Category: Fact Check

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Quick Take

Social media posts misleadingly claim that “Trump’s Project 2025 will end” the Federal Emergency Management Agency and provide “ZERO federal help” to disaster victims. Project 2025 is not former President Donald Trump’s plan, and there is no evidence that he would “end” FEMA. In fact, his administration spent tens of billions on disaster aid when he was president.

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Full Story

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept. 26 in northwest Florida, caused destruction across six southeastern states and has claimed at least 231 lives, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes to strike the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina.

Federal assistance for Helene exceeded $344 million by Oct. 9, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed thousands of personnel, assessed damage and provided essential aid, including meals, water, generators and tarps, to the affected regions. The extent of the damage will require “a multibillion-dollar, multiyear recovery” effort, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. 

As Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s western coast on the evening of Oct. 9 with what the National Weather Service called a “life-threatening” storm surge, FEMA is in the eye of a misinformation storm. (The spread of false claims has become so pervasive that the agency has launched a dedicated “Rumor Response” page for Hurricane Helene, following similar pages launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and previous disasters.)

Recent social media posts have made misleading claims about the future of FEMA if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House.

“Trumps Project 2025 will end FEMA,” an Oct. 2 Threads post claimed.

“If Donald Trump were president today, he would tell North Carolina they’re on their own and getting ZERO federal help. How do we know this? It’s in Project 2025,” another Threads user wrote.

Project 2025, which is being led and funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is a detailed plan to reduce the size and scope of government under “the next conservative President.” We have written extensively about the project and have debunked false and misleading claims about it.

Although portions of it were developed by former Trump aides, Project 2025 isn’t a Trump campaign document and the former president has distanced himself from it.

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during the Sept. 10 debate. “This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do [with it].”

There also is no evidence to support the claim that Trump would “end FEMA” or provide “zero federal help” if he gets back into office.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told us in an email that the social media claims are “fake news.”

During his presidency, Trump authorized tens of billions in disaster assistance through FEMA. From fiscal years 2017 to 2020, a period spanning part of former President Barack Obama’s tenure and most of Trump’s time in office, FEMA spent nearly $94 billion from the Disaster Relief Fund, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In FY2018 alone, the agency allocated nearly $23 billion for recovery efforts following three major hurricanes in the 2017 hurricane season: Harvey, Irma and Maria.

FEMA said the number of applications for assistance during Harvey was “one of the highest in FEMA history.” Within just 30 days, more than $1.5 billion in federal aid was distributed to Texans affected by the storm, covering assistance grants, low-interest disaster loans and advance payments for flood insurance, according to FEMA.

Contrary to social media claims, Trump also has made comments during the current presidential campaign that indicate he will continue to support federal disaster assistance.

Trump has criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough during Hurricane Helene. Trump posted on Truth Social on Oct. 9, saying, “They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there.”

Project 2025 isn’t calling for the elimination of FEMA, either, although experts say the changes it proposes would undermine the agency.

“Rather than ‘cutting’ FEMA, Project 2025 is advocating for a realignment of the agency’s mission and focus – away from DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change initiatives and restoring it to that of helping people before, during, and after disasters,” a Project 2025 spokesperson told us in an email.

The project’s policy agenda, which was published online in “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” proposes changes to FEMA in a chapter written by Ken Cuccinelli, who served as acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration. It recommends that FEMA “be moved to the Department of the Interior or, if combined with the [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency], to the Department of Transportation.” 

“FEMA is the lead federal agency in preparing for and responding to disasters, but it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt,” Project 2025 says.

The plan calls for “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government, eliminating most of DHS’s grant programs.”

Experts: Project 2025 Would Weaken FEMA

Experts say claims on social media that Project 2025 will “end FEMA” are not accurate, but the plan’s proposed changes to FEMA’s structure could undermine its ability to effectively respond to disasters. 

“This idea that Project 2025 and Trump would eliminate FEMA is just not true,” Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told us in a phone interview. “There clearly is a role for FEMA. It’s just a reduced role in a reduced capacity, which I think would not be good for equity, would not be good for the increasing hazards that we face.”

“I think what [Project 2025} would do was really bring it back to where it was at the time of Hurricane Katrina. … And we all know how that worked out,” Schlegelmilch said, referring to FEMA’s failures in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005.

FEMA was established in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter to coordinate the federal government’s response to disasters and emergencies. Initially, it was an independent agency focused on disaster response and recovery efforts. In 2003, FEMA was transferred to the newly created Department of Homeland Security as part of a broader effort to streamline and enhance national security and emergency management after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

“So at that time, FEMA had been moved under the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Homeland Security became much more terrorism-oriented, much more infrastructure-oriented. And FEMA was sort of demoted, kind of within that structure,” Schlegelmilch said.

Dr. Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, was also critical of Project 2025’s proposals for FEMA.

“There is nothing in Project 2025 that aligns with the policy recommendations that come out of the empirical research that we have on what makes emergency management effective,” Montano told us in a phone interview.

“So currently, it’s within DHS, which is not effective, and moving it to another agency, whether it’s [the Department of] Interior or the Department of Transportation, would not solve the problem. It would just shuffle it into another agency,” Montano said. “It is the belief of many in emergency management that FEMA is most effective when it is an independent cabinet-level agency.”

Regarding Project 2025’s proposal on shifting most of FEMA’s preparedness and response costs to the states, Montano said, “I think this would be absolutely devastating, especially for small, poorer communities and states. The vast majority of states do not have the resources to fund their own responses and recoveries.”

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Congressional Budget Office. “FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund: Budgetary History and Projections.” November 2022.

Contorno, Steve. “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved.” CNN. 11 Jul 2024.

Czachor, Emily Mae. “Hurricane Milton makes landfall as Category 3 on Florida’s west coast.” CBS News. 10 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Federal Assistance for Hurricane Helene Exceeds $344 Million as FEMA Expands Dual Response Efforts as Hurricane Milton Forecast to Make Landfall This Evening.” 9 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Disaster Relief Fund: Monthly Report.” 13 Sep 2019.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “FEMA Assistance Tops $1 Billion for Florida Hurricane Irma Survivors.” 19 Apr 2018.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Historic Disaster Response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas.” 22 Sep 2017.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “History of FEMA.” 4 Jan 2021.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Hurricane Helene: Rumor Response.” 4 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Coronavirus Rumor Control.” Updated 15 May 2023.

Federal Emergency Management Agency. “President Donald J. Trump Approves Major Disaster Declaration for Hawaii.” Press release. 28 Sep 2018.

Flaherty, Anne and Stephanie Ebbs. “Trump to tap FEMA account to step up migrant deportations, House Dems say no way.” ABC News. 28 Aug 2019.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Trump’s False Claim of Stolen Disaster Relief Funds.” FactCheck.org. 8 Oct 2024.

Hoffman, Riley. “Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript.” ABC News. 10 Sep 2024.

Keefe, Eliza. “Posts Misrepresent Federal Response, Funding for Hurricane Helene Victims.” FactCheck.org. 8 Oct 2024.

Kiely, Eugene, D’Angelo Gore and Robert Farley. “A Guide to Project 2025.” FactCheck.org. 10 Sep 2024.

Leavitt, Karoline. Spokesperson, Donald J. Trump for President 2024. Email to FactCheck.org. 9 Oct 2024.

Montano, Samantha. Assistant professor of emergency management, Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 7 Oct 2024.

National Weather Service Forecast Office, Tampa Bay Area, Florida. “Key Messages for Hurricane Milton.” 8 Oct 2024.

Project 2025. “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” Accessed 8 Oct 2024.

Sanchez, Ray. “‘The power of water.’ How Helene devastated western North Carolina and left communities in ruins.” CNN. 6 Oct 2024

Schlegelmilch, Jeffrey. Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 7 Oct 2024.

Trump, Donald. “Western North Carolina, and the whole state, for that matter, has been totally and incompetently mismanaged by Harris/Biden. They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there.” Truth Social. 9 Oct 2024.

White House. “Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned.” Sep 2005.

White House. “Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas En Route Greenville, SC.” 2 Oct 2024.

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Quick Take

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided more than $210 million in immediate assistance to communities affected by Hurricane Helene, which the Department of Homeland Security secretary has described as the start of “a multibillion-dollar, multiyear recovery.” Social media posts make the false claim that storm victims are getting “only $750,” and misleadingly compare that to foreign aid.

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Full Story

Communities across the southeastern United States suffered catastrophic damage and loss of life after Hurricane Helene made landfall near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26. 

With more than 230 confirmed dead by Oct. 8 and many still missing, Helene ranks as the second-deadliest hurricane to hit the contiguous United States over the last 50 years. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest, with a toll of at least 1,833.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency directs the federal response to all disasters warranting a presidential disaster declaration. It is operating alongside state, local and tribal partners to address property wreckage and restore access to food, potable water, power, cellular reception and transportation infrastructure. The agency began preparing commodities and equipment before the storm made landfall.

As of Oct. 8, FEMA had provided more than $210 million in federal assistance and supplied more than 15.6 million meals, over 13.9 million liters of water, 157 generators and more than 505,000 tarps to affected communities across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee – the six states for which President Joe Biden has approved major disaster declarations. Almost 7,000 federal personnel, including FEMA staff, have been deployed to the region.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the magnitude of the disaster will require “a multibillion-dollar, multiyear recovery” effort. “We have towns that have disappeared, literally,” he said.

But social media posts have spread false claims that the federal government is doing little or nothing to help storm survivors, while spending billions on foreign aid.

In a misleading Oct. 3 Instagram post, conservative commentator Benny Johnson wrote, “We can send BILLIONS to Ukraine but Americans who have lost everything only get $750 dollars?!” The post has received more than 87,000 likes.

Former President Donald Trump echoed that false claim at his Oct. 5 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“They’re offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away. And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of,” he said. “Think of it. We give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars, and we’re handing North Carolina $750.” (See a related story, “Trump’s False Claim of Stolen Disaster Relief Funds.”)

Another post falsely suggested that FEMA hasn’t done anything to help communities battered by the storm. The Threads user asked, “Is this true: No FEMA, Red Cross, government agencies, NOTHING for Helene?? What a country.” The post is no longer available.

Other posts shared on X and Instagram claimed FEMA lacks sufficient funding to address future hurricanes, misleadingly suggesting that money that could be spent on disaster relief is instead going to foreign countries. The posts, which have received about 3.3 million views on X and over 100,000 likes across both platforms, read: “The Biden Harris regime is now saying FEMA does NOT have enough funds to make it through Hurricane season. RIGHT AFTER giving BILLIONS more to Ukraine.”

Funds Directed Specifically to Disaster Relief

The $750 payment mentioned by Trump and the social media posts represents only one form of immediate federal assistance available to storm survivors, and FEMA has said it has sufficient funding to support immediate response and recovery needs.

In addition, contrary to the online claims, FEMA is funded through a dedicated fund for disaster relief efforts.

FEMA launched a rumor response page to tackle a post-Helene flurry of misinformation. The White House also issued a memo on Oct. 5 addressing falsehoods about the government’s response to the hurricane.

“FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund has enough funding to support Hurricane Helene efforts and FEMA has what it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts,” the agency says. 

Biden echoed this sentiment in an Oct. 4 letter to Congress. But he did address the need for future funding. The federal government is currently operating under a short-term funding bill, which funds government operations through Dec. 20.

“While FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund has the resources it requires right now to meet immediate needs, the fund does face a shortfall at the end of the year,” Biden said. “Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favor of meeting urgent needs.”

“The Congress should provide FEMA additional resources to avoid forcing that kind of unnecessary trade-off and to give the communities we serve the certainty of knowing that help will be ongoing, both for the short- and long-term,” he said.

FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, or DRF, is provided by Congress through both annual discretionary appropriations and supplemental appropriations granted in response to certain major disasters. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Congress allocated $381 billion to the DRF between 1992 and 2021. Almost three-quarters of this total was granted through supplemental appropriations. 

As a dedicated federal spending account for disaster efforts, “no money is being diverted” from the DRF “to other non-disaster related efforts,” FEMA said. 

U.S. military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine has been provided by Congress since February 2022 through other supplemental appropriations.

FEMA uses the DRF to finance both short- and long-term response and recovery activities, including debris removal, food and medical aid distribution, the Individual Assistance Program, and future disaster mitigation projects. The $750 payment is an initial payment survivors may receive while FEMA determines eligibility for its many other offerings within the Individual Assistance Program.

“This [$750] is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies,” the agency’s rumor response page explains. 

Additional forms of assistance address medical expenses, temporary housing needs and home repair costs, among other needs.

Eligible individuals can apply for assistance by calling the FEMA helpline at 1-800-621-3362, visiting disasterassistance.gov or downloading the FEMA app.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Arabia, Christina, et al. “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine.” Congressional Research Service. 22 May 2024.

Bogel-Burroughs, Nicholas, and Kate Selig. “Still Searching for Their Loved Ones, a Week After Hurricane Helene.” New York Times. 4 Oct 2024.

Bomprezzi, Peitro, et al. “Ukraine Support Tracker.” Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Accessed 8 Oct 2024.

Ebensberger, Richard. “FEMA prepares for Hurricane Helene’s landfall; stands up incident support base at Maxwell AFB.” Maxwell Air Force Base. 25 Sep 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “As Federal Assistance for Hurricane Helene Exceeds $210 Million, FEMA Prepares for Dual Response with Hurricane Milton Strengthening as it Moves Toward Gulf Coast of Florida.” 8 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “FEMA Launches Web Page to Respond to Rumors and Confirm the Facts Related to Hurricane Helene Response and Recovery.” Press release. 4 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “How a Disaster Gets Declared.” 22 Jul 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “How FEMA Works.” 23 Jan 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “Hurricane Helene: Rumor Response.” Accessed 6 Oct 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “Individuals and Households Program.” Press release. 22 Mar 2024.

Federal Emergency Management Administration. “When can I apply for Individual Assistance?” 16 May 2023.

Gore, D’Angelo. “Trump’s False Claim of Stolen Disaster Relief Funds.” FactCheck.org. 8 Oct 2024.

Sarnoff, Leah and Daniel Amarante. “Tracking Hurricane Helen’s destruction: Path, storm surge and rescue efforts.” ABC News. 5 Oct 2024.

Shapiro, Emily, et al. “Hurricane Helene live updates: Death toll surpasses 230 as rescue efforts continue.” ABC News. 8 Oct 2024.

Sperl, Jon. “FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund: Budgetary History and Projections.” Congressional Budget Office. 22 Nov 2022.

Sutton, Joe, et al. “Helene death toll rises to at least 227 across 6 states.” CNN. 5 Oct 2024.

Ukraine Oversight. Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve. “Funding.” Accessed 8 Oct 2024.

Webster, Elizabeth. “FEMA Individual Assistance Programs: An Overview.” Congressional Research Service. 17 Apr 2024.

White House. “Interested Parties Memo: Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods with Facts.” 5 Oct 2024.

White House. “Letter to Congress on Disaster Needs.” 4 Oct 2024.

White House. “Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas En Route Greenville, SC.” 2 Oct 2024.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that no funds intended for disaster relief have been used to pay for programs that respond to illegal immigration. But former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that the Biden administration “stole” money for hurricane recovery and spent it on housing for people in the U.S. illegally.

“This is false,” FEMA wrote on its “rumor response” page on Oct. 3. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”

However, that same day, Trump said otherwise at a Michigan rally while talking about how President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have responded to the devastation that Hurricane Helene caused in several southeastern states.

“[T]here’s nobody that’s handled a hurricane or storm worse than what they are doing right now,” Trump said. “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.”

He went on to claim in his remarks that the administration was not able to provide hurricane relief to affected states and residents because they “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”

Even after FEMA and news organizations had corrected Trump’s misinformation, he continued to make similar claims in public appearances. For instance, in an Oct. 4 town hall in North Carolina, one of the hardest hit states, Trump said that the federal government cannot help residents there because “we’re missing a billion dollars they gave … to the migrants that came in and now we don’t have the money.”

To be clear, federal law prohibits noncitizens from legally voting in federal elections, and there’s no evidence any disaster relief money is “missing.”

On its page responding to rumors about hurricane relief, FEMA says, “If you were affected by Helene, do not hesitate to apply for disaster assistance as there is a variety of help available for different needs.”

Separate Funding Accounts

Trump began making the false funding claims after Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, warned that FEMA, a DHS agency, may not have enough money to last for the remainder of the hurricane season, which started June 1 and goes until Nov. 30.

In an Oct. 2 press gaggle, a reporter asked Mayorkas a question about his confidence in the amount of funding that FEMA currently has for recovery efforts, and whether Congress may need to appropriate more money. In response, Mayorkas said: “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what is imminent.”

He went on to say that the agency has money for “the immediate needs right now,” because of a continuing budget resolution, “but that is not a stable source of supply, if you will.” He emphasized that this will be “a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year recovery.”

As Mayorkas said, the federal government is currently operating on a continuing budget resolution because Congress has not passed appropriations bills for DHS and other federal departments for fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1. The stop-gap funding bill, which Biden signed in September, funds the government through Dec. 20.

While the continuing resolution included about $20 billion for disaster relief, E&E News reported that a FEMA financial report indicated that money may only last until January. When Congress passed the stopgap measure last month, lawmakers opted not to include any additional funding for hurricane relief.

For now, congressional leaders have decided to wait to work on a supplemental disaster spending package until Congress is back in session after the election in November.

After Mayorkas made his remarks, Trump and other critics began to focus on federal funding for the department’s Shelter and Services Program, claiming that money for the grant program was taken from the budget for responding to natural disasters. Some who made the claim got the inaccurate information from an Oct.1 Federalist story that misleadingly said: “The Biden-Harris administration took more than a billion tax dollars that had been allocated to the agency responsible for American disaster relief and used it to offer services for illegal immigrants.”

The Shelter and Services Program was created by Congress in 2023 specifically to make payments to “nonfederal entities that provide shelter and other eligible services to migrants encountered by and released from DHS custody,” as a Congressional Research Service report published that year explained. Congress authorized about $364 million for the program for fiscal year 2023, and increased the program’s appropriation to $650 million for fiscal year 2024.

As FEMA has said, that money was not rerouted from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, which is funded by Congress separately. For fiscal year 2024, which ended Sept. 30, the Disaster Relief Fund had almost $57 billion in total budget resources, including about $20 billion in initial appropriations from Congress and more than $25 billion in supplemental appropriations.

“As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters,” a DHS spokesperson has said in a statement to reporters. “The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”

The money for migrant support came from the budget of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, according to the CRS. FEMA administers the grants in coordination with CBP.

Trump’s campaign also has pointed to funding for FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which was established in 1983 and existed until it was replaced by the Shelter and Services Program.

In an Oct. 7 post on its website, the Trump campaign, citing that program, said that the White House and the media “have repeatedly said that FEMA money is being used for illegal aliens.” The post included a hyperlink to video clips of a CNN reporter and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talking in September 2022 about the availability of federal EFSP funds to help support local governments that were dealing with an influx of migrants.

Although funding for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program was administered by FEMA, that money also was appropriated by Congress separate from funding for disaster relief. Furthermore, “Congress passed the first funding measure for EFSP assistance specifically for migrant support … in 2019,” when Trump was president, the CRS said in a 2023 report.

Trump’s DHS Repurposed Disaster Money

In fact, as other news outlets have noted, in 2019, during the Trump administration, DHS officials did take some money from FEMA’s disaster relief budget to address issues at the southern border. 

In August that year, which was during hurricane season, the Associated Press reported that DHS announced that it “would transfer $155 million to create temporary facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border for holding hearings with the aim of moving asylum cases through the system faster.”

“The money,” according to lawmakers, “will come out of unobligated money from the base disaster relief fund at FEMA,” the AP’s story said.

So, Trump is falsely accusing the Biden-Harris administration of something that DHS did under Trump.

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In a classic example of how political ads mislead viewers by using out-of-context quotes, a TV ad from former President Donald Trump’s campaign cites the New York Times as saying Vice President Kamala Harris “is seeking to significantly raise taxes.” Period, end of sentence. The rest of that sentence in the Times said: “on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.”

There’s more context that was left on the cutting room floor. The ad twice features a clip of Harris saying, “Taxes are going to have to go up.” In the July 2019 event, Harris actually said, “Estate taxes are going to have to go up for the richest Americans.”

The Trump ad, released Oct. 2, leaves the false impression that Harris has said she wants to broadly raise taxes on all income groups. It assumes, without explicitly saying so, that Harris’ “plan” is to let all of the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire, as they are scheduled to do at the end of 2025. But Harris, who hasn’t detailed how she would handle that expiration, has said she “will make sure no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes” and will “roll back Trump’s tax cuts for the richest Americans,” as her economic policy book says.

The ad has aired in the swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to AdImpact, a political ad tracking service.

Nearly every citation in the ad is problematic.

The ad begins with the New York Times quote on the screen, citing an Aug. 22 story. An announcer says: “Kamala Harris is going to significantly raise taxes.” But the Times’ story that day said she wouldn’t raise taxes on those earning under $400,000.

New York Times, Aug. 22: No one making less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes go up under the plan. Instead, Ms. Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.

The ad then shows the truncated clip of Harris saying, “Taxes are going to have to go up.” As we said, the full quote makes a difference. At the July 2019 roundtable event in Davenport, Iowa, when Harris was running for president, she talked about repealing the 2017 tax law, which Trump signed, saying it “represent[ed] the top 1% and the biggest corporations in America.” (As we’ve written, the tax law benefited all income groups on average. In 2018, the top 1% of income earners got 20.5% of the benefits of the tax cuts, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis, but 82% of middle-income earners got a tax cut.)

Harris went on to talk about new tax credits she supported, and she said that “estate taxes” for the “richest Americans” would “have to go up,” not all taxes, as the Trump campaign ad makes it appear.

Harris, Iowa roundtable, July 16, 2019 (at the 15:27 mark): We also have to increase taxes for the top 1%, and that, part of that is going to be about repealing that tax bill they just passed. And also looking at estate taxes are going to have to go up for the richest Americans, and closing certain corporate loopholes, including the carried interest deductible and a number of other things that are about people not reporting income as income and therefore not being taxed on it as income, the way you and I are being taxed.

The Trump ad then claims: “Kamala’s plan will raise families’ taxes by nearly $2,600 a year,” citing the Tax Foundation on May 7. That’s not what the Tax Foundation said.

Instead, the Tax Foundation article analyzed the impact on taxpayers if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions expire at the end of 2025, as scheduled. (Republicans wrote the legislation to have most of the individual income tax provisions expire after 2025, so that it could be passed with a simple majority.) “Without congressional action, most taxpayers will see a notable tax increase relative to current policy in 2026,” the Tax Foundation said.

One of the authors of that article, Erica York, senior economist and research director of the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy, told us: “That is not our analysis of Harris’s tax proposals.” (The ad also cites the figure of $2,580, but the tax policy group estimated the nationwide average tax increase would be $2,853 per taxpayer if the TCJA fully expires.)

The Tax Foundation did publish a preliminary analysis of Harris’ tax proposals on Sept. 10, finding that her plans “would redistribute income from high earners to low earners.”

Among other policies, the analysis included Harris’ proposal to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%; restore the top individual income tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, on income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for married couples; increase the long-term capital gains rate to 28% from 20% for households with taxable income of more than $1 million; eliminate taxes on tips for service industry workers; expand the child tax credit, including a $6,000 credit for newborns; and provide eligible first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 in mortgage assistance.

Under Harris’ proposals, the Tax Foundation found: “The bottom 60 percent of earners would see increases in after-tax income in 2025, while the top 40 percent of earners would see decreases. After-tax income for the bottom quintile would increase by 16.5 percent, largely from expanded tax credits. In contrast, the top 1 percent of earners would experience a 9.5 percent decrease in after-tax income.”

The Tax Foundation also analyzed Trump’s proposals, and the Tax Policy Center published a guide to the candidates’ tax policies.

We asked the Trump campaign about the TV ad’s inherent claim that Harris would let all of the TCJA expire, given she has pledged not to raise taxes for people earning less than $400,000 a year. Spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told us that Harris had voted against the TCJA and that she “has called for scrapping” the law entirely, “saying the U.S. should ‘get rid of the whole thing.’” The link, however, goes to a May 2019 article in the Hill. Harris did say that at the time, but the Hill reported that her campaign said she wanted to replace the TCJA with “legislation she has proposed that would involve nearly $3 trillion in refundable tax cuts primarily affecting the middle class.”

The TV ad does accurately cite a Sept. 10 CNBC article as saying that prices have gone up 19.4% since the start of the Biden-Harris administration. The cumulative price increase under Trump was 7.8%, according to Consumer Price Index data.

The ad ends by saying Trump “will cut taxes again. No taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security,” citing another New York Times article. Trump has proposed those ideas, as the Sept. 22 article said. He also has proposed universal tariffs on imported goods — ideas that, the Times said, could move the U.S. away from income taxes and toward a consumption tax on the goods Americans buy.

“Mr. Trump has floated ideas that, taken together, would fundamentally change the way Americans are taxed, eroding the income tax while embracing expansive tariffs as a way to raise federal revenue,” the Times reported.

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Quick Take

Springfield, Ohio, has been the target of misinformation about its Haitian immigrant population. Conservative commentators are now falsely claiming the mayor traveled to Haiti and he and other city officials received “kick-backs” for “importing” immigrants to Springfield. The mayor told us he has never been to Haiti nor has he received any “kickbacks.”

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Full Story

Former President Donald Trump has spread misinformation about immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the U.S. border over the past several years. During the Sept. 10 presidential debate, as we wrote, Trump made the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs … They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, also claimed on X that there had been reports of Haitians eating people’s pets in Springfield. In addition, Vance made an unfounded claim that immigrants were responsible for an 81% increase in murders in Springfield, as we’ve written.

Springfield has experienced an influx of immigrants who legally entered the country and moved to the city over the past few years. The city estimates about 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants now live in Ohio’s Clark County, where Springfield is located. Of that group, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 are Haitian, according to the county’s health commissioner, CNN reported.

But the political discourse has prompted accounts on social media to espouse conspiracies to explain the immigration influx. 

The conservative podcast Chicks on the Right posted a screenshot from a Sept. 12 post on X by former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros. Without providing any evidence, Tantaros claimed, “The Mayor of Springfield, OH has made multiple trips to Haiti. He, and the entire City Council, received financial kick-backs for importing $20,000+ illegal aliens. Its why they ignore the pleas of residents. Nationwide, politicians are profiting from mass illegal migration.”

The Chicks on the Right Instagram post received more than 28,000 likes.

Neither Chicks on the Right nor Andrea Tantaros responded to our requests for information to support their claims.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue told us in an emailed statement: “I have never been to Haiti and I have never received financial ‘kick backs’ or even [been] involved with the transportation of immigrants into our city or even the US.”

Asked in a phone interview if he or the city of Springfield ever received any funding, grants or money related to bringing new Haitian residents to the city, Rue said: “No, absolutely not.”

Rue told us he spoke earlier this year with Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio about the need for federal funding that would allow the city to “reinforce” its infrastructure due to “a rapid increase” of its population. The mayor said the city is seeking additional support for its hospitals, school system, public safety forces, and infrastructure to accommodate the new residents, including additional translation support. 

Rue said the city was not looking for a “bailout” or a per-resident fee when it asked for help. “We just need to be able to communicate with the individuals who are here and for the infrastructure,” he said.

After Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight by Trump and Vance, the city also asked Turner and other federal officials for additional funding to pay for increased security and police overtime to secure its schools, Rue told us. The false claims about the Haitian immigrants sparked a series of bomb threats that led to evacuations and the closing of city schools.

Rue said as a part-time mayor — who earns $14,680 annually — he does not have the ability to influence whether immigrants should move to the city, or even keep track of who’s coming. “No local government has that kind of control. That’s not how it works,” he said. 

On its website, the city says, “No government entity is responsible for the influx of Haitians into Clark County. Once a person with Temporary Protected Status enters the country, they are free to locate wherever they choose.”

Only Congress is authorized to write laws affecting immigration, and the president has broad legal authority to control how immigration laws are enforced. Federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of State, and Citizenship and Immigration Services have the authority to enforce immigration laws, or permit immigrants or foreign visitors to live and work in the U.S.

Rue hasn’t received any campaign contributions since 2021, when he ran for reelection to the city commission and received 13 donations, ranging between $50 and $500 each, totaling $2,750, mostly from Springfield residents, according to his campaign filings with the Clark County Board of Elections. 

Rue said as far as he’s aware, no one from the city manager’s office or the city commission – which is similar to a city council — has been to Haiti either.

Bridget Houston, a city commissioner, told us in an emailed statement responding to the social media claims: “Mayor Rue has never been to Haiti. Additionally, none of us ever have, or are currently receiving any financial kickbacks.”

“There has been no ‘importing’ immigrants as well — we are a city and cannot control our physical border and cannot control who lives or visits here. In fact, our Federal allocated dollars have gone down year over year. Most of the Haitians living in Springfield do have Federal documents as well that allow them to be here. Last, I will add that we are also required by the State of Ohio to undergo fraud training every year, and have to disclose all investments to the State of Ohio as well,” Houston said.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Astor, Maggie. “Trump Doubles Down on Migrants ‘Poisoning’ the Country.” New York Times. 17 Mar 2024.

Brewster, Shaquille, Peter Shaw and Daniella Silva. “Springfield children ‘fearful’ amid dozens of bomb threats after false migrant rumors.” NBC News. 19 Sep 2024.

Catalini, Mike, Julie Carr Smyth and Bruce Shipkowski. “Trump falsely accuses immigrants in Ohio of abducting and eating pets.” Associated Press. 11 Sep 2024.

City of Springfield. “Immigration FAQs.” Accessed 30 Sep 2024.

Clark County Board of Elections. “Campaign Finance Committee Information.” Accessed: 27 Sep 2024.

Forrest, Vicky. “Springfield mayor: Investigation into businesses, immigration continues.” Springfield News Sun. 12 Jul 2024.

Houston, Bridget. City commissioner, Springfield, Ohio. Email to FactCheck.org. 30 Sep 2024. 

Kiely, Eugene, et al. “FactChecking the Harris-Trump Debate.” FactCheck.org. 11 Sep 2024.

Kiely, Eugene. “Vance’s Misleading Claim About Immigrants and Murders in Springfield, Ohio.” FactCheck.org. 20 Sep 2024. 

National Immigration Law Center. “The President’s Broad Legal Authority to Act on Immigration.” 20 Aug 2014.

Rue, Rob. Mayor, Springfield, Ohio. Email and phone interview with FactCheck.org. 27 Sep 2024.

Shoichet, Catherine E. “‘Why Springfield?’ How a small Ohio city became home for thousands of Haitians.” CNN. 19 Sep 2024.

Thomas, Merlyn and Mike Wendling. “Trump repeats baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets.” BBC. 15 Sep 2024.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

Project 2025 proposes dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some social media posts misleadingly claim the project calls for closing the National Hurricane Center, a part of NOAA. A Heritage Foundation spokesperson said Project 2025 “does not call for eliminating the NHC,” though climate experts warned that the project’s proposals would hamper the NHC’s operations.

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Full Story

More than 180 people have been confirmed dead as of Oct. 2 across six states following the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Helene, stretching from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, according to CNN.

The National Hurricane Center, which is part of the National Weather Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has issued advisories and forecasts about the storm. In the midst of the hurricane, discussions about the future of the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, circulated on social media.

Some social media users misleadingly claimed that Project 2025, a policy agenda aimed at downsizing the federal government, has specifically called for the elimination of the NHC. Project 2025 was created and funded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank, as we’ve written.

“As Hurricane Helene is upgraded to a Category 4, it might be a good time to remind you Project 2025 intends to close the National Hurricane Center,” posts on Threads and Instagram claimed on Sept. 26.

Project 2025 provides a blueprint for “the next conservative President” on federal operations, the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs, and energy policy, particularly regarding climate change.

Former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025. “I’m not going to read it,” Trump said during his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He also claimed to be unaware of who was behind the initiative, though portions of the plan were developed by advisers who served during Trump’s first term.

Trump has not publicly called for eliminating or dismantling the National Hurricane Center. But when he was president, he did propose deep cuts to NOAA, including smaller cuts to the National Weather Service.

Project 2025 talks about NOAA in its policy agenda published online, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” It proposes plans for the agency under the chapter “Department of Commerce,” written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration of the Department of Commerce during the Trump administration.

The project proposes that NOAA be “dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

However, Heritage Foundation spokesperson Ellen Keenan told us in an email, “Project 2025 does not call for eliminating the NHC or the NOAA. Those claims are false.”

Here’s what Project 2025 writes about the NHC:

Project 2025: The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally. Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.

Project 2025 calls NOAA “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” It criticized the administration’s efforts to predict and manage major weather events as “the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

The project argues that the “current organization corrupts its useful functions” and suggests that “it should be broken up and downsized.”

Experts Warn of Impact on NHC

Climate experts are questioning the motivations behind Project 2025’s proposal for the NOAA and the impact it would have on the National Hurricane Center.

“There are lots of ways they go after an agency without calling for its immediate elimination, and I think they are hiding behind the fact that they haven’t explicitly called for elimination,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told us. “But they’re calling for the kind of destructive actions that would seriously hobble the agency’s ability to do its job,” she said.

NOAA’s ability to predict major storms like Hurricane Helene depends on its various offices working together to provide real-time weather data as well as long-term climate trend data. “These different offices are working together very closely to provide … both short-term as well as long-range information to help inform weather and climate predictions,” Cleetus added. “So the idea that you would dismantle it and it would still continue to be able to provide the service, that’s just not accurate.”

Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, also told us the language in Project 2025 makes it “clear that NHC would be axed, at least in its current form. … It would create all sorts of confusion, uncertainty, disruption, etc. and the idea that the NHC could continue to fulfill its mission is absurd.”

“Without NOAA and the critical data [they] collect and maintain, NHC will be unable to operate in any useful capacity,” Mann said.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Cleetus, Rachel. Policy director, Climate and Energy program, Union of Concerned Scientists. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 1 Oct 2024.

Contorno, Steve. “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved.” 11 Jul 2024.

Hoffman, Riley. “Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript.” ABC News. 10 Sep 2024.

Keenan, Ellen. Senior communications manager, Special Initiatives. Heritage Foundation. Email to FactCheck.org. 30 Sep 2024.

Kiely, Eugene, D’Angelo Gore and Robert Farley. “A Guide to Project 2025.” FactCheck.org. 10 Sep 2024.

Mann Michael. Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, Department of Earth & Environmental Science/Annenberg School for Communication. University of Pennsylvania. Emails to FactCheck.org. 30 Sep 2024.

Mufson, Steven, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis. “White House proposes steep budget cuts leading climate science agency.” Washington Post. 3 Mar 2017.

Project 2025. “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” Accessed 30 Sep 2024.

U.S. Department of Commerce. National Hurricane Center. Accessed 1 Oct 2024.

Wolfe, Elizabeth, et al. “Relief efforts continue after Hurricane Helene kills at least 180.” CNN. 2 Oct 2024.

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In recent remarks, Vice President Kamala Harris has cited several economic analyses, claiming they found her plan would “strengthen the economy” and former President Donald Trump’s plan would “weaken it.” But that’s not exactly what some of those reports said.

In a Sept. 19 campaign event with former talk show host Oprah Winfrey, Harris criticized Trump’s economic plans, saying that he wanted to give “another tax break for billionaires and the biggest corporations that would add $5 trillion to our deficit” and that he had proposed “what I call a Trump sales tax, which is basically he’s going to put a 20% tax on everyday necessities, that economists have estimated will cost the average American $4,000 more a year, which is why Goldman Sachs, which is why Moody’s, which is why Wharton School of Business, which is why 16 Nobel laureates have collectively determined after analyzing our plans, one, mine would strengthen the economy, his would weaken it. Two, that on his plan, he would actually blow up inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year.”

We’ve written before about Harris’ characterization of Trump’s plans. The $5 trillion figure is the estimated 10-year cost of extending all the tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed in December 2017, but those tax changes benefited people of all income groups — not only billionaires and big corporations. Harris’ reference to “a Trump sales tax” costing average Americans $4,000 a year is a high-end estimate from a liberal think tank about Trump’s plan for “universal baseline tariffs” on imports.

Harris again cited the Nobel laureates, Goldman Sachs and Moody’s in an interview that aired Sept. 25 on MSNBC, saying they found that “my plan would grow the economy, his would shrink the economy,” and the same day in a speech in Pittsburgh, she referred to “a survey of top economists by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago,” saying it “found that, by an overwhelming 70 to 3% margin, my plan would be better for keeping inflation low.”

Harris was mostly correct in her description of Moody’s Analytics, the Financial Times survey and the 16 Nobel laureates, except the latter commented on President Joe Biden’s economic policies, not Harris’ proposals since she became the Democratic presidential nominee. But she is wrong about the Wharton analysis and exaggerates what Goldman Sachs said.

We’ll explain what each economic group determined.

Penn Wharton Budget Model

In the campaign event with Winfrey, Harris cited the “Wharton School of Business.” She is referring to analyses performed by the Penn Wharton Budget Model of Harris’ and Trump’s tax and spending plans, and PWBM did not conclude that her plan “would strengthen the economy, his would weaken it,” as she said.

PWBM found that Harris’ plan would reduce the nation’s gross domestic product more than Trump’s, and would reduce workers’ wages more.

PWBM did conclude that Trump’s plan would add about twice as much to the nation’s debt, but PWBM warned that the debt added by both candidates’ plans would fall on “future generations who must finance almost the entirety of the tax decreases” each has proposed.

PWBM determined that under Harris’ tax and spending plan, “Relative to current law, GDP falls by 1.3 percent by 2034 and by 4 percent within 30 years (year 2054). Capital investment and working hours fall, thereby reducing wages by 0.8 percent in 2034 and by 3.3 percent in 2054.”

It also found that Harris’ plans would increase cumulative deficits by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years on a conventional basis and by $2 trillion on a dynamic basis. (Dynamic forecasts take into account the policies’ expected effects on economic activity.)

More generally, PWBM concluded: “Lower and middle-income households generally benefit from increased transfers and credits on a conventional basis, while higher-income households are worse off.”

PWBM’s analysis of Trump’s tax and spending plans concluded that his would cause even bigger deficits.

“We estimate that the Trump Campaign tax and spending proposals would increase primary deficits by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years on a conventional basis and by $4.1 trillion on a dynamic basis that includes economic feedback effects,” the analysis stated.

But it found that the Trump plan’s impact on the GDP, while still negative, was not as bad as Harris’.

PWBM concluded that while GDP would increase during the first part of the next decade under Trump’s plan, “GDP eventually falls relative to current law, falling by 0.4 percent in 2034 and by 2.1 percent in 30 years.” In addition, “After initially increasing, capital investment and working hours eventually fall, leaving average wages unchanged in 2034 and lower by 1.7 percent in 2054.”

“Low, middle, and high-income households in 2026 and 2034 all fare better under the campaign proposals on a conventional basis,” PWBM concluded.

The analyses of Harris’ and Trump’s plans did not include their call to eliminate the taxation of tips earned by service workers. Both campaigns would have to offer “a considerable number of additional details” in order to analyze their plans, PWBM said.

Similarly, PWBM did not include Trump’s proposal to impose across-the-board tariffs of between 10% to 20% on all imported goods. “Key implementation details” are missing from Trump’s plan, the PWBM analysis stated. “While new import taxes and tariffs could raise several trillion dollars in new revenue over the next decade, they could also lead to revenue losses due to potential retaliatory actions from other governments and other economic dynamics.”

Goldman Sachs

In her interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, Harris said analysts at Goldman Sachs, a global investment and wealth management firm, “said my plan would grow the economy” and Trump’s “would shrink the economy.”

In fact, the analysts found that the economy would continue to grow under both candidates. If Trump wins, the growth would be a bit smaller in Trump’s first year, but that “abates in 2026,” the report said. If Harris wins, there would be at best a “very slight boost to GDP growth” in the first two years, the report said, referring to the real GDP, which is adjusted for inflation.

The company’s chief executive officer suggested the difference in the economic impact between the two candidates isn’t significant.

“I think a lot more has been made of this than should be,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said in a Sept. 11 interview on CNBC, when he was asked about similar remarks that Harris made the previous night during the presidential debate.

The Harris campaign referred us to news articles about a Sept. 3 research note written by several Goldman Sachs research analysts, including Alec Phillips, the firm’s chief political economist. The Harris campaign did not provide us with a copy of the analysis, but we did obtain a copy of the 23-page report.

Here we will summarize the analysis, and what the company’s CEO said about it.

The researchers said they reviewed “likely changes to trade, immigration, and fiscal policy” by both candidates and estimated “the effects on inflation, labor force growth, GDP, and the deficit” under different election outcomes — a Republican sweep, a Democratic sweep or divided government.

For Trump, the analysis assumed that the former president will raise tariffs on Chinese goods by an average of 20 percentage points, and increase tariffs on auto imports from Mexico and the European Union. It also assumed Trump will reduce immigration and extend the expiring provisions of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, while discounting other Trump tax cuts as unlikely to pass Congress.

The analysts assumed that Harris, on the other hand, will not raise tariffs and immigration will slow but remain “above the pre-pandemic trend.” They also assumed that Harris would seek to extend some, but not all, of the 2017 tax cuts, as well as increase the child tax credit and propose a tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

What would be the net impact of these plans on the nation’s economic growth?

First, it’s important to note that the analysis includes a chart that shows Goldman Sachs estimates that the nation’s real GDP will increase by 2% or more in 2025, 2026 and 2027. The net effect of Trump’s immigration, trade and fiscal policies would slightly reduce that growth in 2025, the report said.

“We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse, resulting in a peak hit to GDP growth of -0.5pp in 2025H2 that abates in 2026,” the report said.

In short, real GDP would continue to grow, but at 0.5 percentage point less than it otherwise would in the second half of 2025.

As for a Harris victory, the analysts at Goldman Sachs said: “If Democrats sweep, new spending and expanded middle-income tax credits would slightly more than offset lower investment due to higher corporate tax rates, resulting in a very slight boost to GDP growth on average over 2025-2026. If Harris wins with divided government, the effects of policy changes would be small and neutral on net.”

In the CNBC interview, Solomon was asked about Harris’ use of his company’s report during the debate. Harris said, “What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump’s plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy.”

“I think a lot more has been made of this than should be,” Solomon said. “What the report did is it looked at a handful of policy issues that have been put out by both sides, and it tried to model their impact on GDP growth. The reason I say a bigger deal has been made of it is what it showed is the difference between the sets of policies that they put forward was about two-tenths of 1%, OK? So [the] economy grows, OK, if you took these particular sets of policies they looked at.”

Moody’s Analytics

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has said that if Harris and Trump were able to get all their policies enacted, the economy would thrive more under a Harris administration.

“Assuming Harris and Trump are able to fully implement the policies they have proposed when they take office, the economy will perform better under Harris than under Trump in their terms,” Zandi told Newsweek in a Sept. 20 article. “That is, real economic growth will be stronger, inflation and interest rates lower and budget deficits and debt lower under Harris’ policies than under Trump’s policies,” he said.

However, a Moody’s Analytics report published in early August said that it’s most likely if Harris wins the election, she will have to deal with a divided Congress – making it difficult to execute her full agenda, which Moody’s assumed would be similar to what was in the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2025. But that scenario would still work out better for the economy than if Trump becomes president with a Republican-controlled Congress, the second likeliest outcome, the analysis said.

Even with a split Congress, Moody’s economists projected that Harris’ proposals would lead to average annual economic growth of 2.1% from 2024 to 2028. The economy would still grow under Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress – contrary to Harris’ suggestion in the MSNBC interview that the economy would “shrink” – but the increase would occur at a slower average rate of 1.3% annually.

Moody’s also said that “under the Republican sweep scenario,” consumer price inflation increases from 3% in 2024 to 3.5% in 2025, “fueled by the higher tariffs, outflow of foreign immigrants, the resulting tighter labor market and more quickly rising labor costs, and tax-cut-fueled fiscal stimulus.” Real incomes and consumer and business sentiment would be weighed down by the higher inflation and interest rates, starting a recession by the middle of 2025, the analysis said, as Harris indicated in her remarks about Trump’s plans.

“While the economy recovers beginning in mid-2026,” the analysis said, “employment is still 3.2 million jobs lower and the unemployment rate is nearly half a percentage point higher by the end of Trump’s term” than it would be at the end of a four-year Harris term.

On the other hand, under a Harris presidency with Republicans running the Senate, the annual rate of inflation would decline to 2.4% in 2025, and interest rates would fall to about 3% before the start of 2027. Annual deficits also would be lower under Harris and a divided Congress, Moody’s said, as would the ratio of debt to GDP.

Notably, Moody’s said that a “lack of transparency and specificity” made it difficult to analyze the macroeconomic impact of Trump’s policies, and a wide range of proposals by the Biden-Harris administration complicated the analysis of potential Harris policies.

Financial Times/Chicago Booth Survey

In Pittsburgh, Harris correctly cited a survey by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “A survey of top economists by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago found that, by an overwhelming 70 to 3% margin, my plan would be better for keeping inflation low,” she said.

The survey, which the Financial Times wrote about on Sept. 14, asked 37 economists: “If the Harris or Trump economic platforms were to be enacted, which do you think would be more inflationary in the medium term?” In response, 70% said Trump’s plans would be more inflationary; 27% said that there would be “no material difference in their inflationary consequences,” and 3% said Harris’ plans would be more inflationary.

There was a similar response to the question about federal deficits: 70% said Trump’s plans would lead to larger deficits; 19% said there would be “no material difference,” and 11% said Harris’ plans would “produce larger federal budget deficits in the medium term.”

Those two questions were the only ones in the survey that asked about the presidential candidates.

Nobel Laureates

Harris referred to “16 Nobel laureates” in the event with Winfrey and other events. Those Nobel Prize-winning economists commented on Biden’s record in office, not future plans by Harris. But they did praise the Biden administration, while saying they were “deeply concerned about the risks of a second Trump administration for the U.S. economy.”

The 16 economists wrote a letter in June, when Biden was still running for reelection, saying: “While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump’s. In his first four years as President, Joe Biden signed into law major investments in the U.S. economy, including in infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and climate. Together, these investments are likely to increase productivity and economic growth while lowering long-term inflationary pressures and facilitating the clean energy transition. … An additional four years of Joe Biden’s presidency would allow him to continue supporting an inclusive U.S. economic recovery.”

On Trump’s plans, the letter said: “Nonpartisan researchers, including at Evercore, Allianz, Oxford Economics, and the Peterson Institute, predict that if Donald Trump successfully enacts his agenda, it will increase inflation. … We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy.”

As vice president, Harris clearly supports the actions of the Biden administration and many of the same economic policies as the president, but the Nobel laureates didn’t analyze her plan, as she said.

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Vice President Kamala Harris has said that she will not attempt to ban fracking if elected president, a reversal of a position that she took during her 2020 presidential campaign. But a TV ad from Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick claims that Harris “would make” hundreds of thousands of fracking-dependent jobs in Pennsylvania “disappear.”

Even if Harris wanted to ban fracking, which she now says she doesn’t, she alone would only be able to do so on federal land, where presidents have the authority to restrict drilling for oil and natural gas, experts told us. A ban on state or private land, where the vast majority of oil and natural gas production in the country takes place, would require an act of Congress.

It’s also questionable that more than 300,000 jobs in Pennsylvania “depend on fracking,” as the ad claims. That estimate of indirect and induced jobs attached to the state’s wider oil and natural gas industry comes from a 2023 report commissioned by an industry trade association. Others say the estimate is inflated.

The McCormick ad, released in tandem with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, began airing across the Keystone State on Sept. 17, according to the ad tracking service AdImpact. The ad starts with a nearly 5-year-old video of Harris talking about fracking, known formally as hydraulic fracturing.

“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris says in the clip, which was her response in a 2019 climate town hall to a question about a potential fracking prohibition.

The ad’s narrator then goes on to say: “Harris would make these Pennsylvania jobs disappear. But that’s not all. Three hundred thousand Pennsylvania jobs that depend on fracking would also disappear.” After that, McCormick appears in the ad and says that means “truck drivers, hard-working people like mechanics, even bartenders,” would be out of work.

McCormick then asks, “And what’s Bob Casey say about Kamala?” That’s followed by a clip of Sen. Casey of Pennsylvania, McCormick’s Democratic opponent, saying in a July MSNBC interview that Harris is “prepared right now to do this job.” At the end of the ad, the Republican businessman calls Casey and Harris “too weak.”

To be clear, Casey is against banning fracking, and Harris now says she is, too.

“As president, I will not ban fracking,” Harris responded when asked in an Aug. 29 CNN interview if she still wanted to ban the procedure that uses water, sand or chemicals to extract oil and natural gas from underground rock formations. In that interview, Harris said her position changed when she realized that it is possible to achieve certain climate goals “without banning fracking” — a drilling process that can negatively impact the environment, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Harris reiterated her promise not to ban fracking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate, in which her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, claimed — as he often has — that Harris “will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania” if she becomes president.

“My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil,” Harris said, after noting that she voted for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Among other things, that law requires the Department of Interior to make at least some federal land and offshore waters available for leasing by oil and gas companies to do drilling.

Furthermore, no president can unilaterally ban all fracking, experts told us.

“The President would only be able to truly ban fracking on federal lands, where it can fully control land and resource use,” Jennifer Baka, an associate professor of geography at Penn State University, said in an email to us. “On state and private lands, where most fracking occurs, fracking is regulated by the states through their authority to govern land and resource use.”

Presidents could try to further limit fracking through executive actions or regulations, but such measures would have to survive expected legal challenges and also could be overturned by a future president. “It would require an act of Congress to ban it nationwide,” said Timothy W. Kelsey, a professor of agricultural economics at Penn State, in an email to us.

In recent years, Congress has failed to pass bills eliminating fracking nationwide.

Fracking Jobs in Pennsylvania

Fracking has helped produce record amounts of crude oil and natural gas in the U.S., which is currently the world leader in production of both energy sources. The technology also has contributed to Pennsylvania becoming the second-largest producer of natural gas behind Texas.

The ad’s narrator says that a ban would mean Pennsylvania fracking jobs would no longer exist, and “300,000 Pennsylvania jobs that depend on fracking also would disappear.” But the number of jobs in Pennsylvania that rely on fracking is debatable.

Text on screen in the ad says, “Harris Fracking Ban 330,640 lost jobs,” although no source is cited. Supporting documentation that an NRSC spokesperson provided to FactCheck.org shows the figure comes from a 2023 report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and natural gas trade association.

The report, produced by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that there were 423,700 jobs tied to Pennsylvania’s oil and natural gas industry in 2021, including 93,060 direct jobs, 143,530 indirect jobs at businesses within the industry’s supply chain and 187,110 induced jobs from the spending of wages made by people employed directly or indirectly in the industry. (The indirect and induced jobs figures add up to 330,640.)

So, the ad’s figure for fracking-dependent jobs at risk if a total ban were implemented is an estimate of the economic impact for the broader oil and gas industry. It’s also an overestimate, according to Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher for the Ohio River Valley Institute, a think tank that focuses on clean energy policy and economics.

In an August 2023 blog post, he argued that the estimate of indirect and induced jobs in the API report was derived using “exaggerated multipliers” and “double counting.” In an email to us, O’Leary — using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the partially labor union-funded Economic Policy Institute — estimated that there were 74,145 fracking-related jobs in Pennsylvania in 2023, of which 18,636 were direct jobs and 55,509 were indirect and induced jobs.

His estimate was based on employment in five BLS categories that could “reasonably be associated with the fracking industry,” he said, including oil and gas extraction, drilling for oil and gas, support services for oil and gas, oil and gas pipeline construction, and pipeline transportation. Meanwhile, the API’s report mostly relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and included additional employment sectors.

O’Leary said many jobs that API counted, such as clerks at gas stations with and without convenience stores, are “not specifically associated with fracking.”

Kelsey also said in an email to us that the API figure “seems pretty high” compared with jobs estimates from studies done years ago when “natural gas development was much more robust in PA than it has been for the past few years.”

As for state government data, the 2022 Pennsylvania Energy Employment Report, produced for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Energy Programs Office by the consulting firm BW Research Partnership, said that in 2021 there were a combined 40,684 petroleum and natural gas jobs in the state, including jobs across sectors for fuel extraction and mining, power line transmission and wholesale trade and distribution, fuel storage, and electricity generation. The report did not mention fracking, explicitly.

However, Kelsey noted that state employment figures do not account for indirect and induced jobs, and thus are “almost always less than the total economic impact of a sector.”

So, the number of jobs in Pennsylvania that “depend on fracking” may be lower than the ad claims, but it also may be higher than state data suggest.

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Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

Quick Take

The arrest of Ryan Wesley Routh in an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has sparked unfounded claims online that Routh had “inside” knowledge of Trump’s plans. Public reports about Trump’s schedule indicated his likely whereabouts, and evidence shows Routh staked out the site for about 12 hours.

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Full Story

Former President Donald Trump was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, when authorities fired shots at Ryan Wesley Routh, who is now under investigation for an apparent assassination attempt on Trump’s life.

Routh, 58, was apprehended after a Secret Service agent spotted what appeared to be a rifle poking out of shrubbery several hundred yards from where Trump was playing. The agent discharged his firearm when he saw the rifle but, the gunman fled the scene in a sport utility vehicle. He was later captured by local sheriffs’ officers, according to the criminal complaint.

Agents who searched the area on the golf course perimeter recovered a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style semiautomatic rifle with a scope and a black plastic bag containing food. Routh was charged with possessing a firearm by a convicted felon and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number, the criminal complaint said.

The FBI is leading the ongoing investigation into the incident, and more charges could be filed.

The former president was unharmed, and he later posted on social media, thanking the Secret Service and law enforcement for their work. He wrote, “It was certainly an interesting day!”

“The president wasn’t even really supposed to go there,” Ronald L. Rowe Jr., acting director of the Secret Service, said at a news conference on Sept. 16, referring to the golf course. “It was not on his official schedule.”

This marked the apparent second assassination attempt on Trump in recent months. The first occurred on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman gained a clear sight line to fire several shots, one of which grazed Trump’s ear. The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was killed by Secret Service agents at the scene. We’ve previously written about misinformation that followed the shooting, in which one rally attendee was killed and two others were wounded.

The recent incident in Florida has fueled unfounded claims that Routh must have had inside knowledge of Trump’s whereabouts and schedule. 

A Sept. 16 post on Threads read, “How does someone who’s from North Carolina and lives in Hawaii know where to be in Florida, at the exact location, at the exact golf course, where 45 made a last minute decision to play golf?”

Conservative commentator Graham Allen posted a video on Instagram on Sept. 16 saying, “How did the shooter know the location of the President when it was a NON public/LAST minute decision?! INSIDE JOB!!!!”

However, there is no evidence to support the claims that Routh had “inside” information about Trump. Deducing where Trump would be on Sept. 15, a Sunday, was not difficult, even without notice on an official schedule.

On Sept. 12, Trump posted on X about a planned livestreaming event from his residence and golf club at Mar-a-Lago at 8 p.m. on Sept. 16 to introduce the crypto platform World Liberty Financial. World Liberty Financial also publicized Trump’s involvement in the livestream, making his likely location public knowledge.

There are also online accounts that track the movement of Trump’s planes. This kind of public tracking adds to the available information about Trump’s location and activities.

In addition, news reports have noted that Trump frequently plays golf at his course when he’s in Florida. A BBC article from West Palm Beach reported, “Residents say Trump spends almost every Sunday at the West Palm Beach golf club when he is not on the campaign trail.”

The criminal complaint against Routh suggests that he arrived at the tree-lined fence of the golf course’s southern perimeter at 1:59 a.m. on Sept. 15, based on the location data from his cell phone. 

“Agents requested T-Mobile, on an emergency basis, to provide law enforcement with information pertaining to Routh’s mobile phone usage. Those records indicated that Routh’s mobile phone was located in the vicinity of the area along the tree line described above from approximately 1:59 am until approximately 1:31 pm on September 15,” the complaint says. Routh apparently didn’t know the exact time Trump would be there since he staked out the golf course for nearly 12 hours.

The Secret Service has had concerns about Trump’s vulnerability while golfing, particularly at his own clubs, because they are near public roads. According to the Washington Post, Secret Service agents presented Trump with photos taken by news photographers with long-range lenses to capture images of Trump golfing at his club in Sterling, Virginia. Officials told Trump that if photographers could get clear shots of the president, potential gunmen could do the same.

“He selects locations to golf — his own clubs — that are particularly difficult to secure. And then he follows a highly predictable routine on any given weekend,” the Post reported.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.

Sources

Associated Press. ”LIVE: Secret Service press conference after Trump apparent assassination attempt.” YouTube. 16 Sep 2024.

FactCheck.org. “Misinformation Swirls After Attempted Assassination.” 19 Jul 2024.

FBI. Press release. “Update on the FBI investigation of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.” 15 Jul 2024.

Halpert, Madeline. “Gunman lurked for hours before Trump’s last-minute game of golf.” BBC News. 16 Sep 2024.

Herb, Jeremy. “Inside the fateful 12 hours of an apparent assassination attempt outside the Trump International Golf Club.” CNN. 17 Sep 2024.

Kelly, Kate, Eileen Sullivan and Luke Broadwater. “Secret Service Scrambled After Trump’s Short Notice on Golf Outing.” New York Times. 17 Sep 2024.

Leonnig, Carol D., Josh Dawsey and Isaac Stanley-Becker. “Trump’s golf outings have long concerned Secret Service.” Washington Post. 16 Sep 2024.

Trump Jet (Tracking). bsky.app/profile/trumpjet.grndcntrl.net. Accessed 19 Sep 2024.

United States District Court, Southern District of Florida. Criminal Cover Sheet. “United States of America vs. Ryan Wesley Routh.” 15 Sep 2024.

WLFI (@worldlibertyfi). “Join us live from Mar-A-Lago on September 16 at 8 pm EST with Donald J. Trump! Tune in to hear our vision for making finance great again.” X. 12 Sep 2024.

Former President Donald Trump created a stir when he made the baseless claim in a Sept. 10 presidential debate that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the pets” of their new neighbors — repeating a rumor that his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, circulated on social media one day earlier.

Now, Vance has cherry-picked data to make the unfounded claim that immigrants are responsible for an 81% increase in the city’s murders.

On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Vance was asked about his Sept. 9 post on X that immigrants are abducting and eating pets in Springfield. Vance deflected the question by talking about the “terrible problems caused by [Vice President] Kamala Harris’ open border in Springfield.”

“Thanks to her open border, murders are up 81% in Springfield, Ohio,” Vance claimed in the Sept. 15 interview.

The Springfield Police Division provided us crime data for the last 10 years, dating to 2014, that show there were nine murders in 2023. That’s a 50% increase from the six murders in 2022, and an 80% increase from 2021 — but one fewer than the 10 murders in 2020, when Trump was president. The number of murders in 2023 was equal to or lower than the number of murders in three of the four years that Trump was president, despite the apparent increase in the city’s population. (See the chart below.)

As for the number of murders in 2024, a city police official told us that there have been four to date — which puts the city on track for fewer murders than last year, and about the same as 2022. (We found news accounts of three reported murders in the city. The police official said the fourth was a shooting over this past weekend that resulted in one death.)

We also could find no evidence to support Vance’s claim that immigrants are responsible for committing murders. The city does not keep track of the ethnicity of those accused of committing crimes other than the two broad categories of Hispanic and non-Hispanic, a police official told us. None of the news reports about the murders committed in 2024 mentions the ethnicity of the suspected murderer.

In an FAQ on the city’s immigrant population, the city addressed concerns about Haitians being responsible for more crime. “Haitians are more likely to be the victims of crime than they are to be the perpetrators in our community. Clark County jail data shows there are 199 inmates in our county jail this week. Two of them are Haitian. That’s 1% (as of Sept. 8),” the city website says.

We asked the Trump campaign about Vance’s claim, but we did not get a response.

Haitian Population in Springfield

Springfield has become a focal point in the national debate over immigration because large numbers of Haitians who were granted legal status in the United States have settled in the city over the last several years.

In his CBS News interview and at a Sept. 18 rally in North Carolina, Vance said that there are 20,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield. In a Sept. 18 rally in Long Island, Trump boosted the figure, saying that there was “no crime” in the city before claiming that “32,000 illegal immigrants” came into town “in a period of a few weeks.” But Mayor Rob Rue put the city’s total immigrant population at between 12,000 and 15,000, which is also on the city’s FAQ page.

“We have realistically been saying 12 to 15,000 immigrants is what we’ve, what we have counted through the health department and other agencies that we work with,” Rue said in a Sept. 10 press conference.

The Census Bureau estimates the city’s total population at 58,662 people, as of 2020.

The influx of immigrants helped solve a labor shortage, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, but also has strained the city’s services. Earlier this month, Gov. Mike DeWine announced that the state would provide state troopers to help with traffic control and enforcement in Springfield and $2.5 million to help the city expand primary health care for its residents.

The help with traffic enforcement came a little more than a year after an 11-year-old boy died in an accident last August when a Haitian driver hit a school bus. The driver, Hermanio Joseph, was sentenced to nine to 13 years in prison on charges of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide.

The boy’s death had become a talking point for Trump and Vance in their campaign against Harris.

In a Sept. 9 social media post, the Trump campaign said, “REMEMBER: 11-year-old Aiden Clark was killed on his way to school by a Haitian migrant that Kamala Harris let into the country in Springfield, Ohio.” A day later, Vance posted on X that the boy had been “murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”

At a city commissioners’ meeting on Sept. 10, the boy’s father appealed to Vance and others to stop using his son’s name as a “political tool.” That same night, Trump said during the presidential debate: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” A day earlier, Vance had posted on X: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

But, as we wrote, Springfield police said in a statement that “there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Rue also told CNN that there were “no verifiable” reports of such activity.

Likewise, Vance’s claim that “murders are up 81% in Springfield” because of immigrants is unsupported by the facts.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.