 or older.

Those shortfalls are what remain after the federal government has paid back with interest all of the money it has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare differ from true pensions because taxpayers don’t have a contractual right to receive these benefits. Nevertheless, paying these benefits is an implied commitment of the federal government, and federal law requires that these programs be included in the Treasury report. The Treasury report estimates that the combined closed group unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and some smaller social insurance programs are $105.8 trillion. This figure doesn’t include intergovernmental debt, which is consolidated with other data in the report. Federal Assets The Treasury also records the federal government’s commercial assets, such as:

$1.2 trillion in cash and other monetary assets.
$1.3 trillion in property, plants, and equipment.
$1.8 trillion in receivable loans, mainly comprised of student loans.

In total, the government estimated that it owned $5.7 trillion in commercial assets at the close of its 2024 fiscal year. This figure is likely lower than reality because the Treasury report measures the value of the federal government’s:

gold and silver according to laws that require it to assess gold at $42.22/ounce and silver at $1.29/ounce, which are small fractions of the market prices.
property, plant, and equipment at the cost of purchasing these items and then depreciates them, which fails to account for inflation and the appreciation of assets like land.

Using data on the market value of gold and silver and an extremely rough, non-generalizable estimate of the difference between the historical cost and fair market value of a government entity, Just Facts estimates that the federal government has about $2.2 trillion more in assets than the Treasury reported. Including this, the federal government has about $7.9 trillion in commercial assets. The Treasury report doesn’t account for federal stewardship land and heritage assets, such as national parks and the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. While these items have tangible value, the report explains that they “are intended to be preserved as national treasures,” not sold to the highest bidder to cover debts. Adding up the federal government’s debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations and then subtracting the value of its commercial assets yields a fiscal shortfall of $143 trillion. Root Causes As with other policy issues, the media and politicians have repeatedly misinformed the public about the root causes of the federal government’s fiscal deterioration. For example, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D–TX) claims there’s “not” a “lot” of “waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.” In reality, the Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses $233–$521 billion per year to “fraud alone.” This costs every household in the nation an average of $137,000–$305,000 over a lifetime, not counting waste or abuse. Those numbers show that if the bulk of fraud were eliminated, it could put a significant dent in the problem, but it would not be nearly enough to fix it. Another recent example of misinformation comes from PolitiFact, which claims that “tax cuts were the biggest of four types of legislation that have added to the federal debt since 2001.” PolitiFact bases this assertion on a study that puts all tax cuts into one bucket while splitting added spending into three buckets. Placing the added spending into one bucket, the study shows that it accounts for 61% of the added debt. Furthermore, the study states that those figures fail to account for the “effects of the built-in spending growth in certain parts of the budget, while it takes for granted the built-in growth in revenue.” Because such revenue increases are baked into federal law, most “tax cuts” are actually “tax evens” that correct for bracket creep, which consumes an ever-growing share of people’s incomes over time. That’s why despite the passage of numerous “tax cuts,” the portion of the U.S. economy consumed by federal taxes has been roughly level for eight decades:

Meanwhile, federal spending has soared from 3% of the U.S. economy in 1930 to 23% in 2023. Yet, a scientific survey commissioned in 2020 by Just Facts found that 25% of voters believe tax cuts were the main driver of debt. This accords with numerous news stories that blame the debt on tax cuts. The same survey found that another 25% of voters believe the main driver of rising national debt is military spending. This conforms to the reporting of media outlets that frequently blame the debt on military spending. In reality, military spending has plummeted from 53% of all federal expenses in 1960 to 17% in 2023:

As shown in the charts above, the primary driver of the national debt is increased spending, particularly on social programs. These programs—which provide healthcare, income security, education, nutrition, housing, and cultural services—have grown from 21% of all federal spending in 1960 to 61% in 2023. Yet, only 39% of voters correctly identify social spending as the primary cause of rising debt. In total, social programs and interest on the national debt—which mainly stems from social programs—account for 75% of all federal spending. Also, the vast bulk of the government’s unfunded obligations are due to Social Security and Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the main drivers of future debt will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Obamacare, and interest on the national debt. Under the weight of these, the publicly held debt is due to skyrocket to unprecedented levels over coming decades. Harmful Effects The national debt doesn’t always manifest in the obvious fallouts of increased taxes or reduced government benefits. A broad range of academic publications document that the consequences of excessive government debt also include intensified inflation, lower wages, weak economic growth, and combinations of such results. The linkage between those economic scourges and government debt are not always obvious to voters, and politicians who run up debt often blame “greed” for the harms that their deficit spending has caused. The media also promotes this false storyline. Hence, the harmful effects of government debt continue. Contrary to those who allege that the U.S. government can spend and borrow with abandon because it can print money, the Government Accountability Office warns that “the costs of federal borrowing will be borne by tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers,” which “may reduce or slow the growth of the living standards of future generations.” Such effects may have already begun. Although association does not prove causation, the national debt has risen steeply over recent decades, and with this, the U.S. has experienced episodes of rapid inflation and historically poor growth in gross domestic product, productivity, and household income.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/overlooked-treasury-report-supports-musks-warning-about-federal-deficits-sinking-the-u-s/feed 0 Media Perpetuates Fraud at the Root of “Black Lives Matter” Plaza https://www.justfactsdaily.com/media-perpetuates-fraud-at-the-root-of-black-lives-matter-plaza https://www.justfactsdaily.com/media-perpetuates-fraud-at-the-root-of-black-lives-matter-plaza#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2025 18:08:00 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12573 By James D. Agresti March 7, 2025

Credit: Johnny Silvercloud/Shutterstock.com A large array of media outlets are reporting on the decision to remove the massive “Black Lives Matter” mural from a street near the White House. Tracing the history of this famous marker, many of the reports claim that Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser created the mural and renamed the area to “Black Lives Matter Plaza” as an “act of defiance” against President Trump. The fact of the matter, however, is that the mural and plaza are rooted in a brazen fraud committed against Trump. On June 1, 2020, the U.S. Park Police and the DC Police Department dispersed a violent BLM protest that had been going on for days near the White House. As rioters burned cities across the nation, protestors surrounded the White House, injured 60 Secret Service officers, and tried to breach security barriers while hurling “bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items.” This reportedly led the Secret Service to move Trump to a bunker designed for emergencies like terror attacks. Shortly after the protest was cleared, President Trump walked from the White House to a historical landmark church that was boarded up due to the cleared protest. He then stood in front of the church, held up a Bible, made a few remarks about the greatness of America, and gathered his staff around him for pictures. Within a few hours, many Democrats and media outlets accused Trump of ordering federal troops to “tear-gas peaceful protestors for a photo op.” For example:

Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed, “The President of the United States tear-gassed peaceful protestors in order to clear the way for a useless photo-op outside the White House.”
Senator Kamala Harris alleged, “Donald Trump just tear-gassed peaceful protesters for a photo op.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that Trump “used the military to push out a peaceful protest so he could have a photo op at a church.”
NPR reported that the “U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops” used “tear gas” against “people nonviolently protesting police brutality” to clear the way for a “Trump church photo-op.”
A New York Times headline stated, “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.”
A headline on Slate proclaimed, “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed and Beaten Outside White House to Clear Space for a Trump Photo-Op.”

Within four days, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had “Black Lives Matter” painted in giant yellow letters on the street near the protest and announced that she was renaming the area to “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” Two months later, Bowser took the stage at the DNC Convention and boasted that she created “Black Lives Matter Plaza” because Donald Trump deployed “troops” and “tear gas” against people who “peacefully protested the death of George Floyd.” Ten months later in June 2021, the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior released the results of an investigation which found that every aspect of the allegations against Trump were false. Specifically, the investigation documented with videos and witnesses that:

the protestors were not peaceful but had injured “at least 49” Park Police officers, “vandalized” federal and private property, wore “ballistic vests,” carried “baseball bats,” and “threw projectiles like rocks.”
the Park Police “did not use CS gas” (i.e., tear gas) to clear the protestors.
the DC Police Department—which was under the authority of Mayor Bowser—used tear gas in the area without “the control or direction” of the Park Police.
the Park Police “did not know about” Trump’s visit to the area until “hours after it had begun developing its operational plan” to quell the violence and after the “fencing contractor” they requested had already “arrived in the park.”

Even after the results of the investigation were released, Bowser campaigned for reelection in 2022 with a mailer that stated, “When Trump sent federal officers to the streets of DC to stop peaceful protestors, Muriel painted BLACK LIVES MATTER across 16 Street NW to send a bold message.” In summary, the protestors were far from peaceful, the protest was cleared because of their violence, the timing had nothing to do with Trump, and it was the DC Police who deployed the teargas. Yet, leading Democrats and the media blamed all of this on Trump. Five years later, the media is still whitewashing the history of BLM Plaza, and publications like the New York Times are quoting people who allege that the decision to rename it and remove the mural is an attempt to “destroy history.”]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/media-perpetuates-fraud-at-the-root-of-black-lives-matter-plaza/feed 3 50 Examples of Fake News in 2024 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/50-examples-of-fake-news-in-2024 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/50-examples-of-fake-news-in-2024#comments Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:51:46 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12414 By James D. Agresti December 30, 2024

New York Times Building in Midtown Manhattan. Credit: Tada Images/Shutterstock.com Reflecting back on 2024 and looking forward to a future with less misinformation and more facts, Just Facts has summarized 50 false or misleading claims spread by journalists, commentators, and so-called fact checkers during the past year. Each of these examples quotes a specific media outlet or individual, but nearly all of these fictions were propagated by multiple outlets and people, and many of them were broadcast by dozens. 1: Inflation Margaret Brennan and John Dickerson of CBS News claimed that “the president of the United States has nothing to do with the price of bacon,” “or eggs,” “or gas,” “or any of it.” In fact, presidents impact the prices of virtually everything through federal deficits that spur inflation, regulations that prohibit the use of cost-effective production methods and resources, price and wage controls, trade deals, tariffs, and more. 2: “Bloodbath” Reporting on the first assassination attempt against Donald Trump, George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz of ABC News claimed that Trump “contributed” to “violent rhetoric” because he said “it’s going to be a bloodbath” if “I don’t get elected.” In fact, Trump didn’t use the term “bloodbath” as a call to violence but to describe the effects of Biden’s policies, especially on the auto industry. 3: Crime Trends PolitiFact reported that “the violent crime rate today is near a 50-year low.” In fact, that claim is derived from FBI data, which is based on voluntary reports of crimes by state and local law enforcement agencies and “excludes” crimes like “sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “attempted robberies,” and “crimes not reported to law enforcement.” The DOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey—which is widely considered to be the “gold standard” for measuring crime trends—showed a 37% increase in violent crime from 2020 to 2023. Moreover, the latest rate of murder—which is the best-measured and worst violent crime—was 36% higher in 2023 than in 2014. 4: Jobs The New York Times reported that “President Biden is presiding over a job-creation boom that would have gotten almost any of his predecessors re-elected in the postwar era.” In fact, all real job growth under Biden went to immigrants, while jobs held by people born in the USA barely recovered from Covid lockdowns, are drastically below their pre-Covid trajectory, and flatlined over the past year:

5: Border Wall Axios reported that Kamala Harris pledged to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border.” In fact, Harris said nothing of the sort, but Axios inferred this based on her support of a bill that makes funds “available” for a border barrier but doesn’t actually require it to be built. Such funds were appropriated in prior years but were not used by the Biden administration. 6: School Shootings The Associated Press and reams of other media outlets reported that JD Vance said “school shootings are a ‘fact of life’.” In fact, Vance said that “psychos” who “want to make headlines” are a “fact of life”—not “school shootings.” He then said, “We have got to bolster security at our schools.” 7: Fauci’s Record MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell claimed that “no one in our lifetimes has saved more lives” than Anthony Fauci. In fact, Fauci may have killed more people than anyone in our lifetimes:

First, Fauci led the federal agency that funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then lied about it to Congress.
Second, Fauci greatly overstated the Covid-19 death rate, prompting mass hysteria and lockdowns that already have or ultimately will shorten the lives of millions of people.
Third, Fauci spread the hoax that C-19 was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” when more than half of all Covid deaths were among the fully vaccinated.

8: Republic v. Democracy The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer-prize winning historian, claimed that “America is a democracy” and “there isn’t a meaningful difference between” a “democracy” and a “republic.” In fact, the founding fathers explicitly stated that they formed a “republic” and not a “democracy” because the latter lacks safeguards against tyrannical mob rule. 9: “Handled by the Military” CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that Donald Trump said “that as commander in chief, he will contemplate using the United States military or National Guard to go after his political opponents, including Democrats” like “Adam Schiff.” In fact, Trump was answering a question about “agitators” who would sow “chaos on election day,” like the “Afghan refugee charged with plotting a U.S. election day massacre.” He was not talking about Americans who “don’t support him” but “sick people, radical-left lunatics,” who’ve rioted, committed arson, and murdered people. Furthermore, he was talking about the 2024 election while the military is not under his command. 10: Biden Family Business Dealings MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace reported it is “conspiracy theory” that Hunter Biden “profited from business dealings in Ukraine with the help of his father.” In fact, written records and first-hand witnesses prove that Joe Biden was heavily involved in Hunter’s business deals, bribed Ukrainians with U.S. taxpayer money, obstructed justice, and lied that evidence of all this from Hunter’s laptop was a “Russian plant.” 11: “Firing Squad” Matt Young of the Daily Beast reported that Donald Trump talked about “putting Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad” in an article headlined, “Trump Fantasizes About Shooting Female Rival in the Face.” In fact, Trump said that Cheney wouldn’t be a “radical war hawk” if she were serving in combat “with nine barrels shooting at her” instead of “sitting in Washington.” 12: Racialized Killings The Associated Press reported that deputies in Florida “burst into the wrong” apartment and “fatally shot a Black” man “when they saw he was armed with a gun.” In fact, the AP selectively highlights people’s races in cases where blacks are killed by whites or police. The AP has done that 60+ times on X and never done the opposite, even though black-on-white murders are 2–3 times more common than vice-versa. 13: “Bipartisan” Border Bill In a “fact check” of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, PolitiFact reported Harris was “correct that Trump helped kill a bipartisan border security bill.” In fact, the crux of Harris’ argument was that Trump killed the bill because “he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” Trump actually opposed the bill because it is laced with loopholes that codify Biden’s open border policies, which fueled the worst border crisis recorded in U.S. history. Hence, only one Republican ultimately voted for it. 14: Late-Term Abortions NBC’s Kristen Welker reported that “abortions later in pregnancy—21 weeks and after—are extremely rare and usually only take place in the case of a health emergency.” In fact, about 15,000 late-term abortions per year are performed in the U.S. at 21 weeks or later, and roughly 80% of them are not for health reasons but purely elective. These abortions are performed on pre-birth humans who are weeks older than this individual at 18 weeks:

15: Abortions Up Till Birth PolitiFact reported that Democrats don’t support “abortion on demand” up to birth because they only support such abortions if the pregnancy poses a “risk” to “health.” In fact, 99% of Congressional Democrats voted for bills that would legalize all abortions up till birth if any abortionist merely says it is for “health.” Per late-term abortionist Warren Hern, “I will certify that “any pregnancy is a threat” to “health.” 16: Live Birth Abortions PolitiFact reported that Donald Trump was wrong to say that Democrats support abortion measures that result in the “execution” of babies “after birth.” In fact, roughly 3–16% of late-term abortions result in live births, and 99% of House Democrats voted against a bill to prosecute any abortionist who “intentionally” “kills a child born alive” after an abortion or fails to give them medical care. Democrats alleged that the bill was redundant, but the current federal law to protect newborns who survive abortions doesn’t have any penalties for breaking it. 17: Presidential Immunity Journalist Ron Filipkowski reported that “a Republican Supreme Court has ruled that presidents who commit crimes in office can’t be prosecuted,” and “we have an incoming president who loves committing crimes.” In fact, the ruling prevents current presidents from abusing their power to prosecute their predecessors for carrying out “official actions” within their “constitutional authority.” Without such immunity, the Trump administration could prosecute Biden for illegally transferring student loans from borrowers to taxpayers. Before Biden took control of the DOJ, such matters were always settled by lawsuits, not prosecutions. 18: Quid-Pro Quo The Atlantic’s David Frum claimed that Donald Trump “tried to blackmail Ukraine’s Zelensky to produce dirt on the Biden family.” In fact, a transcript of the phone call where this allegedly occurred shows that Trump did nothing of the sort. Meanwhile, smoking gun emails prove that Joe Biden withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to ensure that a prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden’s financial benefactor was fired. 19: Russia Collusion CNN’s Josh Campbell, a former FBI agent, claimed that the FBI’s “initial investigation of the Trump world” “started because four people in Trump’s orbit had these sketchy ties to the Russians.” In fact, the FBI targeted Trump’s orbit based on “unvetted hearsay information” that proved to be baseless, and the agency repeatedly misled a court to obtain search warrants for the investigation. The FBI did this less than two weeks after agents expressed personal animus for Trump as he overtook Clinton in the polls, and official records of their actions reveal a host of indiscretions. 20: “Climate Crisis” ABC News reported, “The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it’s happening right now and affecting what matters most to us. Hurricanes intensified by a warming planet and drought-fueled wildfires are destroying our communities. Rising seas and flooding are swallowing our homes. And record-breaking heat waves are reshaping our way of life.” In fact, the following climate-related measures have stayed level or improved for the past 30–170 years:

21: Civil Rights Axios reported that Donald Trump’s “close allies” want to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.” In fact, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it illegal to “discriminate against any individual” because of their “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Democrats have twisted this into a license to discriminate via affirmative action and DEI. 22: “Cancel Student Debt” NBC News reported that “President Joe Biden is expected to announce revised plans to cancel student debt.” In fact, Biden wasn’t planning to “cancel” this debt but transfer it to taxpayers. In the meantime, inflation-adjusted taxpayer funding per college student has already tripled since 1960. 23: mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines PolitiFact reported that mRNA Covid vaccines are “helping save millions of lives.” In fact, the most objective evidence shows no indication that mRNA Covid vaccines save more lives than they take. Moreover, clinical trials were narrowed and then halted before their effects on mortality could be accurately determined. 24: Birthright Citizenship NBC’s Kristen Welker reported that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, “All persons born in the United States are citizens.” In fact, the 14th Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” The U.S. senator who introduced the 14th Amendment stated that this doesn’t include the children of anyone who is not legally and permanently living in the United States, such as “foreigners, aliens.” 25: Academic Plagiarism The Associated Press reported that the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay under a cloud of plagiarism allegation “highlights a new conservative weapon against colleges.” In fact, universities have a duty to root out plagiarism. The fact that outsiders exposed 45+ examples of Gay copying other people’s work without proper attribution shows rot in academia—not the people who did the job that Harvard failed to do. 26: Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens MSNBC’s Jen Psaki claimed that “non-citizens can’t vote” because it’s “a crime.” In fact, non-citizens can and do vote because federal law doesn’t require proof of citizenship to register to vote. As a result, about 2–5 million non-citizens are now illegally registered, half of these people vote, and 73–82% of them vote for Democrats. Desperate attempts to debunk these facts by a host of media outlets and fact checkers have repeatedly failed. 27: Migrants Are “Animals” CBS Evening News anchor Robert Costa reported that Donald Trump “referred to migrants as ‘animals’.” In fact, Trump wasn’t talking about migrants in general but about murderous aliens like MS-13 gang members and the illegal border crosser arrested for the murder of Laken Riley, a 26-year-old nursing student. 28: Laken Riley PolitiFact reported that President Biden had nothing to do with the murder of Laken Riley because “Biden does not decide who is released into the country.” In fact, the illegal border crosser charged with her murder was let into the U.S. as a direct consequence of policies that Biden enacted. 29: Illegal Immigrant Crime Rates NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander reported that “undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a much lower percentage than Americans do.” In fact, illegal immigrants commit serious, imprisonable crimes at much higher rates than Americans. Claims to the contrary are based on studies riddled with these five defects. 30: Border Porosity Axios reported that the U.S./Mexico border is “more fortified than it’s ever been” and that the Biden administration is “attempting to stop as many people who cross the border as they can.” In fact, objective measures like gotaways, inadmissible migrant encounters, and border crossing deaths proved that the border was far more open than ever recorded in the nation’s history. Moreover, the Biden administration let into the U.S. at least 70% of all the illegal border crossers who were “stopped.” 31: Illegal Immigration Rates PolitiFact reported it is “false” that “illegal immigration outpaced American births.” In fact, PolitiFact’s analysis failed to account for 770,000 illegal immigrant gotaways per year and 800,000 visa overstays per year. 32: “Undocumented” Immigrants Virtually all major media outlets referred to illegal immigrants as “undocumented.” In fact, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage explains that terms like “undocumented” are “euphemisms” which “obscure” the fact that people are “present in a country in violation of the immigration laws.” 33: Hunter Biden’s Laptop Based on evidence that Biden accuser Alexander Smirnov had contacts with Russian intelligence, NBC News reported that the “former U.S. spies” who “warned in 2020 that the Hunter Biden scandal had Russian fingerprints” “feel vindicated now.” In fact, the 51 spies have never presented any evidence of Russian involvement with Hunter’s laptop, and the contents of the laptop have been widely verified as authentic. Moreover, these former intel officials stayed silent as Joe Biden and the media used their authority to lie that the laptop “is a Russian plant.” 34: Mar-a-Lago Valuation NBC News reported that Donald Trump “fraudulently puffed up the value” of his Mar-a-Lago estate by valuing it “at $426 million to $612 million, while the Palm Beach County assessor appraised the property’s market value to be $18 million to $27 million.” In fact, a tax assessment of Mar-a-Lago is not its “market value”—a widely known fact that was even reported by CNN. This stark reality is documented by a broad array of real estate industry leaders and business publications, such as Realtor.com, Zillow, and U.S. News & World Report. 35: “Misogynoir” The Associated Press reported that “Black women working year-round and full-time in 2021 made 69 cents for every dollar a white man got” because of “misogynoir,” defined as “hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against Black women.” In fact, the lower average incomes of black women don’t correlate with racism or sexism but with leftist policies and mindsets. This includes but isn’t limited to poor educational outcomes in Democrat-dominated schools and high rates of single-parent households. 36: Grocery Prices In an episode of 60 Minutes, host Lesley Stahl suggested that “greedflation” is the reason why “grocery prices have gone through the roof” in recent years. In fact, the average grocery store profit margin is only 1.6%, and the wholesale food prices paid by supermarkets rose by more than the retail food prices paid by consumers during the Biden/Harris administration. Furthermore, a 2024 study by 3 Ph.D. economists at the San Francisco Fed found that “price markups for goods and services”—or so-called greedflation—has “not been a main driver” of inflation. Instead, the study found that the root causes are “large” federal “fiscal transfers” like “increased unemployment benefits” and Federal Reserve policies like lowering “the federal funds rate target to essentially zero.” 37: International Living Standards Tucker Carlson claimed that U.S. leaders have tanked our “standard of living” because he was able to buy $400 worth of food in a Russian grocery store with only 104 U.S. dollars. In fact, the average standard of living in the U.S. is roughly 2.4 times higher than in Russia. Carlson could buy a disproportionate amount of groceries in Russia with $104 only because U.S. dollars have far greater purchasing power than Russian rubles. 38: Dictator Clothing Alex Kasprak of Snopes reported that Elon Musk posted this AI-generated image with the pretense that it “authentically shows Kamala Harris wearing ‘communist dictator’ garb”:

In fact, Musk’s posts are laced with AI-generated humor. 39: Christian Nationalism Politico reported that “Trump allies” are “developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power.” In fact, “Christian nationalist” is a slur used by people to ban Christian values from government, an agenda that has no basis in the Constitution and is at odds with:

the authors of the Declaration of Independence, who wrote that “all men” are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Abraham Lincoln, who wrote that the only way to “know right from wrong” is the Bible.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote that “a just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

40: Gun Ownership & Violence PolitiFact reported that states with more gun ownership have more gun violence. In fact, there’s no clear association between state gun ownership rates and murder rates, and PolitiFact’s misleading measure:

counts murders committed with guns but fails to account for lives saved by guns.
assumes that gun suicides don’t occur through other means when guns are unavailable.

41: Indicting Political Opponents NBC’s Lester Holt reported that Trump “has said that if he’s re-elected he would use the FBI and the DOJ to go after his political opponents.” In fact, Trump said that Joe Biden sicced the FBI and DOJ on his political opponents, and this could “happen in reverse,” but “the people aren’t going to stand for it.” 42: Sea Level Rise PBS News reported that “by 2100, scientists project sea levels around parts of Florida will rise between two and eight feet,” submerging large parts of the state. In fact, climate activists have been making such predictions for more than 30 years, and they have turned out to be categorically false:

In 1989, a senior U.N. official projected that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” Since then, Earth’s land area has grown by about 22,400 square miles.

In 1992, Al Gore claimed that “up to 60% of the present population of Florida may have to be relocated” “not long after” the “next few decades” “because of the rising sea level, due to global warming.” Since then, the coastal population of Florida has grown by 61%.

In 1989, another senior UN official wrote that “sea-level rise as a consequence of global warming would immediately threaten that large fraction of the globe living at sea level.” Since then, Earth’s coastal land area has grown by about 5,200 square miles.

In 1995, the New York Times reported that “some experts” say “most of the beaches on the East Coast” of the U.S. will “be gone in 25 years” due to global warming. Since then, none of them have disappeared.

43: Masking NBC’s Kristen Welker reported, “Scientists did show that masks help to stop the spread” of Covid-19. In fact, no randomized controlled trial has ever found that masks save lives, and an analysis of CDC mask studies published by the American Journal of Medicine in 2023 found that “the level of evidence generated was low and the conclusions were most often unsupported by the data.” Covid deaths enduringly plunged only after nearly everyone caught C-19 and naturally acquired immunity flourished—not when masks or vaccines were deployed. 44: Debt Limit Reuters reported that not raising the debt limit “could prevent the Treasury from paying its debts” and cause a “U.S. debt default.” In fact, not raising the debt limit wouldn’t cause a debt default unless the president violates the law and Constitution. 45: Picking Crops CNN’s Catherine Rampell reported that it “will worsen the economy” if Trump deports the illegal immigrants who “pick your crops.” In fact, a 2017 study by a research institute at the University of California found, “If the influx of immigrant workers were slowed or stopped and farm wages rose,” the average U.S. family would pay $21 more per year for fresh fruits and vegetables. 46: Kamala’s “Tax Cuts” CNN reported that Kamala Harris proposed a “new plan to provide tax relief for more than 100 million middle-class and lower-income Americans.” In fact, her proposed “tax cuts” were actually welfare benefits doled out by the IRS via two fraud-ridden programs. 47: Racism & Sexism in Elections CNN’s David Axelrod claimed that “anybody who thinks” “racial bias” and “sexism” did not in any way impact the outcome” of the 2024 presidential election is “wrong.” In fact, scientific surveys stretching back for decades show no indication that racism or sexism play a role in the outcomes of presidential elections. Also, Kamala Harris received a smaller portion of the female vote than Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. 48: Pre-Musk Twitter On 60 Minutes, anchor Lesley Stahl reported that Twitter/X is “rife with trash talk and lies” since Elon Musk took over in 2022. In fact, pre-Musk Twitter broadly censored proven facts and widely spread flagrant falsehoods about countless important issues. A prime example is Lesley Stahl’s claim on 60 Minutes that Hunter Biden’s laptop “can’t be verified.” Here’s 13 more examples. 49: Economic Growth Axios reported that the U.S. is experiencing an “unprecedented—and largely unheralded—economic miracle” because the nation’s GDP “has surged by an astonishing 40%” in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, Axios failed to account for inflation and population growth, which are both vital for understanding economic trends. Exploding Axios’ claim of an “economic miracle,” real GDP per capita is still below its pre-Covid trajectory:

50: Inadmissible Migrants CNN’s Dana Bash reported that it’s “not illegal” for Biden to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants who are inadmissible under federal law to cross U.S. borders via airplanes and land ports of entry. In fact, the law allows for such entries under narrow circumstances and “only on a case-by-case basis”—not by the trainload. Texas and 19 other states filed a lawsuit against this policy, but the case was dismissed by a district court judge on the basis of standing, a legal doctrine that prohibits lawsuits unless plaintiffs can prove that they suffered a direct personal injury. Litigation has continued, and regardless of the outcome, the issue of standing doesn’t settle the legality of Biden’s actions. Conclusion Despite broadcasting an avalanche of fake news in 2024, journalists cast themselves as paragons of truthfulness. CNN’s Dana Bash, for a prime example, claimed in an interview with JD Vance that “There aren’t media lies” and journalists don’t distort Trump’s words but simply “let him speak for himself.” In reality, the press has incessantly reported Trump’s words out of context in ways that disfigure what he actually said. Although it’s hard to discern whether these were honest mistakes or deliberate lies, journalists often did this by cutting out vital words that Trump said in close proximity to one another, sometimes within seconds. Yet, CBS reporter Scott Pelly claimed in 2024, “We fact-check every story.” Journalists have also defended their cherry-picked sources and described them as victims of unjust criticism. For instance, 60 Minutes reported that academics who “flagged misinformation to social media” say “there’s a campaign to discredit them—and it’s mainly coming from conservatives.” In reality, a Harvard non-scientific survey of 150 “misinformation” scholars found that 83% described themselves as “fairly left-wing” or “very left-wing.” Beyond the ideological bias, this is significant because pillars of leftism like Lenin and Alinsky openly encouraged lying to achieve their ends. Based on a study published by the prestigious journal Nature, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump alleged that “doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong.” However, Bump failed to reveal that the study “hired professional fact checkers from leading national media organizations” to “determine” what’s “true” and “false.” Given the track record of the media, this fatally flawed study reinforces the need to conduct your own research and equip yourself with the necessary skills to do it well.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/50-examples-of-fake-news-in-2024/feed 13 Abolishing the Debt Limit Would Enable Politicians to Avoid Accountability https://www.justfactsdaily.com/abolishing-the-debt-limit-would-enable-politicians-to-avoid-accountability https://www.justfactsdaily.com/abolishing-the-debt-limit-would-enable-politicians-to-avoid-accountability#respond Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:12:43 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12392 By James D. Agresti December 21, 2024

Credit: ChatGPT Overview With the national debt at its worst level in U.S. history, both Donald Trump and far-left Democrats like Ilhan Omar are pushing to eliminate the debt limit. This would reduce transparency and responsibility for politicians who run up debt and make it easier for them to pass the buck to future officeholders and younger generations of Americans. The Debt Situation Economists typically measure each country’s national debt as a portion of its economy because this provides a good indicator of the government’s ability to service its debt. By this measure, the U.S. national debt is currently worse than it’s ever been in the history of the nation:

The only era in which the national debt was close to current levels was World War II, the deadliest and most widespread conflict in world history. However, the debt from World War II rapidly fell once the war ended, while he modern debt has been on a steep upward path for decades. Driven mainly by increases in social spending, the national debt is on track to dwarf World War II levels over the next 10 years, exposing the people of the U.S. to enormous harms. One of the most nefarious aspects of government debt is that it hurts people through economic mechanisms that aren’t always obvious to them. This is aggravated by politicians who run up debt and falsely blame others for the common effects of excessive debt. Those effects can manifest gradually or abruptly in the form of:

reduced “living standards” and “wages.”
“higher inflation” that increases “the size of future budget deficits” and decreases “the purchasing power” of citizens’ savings and income.
“losses for mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and other holders of federal debt.”
increased “probability of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would be forced to pay much more to borrow money.”

Calls to Remove the Debt Limit NBC News is reporting that Donald Trump stated in a phone interview with NBC that abolishing the debt limit would be the “smartest thing” Congress could do and he “would support that entirely.” He also said, “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge” because “it doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically.” In accord with that sentiment, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the debt ceiling is “very unnecessary” and that “Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling.” This stance puts him in the company of far-left influencers and Democrats, such as:

the New York Times editorial board, which claims that the debt limit “has not served a useful purpose in living memory.”
Representatives Ilhan Omar, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Dan Goldman, and Rashida Tlaib, who cosponsored a bill that would castrate the debt limit by making it unenforceable without veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress.
Cal Berkeley professor Robert Reich, who wrote that the debt ceiling “serves absolutely no purpose” and should be abolished.
Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, who posted on X, “I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking.”

Contrary to Trump and these leftists, the debt limit serves the purposes of transparency, responsibility, and preventing politicians from passing the buck. Transparency & Responsibility Politicians routinely enact thousands of pages of complex laws while claiming that they are saving money, cutting the deficit, and investing in America. Joe Biden’s X feed is heavily laced with such statements. Contradicting his talk of fiscal responsibility, Biden signed a law in 2021 to raise the debt limit by $2.5 trillion, and 100% of Congressional Democrats voted for it. On top of that, Biden signed a law in 2023 to suspend the debt limit through January 1, 2025. The vast bulk of Democrats, along with a majority of Republicans, also voted for this. Such votes provide public visibility into the actual state of federal finances and who is driving it deeper into debt. Without this, people like Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House Democrats, can easily pull the wool over voters’ eyes with claims like this: “President Biden and House Dems have cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion” during 2021 to 2022. In reality, Biden and the Democrats increased federal deficits by about $840 billion over that period, but understanding this requires comprehending these detailed facts:

When Biden entered office, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting deficits would decline by $2.95 trillion in 2021 and 2022 due to the expiration of Covid-19 pandemic spending.
Instead, deficits fell by just $2.11 trillion primarily because Democrats increased spending on wide-ranging social welfare programs and bailouts for state/local governments and private union pension funds.
Consequently, Democrats increased the deficits by $840 billion relative to what would have happened if they kept the status quo.
From the time that Congress enacted Biden’s first major economic proposal through 2022, the national debt grew by $3.5 trillion.

In contrast, votes to raise the debt limit are obvious. This gives voters straightforward information to hold politicians accountable. Passing the Buck Another important purpose of the debt limit is to hinder presidents and congresses from racking up bills and forcing future officeholders to pick up the tab. For a prime example, one month before Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, a lame-duck Congress and President Biden passed an omnibus funding bill that spans 4,155-pages and spends about $1.7 trillion. Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut called it the greatest increase in “non-defense funding ever” and boasted that it “fulfills 98% of Democratic Member requests in the House.” The politicians who voted for this law could have raised the debt limit in the same bill, but instead, they left that to the new Congress while saddling it with all of the spending they passed. As a result, Republicans were able to negotiate some spending reductions with Democrats in exchange for raising the debt limit. On a much larger scale, previous congresses and presidents have enacted large mandatory programs with perpetual authority to spend money, like Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs. The share of the federal budget consumed by these programs has grown from about 30% in the early 1970s to more than 60% today. Mandatory programs have become such an engrained part of government spending that politicians sometimes ignore these outlays when speaking about the federal budget. The debt limit gives voters and lawmakers a measure of control over the spending that occurs under their watch, even if they don’t simultaneously control both houses of congress and the presidency. A common talking point of people who want to scrap the debt ceiling is that “Congress has already voted to spend this money” and not spending it would be “breaking promises.” In many cases, however, the current Congress did not vote to “spend this money,” and the previous congresses that made the “promises” didn’t provide enough revenues to pay for them. Summary The debt limit, a provision that is rooted in the Constitution and dates back to the founding of the nation, forces congresses and presidents to go on record with clear votes to increase or not increase the national debt. Eliminating it would make it easier for fiscally irresponsible politicians to avoid accountability, impair the ability of their successors to rein in spending, and financially cripple future generations of Americans.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/abolishing-the-debt-limit-would-enable-politicians-to-avoid-accountability/feed 0 The Constitution Does Not Grant Birthright Citizenship to the Children of Illegal Immigrants https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-constitution-does-not-grant-birthright-citizenship-to-the-children-of-illegal-immigrants https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-constitution-does-not-grant-birthright-citizenship-to-the-children-of-illegal-immigrants#comments Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:55:59 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12369 By James D. Agresti December 16, 2024

The U.S. border wall near Juarez, Mexico, 12/21/2022. Credit: David Peinado Romero Overview Dozens of media outlets are reporting in unison that Donald Trump cannot stop the U.S. government from awarding birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. They claim this is the case because the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires it. In reality, the legislative history of the 14th Amendment is clear that it only grants birthright citizenship to the children of people who are legally and permanently living in the United States. This does not apply to the children of illegal immigrants, temporary residents, visitors, or tourists. The children of such foreigners are currently granted U.S. citizenship and its benefits under a misinterpretation of the Constitution. Although such citizenship could be conferred through legislation, no such law exists. A Supreme Court ruling in 1898 presents mixed messages about this issue, but it is factually flawed on multiple levels and could justifiably be superseded by the current Supreme Court. The Historical Background In 1866, shortly after the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished, a bloc of Congressmen called the “Radical Republicans” passed a civil rights law to ensure that African Americans had the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens….” This law applied to former slaves but not to foreigners, and thus, it stated that:

all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States….

To guarantee that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was constitutional, the Radical Republicans fought for and secured passage of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868. The amendment mimics the act and states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The sentence above is known as the “birthright citizenship” clause of the Constitution. Under the current prevailing interpretation of it, children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants, temporary residents, visitors, and tourists automatically become U.S. citizens and:

are eligible for all state and federal welfare benefits, such as food stamps, housing, home energy, childcare, and health insurance.
can vote in U.S. elections.
sometimes serve as shields to prevent their parents from being deported.
can sponsor their relatives to become legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens.

In 2009, Pew Research estimated that 73% of the children of unauthorized immigrants were U.S. citizens. The Current Debate During a recent episode of NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator Kristen Welker asked President-elect Donald Trump if he planned to keep his promise to end birthright citizenship on his first day in office, and Trump replied, “Yeah. Absolutely.” Welker then challenged Trump by stating, “The 14th Amendment, though, says that, quote, ‘All persons born in the United States are citizens.’ Can you get around the 14th Amendment with an executive action?” Welker’s assertion is materially false because it omits the operative words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” from the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens….

The debate about birthright citizenship hinges upon the words that Welker excluded, but instead of correcting her, several media outlets parroted her falsehood, like the BBC, CNN, and NBC News. While posting a screenshot of the misleading NBC article, Hillary Clinton wrote on X, “Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution. Trump may want to read it.” Yet, neither she nor NBC quoted the Constitution. Dozens of other media outlets reported on the exchange between Trump and Welker while mentioning the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” but claiming that it includes illegal immigrants. This includes, for example, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, PolitiFact, and CBS News. The common thread among all of them is that they ignore the pivotal facts of the issue. The Determinative Facts On May 30, 1866, Republican Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan introduced the 14th Amendment in the U.S. Senate and defined the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” by stating:

This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

Some scholars, like Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner, argue that the words “foreigners,” “aliens,” “ambassadors” and “foreign ministers” are merely “synonyms to describe the same category of individuals, namely the children of foreign officials.” Drezner’s claim is transparently false because the meanings of the words “foreigner” and “alien” include illegal immigrants, while “ambassador” and “foreign minister” do not. Moreover, the differences between the first two words and the last two are so great that a total of 198 synonyms provided by Power Thesaurus for “foreigner” and “alien” don’t include “ambassador” or “foreign minister.” The converse is also true. Furthermore, the senators debated the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” after Howard introduced the amendment, and Howard further explained that:

the word “jurisdiction,” as here employed, ought to be construed as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now. Certainly, gentlemen cannot contend that an Indian belonging to a tribe, although born within the limits of a State, is subject to this full and complete jurisdiction.

As ratified, the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment contains the exact words proposed by Howard. Hence, there can be little doubt that it means exactly what he said it means. Drezner quotes other snippets from the U.S. Senate debate as if they determine the meaning of the birthright citizenship clause, but the full record of the discussion reveals that they were just a part of the typical back-and-forth that occurs in such debates. By cherry-picking quotes from this dialogue, one can make any variety of claims about what it means. In the end, the definitive authority on this issue is Jacob Howard, who proposed and clarified the words that became a part of the U.S. Constitution. Notably, the 14th Amendment doesn’t prohibit federal legislators from granting citizenship to people not included in its birthright citizenship clause. This occurred in 1924 when Congress passed and President Calvin Coolidge signed a law that awarded U.S. citizenship to all “non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.” Conversely, no such legislation has been passed for the children of illegal immigrants or tourists. Supreme Court Precedent In 1873, a baby named Wong Kim Ark was born in the city of San Francisco to Chinese immigrants who were legally living in the U.S. and had “established and enjoyed a permanent domicile and residence therein” but were not U.S. citizens. When Ark was about 21 years old, he took a trip to China but was denied reentry to the U.S. because laws enacted in 1882 and 1888 prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the U.S., and customs officials decided that Ark wasn’t a U.S. citizen because his parents were not. Ark sued, and the case went to the Supreme Court, where Ark won. In a 6–2 decision issued in 1898, the majority declared that the 14th amendment grants citizenship to “all children here born of resident aliens” with limited exceptions like diplomats, occupying enemy forces, and members of Indian tribes. Conflictingly, however, the majority also wrote that the 14th Amendment’s phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” only applies to people who “are permitted by the United States to reside here.” This plainly excludes unauthorized immigrants and tourists who don’t live in the U.S. Another flaw in the ruling is that the majority assumes the 14th Amendment “must be interpreted in the light” of “English common law” that preceded the birth of the United States. Since “English common law” linked “English nationality” to “birth within the allegiance” of “the king,” the majority claimed that the 14th Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country….” Beyond the fact that the 14th Amendment was enacted 92 years after the birth of the United States, the dissenting justices criticized the majority for imposing on the U.S. Constitution “feudal” and “regal” doctrines that the founders of the U.S. had overthrown. The notion that people are the “subjects” of a monarch, wrote the minority, “never had any basis in the United States.” Another weakness in the majority’s ruling is their claim that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” means the same as “within the jurisdiction.” This is called into question by the first paragraph of the 14th Amendment, which uses those phrases for different purposes (italics added):

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….”
“nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

It’s a stretch to assume that the authors of 14th Amendment used those distinctive terms to mean the same thing, especially since one of the authors explicitly stated that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction”:

“will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers….”
doesn’t include “an Indian belonging to a tribe.”
“ought to be construed as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”

Given the forgoing facts, the current Supreme Court may set aside the conflicting dicta of the Court’s 1898 ruling in Wong Kim Ark, who was the child of legal immigrants—not illegal immigrants or tourists. Summary Based on a faulty interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the federal government is awarding citizenship to the children of nearly everyone who gives birth in the United States. As a result, the children are entitled to receive welfare, vote when they become older, and obtain other benefits of U.S. citizenship. This includes the children of illegal immigrants, temporary residents, and even foreigners who vacation in the U.S. The legislative history of the 14th Amendment reveals that the birthright citizenship clause was enacted primarily to protect the civil rights of African Americans. Contrary to shallow claims from the media and certain scholars, it doesn’t grant citizenship to the children of anyone who is not legally and permanently living in the United States.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/the-constitution-does-not-grant-birthright-citizenship-to-the-children-of-illegal-immigrants/feed 3 Axios Butchers the History of Thanksgiving https://www.justfactsdaily.com/axios-butchers-the-history-of-thanksgiving https://www.justfactsdaily.com/axios-butchers-the-history-of-thanksgiving#comments Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:28:52 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12335 By James D. Agresti December 3, 2024

Oil painting of the first Thanksgiving. Credit: Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, 1932 / Shutterstock.com On the day before Thanksgiving, Axios published an article titled “Thanksgiving’s Troubled History” by Russell Contreras, the “Justice and Race reporter at Axios.” Citing “a new generation of historians,” Contreras declares that “Thanksgiving in the United States is based on a mythical feast between the Wampanoag people and Mayflower Pilgrims” and that “the holiday’s real story is mixed with national unity and racial exclusion.” According to Contreras, the Native Americans weren’t actually invited to the famous 1621 meal but “showed up” out of “concern over gunshots.” His source for that claim is the Partnership With Native Americans, which requires readers to submit their e-mails to “Download The Real Thanksgiving Story.” The downloaded document quotes an “account by Ramona Peters, via Indian Country Today Media Network.” Beyond that, it doesn’t provide a hyperlink, article title, or any other type of sourcing. Peters’ account, located by Just Facts, appears in an interview she gave in 2012. In this interview, Peters, the “Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s Tribal Historic Preservation Officer,” was asked to comment on “what we’re taught in mainstream media and in schools” about Thanksgiving. She replied by stating:

Yeah, it was made up. It was Abraham Lincoln who used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together. He was trying to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided.

Asked twice if the Pilgrims and Wampanoags shared a meal together at the first Thanksgiving, Peters replied, “No.” Because Peters provided no sources or documentation for her claims, Just Facts attempted to reach her via an email address that appeared in more than a dozen official documents but received an auto-reply stating, “Unable to deliver message after multiple retries, giving up.” In short, Axios’ claim that Thanksgiving is “based on a mythical feast” rests on an uncorroborated assertion made by one person 400 years after the events in question. Peters’ version of Thanksgiving doesn’t even appear to be a tribal tradition because she stated that the Wampanoag celebrate Thanksgiving like other Americans and “most of us are taught about the friendly Indians and the friendly Pilgrims and people sitting down and eating together.” Moreover, Peters’ account is at odds with the first-hand witness of Edward Winslow, governor of the Pilgrim colony, which consisted of only 53 people at the time. He wrote that the Pilgrims “entertained and feasted” with the Indians for three days because, “by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” That was 242 years before Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, obliterating the accusation that Lincoln made it up. The National Press Club recently honored Axios CEO Jim VandeHei, who took the opportunity to lambaste Elon Musk for saying to X users, “You are the media now.” After calling Musk’s statement “bullshit” to cheers from his audience, VandeHei proclaimed that:

being a reporter is hard, really hard. You have to care. You have to do the hard work. You have to get up every single day and say, “I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism.” You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. You don’t do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work.

Belying that claim, Axios’ article on the history of Thanksgiving adds to the hundreds of reasons why 69% of Americans have little-to-no trust in mass media.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/axios-butchers-the-history-of-thanksgiving/feed 5 The FBI’s Biden-Era Murder Estimates Are Far Below the Number of Homicides Recorded on Death Certificates https://www.justfactsdaily.com/fbi-biden-era-murder-estimates-homicides-death-certificates https://www.justfactsdaily.com/fbi-biden-era-murder-estimates-homicides-death-certificates#comments Mon, 18 Nov 2024 16:04:04 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12295 By James D. Agresti November 18, 2024

Credit: Cryptographer/Shutterstock.com Overview As the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics explains, “The United States uses two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides.” These consist of:

death certificates collected by the states and compiled by the CDC.
reports by local law enforcement agencies compiled by the states and aggregated by the FBI, which also generates estimates for agencies that don’t report.

Death certificates have always provided broader and more accurate data than the FBI’s figures, but the gap between them has grown sharply under the Biden administration. This may indicate that local law enforcement agencies, states, and/or the FBI are undercounting murders. Furthermore, the Biden administration FBI inexplicably revised its pre-Biden murder data all the way back to 2003, elevating the counts in certain years by up to 7%. The FBI made these unprecedented alterations without so much as a footnote to inform the public. As a result of those factors and others, the gap between murders reported by the FBI and the number of homicides recorded on death certificates has grown from a low of 16 killings in 2003 to an average of 3,711 killings per year during Biden’s presidency:

Again, all of the figures above are homicides recorded on death certificates that are not reported as murders by Biden’s FBI. The FBI is part of the DOJ, which is under the authority of the president. The leaders of the DOJ and FBI are both appointed by the president. Measuring Murder In addition to being the worst crime, murder is also the most measurable one. Per the World Bank, “The intentional killing of a human being by another is the ultimate crime. Its indisputable physical consequences manifested in the form of a dead body also make it the most categorical and calculable.” Still, there are challenges in measuring murder and significant differences between the two primary measures of homicide in the United States. In the words of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, death certificates provide “more accurate homicide trends at the national level than” FBI data because:

the reporting of death certificates is “mandatory,” while the FBI relies on “voluntary” reports “from individual law enforcement agencies” that are “compiled monthly by state-level agencies.”
death certificates include homicides that “occur in federal jurisdictions,” while the FBI rarely counts “homicides occurring in federal prisons, on military bases, and on Indian reservations.”
death certificates include homicides caused by the deliberate “crashing of a motor vehicle, but this category generally accounts for less than 100 deaths per year.”

On the other hand, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include:

justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders.
some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides.

Despite those differences, a 2014 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that “the two sources show similar trends for the rate of homicides over time at the national level,” although the count of death certificates “consistently shows a higher number and rate of homicides” at the national level than FBI data. This chart from the report illustrates the point:

Biden-Era Revisions Each year in the fall, the FBI typically publishes crime data from the prior year and revises its data from one year before that. In 2020, for example, the FBI published new murder data for 2019 and revised its murder estimate for 2018 from 16,214 to 16,374, an increase of 160 murders, or 1%. To alert people to the change, the FBI added a footnote next to the year 2018 that says, “The crime figures have been adjusted.” In 2023, however, the FBI revised its murder data from every prior year back to 2003. While the changes in some years were minimal, others were substantial. For example, the FBI altered its murder estimate for 2003 from 16,528 to 17,716, an increase of 1,188, or 7%. Illuminating the rarity of those changes, the highlighted figures in the table below show all of the FBI’s revisions of murder data from 2003 to 2022 in reports published from 2004 to 2023. Note that the FBI excluded most historical data from its 2022 publication of 2021 data, which is why there are only two figures in the 2021 column:

Furthermore, the scale of the changes that the FBI published in 2023 are far greater than any in the past. Yet, the FBI only included a footnote to alert people to the change for 2021 and none of the other 18 years. In 2024, the FBI made other murder revisions. Most significantly, it reduced the murder estimate for 2021 from 22,536 to 21,462, a decrease of 1,074, or 5%. Prior Administrations After discovering the Biden-era data revisions, Just Facts dug deeper by calculating the gaps between FBI murders and death certificate homicides using FBI publications issued during other presidencies. Just Facts’ analysis revealed that the vast bulk of gap increases materialized during the Biden administration, but there were notable trends under other presidents as well. During the presidency of George W. Bush, the gap remained roughly level at around 9% except for 2001 because the FBI didn’t include the 9/11 terrorist attack killings in the count of murders. However, Biden’s FBI substantially increased murder counts in the earlier years of Bush’s term, making it seem like the gap between FBI murders and death certificate homicides increased from about 0% to 9% during his presidency:

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the gap increased from 10% to 13%. Other than two years, Obama’s FBI left the Bush-era murder counts unchanged. Biden’s FBI raised the murder counts in assorted years of Obamas’ term, thus reducing the gap in certain years, but the general trend remained intact:

During the presidency of Donald Trump, the gap increased from 13% to 17%. Other than the customary prior year revision, Trump’s FBI left the Bush and Obama-era murder counts unchanged. However, Biden’s FBI irregularly increased the murder counts throughout Trump’s term, making it seem like the gap jumped up and down between 7% to 13%:

In summary, the gaps between FBI murders and death certificate homicides rose significantly in publications issued under all of the presidents but Bush. However, the Biden era publications and revisions are unprecedented in scope and scale. Lack of Transparency

FBI headquarters. Credit: ieronymos/Shutterstock.com To determine if there was a legitimate basis for the FBI’s revisions, Just Facts filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI on June 7. More than five months later, the FBI has not replied. Just Facts also emailed the FBI’s National Press Office on November 15 and is awaiting a response. Beyond the unmarked murder revisions in 2023, the FBI has been burying its crime data since the first year of the Biden administration. Prior to this, the FBI published its annual “Crime in the United States” report with a simple overview page that provided links to webpages with clear summaries and datasets for different categories of crimes. Since 2021, however, Biden’s FBI has buried these datasets in a fragmented manner under a maze of vaguely worded dropdown menus and acronyms with expiring hyperlinks. That convoluted system has led to some massive underreports of violent crime. For a prime example, NewsNation reported in 2022 that 14,677 murders occurred in 2021 based on the FBI’s convoluted presentation of its data. This was 8,000 fewer murders than the FBI’s actual estimate of 22,900 murders that year. To rectify this problem, Just Facts has posted the FBI’s crime data for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 at easily accessible permalinks. Data for earlier years are still available from the FBI. Throughout this period of data burying, stealth murder revisions, and unprecedented disconnects between FBI murders and death certificate homicides, the director of the FBI has been Christopher Wray. He has led the agency since the first year of the Trump administration and throughout the Biden administration.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/fbi-biden-era-murder-estimates-homicides-death-certificates/feed 2 Powerful Groups Are Hiding Facts About Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/powerful-groups-are-hiding-facts-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/powerful-groups-are-hiding-facts-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens#comments Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:59:36 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12242 By James D. Agresti October 30, 2024

Credit: NYCStock/Shutterstock.com Overview Massive government-funded media outlets and other information powerbrokers are keeping Americans in the dark about the prevalence of illegal voting by non-citizens. They are doing this by betraying a core rule of honest journalism: “No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance.” Such deceitful reporting is impairing the integrity of the U.S. electoral system by enabling illegal voting to go unchecked. This fraud negates the votes of U.S. citizens, thus usurping their Constitutional right to vote. Background In May 2024, Just Facts published an eye-opening study which found that roughly:

2 to 5 million non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in the United States.
1.0 to 2.7 million of them will illegally vote in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections unless better anti-fraud measures are implemented.

The study went viral with influential people, organizations, news outlets, and websites citing it. This includes U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky, the Daily Wire, True the Vote, the Republican National Committee, the New York Post, Leading Report, Maria Bartiromo, and a post on X with more than 24 million views due to a repost by Elon Musk. Underscoring the study’s reach and import, it was attacked by the New York Times, Snopes, the Cato Institute, and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. In June, Just Facts published an article that systematically debunked their arguments. Now, a new gamut of organizations are assailing the study, including:

NPR and the BBC, two of the world’s largest taxpayer-funded media outlets.
the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a non-profit liberal legal powerhouse that had $109 million in revenues during 2023.
NewsGuard, an organization that partners with government agencies like the State Department, Department of Defense, and World Health Organization to allegedly “counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies.”

Despite the massive resources of these organizations, their attacks on the study consisted of discredited arguments that have already been refuted by documented facts. Furthermore, these facts are unavoidable to anyone who simply reads the study and an article linked at the bottom of it in a note that says, “Just Facts has published a thorough rebuttal to critiques of this study.” The Cato Institute Among the most naive of their arguments, Allison Anderman, an attorney who writes for the Brennan Center, claims that Just Facts’ study is wrong because “the conservative Cato Institute” says so. Likewise, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, an NYU professor named Yann LeCun, argues that “even the conservative Cato Institute knows that the numbers of non-citizens who vote are so infinitesimally small as to be completely inconsequential.” Above and beyond the fact that Just Facts has already debunked Cato’s arguments, the Cato Institute is not conservative. Rather, it is libertarian, and it is so far left on the issue of immigration that it lobbies for open borders. Those facts are hard to miss given that the second paragraph of the “About Us” page on Cato’s website states that it “promotes libertarian ideas,” and a commentary on the website by Cato’s VP of research is titled, “Forget the Wall Already, It’s Time for the U.S. to Have Open Borders.” In other words, these scholars—one of whom leads the creation of artificial intelligence for the world’s largest social media company—failed to conduct even basic research or are deliberately misleading their readers. “Selected the Wrong Box” A common thread among the attacks on Just Facts’ study is the allegation that certain scholars previously debunked it. In the words of NPR reporter Jude Joffe-Block, Just Facts’ study is based on “discredited estimates” from a “widely contested 2014 paper” that was rejected by 200 political scientists in “an open letter.” More specifically, Joffe-Block claims that the 2014 study “was methodologically unsound because” it was based on a large survey in which “a small subset of people who reported being noncitizen voters could easily have been citizens who had simply selected the wrong box.” In reality, that claim has always been questionable and is irrelevant to Just Facts’ study, which uses data from 2022. Here are the pivotal facts that NPR, the BBC, the Brennan Center, and NewsGuard kept from their audiences:

The authors of the 2014 paper, published by the academic journal Electoral Studies, foresaw and refuted that argument in an appendix of the study.
Critics attacked the 2014 paper without acknowledging—much less addressing—the facts that appeared in its appendix and five other publications that rebutted their argument.
Their argument is inapplicable to Just Facts’ study, which is based on data from a 2022 survey in which “multiple citizenship questions” were asked to “limit the possibility of honest mistakes by survey respondents.”

All of those facts are readily available and documented with links to primary sources in Just Facts’ study and its rebuttal to critics. Yet, Joffe-Block, who claims to be a journalist “specializing in deeply reported stories,” simply ignores these facts. Even more misleading, NewsGuard’s article falsely claims that Just Facts’ study “heavily relied” on survey data from “2008 and 2010” that was used in the “2014 study.” A simple read of Just Facts’ study shows that isn’t true. Moreover, the study provides a spreadsheet that proves:

100% of the data on non-citizen voter registration is from a 2022 survey.
one of the study’s formulas uses data from the 2014 study to calculate a denominator, and if this figure were affected by the error that critics imagine, it would actually decrease the non-citizen voter registration rate.

Remarkably, NewsGuard’s article was written by seven authors, none of whom detected this blatant falsehood. This includes Senior Staff Analyst Chiara Vercellone, Politics Editor Sam Howard, Editor McKenzie Sadeghi, Staff Analyst Coalter Palmer, Staff Analyst Sofia Rubinson, Senior Analyst Becca Schimmel, and News Verification Reporter Sarah Komar. “One Percent” Among those who downplay illegal voting by non-citizens, another common claim is that the lead author of the 2014 paper has dramatically reduced his estimate of non-citizen voter registration from 25% to 1%. In the 2014 paper, Dr. Jesse Richman and two of his colleagues at Old Dominion University and George Mason University found that “roughly one quarter of non-citizens” in the U.S. “were likely registered to vote.” In contrast, Richman estimated in a 2023 report that “approximately one percent of non-citizens” are registered to vote. According to BBC reporter Mike Wendling, who is the “co-founder of the BBC’s disinformation unit,” Richman used “more recent” data to “conclude in 2023 that 1% of non-citizens were registered to vote.” In reality, Richman’s figure of 1% is based on measures that lowball the rate of non-citizen voter registration. This is proven by:

a statement from Richman in which he admitted that he tried to “minimize the risk that the estimate could be biased upwards” for a “court case,” thus creating “an increased risk that the estimate could be biased downwards.”
an extensive appendix by Just Facts that details how the 1% figure is based on narrow or distorted measures that underestimate the rate of non-citizen voter registration.

Even though these facts are plainly stated and thoroughly documented in Just Facts’ study, Wendling chose to ignore them even after Just Facts President Jim Agresti reiterated them to Wendling in a recorded interview and an email. Instead of presenting these facts, Wendling wrote that “Agresti said that his own calculations produced a number that was at the very least ten times” the 1% figure. When Wendling did this, he stripped out the hyperlinks that Agresti provided to him. This created the illusion that Agresti made a totally unsupported claim, when in reality, he presented a thoroughly documented fact. This kind of link-purging is a common ploy of “fact checkers” and journalists. More Falsehoods and Half-Truths Other fact-deficient canards used by NPR, the BBC, NewsGuard, and/or the Brennan Center include the following:

It’s “not possible to draw statistical conclusions from a relatively small number of survey participants”—when in fact—the survey in Just Facts’ study is large enough to measure statistically significant nationwide results with at least 95% confidence.
The survey “does not constitute a representative sample of the population” —when in fact—the evidence suggests it does.
Just Facts is merely a “website”—when in fact—it is a research and educational institute that has been cited, complimented, and commended by a diverse array of scholars, peer-reviewed journals, major media outlets, government entities, and think tanks.
Just Facts is a “pro-Trump” organization—when in fact—it recently published an article that refutes Trump’s false claims about violent crime, a post that critiques his plan for “tax cuts,” and a video documenting that he contributed to inflation.
“Investigations into voter rolls show very few immigrants registered to vote and even fewer voting”—when in fact—the ability to vet the rolls is severely limited by lax voter registration laws, rampant identity fraud among illegal immigrants, and the refusal of certain states and the Biden administration to release data on the citizenship status of voters.

Conclusion In a recent interview on CBS News, Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, claimed there are “no facts underlying” the assertion that “non-citizens are going to vote.” Although Mayorkas’ claim is belied by numerous facts, he can slip this falsehood past all Americans who trust the information powerbrokers that hide vital facts about this issue from their audiences.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/powerful-groups-are-hiding-facts-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens/feed 4 Real Violent Crime Trends https://www.justfactsdaily.com/real-violent-crime-trends https://www.justfactsdaily.com/real-violent-crime-trends#comments Thu, 17 Oct 2024 15:23:13 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12201 By James D. Agresti October 17, 2024

Artiom Photo/Shutterstock.com Overview Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, media outlets, and so-called “fact checkers” are claiming that “violent crime is near a 50-year low.” In contrast, Donald Trump is alleging that “crime is worse than it’s ever been.” The reality is that all of them are wrong. There are three key measures of violent crime with various strengths and weaknesses, but the most reliable and severe one shows that the murder rate in 2023 was 36% higher than the modern low in 2014 but 14% lower than the modern peak in 2021. FBI Data The statistics cited by Harris and others who declare that violent crime is extraordinarily low come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which is based on voluntary reports of crimes by state and local law enforcement agencies. As explained by the FBI, this report “excludes” crimes like “sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “attempted robberies,” and “crimes not reported to law enforcement.” Regarding the last of those exclusions, the FBI discloses that “changes in police procedures, shifting attitudes toward crime and police, and other societal changes can affect the extent to which people report and law enforcement agencies record crime.” Thus, the FBI cautions against “making any direct comparison between data in this publication and those in prior” years. If one ignores that warning—and all of the crimes not recorded in the Uniform Crime Report—violent crime appears to be near a 50-year low:

Trump claims that “the FBI defrauded everybody because what they did is they used statistics not including some of the worst areas and some of the worst cities.” This simply isn’t true, even in light of the fact that the FBI stealthily revised its 2022 crime data, which is accounted for in the chart above. Contrary to Trump, the FBI provides “statistics for the entire United States” by including “estimated” crime numbers for law enforcement agencies that don’t report data to the FBI. This creates uncertainty, but agencies who submitted data to the FBI in 2023 covered 94.3% of the U.S. population and “every city agency” covering a million or more people. On the other hand, the FBI has been burying crime data since the outset of the Biden administration, and this has led to some massive underreports of violent crime. For a prime example, NewsNation reported in 2022 that 14,677 murders occurred in 2021 based on the FBI’s convoluted presentation of its data. This was 8,000 fewer murders than the FBI’s actual estimate of 22,900 murders that year. To rectify this problem, Just Facts has posted the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 2020/2021, 2022, and 2023 at easily accessible permalinks. The FBI has buried these datasets in a fragmented manner under a maze of vaguely worded dropdown menus and acronyms with expiring hyperlinks. Reports for earlier years are still readily available from the FBI. DOJ Data Another common source of violent crime data is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is conducted by the Department of Justice. In the words of an academic book published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, this survey “is widely viewed as a ‘gold standard for measuring crime victimization’.” Nevertheless, the book warns that the NCVS is “beset with methodological problems of surveys in general as well as particular problems associated with measuring illicit, deviant, and deleterious activities….” The survey is based on a statistically powerful nationally representative sample of 160,000 people, but it doesn’t measure “homicide, arson, commercial crimes, and crimes against children under age 12.” Also, it includes simple assaults in its violent crime rates, which commonly involve no injuries or minor ones. Like the FBI data, the NCVS shows large declines in violent crime since the early 1990s, but it greatly differs from the FBI data in recent years and shows an apparent 37% increase in violent crime from 2020 to 2023:

Given sampling margins of error, the NCVS violent crime rate may have risen by as little as 12% to as much as 69% from 2020 to 2023. Regardless, this is a sizeable disconnect from FBI statistics, which show a 6% decrease in the violent crime rate from 2020 to 2023. Murder Data The only measure of violent crime that transcends the vagaries of FBI and NCVS data is murder. Although counts of murders exclude all lower-level crimes, they capture the harshest and best-measured one. Per a 2010 DOJ report, “Homicide is of interest not only because of its severity but also because it is a fairly reliable barometer of all violent crime. At a national level, no other crime is measured as accurately and precisely.” There are two primary measures of murder—the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and death certificate data compiled by the CDC. As explained in a 2014 DOJ report, death certificates provide “more accurate homicide trends at the national level than” FBI data because:

the reporting of death certificates is “mandatory,” while the FBI relies on “voluntary” reports “from individual law enforcement agencies that are compiled monthly by state-level agencies.”
death certificates include homicides that “occur in federal jurisdictions,” while the FBI rarely counts “homicides occurring in federal prisons, on military bases, and on Indian reservations.”
death certificates include homicides caused by the deliberate “crashing of a motor vehicle, but this category generally accounts for less than 100 deaths per year.”

However, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include:

justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders.
some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides.

The 2014 DOJ report suggests that “a more comprehensive understanding of homicide in the United States can perhaps be achieved by combining the strengths of the two data collection systems.” Hence, Just Facts developed a methodology to combine data from both sources and a scholarly journal to produce murder estimates. This yields figures that are higher than the FBI’s estimates and 4.2% lower than the number of homicides recorded on death certificates. Contrary to Harris, the media, and to Trump, these data show that the murder rate in 2023 was 36% higher than the modern low in 2014 but 14% lower than the modern peak in 2021:

While ignoring the fact that correlation does not prove causation, many media outlets and Democrats have blamed the surge in murders in 2020 on Covid-19 and Trump. In reality, the facts point to the BLM movement as the most likely cause. The same applies to the murder surge in 2015. Conclusion Violent crime is a serious issue, and in the case of murder, deadly serious. Yet, prominent Democrats, Republicans, and media outlets are all misleading the public about this problem that impacts a large portion of Americans. A 1987 DOJ study based on crime data from 1974 to 1985 found:

42% of Americans will be the victim of a completed violent crime (assault, robbery, or rape) in the course of their lives.
83% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime.
52% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime more than once.

With regard to murders, one out of every 200 people in the U.S. will eventually be slain if murders remain at the same rate as 2023. Even in previous years when murders were less common, the lifetime likelihood of murder was so shocking to some people that they sent repeated emails to Just Facts insisting it was wrong. Yet, the methodology used to compute this figure was developed by a licensed actuary, double-checked by a Ph.D. mathematician, and triple-checked by a Ph.D. biostatistician. In other words, the numbers are correct, but some people’s perception of the problem is disconnected from reality. All of this points to the need for reliable, contextualized facts on this issue, which are not readily available from the FBI and which political parties and the press often fail to provide.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/real-violent-crime-trends/feed 3 Sweeping Measure Shows the Real Scale of Border Insecurity Under Biden and Harris https://www.justfactsdaily.com/sweeping-measure-shows-the-real-scale-of-border-insecurity-under-biden-and-harris https://www.justfactsdaily.com/sweeping-measure-shows-the-real-scale-of-border-insecurity-under-biden-and-harris#respond Thu, 19 Sep 2024 15:23:39 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12121 By James D. Agresti September 19, 2024

Eagle Pass, TX, 9/30/2023: A Border Patrol agent hands a receipt for seized items to a migrant who illegally crossed the Rio Grande River to enter the U.S. to seek asylum. Credit: Vic Hinterlang/Shutterstock.com For more than half a century, the number of immigrants apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol at the Southwest border has served as a rough proxy for illegal entries. However, this measure has become much less informative in recent years because it doesn’t account for other aspects of border insecurity that have exploded during the Biden/Harris administration. These include:

gotaways, who are illegal border crossers detected by Border Patrol but not apprehended.

inadmissible migrants encountered at ports of entry, who are generally banned from entering the U.S. but are routinely being allowed in.

To close that data gap, Just Facts has merged three federal datasets into a single measure called “Inadmissible Migrant Encounters and Gotaways,” or “IMEGs” for short. This sweeping measure of border insecurity includes apprehensions at all borders, inadmissible migrant encounters at ports, and gotaways. Annual datasets for this metric are available for the entirety of the Trump administration and the first three years of Biden’s. Combined, they reveal an average of 881,000 IMEGs per year under Trump/Pence and 3,228,000 per year under Biden/Harris:

The transitions between the datasets and presidencies have slight offsets because the annual datasets begin on the first day of the federal fiscal year (October 1), while presidential inaugurations take place four months later on January 20. These offsets are mitigated by the fact that many illegal immigrants respond to the results of U.S. elections and begin traveling to the U.S. before presidents are seated. Presidential elections take place in early November, only one month after the start of the federal fiscal year. The abnormality of the situation under Biden/Harris is underscored by the full historical records of Southwest border apprehensions and IMEGs, which show dramatic increases and divergencies in recent years:

The three components of IMEGs are detailed below and shed additional light on the unprecedented nature of border insecurity under Biden and Harris. Southwest Border Apprehensions Data on Southwest border apprehensions extend back to 1960 and include illegal border crossers who are caught while trying to evade Border Patrol and those who deliberately turn themselves into Border Patrol because they expect to be allowed into the United States. The latter became a common occurrence under Biden and Harris. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Biden enacted numerous policies to loosen immigration restrictions and release illegal border crossers into the nation. In the first 2.2 years of Biden’s presidency, his administration released into the U.S. 2,148,738 of the 3,447,327 unique individuals encountered by Customs and Border Protection at the Southwest Border — a release rate of 62%. In January of this year, Biden’s Security of Homeland Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, admitted in an interview with Fox News that the release rate was above 70%. Several days later, three Border Patrol agents reported to Fox that agents confronted Mayorkas during a meeting, and he confessed that the release rate was actually “above 85%.” Under these policies, Southwest border apprehensions rose to record levels. In 2023, the figure was 2.0 million, or 2.9 times the pre-Biden historical average:

Biden and various media outlets are currently touting steep declines in Southwest border apprehensions over recent months. This half-truth ignores the fact that Biden is now allowing masses of inadmissible immigrants into the country through other means, as documented below. Gotaways Reliable data on gotaways extend back to 2014. These figures don’t include illegal immigrants who are not detected by Border Patrol, which are impossible to directly measure. As explained by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security:

Gotaways occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border, but no one is found, or no agents are available to respond. Gotaways are observational estimates and rely on agents identifying migrants as crossing illegally and tracking them to the point where they cannot be apprehended; however, an unknown number of migrants evade detection.

Like other measures of border insecurity, gotaways have skyrocketed under Biden. In 2023, there were at least 769,000 gotaways, or 6.1 times the pre-Biden average:

As these hordes of illegal entries occurred, Biden administration officials repeatedly insisted that the “border is secure.” Harris, for example, declared on NBC’s Meet the Press in September 2022 that “The border is secure” and “We have a secure border.” The Biden administration has asked for more money to allegedly secure the border, but in January 2024, Mayorkas wouldn’t commit to accept more funding from Congress “on the condition that the funds could only be used for detention and removal, but not release into the country.” Airports and Land Ports of Entry In 2022, Biden and company began allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants who are inadmissible under federal law to cross U.S. borders via airplanes and land ports of entry. The administration permits the migrants to enter by using a free app and:

claims authority to do this under its general regulatory powers and a provision of the law that allows for temporary entries “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

is being challenged and sued by various states for redefining “illegal crossings as lawful pathways” and “inflicting serious costs” on the states.

The impact of this policy is evident from data on inadmissible migrant encounters at ports of entry, which are available during the Trump and Biden administrations:

CNN’s Dana Bash recently claimed that it’s “not illegal” for Biden and Harris to let these people into the country, but the reality is that the law allows for such entries under narrow circumstances and “only on a case-by-case basis” — not by the trainload. Texas and 19 other states filed a lawsuit against this policy, but the case was dismissed by a district court judge on the basis of standing, a legal doctrine that prohibits lawsuits unless plaintiffs can prove that they suffered a direct personal injury. Litigation has continued, but regardless of the outcome, the issue of standing doesn’t settle the legality of Biden’s actions. Similarly, the Biden administration flagrantly flouted the law when attempting to transfer student loan debts to taxpayers. This action was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in a 6‑3 ruling. Notably, the minority argued that the plaintiffs didn’t have “standing” to challenge Biden’s dictate. Conclusion Given the actions of the Biden administration, apprehensions at the Southwest border no longer provide a broadly informative proxy of border insecurity. To close this gap in knowledge, Just Facts has merged federal data on apprehensions at all borders, inadmissible migrant encounters at ports, and gotaways into a single measure called IMEGs. This broad measure reveals 3,228,000 IMEGs per year under Biden and Harris, or 3.7 times the 881,000 IMEGs per year under Trump and Pence. Although association does not prove causation, Biden and his underlings have taken deliberate actions that materially increased these numbers. U.S. immigration laws are designed to ensure that newcomers are a net benefit to the nation. They accomplish this by providing strict criteria for who is allowed in and by limiting the numbers so that migrants assimilate instead of bringing crime-ridden and poverty-stricken cultures from their homelands to the United States. By allowing millions of migrants into the U.S. who are not subject to those standards, Biden and Harris have jeopardized the economic health and physical safety of the American people.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/sweeping-measure-shows-the-real-scale-of-border-insecurity-under-biden-and-harris/feed 0 No, Kamala Harris Hasn’t Promised to Build a Border Wall https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-kamala-harris-hasnt-promised-to-build-a-border-wall https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-kamala-harris-hasnt-promised-to-build-a-border-wall#respond Wed, 28 Aug 2024 05:45:49 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=12058 By James D. Agresti August 28, 2024

Credit: Juli Hansen/Shutterstock.com In an article titled “Harris Flip-Flops on Building the Border Wall,” Axios is reporting that Kamala Harris is suddenly pledging to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border.” That claim is demonstrably false and is based on a misrepresentation of the Senate Border Act of 2024, which has been repeatedly misportrayed as a “tough” border bill. Axios’ article, written by Alex Thompson and Hans Nichols, claims that Harris promised to build a wall because she announced at the “Democratic National Convention last week” that she “would sign the recent bipartisan border security bill.” And according to a statement obtained by Axios from Republican Senator James Lankford (OK), the bill “requires the Trump border wall.” Those claims are highly misleading for two reasons. First, Harris’ support of the bill isn’t new or noteworthy, as Axios leads its readers to believe. Biden has repeatedly lobbied to pass the bill, Senate Democrats overwhelmingly voted for it, and Harris ran a television ad before the convention bragging that she “backed” the bill. Second, the actual text of the bill makes funds “available” for a border barrier but doesn’t require it to be built. Pages 76–78 of the bill contain the operative text, which:

allocates “funds” that “remain available until September 30, 2028” for a “steel bollard pedestrian barrier.”
leaves the decision as to whether the wall gets built to the Secretary of Homeland Security, who is under the authority of the President.

Those facts are reinforced by pages 76–77 of the bill, which document that the funds for the border barrier were “made available” in laws passed in 2020 and 2021 but weren’t spent. In short, Axios misconstrues the availability of funds as a requirement to use them. As explained by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Congress generally appropriates budget authority to an agency for use during a specific period…. However, agencies do not always obligate and outlay these funds in time, which ultimately results in cancelled appropriations.” The “Tough” Border Bill Axios’ article adds to the long string of claims that falsely portray the Senate Border Act as tough. This is a frequent talking point of Democrats like:

Joe Biden, who called it “the toughest border enforcement in history.”
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (CT), who called it “the toughest border security bill in decades.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who said the bill “would have delivered the toughest border measures in decades.”
U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (NM), who called it “the toughest border security legislation in history.”
Kamala Harris, who called it “the toughest border control bill in decades.”

In reality, the bill’s 370 pages of legalese are laced with loopholes that codify Biden’s open border policies. Chris Murphy, the Democrat architect of the bill, spelled out these provisions in a moment of candor while selling the bill to his followers:

“The border never closes.”
Asylum claims are “processed in a non-detained, non-adversarial way.”
“Most asylum seekers can work immediately.”
There is a “slightly higher asylum screening standard at the border.”
“All immigrants” receive a “brand new right to legal representation.”
Shutdown authority “can only be used for a limited number of days per year” and “sunsets in 3 years.”
“Emergency cases that show up in between the ports still need to be accepted.”
“The ports must process a minimum of 1400 claims a day.”
There is a “new pathway to citizenship for Afghan parolees (the Afghan Adjustment Act) and the children of H1B holders.”

In vivid contrast, House Republicans passed a bill that would build the wall and close loopholes used by Biden that allow and entice illegal immigration. However, 100% of House Democrats voted against it, and Senate Democrats shelved it. In the words of the Congressional Budget Office, the Republican bill would:

“require DHS to construct at least 900 miles of wall and physical barriers.”
“require the federal government to detain arriving aliens or return them.”
ban “handing out work permits for simply crossing at a port of entry.”
“limit both the rules of eligibility” to “apply for asylum” and the “circumstances under which asylum could be granted.”
“create a new criminal penalty for overstaying a visa.”
“require all U.S. employers to use E-Verify, the federal web-based system for confirming eligibility to work.”
“significantly restrict” the President’s “ability to grant parole.”

A Gallup survey conducted in June found that 77% of U.S. adults consider “the situation at the U.S. border with Mexico” to be a “crisis” or “major problem.” By portraying Harris and Democrats as tough on the border, Axios and other media outlets like ABC are misinforming voters about an issue with deadly implications. Why Does Trump Oppose the Senate Bill? Another canard in the same Axios article is the claim that Trump “ordered his allies to kill” the Senate Border Act, “fearing it would help Democrats in the November elections.” That common allegation is derived from a post that Trump made on Truth Social in which he stated, “This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party.” Contradicting the Democrat and media spin that Trump opposes the bill because he doesn’t want the border crisis fixed before the election, Trump wrote in the very same post that the bill must be defeated because it:

“only gives Shutdown Authority after 5000 Encounters a day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which must be done.”
“takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans.”

In summary, the claim that Kamala Harris promised to build a border wall has no basis in reality and bolsters counterfactual propaganda that Democrats are strong on border security. Meanwhile, Democrats universally opposed a strong border bill, and objective measures show that the border has been far less secure under Biden and Harris than ever recorded in the nation’s history.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/no-kamala-harris-hasnt-promised-to-build-a-border-wall/feed 0 Federal Fiscal Burden Consumes 93% of America’s Wealth https://www.justfactsdaily.com/federal-fiscal-burden-consumes-93-of-americas-wealth https://www.justfactsdaily.com/federal-fiscal-burden-consumes-93-of-americas-wealth#comments Thu, 01 Aug 2024 13:56:02 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=11995 By James D. Agresti August 1, 2024

Credit: Lukas Holub/Shutterstock.com Overview Based on data from a U.S. Treasury report, the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. This staggering figure equals 93% of all the wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion. Unlike other measures of federal red ink that cover an arbitrary period, extend into the infinite future, or ignore government resources, the figure of $142 trillion applies strictly to Americans who are alive right now and includes the government’s commercial assets. Thus, it quantifies the financial burden that today’s Americans are leaving to their children and future generations. Complete v. Incomplete Accounting Federal law requires the U.S. Treasury to publish an annual report that details the government’s “overall financial position.” In addition to the national debt, the “Financial Report of the United States Government” also includes the government’s explicit and implicit financial commitments, such as:

federal employee pensions and other retirement benefits like healthcare.
environmental liabilities like contaminated nuclear sites.
unfunded obligations for social insurance programs like Medicare.

Such “fiscal exposures,” as explained by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “represent significant commitments that ultimately have to be addressed.” Thus, GAO stresses that ignoring them can “make it difficult for policymakers and the public to adequately understand the government’s overall performance and true financial condition.” Yet, that is precisely what the media does. Although the Treasury published the report in February, Google News indicates that no major media outlet has mentioned it. Meanwhile, the same outlets have frequently reported on the national debt and federal budget, which are incomplete measures of the federal government’s fiscal situation. The commonly cited national debt and federal budget are mainly based on cash accounting, which is the simplistic process of counting money as it flows in or out. Thus, liabilities like pension benefits for federal workers aren’t measured until they are actually paid, which is often decades after they are promised. In contrast, the Treasury report mainly uses accrual accounting, which measures financial commitments as they are made. This is how the federal government requires large corporations to report their finances. In the words of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which is tasked by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create private-sector accounting rules, accrual accounting is the “most relevant and reliable” way to measure the financial health of pension plans. The same applies to other retirement benefits like healthcare. The accounting rule that governs such benefits explains that “a failure to accrue” implies “that no obligation exists prior to the payment of benefits.” Since an obligation does exist, failing to account for it “impairs the usefulness and integrity” of financial statements. The Grand Total A methodical tally of accrual accounting data in the Treasury report shows that the federal government has amassed $142 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations beyond the value of its commercial assets. This reflects the government’s finances at the close of its 2023 fiscal year on September 30, 2023. The primary components of this burden, which are unpacked below, include:

$26.3 trillion in publicly held national debt.
$16.6 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt.
$104.2 trillion in unfunded social insurance obligations.

These figures tally to $147.1 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations. Offsetting this is $5.4 trillion in commercial assets owned by the federal government, leaving a grand total shortfall of $141.7 trillion. Numbers in the trillions are hard to conceive, so it’s revealing to place them in context. The figure of $142 trillion amounts to 93% of the net wealth Americans have accumulated since the nation’s founding, estimated by the Federal Reserve to be $152 trillion. This includes all of their assets in savings, real estate, corporate stocks, private businesses, and consumer durable goods like automobiles and furniture. The government’s $142 trillion shortfall also amounts to:

$430,252 for every person living in the U.S.
$1,098,087 for every household in the U.S.
5.2 times annual U.S. economic output (GDP).
30 times annual federal revenues.

Publicly Held Debt The simplest major item quantified by the Treasury report is the publicly held debt, which is $26.3 trillion. This is the money the federal government owes to non-federal entities like individuals, corporations, state governments, and foreign governments. Publicly held debt is a partial measure of the national debt that excludes $6.9 trillion the federal government owes to federal programs like Social Security and Medicare. The Treasury report also details these intergovernmental debts and consolidates them with the items below. Liabilities Pension and other retirement benefits are a large part of compensation packages for government employees. With these generous benefits included, civilian non-postal federal employees receive an average of 17% more total compensation than private-sector workers with comparable education and work experience. Postal workers receive even greater premiums ranging from 25% to 43%. In 2022, federal, state, and local governments spent $2.3 trillion on employee compensation, costing each household in the nation an average of $17,299. The Treasury report shows that the federal government currently owes $14.3 trillion in pensions and other benefits to federal employees and veterans that are not accounted for in the publicly held national debt. To pay the present value of these benefits will require an average of $109,005 from every household in the United States. The Treasury reports other liabilities of the federal government, such as:

$124 billion in accounts payable.
$645 billion in environmental and disposal liabilities.
$99 billion in insurance and guarantee program liabilities.

Altogether, the Treasury records $16.6 trillion in liabilities that are not accounted for in the publicly held debt. Social Security & Medicare A similar but far more expensive situation exists with social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This is because — contrary to popular belief — these programs don’t save workers’ taxes for their retirements. Instead, they immediately spend the vast majority of those taxes to pay benefits to current recipients. Thus, they are called “pay-as-you-go” programs. In stark contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains that “federal law requires private pension plans to operate as funded plans, not as pay-as-you-go plans.” The reasons for this, as explained by the American Academy of Actuaries, are to increase “benefit security” and ensure “intergenerational equity.” Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, have levied dramatically increased tax burdens on succeeding generations of Americans, thus creating severe generational inequality. And unless retirement ages are raised or benefits are reduced in some other way, taxes will need to be increased again to keep the programs solvent. Federal actuaries measure the unfunded obligations of Social Security and Medicare in several different ways, but only one of them approximates accrual accounting. This is called the “closed-group” unfunded obligation, which is the money needed to cover the shortfalls for all current taxpayers and beneficiaries in these programs. In the words of Harvard Law School professor and federal budget specialist Howell E. Jackson, the closed-group measure “reflects the financial burden or liability being passed on to future generations.” These burdens are $49.8 trillion for Social Security and $53.9 trillion for Medicare. Placing these figures in context:

Social Security’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $272,237 from every person who currently pays Social Security payroll taxes.
Medicare’s unfunded obligations amount to an additional $201,932 from every U.S. resident aged 16 or older.

Those shortfalls are what remain after the federal government has paid back with interest all of the money it has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare differ from true pensions because taxpayers don’t have a contractual right to receive these benefits. Nevertheless, paying these benefits is an implied commitment of the federal government, and federal law requires that these programs be included in the Treasury report. The Treasury report estimates that the combined closed group unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and some smaller social insurance programs are $104.2 trillion. This figure doesn’t include intergovernmental debt, which is consolidated with other data in the report. Federal Assets The Treasury also records the federal government’s commercial assets, such as:

$922 billion in cash and other monetary assets.
$1.2 trillion in property, plants, and equipment.
$1.7 trillion in receivable loans, mainly comprised of student loans.

However, the report doesn’t account for federal stewardship land and heritage assets, such as national parks and the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. While these items have tangible value, the report explains that they “are intended to be preserved as national treasures,” not sold to the highest bidder to cover debts. In total, the government owned $5.4 trillion in commercial assets at the close of its 2023 fiscal year. Adding up the federal government’s debts, liabilities, and unfunded obligations and then subtracting the value of its commercial assets yields a fiscal shortfall of $142 trillion. Root Causes The first critical step in solving a problem is to understand its root causes. However, scientific surveys show that many voters are misinformed about the root causes of government debt. A scientific, nationally representative survey commissioned in 2020 by Just Facts found that 25% of voters believe the main driver of the rising national debt is military spending. This accords with the reporting of media outlets that frequently blame the debt on military spending. In reality, military spending has plummeted from 53% of all federal expenses in 1960 to 17% in 2022:

The same survey found that another 25% of voters believe tax cuts were the main driver of debt, in accord with news stories that blame the debt on tax cuts. In reality, federal revenues have stayed at a roughly level portion of the U.S. economy for the past 80 years:

As shown in the charts above, the primary driver of the national debt is increased spending, particularly on social programs. These programs — which provide healthcare, income security, education, nutrition, housing, and cultural services — have grown from 21% of all federal spending in 1960 to 64% in 2022. Yet, only 39% of voters correctly identify social spending as the primary cause of rising debt. Moreover, the vast bulk of the government’s unfunded obligations are due to Social Security and Medicare. Thus, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the main drivers of future debt will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Obamacare, and interest on the national debt. Under the weight of these, the publicly held debt is due to soar to unprecedented levels over coming decades. Harmful Effects A broad range of academic publications explain that excessive government debt can cause far-reaching negative outcomes, such as lower wages, increased inflation, weak economic growth, higher taxes, reduced government benefits, or combinations of such results. Likewise, GAO warns that “the costs of federal borrowing will be borne by tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers,” which “may reduce or slow the growth of the living standards of future generations.” Such effects may have already begun. Although association does not prove causation, the national debt has skyrocketed over recent decades, and with this, the U.S. has experienced episodes of historically poor growth in gross domestic product, productivity, and household income. Along with this, rapid inflation has set in, another common consequence of excessive government debt. While some believe the U.S. government can spend and borrow with abandon because it can print money, one of the most established laws of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The prolific economist William A. McEachern explains why this is so:

There is no free lunch because all goods and services involve a cost to someone. The lunch may seem free to you, but it draws scarce resources away from the production of other goods and services, and whoever provides a free lunch often expects something in return. A Russian proverb makes a similar point but with a bit more bite: “The only place you find free cheese is in a mousetrap.”

]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/federal-fiscal-burden-consumes-93-of-americas-wealth/feed 2 Critics Fail to Debunk Explosive Study on Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/critics-fail-to-debunk-explosive-study-on-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/critics-fail-to-debunk-explosive-study-on-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens#comments Thu, 27 Jun 2024 15:42:29 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=11905 By James D. Agresti June 27, 2024

Credit: Trevor Bexon/Shutterstock.com Overview A new study by Just Facts has gone viral with influential people, organizations, news outlets, and websites citing it. This includes, for example, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Congressional testimony by Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky, and a post on X with more than 24 million views due to a repost by Elon Musk. Based on 2022 survey data and an enhanced version of a stress-tested methodology from a scholarly journal, the study found that about 10% to 27% of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are illegally registered to vote. Since more than 20 million of them now live in the U.S., this amounts to 2–5 million illegally registered voters, which can easily overturn the results of close major elections. Yet, some critics have alleged the study is false, including the New York Times, Snopes, the Cato Institute, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, and others. However, all of them failed to find any real flaw in the study and resorted to:

inventing blatant falsehoods.
using lies of omission.
misportraying discredited claims as if they were facts.
misportraying facts as if they were discredited claims.
misquoting sources.
cherry-picking evidence that is shattered by evidence they ignored.

In sum, they couldn’t even put a minor dent in the study despite considerable efforts to do so — even with help from a cadre of scholars. This ultimately reinforces the study because this swarm of ardent critics was unable to identify a single legitimate problem with it. Contrary to those critiques, verifiable facts show that about 2–5 million non-citizens are registered to vote and reveal that Just Facts’ study:

is transparent and thoroughly documented with credible primary sources.
is based on a survey large enough to measure statistically significant nationwide results.
is firmly grounded in new data that annihilates an old canard used to deny the facts of this matter.
uses straightforward and empirically justified methodologies.
is vastly more reliable than other studies on this issue that are plagued by unrealistic and counterfactual assumptions.

Beyond shedding light on the important issue of election integrity, this affair provides valuable insights about how activists, journalists, and scholars mislead the public. Thoroughly Documented & Transparent The first and most simple-minded criticism of Just Facts’ study comes from a top-viewed reply to the viral post on X and alleges “there’s no information or transparency on who conducted the research or their methods.” That statement is the exact opposite of reality. First, the full study can be accessed in less than 20 seconds with two clicks from the post on X that was the target of this attack. The post linked directly to an article on the news site Not the Bee, which linked to Just Facts’ study in the second sentence of the article. Second, the study is located on Just Facts’ main website, which contains extensive details about the organization. Third, even a brief look at the study reveals that it thoroughly documented with hyperlinks, full methodological details, and a spreadsheet that contains all of the study’s sources, data, and calculations. Such rigor is standard practice for Just Facts and is the hallmark that distinguishes its publications from typical news reports and policy analyses. While the other critiques aren’t as shallow as this one, such duplicity permeates them as well. Accomplished & Credible Another ruse used by critics of the study is to cast doubt on it by referring to Just Facts as a mere “website.” This tactic was employed by the Center for an Informed Public in an article written by five scholars with more than enough acumen to know it isn’t true. In reality, Just Facts is a non-profit research and educational institute with 16 years of public tax filings and 17 years of academic accomplishments. Among these are citations of Just Facts’ work by a wide variety of prominent and scholarly organizations, including:

media outlets, such as CBS, PBS, Fox News, Yahoo News, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, CNBC, Forbes, Psychology Today, and Roll Call.

educational institutions, such as Rice University, Pepperdine University, Vanderbilt University, West Virginia University, the University of Texas, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Washington.

academic publishers, such as Gale Cengage Learning, Encyclopedia Britannica, Praeger, Routledge, Elsevier Health Sciences, and McGraw Hill Professional.

government entities, such as the Oklahoma Department of Labor, the Detroit City Council, the Alabama Department of Education, the Utah State Board of Education, and the education ministry of Northern Ireland.

peer-reviewed journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Critical Education, the International Journal of Sciences, and the Journal of Development Policy, Research and Practice.

think tanks, such as the Hoover Institution, the National Tax Association, the Pacific Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the California Policy Center, and Instituto Liberdade (Brazil).

political and advocacy groups, such as the Liberal Democratic Party of Australia, the Children’s Advocacy Institute, Doctors for Life International, and the Washington State Education Association.

associations and corporations, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Harvard Graduate Council, IBM Corporation, and the American Nurses Association.

Even while operating with modest six-figure budgets, Just Facts preempted multi-billion-dollar government health agencies and virtually every major media outlet on key facts related to Covid-19 almost a dozen times. Furthermore, Just Facts President James D. Agresti, the author of the study and the present article, has an extensive record of scholarly achievements, and his work has been explicitly complimented by people with Ph.D.’s in economics, law, biostatistics, chemistry, mathematics, molecular biology, biochemistry, biochemical taxonomy, metrology, psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, oceanography, horticulture, operations research, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, political science, and computer science. Statistically Significant Nationwide Results Moving on to the study’s methodology, the attack from Snopes was written by an “investigative journalist and science writer” named Alex Kasprak. Before publishing his article, Kasprak emailed Agresti and declared that the study is “wildly untenable” for two reasons. The first, he said, is that the results stem “from a pool of at most 71 purported non-citizen respondents, and extrapolations based on these numbers” to “the entire U.S. population.” Referring to his critique of a similar study by Just Facts in 2017, Kasprak wrote, “My criticism is no different now than it was in 2017.” Kasprak, however, was oblivious to the fact that Just Facts published a thorough rebuttal to his 2017 piece, proving that his arguments were based on “mathematically illiterate notions instead of concrete, quantifiable facts.” Using 12 academic sources, such as the textbook Statistics for K–8 Educators and the textbook Mind on Statistics, the rebuttal documented that:

Just Facts’ study wasn’t an “extrapolation” but a “straightforward application of survey data.”
Snopes and “every major media outlet routinely cite similar figures” without a hint of skepticism and without calling them “extrapolations.”
the figures cited by Kasprak were numerators used in rate calculations, but the main driver of survey statistical power is denominators.
comparatively small numerators increase (not decrease) the statistical sampling confidence of surveys.
the survey was large enough to measure statistically significant nationwide results with at least 95% confidence.

Just Facts previously notified Snopes of those errors back in 2017, and Just Facts’ new study contains a glaring reference to Kasprak’s “mathematically illiterate” fact check. Yet, he somehow managed to overlook all of that. So Agresti replied to Kasprak’s email by spoon feeding him these facts, and Kasprak abandoned this naïve argument in his new critique while failing to correct his old one. Nevertheless, Kasprak’s new critique links to his old one as proof that Just Facts’ study is “mathematically misguided.” That is a called projection, or falsely accusing others of one’s own misdeeds. This is an oft-used, insidious, and effective means of mass deception. Non-Citizen “Citizens” Kasprak’s other allegation about why Just Facts’ study is “wildly untenable” is that the “purported non-citizen respondents” in the survey who were registered to vote are “known to be at least in part” citizens who submitted “incorrect responses.” This refers to an old claim that a consequential number of citizens who were registered to vote mistakenly identified themselves as non-citizens in this survey. First off, that claim was refuted in 2014 by three scholars in a peer-reviewed study about this issue. The same scholars also detailed “multiple lines of evidence” that further debunked it in 2017. On top of this, Just Facts shredded the claim in 2016 and 2017. Yet, Kasprak doesn’t even acknowledge, much less try to refute, any of the facts in these publications that obliterate this argument. The New York Times does the same in an article by reporter Minho Kim, as does the Cato Institute in a post by Walter Olson. Even more importantly, Just Facts’ new study has a feature that renders that argument irrelevant. Indeed, the study explicitly debunked this predictable attack by documenting that the survey used “multiple citizenship questions” that “limit the possibility of honest mistakes by survey respondents.” The hyperlink in that sentence leads to a 2023 report by Dr. Jesse Richman, the lead author of the 2014 peer-reviewed study on this matter. In this report, Richman provides the following facts about the annual survey that he and Just Facts used in their studies:

In 2019, “a more robust approach to measuring citizenship status was adopted.”
“This involved asking two questions about citizenship status,” the original “complex” one and a new “simpler” one.
Across 164,000 respondents from 2019 through 2022, “every individual in the survey dataset had a consistent pattern of answers across the two questions.”
“These results appear to indicate no errors at all: an error rate of 0.”

The New York Times article, the Cato post, and Kasprak’s email to Just Facts were clueless about all of this, even though these facts were right under their noses. So once again, Agresti spoon fed the facts to Kasprak. But instead of candidly reporting them in his article, Kasprak danced around them and alleged that Just Facts’ study isn’t firmly grounded in the new data. This is a pattern for Kasprak, who has a history of flagrantly misquoting studies and people. Contra Kasprak, the actual facts about Just Facts’ study are as follows:

100% of the data on non-citizen voter registration is from the 2022 survey in which both citizenship questions were asked.

One of the study’s formulas uses older data to calculate a denominator, and if the figure were affected by the error that Kasprak imagines, it would actually decrease the non-citizen voter registration rate — the polar opposite of what Kasprak claims.

All of this can be easily ascertained just by reading the study and examining the documentation it provides, including a spreadsheet of the study’s data and calculations. However, Kasprak ensured that almost none of his readers would do that by burying the hyperlink to Just Facts’ study more than 1,100 words into his article. Hence, only one person has clicked on that link in four weeks since Kasprak’s article was published, and that one person was Agresti. The New York Times made it even harder to find the study by not mentioning Just Facts and by falsely reporting that “a witness at a House hearing last week on election integrity cited a faulty report from 2020 suggesting that around 15 percent of noncitizens routinely vote in federal elections.” In reality, the witnesses cited Just Facts’ study from 2024 (not 2020), the rate is “about 5 to 13%” (not 15%), and nothing in the witness testimony matches the description given by the Times. Discredited Claims Presented as Facts In his article, Kasprak quotes a 2017 open letter from “over 200 political scientists” declaring that the “scholarly political science community has generally rejected the findings” of a peer-reviewed study that Agresti uses “as the primary academic foundation for his claims.” First, this self-selected group of scholars is a small subset of 3,000+ political scientist faculty members at research universities and doesn’t speak for the “community” as they declare. Furthermore, their open letter is entirely based on the discredited argument that citizen voters misidentified themselves as non-citizens in the survey. Again, that argument never had merit and is irrelevant to Just Facts’ new study. Nevertheless, Kasprak treats the falsely predicated conclusion of this cabal as if it were a salient fact. So do the five scholars at the Center for an Informed Public, whose analysis amounts to little more than “Snopes says so” and “the political science community says so.” This bears a striking resemblance to the “Russian disinformation” hoax, where an open letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials was used to spread the lie that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop incriminating Joe Biden were “Russian disinformation.” From the start, the facts were clear this was untrue, but the media ignored the facts and widely reported this claim as if it were a fact. Kasprak’s main source of discredited claims is Dr. Brian Schaffner, the lead signatory of the “non-citizens are citizens” letter and the-co-principal investigator of the survey used in these studies. Like Kasprak, Schaffner either fails to conduct basic research or deliberately ignores published facts that contradict his arguments, thus lying by omission. For example, Schaffner told the Huffington Post in 2017 that Just Facts, Richman, and Richman’s coauthors were guilty of “ignoring measurement error” on the citizenship question in the survey. In reality, these scholars and Just Facts had addressed this matter in no less than six publications. Yet, Schaffner ignored all of this. Nor was that the first time. As Richman previously noted, Schaffner leveled the same charge in 2015 at his 2014 peer-reviewed paper “without ever addressing or acknowledging” an appendix of the paper that already tackled Schaffner’s argument. Nationally Representative Results Another bogus claim that Kasprak parrots from Schaffner is that the survey used by Just Facts “is fundamentally unsuited to answer any question about noncitizens,” including their voter registration rates. Using the survey for this purpose, says Schaffner, is like “trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.” For background, the survey was conducted online, and online surveys can be highly inaccurate if the people sampled in the survey differ substantially from the people who aren’t sampled. In other words, online surveys rarely involve a random or representative sample of the population the survey is supposed to cover. However, a scientific technique called “weighting” can be used to correct for this common problem. As explained in the academic book Designing and Conducting Survey Research: A Comprehensive Guide, weighting “is one of the most common approaches” that researchers use to “present results that are representative of the target population….” In fact, Schaffner himself uses weighting and another technique called “matching” to make the results of the very same survey representative of U.S. citizens. Yet, he claims this cannot be done for non-citizens because “no amount of” weighting “is going to actually fix the issue” that the survey was “never intended to include a representative sample of noncitizens” — a problem called “noncoverage bias.” As before, Kasprak just regurgitates Schaffner’s claim and fails to report any facts. Worse still, Kasprak conceals from his readers the fact that Richman told him the polar opposite of Schaffner. In an email exchange that Richman shared with Just Facts:

Kasprak asked Richman, “How do you know” that the non-citizens in the survey are “representative of that population as a whole?”

Richman replied that because the survey doesn’t provide “a true random sample” of the citizen or non-citizen population, he and his coauthors “confront this issue primarily by weighting the data.”

Kasprak then pushed back by writing, “While it may not be a ‘true’ random sample, surely you are not suggesting that both the full dataset and the noncitizen subset are equally flawed from a representative standpoint, are you?”

Richman then explained to Kasprak that “the entire” survey “dataset is in fact drawn from a set of opt-in panels” and “at a fundamental level it’s all something approximating a quota / convenience sample. Everything on top of that is about some tweaking of who gets into the final published dataset, and about the design of weights to aim to make the opt-in panel match as closely as possible the target population.”

In short, Kasprak asked for comments from Schaffner and Richman, reported one of their claims, and threw out the opposing one without disclosing it. This is a clear lie of omission. More importantly, three categories of facts suggest that Richman is correct and Schaffner is wrong. First, Schaffner’s opt-in survey is loaded with opening for noncoverage bias of both citizens and non-citizens. As explained in the textbook Mind on Statistics, “Surveys that simply use those who respond voluntarily are sure to be biased in favor of those with strong opinions or with time on their hands.” Schaffner’s survey exemplifies this because it only involves people who:

have “an account on yougov.com” and “opt-in to being a YouGov panelist” or are recruited via “online advertisements” or “another survey provider.”

“are compensated by points for taking each survey” and “can exchange accumulated points with giftcards and other prizes.”

are willing to invest roughly 20 minutes to take the pre-election surveys, 10 minutes to take the post-election surveys, and 20 minutes to take the non-election-year surveys.

Second, scholarly publications are clear that weighting is regularly used to correct for noncoverage bias in surveys:

Journal of Official Statistics: “Weighting adjustments are commonly applied in surveys to compensate for nonresponse and noncoverage, and to make weighted sample estimates conform to external values.”

American Journal of Public Health: The “potential for noncoverage bias” can be “significantly” “reduced through weighting adjustments.”

Federal Reserve Small Business Survey: “To control” for “noncoverage bias,” the “sample data are weighted so that the weighted distribution of firms” in the survey “matches the distribution of the firm population in the United States.”

Pew Research: “Weighting is generally used in survey analysis to compensate for sample designs and patterns of non-response that might bias results.”

Third, the accuracy of weighted non-citizen data from Schaffner’s survey was independently corroborated by a 2013 scientific bilingual survey of 800 Latinos. In this nationally representative random survey, 13% ± 6 percentage points of Latino non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote with at least 95% confidence. This is virtually the same result as the weighted data from Schaffner’s 2012 survey, which showed that 15% ±5 percentage points of non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote with at least 95% confidence. Both Just Facts and Richman make clear that weighting is far from foolproof. This is because survey participants may differ in ways that transcend the factors that are weighted. Thus, they repeatedly use terms like “about” and “roughly” to convey that the results of their studies are best estimates and not hard numbers. Also of note is that Agresti’s latest study didn’t use weighted data because Richman hadn’t supplied it yet. Richman later gave the data to Kasprak, and it corroborates Just Facts’ research, which found that the unweighted data may actually understate the voter registration rate of non-citizens. Documented Facts Presented as Discredited Claims Last but far from least, Snopes and the Center for an Informed Public engage in the farce of portraying documented facts as if they were discredited claims. They do this by deleting hyperlinks and other vital information from their sources. Snopes, for a prime example, reports that Richman’s new estimates of non-citizen voter registration are much lower than his prior estimates and that Agresti falsely “dismissed” them as “lowball estimates.” In reality, Agresti didn’t merely dismiss them as lowball estimates but rigorously documented this is the case by:

publishing an extensive appendix that details how each of these figures are based on narrow, bowdlerized, or futile measures that underestimate the rate of non-citizen voter registration.

including a section in the study that highlights the “glaring disparity” between Richman’s old and new estimates and links to the appendix as proof that his new figures are “lowball estimates.”

including in that same section a long and explicit statement from Richman in which he diplomatically admits that his new figures are lowball estimates.

No one who relies on Snopes would know any of this because Kasprak failed to report these pivotal facts and deleted Just Facts’ hyperlink from the words “lowball estimates,” thereby creating the illusion that Agresti made a totally unsupported claim, when in fact, he presented a thoroughly documented fact. Hyperlinks are one of the primary ways in which people document facts in the age of the internet, and stripping them out, as Kasprak did, amounts to a fraud against his readers and a libel against Just Facts. Underscoring the implications of Kasprak’s ruse, a 2011 paper in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law explains that hyperlinks indicate “factual accuracy or support,” inform “readers that the supporting materials can be viewed with merely a click,” and are “critical to the provision of news generally.” The Center for an Informed Public uses a similar ploy by reporting that Richman and one of his coauthors “accept” that the survey used in their 2014 study “does not provide a representative sample of non-citizens,” but “they argue that they conducted their analyses in an appropriate manner.” In fact, they didn’t just argue that but repeatedly documented in their paper that they dealt with it by weighting the data. Yet, the Center for an Informed Public makes it appear as if this fact is nothing but an empty claim. Conclusion Remarkably, the 3,000+ words above don’t address all of the falsehoods that infest the critiques of Just Facts’ study. But they are more than enough to show that the critics are either lying or were extremely biased and negligent in their research of this issue. This includes people who should know better, like:

Alex Kasprak, who holds two master’s degrees and is a senior writer for Snopes.
Brian F. Schaffner, a Ph.D. and professor at Tufts University.
Kate Starbird, a Ph.D. and associate professor at the University of Washington.
Jevin West, a Ph.D. and associate professor at the University of Washington.
Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for an Informed Public.
Danielle Lee Tomson, a Ph.D. and research manager at the Center for an Informed Public.
Walter Olson, a legal scholar and senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Minho Kim, a reporter for the New York Times (and his editors).

If any of these people had real evidence that Just Facts’ study was unreliable, they’d have no need to launch false desperate attacks on it. The fact that they resorted to this strengthens the study’s findings, which show that:

roughly 10% to 27% of non-citizens are registered to vote.
about 5% to 13% of them vote in presidential elections.
roughly 1.0 million to 2.7 million non-citizens will illegally vote in 2024 unless stronger election integrity measures are implemented.

Every illegal vote cancels the vote of a U.S. citizen, thus usurping their Constitutional right to vote. But instead of informing citizens and legislators about this threat to election integrity, these “fact checkers,” journalists, and scholars are misleading the public to believe it doesn’t exist.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/critics-fail-to-debunk-explosive-study-on-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens/feed 6 PolitiFact Covers Up Biden’s Role in the Murder of Laken Riley https://www.justfactsdaily.com/politifact-covers-up-bidens-role-in-the-murder-of-laken-riley https://www.justfactsdaily.com/politifact-covers-up-bidens-role-in-the-murder-of-laken-riley#comments Tue, 12 Mar 2024 13:56:25 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=11677 By James D. Agresti March 12, 2024

Credit: Laken Riley’s Facebook account Overview The “fact checker” PolitiFact asserts that President Biden had nothing to do with the murder of a nursing student by an illegal border crosser because “Biden does not decide who is released into the country.” In reality, the president has vast powers to decide who is allowed into the U.S., and the person charged with this murder was let in as a direct consequence of Biden’s actions. This murder is not an isolated instance. Homicides committed by non-citizens are hundreds of times more common than other types of murders that media outlets often focus on. Biden’s Actions During the Republican Party’s formal response to Biden’s recent State of the Union address, U.S. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama blamed “President Biden’s senseless border policies” for “horrific murders” and spoke about this recent one:

Just think about Laken Riley. In my neighboring state of Georgia, this beautiful, 22-year-old nursing student went out on a jog one morning. But she never got the opportunity to return home. She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland.

Countering Britt, PolitiFact reporters Marta Campabadal Graus and Maria Ramirez Uribe claim that:

Biden does not decide who is released into the country. Border officials decide whom to release into the U.S. because they lack enough resources to detain everyone who illegally crosses U.S. borders.

PolitiFact’s statement—made without any evidence to support it—is a flagrant falsehood disproven by the following facts:

Border officials work for the Department of Homeland Security, which is under the authority of Biden and the person he appointed to lead this agency, Alejandro Mayorkas.

On his first day in office, Biden temporarily suspended President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy (formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols), which required border officials to quickly eject the vast bulk of Central Americans who illegally cross the U.S./Mexico border. Any of these migrants who claimed to have a legal basis to be in the U.S. could then wait in Mexico while their cases were adjudicated—instead of being released into the U.S. where deportation is extremely unlikely.

Four months later, Mayorkas permanently terminated Remain in Mexico to the cheers of “migrant rights advocates” who called this “a huge victory” and welcomed the illegal border crossers into the U.S. with literal hugs.

After a federal judge and a federal appeals court ordered the Biden administration to reinstate Remain in Mexico, the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 ruling in June 2022 that allowed Biden to end it.

Three months later in September 2022, a Venezuelan migrant named Jose Ibarra illegally crossed the U.S./Mexico border, was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol, and was released into the U.S.—an action generally prohibited under Remain in Mexico.

A year and a half later, Ibarra was arrested for the murder of Riley.

The Big Picture Because the U.S. is the third-most populous nation in the world and experiences more than 15,000 homicides per year, there is no shortage of murders to serve the agendas of people who use isolated incidents for political purposes. A prime example is the fact that an average of two on-duty police officers per year commit murder. Although these cases amount to 0.01% of all homicides in the nation, the media and activists often use them to accuse the entire U.S. of systemic racism. In stark contrast, murders committed by immigrants occur hundreds of times more frequently. A 2018 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that non-citizens in U.S. prisons and jails from 2010 to 2016 had been arrested or transferred 33,300 times for homicides committed in the U.S. during 1964–2017. This is an average of 611 murder arrests or transfers per year. The figure of 33,000 double-counts some murders because the “data did not allow” the study to “distinguish between a new arrest and a transfer from one agency to another.” However, the study failed to count many other homicides because:

it didn’t examine the criminal records of non-citizens arrested for murder who weren’t incarcerated in 2010 to 2016, thus ignoring all murderers who had served out their sentences or died before then.

there “are no reliable population data on all criminal aliens in every U.S. state prison and local jail.”

roughly half of all murders in the U.S. don’t result in an arrest, and this figure is significantly lower for murders committed by minorities.

Like most government data on crimes committed by immigrants, the study grouped all non-citizens into a single category, including those who entered the U.S. both illegally and legally. Thus, not all of the murders were committed by illegal border crossers, but the vast bulk of them almost certainly were. This because legal immigrants are heavily screened for criminality and commit crimes at far lower rates than the general public. PolitiFact’s Track Record Beyond declaring that Biden had no role in the murder of Laken Riley, PolitiFact has a history of spreading falsehoods about wide-ranging issues, such as:

the amount of illegal immigration.
income taxes paid by illegal immigrants.
tax rates paid by the wealthy.
the Covid-19 death rate.
Biden’s abortion policies.
the federal “assault weapons” ban.
child hunger
illegal voting by non-citizens.
Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq.
the impact of Obamacare on Medicare.
the market value of Mar-a-Lago.
Antifa’s role in the Capitol Hill riot.
the crime rates of illegal immigrants.
the Democratic Party’s involvement in the Ku Klux Klan.
arming teachers.
misinformation spread on Twitter.
the safety and efficacy of mRNA Covid vaccines.

PolitiFact employs a wide variety of fallacies to support its conclusions, such as quoting sources out of context, cherry-picking, using double standards, misdefining terms, and making patently false statements without evidence to support them. However, they all share a common feature in that they mangle the truth in ways that advance leftist narratives. This creates support and provides cover for politicians and policies that get people killed, like Joe Biden’s role in the murder of Laken Riley.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/politifact-covers-up-bidens-role-in-the-murder-of-laken-riley/feed 2 Elon Musk is Right and the NY Times is Wrong About Illegal Voting By Non-Citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens#comments Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:39:43 +0000 https://www.justfactsdaily.com/?p=11589 By James D. Agresti February 7, 2024

Credit: Frederic Legrand/Shutterstock.com Overview In a recent trio of posts to X, Elon Musk wrote that (1) illegal immigrants “are not prevented from voting in federal elections,” (2) “you don’t need government issued ID to vote,” and (3) Democrats “are importing voters.” To rebut those statements, the New York Times published an article by Jim Rutenberg and Kate Conger claiming that Musk is “spreading election misinformation” about “illegal voting by noncitizens” and echoing a “conspiracy theory” spread by Donald Trump. While Musk’s words are imprecise, the gist of what he wrote is correct, and the Times is categorically wrong. Illegal Voter Registration In response to Musk’s first two points, the Times argues that “federal law requires identification verification from voters when they register.” The hyperlink in that sentence leads to a document by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice claiming that “new identification requirements” in a 2002 federal voting law “may severely threaten voters’ rights….” What the Times fails to reveal is that the Brennan Center document describes the identification requirements in the law, which don’t require government-issued ID or proof of citizenship—just as Musk wrote. The document notes that even a “utility bill” or “bank statement” is enough to comply with the law. The text of the 2002 legislation and the current U.S. election code law confirm this. Furthermore, a 2013 Supreme Court ruling supports Musk and contradicts the Times by explaining that the National Voter Registration Form “does not require documentary evidence of citizenship; rather, it requires only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen.” In fact, the Court’s 2013 ruling blocked the state of Arizona from requiring “documentary proof of citizenship” to register to vote. Likewise, a 2020 appeals court ruling prohibited other states from doing the same, and the Obama administration filed a brief arguing for that outcome. To be clear, federal law and the laws of all 50 states require people to be U.S. citizens in order to register to vote in federal elections, and federal law forbids people from falsely claiming citizenship to register to vote. Penalties for lying about this include up to five years in prison. However, enforcement mechanisms for such laws are limited, and opportunities to get around them are ample. The situation was summarized by Barack Obama shortly before the 2016 U.S. presidential election when actress Gina Rodriguez asked him if “Dreamers” and “undocumented citizens” would be deported if they voted. Obama replied:

Not true. And the reason is, first of all, when you vote, you are a citizen yourself. And there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over, and people start investigating, etcetera.

After dodging the fact that “Dreamers” and “undocumented immigrants” are not citizens, Obama’s clear message was that there is no effective way to enforce the law that prohibits them from voting. And when President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity asked the states for “detailed, publicly available voter-roll data” that could be cross-checked against other databases with information on citizenship status, states refused to turn over the data and filed a flurry of lawsuits to stop the commission. In the words of California’s Secretary of State:

While the commission is allowed to request the personal data of California voters, they cannot compel me to provide it. Let me reassure California voters: I will not provide the Commission with any personal voter data. … Yesterday’s ruling is merely the first in a string of lawsuits challenging the Commission. Those lawsuits send a strong message—the Commission will face opposition at every step of the way from those who are fighting to protect our voting rights, our privacy, and our democratic principles.

Note that California alleged the commission asked for “personal data,” but in reality, the commission explicitly requested “publicly available voter-roll data.” California’s deceptive refusal of the request and the ample openings for non-citizens to vote take on added significance in light of the following testimony by California Senate Leader and Democrat Kevin De Leon in 2017:

I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license … if they got a false green card. And anyone who has family members who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification.

Illegal Voting The Times also alleges that “instances of illegal voting by noncitizens are rare” and supports that claim with a link to PolitiFact—an outfit with a record of publishing flagrant falsehoods on illegal voting and many other issues. Although data on violations of laws with weak enforcement mechanisms are rare, scientific surveys of non-citizens have found that roughly:

13% of Hispanic non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote in 2013.

14% of all non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote in 2012, and 9% stated “I definitely voted” in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

15% of all non-citizens admitted they were registered to vote in 2008, and 8% stated “I definitely voted” in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Those rates are only for self-admitted actions, and database matches with voting and registration records show the actual rates are about twice as high. In 2008, the one year for which Just Facts has full data, 27% of non-citizens were registered to vote, and 16% of them actually voted. The studies that yielded the data above have significant margins of error due to relatively small sample sizes, and there are other sources of uncertainty—some of which may produce overcounts and some undercounts. But given that the Census Bureau estimates there are about 20 million non-citizen adults living in the U.S., a million illegal votes will be cast in every federal election if only 5% of them vote. As summarized by a 2014 paper in the scholarly journal Electoral Studies, “some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections,” and “this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections.” Some media outlets and “fact checkers” have tried to contest those realities, but a multitude of facts from academic books and journals have shown that their arguments consist of mathematically illiterate notions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. On top of this, one “fact checker” leveled slanderous accusations against Ph.D. scholars who conducted and vetted seminal studies on this matter. “The Great Replacement” The Times also asserts “Musk implied that Mr. Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because ‘they are importing voters,’ an echo of the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump was sharing around the same time.” The hyperlink in that sentence leads to another Times article that blames Republicans for spreading a “Great Replacement” narrative “used to justify an act of racist violence” in a mass murder of 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket during 2022. The Times and other media outlets tar Republicans with such guilt-by-association tactics. However, the press gives itself a pass when similar atrocities are committed by people who parrot their false narratives. The Times article doesn’t even attempt to rebut Musk’s point but simply calls it a “conspiracy.” However, multiple facts prove that what Musk wrote is true. For example, 82% of non-citizens who said they voted in 2008 stated that they voted for Democrat Barack Obama, while only 18% said they voted for Republican John McCain. Citing figures that would dwarf the number of non-citizens who vote illegally, Eliseo Medina, a former executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, stated in a 2009 speech that:

the “progressive community” can “expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future” by putting “12 million” unauthorized immigrants “on the path to citizenship and eventually voting.”
turning illegal immigrants into citizens will create a progressive “governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

Illegal immigrants and other non-citizens generally have low incomes and exceptionally high rates of not having a high school diploma. The majority of people with these attributes vote for Democrats. The lopsided votes of non-citizens for Democrats are consistent with the promises and actions of Democrat politicians to give free healthcare, amnesty, and citizenship to people who immigrate to the United States, illegally or legally. The electoral implications of this are further highlighted by facts like these:

A nationally representative bilingual poll of 784 immigrant Latinos conducted by Pew Research in 2011 found that 81% said they would prefer “a bigger government providing more services,” and 12% said they would prefer “a smaller government with fewer services.” In stark contrast, 41% of the general U.S. population said they would prefer a bigger government, and 48% said they want a smaller one.

A 2012 poll of 2,900 immigrants who were U.S. citizens found that 62% identified as Democrats, 25% as Republicans, and 13% as Independents.

A nationally representative bilingual poll of 800 Hispanic adults conducted by McLaughlin & Associates in 2013 found that 59% were born outside the U.S., 53% considered themselves to be Democrats, 12% considered themselves to be Republicans, and 29% considered themselves to be independents or another party.

The fact that illegal immigration, amnesty, and legal immigration help the political prospects of Democrats is incontestable, not a conspiracy. Conclusion Beyond attacking Musk for posting genuine facts about illegal voting by non-citizens, the Times article complains that “X’s fact checkers are long gone” and that the previous “complaint line between the [Biden] campaign and the platform is dead.” The Times bemoans those developments while failing to report that pre-Musk Twitter censored genuine facts and promoted demonstrable falsehoods about Russiagate, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Covid-19, and more. In short, the New York Times is falsely accusing Elon Musk of the very thing that the Times and the previous owners of Twitter are guilty of—spreading misinformation.]]> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens/feed 6