Category: Fact Check

SciCheck Digest

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Economic Forum proposed an initiative to reform economic and social systems, called the “Great Reset.” But a 2020 video of WEF’s Nicole Schwab discussing this initiative never showed her saying that “permanent climate lockdowns” were coming, contrary to claims in a widely shared article.

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The World Economic Forum is a Switzerland-based nonprofit organization that aims to foster collaboration between public and private entities. It is known for its annual meeting in Davos, usually organized around a theme, which was “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” this year and “Working Together, Restoring Trust” last year.

In June 2020, the WEF announced the launch of an initiative called the “Great Reset,” which would be the theme of its 2021 annual meeting. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the potential of businesses and individuals to “abandon practices long claimed to be essential,” WEF founder Klaus Schwab wrote.

The initiative had a variety of goals — including environmental ones as well as ones aimed at improving health, addressing social challenges and increasing economic equity. Contrary to various conspiracy theories, the Great Reset was not intended to help create a global totalitarian government, nor get rid of capitalism.

Most recently, an article rapidly spreading on social media has fabricated a quote from Nicole Schwab, who is co-head of Nature-Based Solutions and a member of the executive committee at WEF. She is also Klaus Schwab’s daughter. The article, from the People’s Voice, follows a familiar playbook for the website, which previously has made up quotes and published false headlines.

The article headline reads: “Klaus Schwab’s Daughter: ‘Permanent Climate Lockdowns Coming – Whether You Like It or Not.’” Except there is no record of Nicole Schwab saying this. A WEF spokesperson told us via email that the People’s Voice article is “fake news.” 

The People’s Voice article says Nicole Schwab “made the admission” in a “newly unearthed video,” which was recorded at a June 2020 event and published at least two years ago. But Schwab never says anything about a climate lockdown. Instead, she speaks about the potential that “things can shift very rapidly when we put our minds to it and when we feel the immediate emergency to our livelihoods.” She also references the Great Reset and urges people to take the pandemic as an opportunity for change that puts “nature at the core of the economy.”

Further, “climate lockdowns” are not part of the Great Reset, a WEF spokesperson told the Associated Press.

The narrative that a “climate lockdown” was coming dates back to 2020, according to a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Some early articles and tweets cited calls to take inspiration from the pandemic response to combat climate change as evidence that activists hoped for a “climate lockdown.”

Exactly what these “climate lockdown” restrictions are supposed to entail is not clear. The phrase has been tied to warnings of restrictions on things ranging from freedom of movement to red meat consumption. 

Some have said that the lockdown does not have to be literal. “Even without government stay-at-home orders, there are a lot of ways for the left to effectively lock you down,” Laura Ingraham said in 2021 on Fox News, naming changes affecting the availability of fuel and gas-powered cars.

The People’s Voice article quotes another article from Slay News, which falsely claims that Nicole Schwab said COVID-19 lockdowns were a precursor to climate lockdowns. The article compares policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions to COVID-19-related restrictions.

Like many environmental initiatives, the Great Reset concept included strategies to reduce carbon emissions, such as ending government subsidies for fossil fuel. However, the only specific environmental effort Nicole Schwab mentions in the 2020 video is “regenerative agriculture,” meant to improve soil health.

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Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.

Sources

“Our Mission.” World Economic Forum website. Accessed 4 Aug 2023.

“World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023, Davos.” World Economic Forum website. Accessed 4 Aug 2023.

“World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Rescheduled to 22-26 May.” World Economic Forum press release. Accessed 21 Jan 2022.

Schwab, Klaus. “Now Is the Time for a ‘Great Reset.’” World Economic Forum website. 3 Jun 2020.

“The Great Reset: Hello and Welcome.” World Economic Forum website. Internet Archive. Archived 30 Jun 2020.

Kim, Noah Y. “No Evidence That ‘Leaked’ Email from a Canadian Politician Is Authentic.” PolitiFact. 29 Aug 2021.

Romero, Luiz. “The Great Reset Is Not a Conspiracy to Force Changes in Economic Systems.” PolitiFact. 11 Oct 2022.

Adl-Tabatabai, Sean. “Klaus Schwab’s Daughter: ‘Permanent Climate Lockdowns Coming – Whether You Like It or Not.’” The People’s Voice. 30 Jul 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “Posts Share Fake Chelsea Clinton Quote About Global Childhood Vaccination Effort.” FactCheck.org. 10 May 2023.

Yandell, Kate. “Ventilators Save Lives, Did Not Cause ‘Nearly All’ COVID-19 Deaths.” FactCheck.org. 1 Jun 2023.

TheLibertyDaily. “Daughter of Klaus Schwab Admits Covid Tyranny Was a Precursor to Coming Climate Lockdowns.” Rumble. 27 Jul 2023.

“The Urgency of a Global Green Transition – with Nicole Schwab.” InTent. Accessed 4 Aug 2023.

WEF spokesperson. Email to FactCheck.org. 2 Aug 2023.

Phan, Karena. “Daughter of WEF Founder Did Not Warn That Permanent Climate Lockdowns Are Coming.” AP News. 2 Aug 2023.

Maharasingam-Shah, Eisha and Pierre Vaux. “‘Climate Lockdown’ and the Culture Wars: How COVID-19 sparked a new narrative against climate action.” Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 2021.

“UK Guardian Activists Hope Coronavirus Lockdown Becomes Climate Lockdown: ‘What Was Once Impossible (Socialist, Reckless) Now Turns out Not to Be, at All.’” Climate Depot. 13 Apr 2020.

Fox News. “Tucker: Brace Yourselves, Climate Lockdowns Are Coming.” YouTube. 22 Jun 2021.

“‘The Ingraham Angle’ on Climate Lockdowns.” Fox News. 19 May 2021.

Bergman, Frank. “Klaus Schwab’s Daughter: Covid Was Precursor to Coming ‘Climate Lockdowns.’” Slay News. 29 Jul 2023.

Masterson, Victoria. “What Is Regenerative Agriculture?” World Economic Forum website. 11 Oct 2022.

Former President Donald Trump and one of his attorneys have invoked a First Amendment defense in response to the federal indictment charging Trump with trying to “subvert the legitimate election results.” But legal experts note Trump’s speech isn’t constitutionally protected if he engaged in a criminal conspiracy, as the indictment alleges.

We’ve said it before — politicians can legally make false claims, or even lie to the American public. There’s no law against it. But the “First Amendment does not protect speech in furtherance of a crime. The Supreme Court has made that clear over and over,” Leslie Kendrick, a law professor and director of the Center for the First Amendment at the University of Virginia, told us in an email. “More importantly, every criminal docket in America demonstrates it every day. Soliciting a crime, planning a crime, and committing fraud are all activities that are made of words that subject people to criminal penalties all the time.”

The Department of Justice filed a grand jury indictment against Trump on Aug. 1 concerning his attempts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election, as we’ve explained. The four counts in the indictment are: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

The indictment charges that after the election, Trump used “the pretext of baseless fraud claims” to pressure officials in several states, which Joe Biden won, to dismiss the “legitimate electors,” who would submit the electoral votes of their states for Biden, and substitute them with a slate of “illegitimate electors” who would switch the electoral votes to Trump — actions that would “disenfranchise millions of voters.” The conspiracy, the indictment says, also involved pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to take “fraudulent actions” during the counting of the electoral votes in Congress on Jan. 6.

In one Truth Social post on Aug. 3 in response to the charges, Trump said: “The Radical Left wants to Criminalize Free Speech!” He also posted quotes from other Republicans making the same argument.

One of Trump’s attorneys, John Lauro, has made that “free speech” defense in several media interviews. He told CNN on Aug. 1 that “this is an attack on free speech, and political advocacy. And there’s nothing that’s more protected, under the First Amendment, than political speech.”

Lauro continued: “So, at the end, our defense is going to be focusing on the fact that what we have now is an administration that has criminalized the free speech, and advocacy, of a prior administration, during the time that there is a political election going on.”

The indictment acknowledges that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” But it charges that Trump did more than simply make false claims — he “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies.”

Bill Barr, a former attorney general during the Trump administration, said in an interview with CNN that he didn’t think the First Amendment defense for Trump was “a valid argument, because, as the indictment says, they’re not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen, when he knew better. But that does not protect you, from entering into a conspiracy. All conspiracies involve speech. And all fraud involves speech. So, free speech doesn’t give you the right, to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”

Several legal experts told us the same thing. We can’t predict what will happen in court, where Trump’s legal arguments ultimately will be tested. But there isn’t a blanket protection on speech when used to plan or execute a crime.

No Protection for Speech in Service of a Crime

“Courts are and should be very careful about imposing any kind of legal liability for political speech,” Gregory Magarian, a law professor at the Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in free speech and constitutional law, told us in a phone interview. But the indictment includes “very conventional” charges — conspiracy and obstruction charges. There’s “no First Amendment question about the viability in general of those legal provisions.”

Magarian said the First Amendment argument was “a phantom argument,” against a charge that isn’t in the indictment — namely, inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “That would be a hard First Amendment problem.”

Much of the evidence for the charges in the indictment, Magarian said, “takes the form of speech of one kind or another.” For instance, the indictment alleges Trump and his co-conspirators organized “fraudulent slates” of electors in several states and had them submit “false certifications” to Congress.

“It’s all speech, but in a lot of criminal cases speech is always the form that the evidence takes,” Magarian said. This would be evidence that the conspiracy formed or there was corrupt intent.

As an example of what’s protected free speech and what’s not, Magarian said the conversation he was having with FactCheck.org was protected speech — the government couldn’t prosecute us for talking. But that protection is breached if the speech “is in service … of a criminal act or enterprise,” like a conspiracy.

Similarly, Kendrick said, “Attempting to persuade other people to engage in fraud or illegality can also be illegal, regardless of the fact that the attempt is composed of language.” For instance, “[p]assing off a stolen car as legitimate to a buyer amounts to fraud. Instructing others, ‘Act like these cars were not stolen,’ could amount to solicitation or conspiracy. It doesn’t matter that these crimes are made of words. They are still crimes—crimes that regular people get convicted of every day.”

“Trump, as I understand it, is charged with a series of conspiracies, in which he agreed with and encouraged others to take illegal actions to accomplish a series of unlawful ends,” Seth Kreimer, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who teaches constitutional law and litigation, told us in an email. “It is settled law that a specific agreement to commit a crime, though accomplished by means of words is not protected ‘freedom of speech.’”

Kreimer cited several Supreme Court cases that illustrated this. In United States v. Williams in 2008, for instance, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Many long established criminal proscriptions—such as laws against conspiracy, incitement, and solicitation—criminalize speech (commercial or not) that is intended to induce or commence illegal activities. … Offers to provide or requests to obtain unlawful material, whether as part of a commercial exchange or not, are similarly undeserving of First Amendment protection.”

Another case — United States v. Mosley, a 1915 case about suppressing people’s right to vote — concerned county election board officials in Oklahoma who, it was alleged, “agreed that, irrespective of the precinct returns being lawful and regular, they would omit them from their count and from their returns to the state election board,” the Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, said. The two defendants also held “a secret meeting … for the purpose of carrying it out.”

The court held that a conspiracy to block votes from being counted in a federal election “was a violation of 18 USC Section 241, which is one of the statutes under which Mr. Trump has been charged,” Kreimer explained. “No one imagined that the defendants could claim that the conspiracy was protected by the First Amendment because their ‘agreements’ and ‘secret meeting’ involved speech.”

Nadine Strossen, a professor of law emerita at New York Law School and senior fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, known as FIRE, referred us to a statement on the Trump indictment from that group. FIRE said it is “an unapologetic, nonpartisan defender of the right to free expression” that “vigorously opposes expanded application of criminal statutes to increase potential liability for speech protected by the First Amendment.” Its statement said that exceptions to First Amendment protection — for speech related to criminal acts — “must remain narrow and well-defined in our laws and jurisprudence.”

But the statement noted the indictment charges that Trump went beyond merely making political claims and took actions. The indictment says he used “knowingly false claims of election fraud” to try to convince others, including the vice president, “to subvert the legitimate election results” or “fraudulently alter” them.

Lauro, Trump’s attorney, has said that Trump believed his false claims were actually true. “We’re entitled to present our side of the story, which is, Mr. Trump, absolutely, unconditionally believed that he won the election,” Lauro told PBS. “He took steps to advocate for that position. And that’s all protected speech.”

Strossen noted, “Intent is often an essential element of any category of constitutionally unprotected speech … as is famously true for defamation as well.”

But Magarian said the First Amendment defense doesn’t matter if the prosecution can’t make the case that Trump had intent to commit these crimes. At that point, the First Amendment “is not what’s getting him off the hook legally.”

As we said, it remains to be seen how the case will play out in a court of law.

“It will be up to a jury, in its role as factfinder, to decide whether former President Trump violated federal law,” the FIRE statement said. “To convict, a jury must hold DOJ to its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that former President Trump (1) knew his election fraud claims were false but repeated them anyway — “corruptly” — in an attempt to (2) have others ignore their legal duties in order to (3) prevent certification of the electoral vote. The First Amendment’s bar against criminalizing protected speech demands nothing less.”

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More coverage:
Q&A on Trump’s Jan. 6 Indictment

Indictment Details Trump’s Attempt to Overturn Swing State Election Outcomes

What Trump Asked of Pence

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A 2.17-minute clip is viral on social media with the claim that the Meitei woman featured in the video is questioning the Opposition MPs’ inaction over Manipur. It is claimed that the woman speaking in the video is slamming them for bringing up the matter of the ongoing unrest in Manipur only after the video of two Kuki women being paraded naked and molested had gone viral. The woman can also be seen bringing up the matter of the 80-year-old Meitei woman who was burned to death in her house. The opposition MPs visited Manipur last week to assess the situation in the violence-stricken state.

Twitter Blue user BhikuMhatre (@MumbaichaDon) shared the video on August 1 with the above claim. The tweet has received over 2 lakh 96,000 views and has been retweeted over 4,000 times. (Archive)

Hats off to this brave #Meitei Sister who ripped apart Opposition MPs’ Picnic in #Manipur

🔸Why did you come here without speaking in #Parliament?
🔸Why did’t you raise your voice for burning a Meitei woman to death at her home by Kukis?
🔸 Meiteis women here, are r@ ped &… pic.twitter.com/pICjWszsuh

— BhikuMhatre (@MumbaichaDon) August 1, 2023

Right Wing influencer Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) shared the video and stated that the Manipur woman had given ‘a piece of her mind’ to the MPs who were indulging in ‘vulture tourism’. His tweet was retweeted over 3,800 times. (Archive)

Listen to this Manipuri woman who is giving a piece of her mind to Opposition MPs who went there for vulture tourism

pic.twitter.com/cYCQP5WkiL

— Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) August 1, 2023

BJP state general secretary for Tripura Amit Rakshit 🇮🇳 (@amitrakshitbjp) also tweeted the clip with the same caption. (Archive)

Other users such as @RajeswariAiyer, @Indumakalktchi, @ashok777_kalam, @p_nikumar and @OsintUpdates also shared the same clip with a similar claim. Several of them claim that the woman told the MPs that the Modiji/the Modi government was doing everything for them.

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Fact Check

A Google search with relevant keywords led us to a tweet by India Today that carried a longer version of the viral clip. The viral part begins at the 3:07 mark of the video shared by India Today.

#Manipur continues to be on edge; A Meitei woman narrates her ordeal in front of the opposition MPs. This is what she has to say #ManipurViolence #INDIA #Meitei #ReporterDiary (@JournoAshutosh) pic.twitter.com/e77ovDnVMu

— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) July 31, 2023

In the video, the woman is speaking to Opposition MPs including DMK’s Kanimozhi, leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, TMC’s Sushmita Dev.

Here is a transcription of what the woman says:

“Due to the actions taken by the state government, like the implementation of NRC and illegal immigrants to be defected since they were staying in reserved forest areas… More than 15,400 acres of land in Manipur were used for poppy plantations with this the Kuki militants are strongly against Meitei. But why? Why the Meitei? What is our fault here? Why not ask the government? Why not stand against the government? But why burn our houses and destroy our future? We are youth. We (the Meitei community) have been staying in these houses with emotions for more than 80,000 years. Churachandpur was taken from the king, Maharaja Churachand during the reign of 1891 to 1941. Churachandpur got its name from Churachand Maharaj. The majority in Churachandpur were Meiteis but so far during our stay here we have never tried to carry out such violence against them. But now all of a sudden due to the illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Burmese they are uniting together and making us homeless. We have been residing there for more than a thousand years during our forefathers and our ancestors. Now, it’s like we don’t belong here.”

At this point, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury intervenes. Then, the woman continues, breaking down:

“We are witnessing the burning of our houses, we are so helpless. No state force was there to protect us, we could’ve been dead.”

Here, TMC MP Sushmita Dev asks the woman about the role of the police. The woman continues:

“(The role of the police) is to protect the citizens but they were like run for your lives we are not coming to save you, we are scared. No effective actions were taken by the government, by the central government. Why not take this issue up in the Parliament earlier? But why bring it up only after the viral video? Why? And with the concern of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, why did you bring up that viral video only…. while prior to that an old woman, who was a wife of a freedom fighter, from Sero was burned alive in her home. Why not bring up that issue? If they are totally against crimes against women, why not bring up that? Not just that, on the 4th of May and 5th of May, most of the victims and villagers are stuck in Churachandpur. There are rape victims, Meitei women were being raped. Why didn’t we stand up? We are scared for our future because we are women we want to save our future…. If you want the evidence, carry out medical tests on each and every woman…. Have the Meitei ever started burning the houses of the Kukis? Have we ever attacked them? They were the first ones to burn our houses, to destroy our futures. We stayed there with hope, building our future. Our parents took care of us and sent us to schools hoping that we’ll become officers, we’ll take care of the family someday. To run a family is not an easy thing. They have been building that up for more than 50 years, and everything was destroyed. If they are still asking for the evidence that the Meitei burned the houses of the Kukis why not use the satellite? They can prove everything.. why not use it? Why is the government still not effective, even after 89 days?

So, at the 3:05-mark in the video, the woman can be heard saying that no effective and timely action was taken by the central government. She asks PM Modi why the issue of Manipur violence was taken up only after the video had gone viral.

Therefore, the claim that the Meitei woman slammed the Opposition MPs is false. In the video, she, in fact, asks the Modi government why it did not take timely action. She names the Prime Minister and asks why he brought up the issue only after the viral video came to the fore. She clearly says no effective actions were taken by the central government. The claim that she told the MPs the Modi government was doing everything for us or something on these lines is also not true.

Related

In an interview hours after former President Donald Trump was indicted for an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, one of his attorneys said that all Trump had ultimately asked his vice president to do was “simply pause” the Electoral College count at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Fox News the following night, Aug. 2, former Vice President Mike Pence called that claim “completely false.” Pence said Trump and his “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” asked him “to literally reject votes.”

“I think it’s important that the American people know what happened in the days before January 6,” Pence said. “President Trump demanded that I use my authority as vice president presiding over the count of the Electoral College to essentially overturn the election by returning or literally rejecting votes. I had no authority to do that.”

For those who might doubt him, Pence urged them to “read the indictment.”

Pence is featured prominently throughout the 45-page indictment, but there are seven and a half pages that specifically deal with “The Defendant’s [Trump’s] Attempts to Enlist the Vice President to Fraudulently Alter the Election Results at the January 6 Certification Proceeding.” That section relies heavily on interviews Pence provided to federal prosecutors, and the indictment references “contemporaneous notes” Pence kept to memorialize some events and conversations.

According to the indictment, “As the January 6 congressional certification proceeding approached and other efforts to impair, obstruct, and defeat the federal government function failed, the Defendant [Trump] sought to enlist the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the certification to fraudulently alter the election results. The Defendant did this first by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to convince the Vice President to accept the Defendant’s fraudulent electors, reject legitimate electoral votes, or send legitimate electoral votes to state legislatures for review rather than count them. When that failed, the Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.”

Here are some of the related events described in the indictment leading up to Jan. 6:

Dec. 23, 2020: Trump retweeted (and later deleted) a memo titled “Operation ‘PENCE’ CARD,” which, the indictment states, “falsely asserted that the Vice President could, among other things, unilaterally disqualify legitimate electors from six targeted states.”

The same day, the indictment says, co-conspirator 2 (whom we have identified as John Eastman, a Trump attorney) “circulated a two-page memorandum outlining a plan for the Vice President to unlawfully declare the Defendant the certified winner of the presidential election.” In the memo, Eastman “transmitted two slates of electors and proposed that the Vice President announce that ‘because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States.’” The indictment says the Eastman memo then “proposed steps that he acknowledged violated the ECA [Electoral Count Act]” and ended with, “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.” It was a position, the indictment says, that contradicted a position Eastman himself had staked out just two months prior.

Dec. 25, 2020: When Pence called Trump to wish him a Merry Christmas, Trump requested that Pence reject electoral votes on Jan. 6. Pence responded, as he had in previous conversations, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.”

Dec. 29, 2020: Citing Pence’s “contemporaneous notes,” the indictment says Trump “falsely told the Vice President that the ‘Justice Dept [was] finding major infractions.’”

Jan. 1, 2021: Trump called Pence and “berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution.” Pence told Trump he didn’t think there was any constitutional authority for that. In response, Trump reportedly told Pence, “You’re too honest.”

Jan. 3, 2021: Trump again told Pence “that at the certification proceeding, the Vice President had the absolute right to reject electoral votes and the ability to overturn the election.” Pence said he disagreed and noted that “a federal appeals court had rejected the lawsuit making that claim the previous day.”

That same day, the indictment states, Eastman “circulated a second memorandum that included a new plan under which, contrary to the ECA, the Vice President would send the elector slates to the state legislatures to determine which slate to count.”

Jan. 4, 2021: Trump held a meeting with Eastman and Pence, along with Marc Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, who was Pence’s counsel. The purpose of the meeting, the indictment states, was to convince Pence “based on the Defendant’s knowingly false claims of election fraud, that the Vice President should reject or send to the states Biden’s legitimate electoral votes, rather than count them.”

Based on Pence’s contemporaneous notes from the meeting, the indictment says, Trump “made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, ‘Bottom line — won every state by 100,000s of votes’” and asking, “What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?” (The indictment says Trump was parroting a claim that senior Justice Department officials had told him the night before was false. We debunked this claim when Trump repeated it two days later in his Jan. 6, 2021, speech.)

Trump and Eastman then asked Pence “to either unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from the seven targeted states, or send the question of which slate was legitimate to the targeted states’ legislatures.” When Pence told Trump even Eastman said he wasn’t sure if Pence had that authority, Trump responded, “That’s okay, I prefer the other suggestion,” meaning the one in which Pence simply rejected the electors unilaterally.

(That allegation contradicts any claims that Trump only asked Pence to pause the voting. A pause to return the issue to the states was only one of the options put to Pence, according to Pence and the indictment. We should note that Trump attorney John Lauro qualified his claim on CNN on Aug. 1, saying that a pause was Trump’s “ultimate request” or “final ask” of Pence, not that it was the only request ever put to Pence.)

The indictment also includes a conversation from that day that was highlighted in the final report issued by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Eric Herschmann, an attorney working for Trump in the White House, told the committee he had told Eastman he thought Eastman’s plan was “crazy” and that if implemented, “you’re going to cause riots in the streets.” Herschmann said Eastman responded with “words to the effect of there’s been violence in this history of our country to protect the democracy or to protect the [R]epublic.”

Jan. 5, 2021: At Trump’s direction, Short and Jacob again met with Eastman, who advocated that Pence “unilaterally reject electors from the targeted states,” as Trump the previous day had said he preferred. According to the indictment, Jacob told Eastman that “following through with the proposal would result in a ‘disastrous situation’ where the election might ‘have to be decided in the streets.’”

That same day, Trump posted to social media, “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” Trump met alone that day with Pence. According to the indictment, “When the Vice President refused to agree to the Defendant’s request that he obstruct the certification, the Defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the Defendant would have to publicly criticize him.”

Despite Pence’s stance, hours later Trump had his campaign issue a false public statement saying, “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”

Jan. 6, 2021: In the early morning on the day that Congress met to officially count the electoral votes, the indictment states, Trump “raised publicly the false expectation” that Pence might “fraudulently alter the election outcome.” Trump posted on social media, “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud … All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

At 11:15 a.m., the indictment says, Trump called Pence “and again pressured him to fraudulently reject or return Biden’s legitimate electoral votes. The Vice President again refused. Immediately after the call, the Defendant decided to single out the Vice President in public remarks he would make within the hour, reinserting language that he had personally drafted earlier that morning — falsely claiming that the Vice President had authority to send electoral votes to the states — but that advisors had previously successfully advocated be removed.”

“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump told the crowd at the “Save America” rally that day. “I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The States got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.”

Just before 1 p.m., the indictment notes, Pence released a statement “explaining that his role as President of the Senate at the certification proceeding that was about to begin did not include ‘unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.’”

When Trump supporters soon after violently attacked the Capitol and temporarily halted Congress’ election proceedings, the indictment notes that some in the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Bring him out!” and “Traitor Pence!”

That night, the indictment says, just after the House and Senate reconvened in a joint session, Eastman made one last appeal to Pence’s counsel, writing, “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the ECA] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”

At 3:41 a.m. on Jan. 7, Pence announced the certified results and declared Biden the victor.

The day after the indictment was handed down, Trump posted a message on social media, saying Pence did not “fight against Election Fraud.” And, Trump insisted, “The V.P. had power that Mike didn’t understand, but after the Election, the RINOS & Dems changed the law, taking that power away!”

That’s not accurate. As we wrote when Trump made a similar claim in a CNN town hall in May, Pence didn’t have the legal right to send electoral votes back to the states. Also, although Congress revised the Electoral Count Act in December 2022, the revision merely “reaffirmed” that a vice president’s role in the electoral vote counting process is “ministerial.” It was not an admission that the law previously allowed a vice president to take the steps Trump sought.

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Summary

In our seventh installment of this feature, gauging how various factors have changed under President Joe Biden, we found:

• The economy added 13.2 million jobs under Biden, putting the total 3.8 million higher than before the pandemic.

• The unemployment rate dropped for a time to the lowest in nearly 54 years; unfilled job openings surged, with over 1.6 for every unemployed job seeker.

• Inflation roared back to the highest level in over 40 years, then slowed markedly. In all, consumer prices are up nearly 15.7%. Gasoline is up 51.2%.

• Weekly earnings rose briskly, by 12.2%. But after adjusting for inflation, “real” weekly earnings went down 3.4%.

• The S&P 500 has increased 20.2%

• The percentage of Americans without health insurance has gone down by 1.3 percentage points.

• Consumer confidence is 6.4 points lower, according to a University of Michigan index, but it has gone up for two straight months.

• The number of apprehensions of those trying to cross the southern border illegally dropped dramatically in June, but is still up 310%.

• U.S. crude oil production has increased 8.2%; imports are up 7.3%.

• The trade deficit for goods and services climbed 30.1%.

• Debt held by the public has gone up 18.9%.

• Refugee admissions have increased 38.5%, but that’s 2,556 refugees per month on average — far short of Biden’s campaign goal of admitting 125,000 a year.

Analysis

We started “Biden’s Numbers” in January 2022 and have published updates every three months since then on the latest data from authoritative sources on how the U.S. is faring. We ran similar quarterly series for former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Readers can form their own opinions on whether a president deserves credit or blame for these statistics — and how much. We take no position on that.

The starting point for these measurements matters. Biden has boasted of inflation dropping and wages rising faster than prices — and that has happened in recent months. But we start the clock when Biden took office.

Jobs and Unemployment

The number of people with jobs has increased dramatically since Biden took office, far surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

Employment — The U.S. economy added 13,235,000 jobs between Biden’s inauguration and June, the latest month for which data are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The June figure is 3,833,000 higher than the February 2020 peak of employment before COVID-19 forced massive shutdowns and layoffs.

One major category of jobs is still lagging, however. Government employment is still 161,000 jobs short of the pre-pandemic peak. That includes 95,500 fewer public school teachers and other local education workers. 

Unemployment — The unemployment rate fell from 6.3% at the time Biden took office to 3.4% in January and again in April, the lowest since June 1969. Most recently the rate has crept up to 3.6% in June. That’s just 0.1 point above the pre-pandemic rate.

Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings soared, reaching a record of over 12 million in March of last year, but then declined after the Federal Reserve began a steep series of interest rate increases aimed at cooling the economy to bring down price inflation.

The number of unfilled jobs has slipped down to 9.8 million as of the last business day of May, the most recent month on record. That’s still an increase of over 2.6 million openings — or 37% — during Biden’s time.

In May, there was an average of over 1.6 jobs for every unemployed job seeker. When Biden took office, there were fewer jobs than unemployed job seekers.

The number of job openings in June is set to be released Aug. 1

Labor Force Participation — One reason many job openings go unfilled is that millions of Americans left the workforce during the pandemic and haven’t returned. The labor force participation rate (the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work) has slowly recovered during Biden’s time, from 61.3% in January 2021 to 62.6% in June.

That still leaves the rate well short of the pre-pandemic level of 63.3% for February 2020.

The rate peaked at 67.3% more than two decades ago, during the first four months of 2000. Labor Department economists project that the rate will trend down to 60.1% in 2031, “primarily because of an aging population.”

Manufacturing Jobs — During the presidential campaign, Biden promised he had a plan to create a million new manufacturing jobs — and whether it’s his doing or not, the number is rising briskly.

As of June, the U.S. added 793,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s time, a 6.5% increase in the space of 29 months, according to BLS. Furthermore, the June total is 204,000 or 1.6% above the number of manufacturing jobs in February 2020, before the pandemic forced plant closures and layoffs.

During Trump’s four years, the economy lost 170,000 manufacturing jobs, or 1.4%, largely due to the pandemic.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Inflation came roaring back under Biden, then slowed in recent months.

Overall during his first 29 months in office, the Consumer Price Index rose 15.7%.

It was for a time the worst inflation in decades. The 12 months ending in June of last year saw a 9.1% increase in the CPI (before seasonal adjustment), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the biggest such increase since the 12 months ending in November 1981.

But now inflation is trending down. The CPI rose 3.1% in the 12 months ending June of this year and 0.2% in June itself.

Gasoline Prices — The price of gasoline has gyrated wildly under Biden.

During the first year and a half of his administration, the national average price of regular gasoline at the pump soared to a record high of just over $5 per gallon (in the week ending June 13, 2022), propelled by motorists resuming travel after pandemic lockdowns and then by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

But then the price drifted down to a low of $3.09 the week ending Dec. 26, 2022, crept back up to $3.66 for the last two weeks in April, and then sank to $3.60 in the week ending July 24, the most recent on record.

That’s $1.22 higher than in the week before Biden took office, an increase of 51.2%.

Wages — Wages also have gone up under Biden, but not as fast as prices.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 12.2% during Biden’s first 29 months in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the BLS. Those production and nonsupervisory workers make up 81% of all employees in the private sector.

But inflation ate up all that gain and more. “Real” weekly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 3.4% since Biden took office.

That’s despite a recent upturn as inflation has moderated. Since hitting the low point under Biden in June of last year, real earnings have gone up nearly 1.3%.

Economic Growth

Despite rising interest rates and fears of a recession, the U.S. real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product grew at a rate of 2.1% in 2022.

The growth has continued in 2023. In a July 27 release, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated that the economy increased at an annual rate of 2.4% in the second quarter. The increase was 2% in the first quarter.

But concerns about a recession remain.

Wells Fargo Investment Institute in a midyear economic outlook report released in June projected real GDP growth at 1.1% in 2023 and 1.5% in 2024. Wells Fargo said it expects a recession “during the back half of 2023 and into early 2024” that would continue to tamp down corporate earnings.

In a June 15 release, the Conference Board, a nonpartisan business membership and research organization, estimated “that real GDP growth will slow to 1.0 percent in 2023, and then fall to 0.0 percent in 2024.”

“The Conference Board forecasts that weaknesses emerging in some parts of the economy will intensify and grow more diffuse over the coming months, leading to a recession,” the board said. “This outlook is associated with numerous factors, including, persistent inflation, Federal Reserve hawkishness, dampened bank lending amid the banking crisis, reduced government spending due to the debt ceiling deal, and underlying trends in consumer spending and income, and business investment.”

In a sustained effort to slow inflation, the Federal Reserve has repeatedly raised interest rates since March 2022 — most recently on July 26.

Not all economists are predicting a recession. In a June 20 opinion piece for CNN, Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, wrote that he is “betting against” the “strong consensus” that a recession is inevitable. “Where is the recession? Each passing month, the consensus looks increasingly off-base,” he wrote. “Yes, the economy will ultimately slump, but odds are fading that a recession is dead ahead.”

Corporate Profits

Under Biden, corporate profits set new records in 2021 and 2022 — but have declined in the last three consecutive quarters.

After-tax corporate profits increased for the seventh consecutive year in 2022, reaching a new high of $2.87 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The record, though, came despite a decline in growth in the last two quarters of the year. (See line 45.)

The slide continued in the first quarter of this year. After-tax corporate profits in the first quarter were estimated at an annual rate of nearly $2.69 trillion — down from $2.72 trillion in the last quarter of 2022 and $2.89 trillion in the third quarter of 2022, according to the BEA.

In its midyear economic outlook report, Wells Fargo Investment Institute said corporations are already experiencing an “earnings recession” that will last through this year.

“Profits should rebound through 2024, as the economic recovery gradually takes hold, but corporate earnings may not recapture their 2022 peak until early 2025,” the report said.

Even with the recent decline in growth, corporate profits in the first quarter were 21.5% higher than the full-year figure for 2020, the year before Biden took office, as estimated by the BEA. 

Consumer Sentiment

Consumer confidence in the economy is beginning to bounce back. 

The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment increased for the second straight month in July. The preliminary July index was 72.6 — up from 64.4 in June and 59.2 in May.

The July preliminary number is still 6.4 points lower than it was when Biden took office in January 2021. But it is considerably improved from June 2022, when consumer confidence bottomed out at 50.

“The sharp rise in sentiment was largely attributable to the continued slowdown in inflation along with stability in labor markets,” Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said.

Stock Markets

After dropping in 2022, the stock markets have rebounded so far this year.

The S&P 500 stock index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average continued to rise since we last calculated the change in late April. The S&P is now up 20.2% since Biden took office, and the Dow, made up of 30 large corporations, has increased 14.8%, as of the close of the markets on July 26.

The NASDAQ composite index, made up of more than 3,000 companies, was still down at our last update, but its continued growth this year now puts it up just 7% under Biden.

Health Insurance

The percentage of the U.S. population that lacks health insurance has gone down under Biden by 1.3 percentage points. The latest figures from the National Health Interview Survey show that 8.4% were uninsured at the time they were interviewed in 2022, down from 9.7% in 2020.

In raw numbers, 27.6 million people were uninsured in 2022, according to the survey, and 31.6 million were uninsured in 2020.

The NHIS is a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data collection is performed by the Census Bureau.

As we noted in our last update, it’s possible the uninsured figures will start to go up in 2023, since some Medicaid provisions that were enacted during the coronavirus pandemic are being phased out.

In March 2020, a pandemic relief law increased the federal Medicaid funding sent to states and required states to keep Medicaid recipients continuously enrolled while the COVID-19 public health emergency was in effect. As the Kaiser Family Foundation explains, the Medicaid program is known for “churn” — people losing and then reenrolling in coverage due to changes in income eligibility or not being able to comply with renewal requirements. Continuous enrollment is one reason Medicaid enrollment expanded during the pandemic.

But this requirement ended on March 31, and the enhanced federal funding will slowly phase out through the end of this year. KFF estimates that between 5.3 million and 14.2 million people will be disenrolled during this time, and the Department of Health and Human Services says the number could be as high as 15 million.

Some who lose Medicaid coverage could pick up insurance through other sources, such as the Affordable Care Act exchanges. But KFF says the change in policy could lead to an increase in the number of people who lack health insurance.

Immigration

On May 14, a reporter asked Biden how things were going at the border three days after his administration had allowed Title 42 to expire.

“Much better than you all expected,” Biden said.

Indeed, many immigration experts and Republican critics had warned that ending Title 42 — a public health law the Trump administration invoked early in the pandemic that allowed border officials to immediately return many of those caught trying to enter the country illegally — would result in a surge of illegal immigration.

But so far, that hasn’t happened. In June, the number of people apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol attempting to cross into the country illegally dipped to 99,545, 48% lower than June of last year. That’s also the lowest monthly number since February 2021, shortly after Biden took office.

Immigration experts say policies the Biden administration enacted leading up to the end of Title 42 partly explains that. In early January, Biden unveiled several border enforcement initiatives that included expanding pathways for legal immigration. The administration expanded the “parole” process for Venezuelans to Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans, allowing applicants a two-year work permit if they have a sponsor in the U.S. and they pass a background check. It also created a mobile app, CBP One, that allows migrants to make appointments to seek asylum (and penalizes those who do not). And the administration announced it would welcome far more refugees from Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“Interestingly, the spike happened in the days leading up to the end of Title 42,” Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told us.

Migrants got the message through word-of-mouth about pending broad policy changes by the Biden administration, Putzel-Kavanaugh said. There is typically a slowing of illegal immigration after such changes, as people wait to see how the new policy plays out, she said. And some of the new policies are the subject of ongoing litigation. On July 25, a federal judge blocked a new administration policy that most migrants would be ineligible for asylum if they passed through another country without seeking protection there first.

The end of Title 42 also resulted in tougher consequences for those attempting to enter the country illegally. Under Title 42, many people were simply turned around at the border, without any legal consequences. That encouraged some to simply try crossing again and again, Putzel-Kavanaugh said. Now, the Biden administration has been increasing expedited removals under Title 8, which stipulates that someone caught trying to cross illegally is barred from legal entry for five years. Those caught attempting to cross illegally multiple times can be charged criminally.

Although the number of people apprehended illegally crossing the border has dipped recently, it still remains historically high under the Biden administration.

Looking at the entirety of Biden’s time in office, and to even out the seasonal changes in border crossings, we compare the most recent 12 months on record with the year prior to him taking office. And for the past 12 months ending in June, the latest figures available, apprehensions totaled 2,084,646, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s 310% higher than during Trump’s last year in office.

“Part of it is just a general increase in migration worldwide, especially in the Western Hemisphere,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said.

The pandemic caused devastating economic consequences in some countries, she said, and many have experienced very slow recoveries. There has also been a rise in civil unrest and political violence in some Central and South American countries, which has also encouraged migration to the U.S. and other countries.

Asked on May 14 if he was confident the number of illegal border crossings would continue to go down, Biden said, “My hope is they’ll continue to go down, but we have more — a lot more work to do. And we need some more help from the Congress as well in terms of funding and legislative changes.”

Food Stamps

Since our last update, there was a drop in the number of people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which used to be known as food stamps.

As of April, more than 41.9 million people were receiving food assistance, the lowest monthly enrollment since September. That figure is down about 820,000 people from January, and it’s a decrease of about 0.6%, or 235,276 people, from when Biden became president in January 2021. The figures, which are preliminary, come from Department of Agriculture data published this month.

Under Biden, SNAP enrollment was as low as 40.8 million in August and September 2021. Trump’s lowest month was February 2020, when the program had 36.9 million participants.

Crude Oil Production and Imports

U.S. crude oil production averaged roughly 12.25 million barrels per day during Biden’s most recent 12 months in office (through April), according to Energy Information Administration data released in late June. That was 8.2% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2020.

In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for July, the EIA projected that crude oil production would average a record 12.56 million barrels per day in 2023, up just a bit from its projections at the time of our last update.

In January, the EIA said it expected much of the increase in crude oil production to come from output in the Permian Basin, which spans 66 counties in southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. In a July update, the EIA said production in the Permian region had increased to 5.7 million barrels per day in March – up from an average of 5.3 million barrels per day in 2022 and 4.7 million barrels per day in 2021. 

Greater crude oil production has not translated to fewer crude oil imports, which continued to increase — averaging more than 6.3 million barrels per day in Biden’s last 12 months. That’s up 7.3% from average daily imports in 2020.

Carbon Emissions

There was a small decline in U.S. carbon emissions since our last update.

In the most recent 12 months on record (ending in April), there were almost 4.88 billion metric tons of emissions from the consumption of coal, natural gas and various petroleum products, according to the EIA. That’s nearly 6.6% higher than the 4.58 billion metric tons that were emitted in 2020.

As of this month, the EIA forecast that energy-related emissions will drop to 4.79 billion metric tons for 2023 — spurred by a 20% reduction in coal emissions compared with 2022.

Debt and Deficits

Debt — Since our last quarterly update, the public debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, increased by $1.1 trillion to over $25.7 trillion, as of July 25. That brings the total increase during Biden’s presidency to roughly $4.09 trillion, which is 18.9% higher than it was when Biden took office.

Deficits — Through the first nine months of fiscal year 2023, the federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion — up $875 billion from the same period in fiscal 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest monthly budget review.

As of May, the CBO projected that the FY 2023 deficit would total $1.5 trillion – up about $100 billion from the agency’s forecast in February. The estimated increase is due to the government’s revenue collections through April, which were lower than expected.

However, CBO said its latest projection for the 2023 deficit was “subject to considerable uncertainty,” partly because the Supreme Court had struck down the Biden administration’s initial plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of people. Canceling that plan is expected to result in $300 billion in savings this fiscal cycle, CBO said.

Gun Sales

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s latest estimates indicate that gun purchases declined again during the second quarter of 2023.

Since the federal government doesn’t collect data on gun sales, the NSSF, a gun industry trade group, estimates gun sales by tracking the number of background checks for firearm sales based on the FBI’s National Instant Background Check System, or NICS. The NSSF-adjusted figures exclude background checks unrelated to sales, such as those required for concealed-carry permits.

The group’s adjusted NICS total for background checks during the second quarter of the year was 3.65 million. That’s a 6.7% drop from the almost 3.92 million in the second quarter of 2022, and it’s also down 35% from the roughly 5.63 million in Trump’s last full quarter in 2020.

Through the first six months of 2023, there were 7.82 million background checks for firearm sales. That half-year total is down from the same period in 2020 (24%), 2021 (20%) and 2022 (3.7%) — which were the years with the first, second and third highest annual totals, respectively. 

Trade Deficit

The international trade deficit – while trending down from last year’s record high – is still up compared with Trump’s final year.

Bureau of Economic Analysis figures published this month show the U.S. imported about $849.5 billion more in goods and services than it exported over the last 12 months through May. That’s an increase of more than $196.6 billion, or 30.1%, compared with 2020.

But through the first five months of 2023, the trade gap in goods and services was down $101.7 billion, or 22.8%, from the same period in 2022, the BEA said. Last year’s almost $951.2 billion annual trade deficit was the largest on record going back to 1960.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — So far under Biden, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed on April 7, 2022, and replaced retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Trump had won confirmation for two Supreme Court justices at the same point during his term.

Court of Appeals — Under Biden, 36 U.S. Court of Appeals judges have been confirmed, while 43 had been confirmed at the same point of Trump’s tenure.

District Court — For District Court confirmations, 103 judges have been confirmed under Biden. At the same point during Trump’s presidency, 86 nominees had been confirmed.

Three U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also have been confirmed under Biden; there had been two such judges confirmed at this point under Trump.

As of July 26, there were 69 federal court vacancies, with 27 nominees pending.

Home Prices & Homeownership

Home prices — The median sales price of existing single-family homes in the U.S. was $416,000 in June, the second-highest price ever recorded for a month since the National Association of Realtors began tracking the statistic in 1999.

The highest median price, $420,900, was recorded in June of last year. Since then, prices steadily dropped to $365,400 in January, but have been rising every month since.

The Federal Reserve has steadily been raising interest rates since March 2022 in an attempt to slow inflation, and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has increased commensurately. While that has cooled homes sales — the annual rate of existing home sales has dropped nearly 19% year-over-year — prices have been on the rise through the first half of 2023 due to limited inventory.

“There are simply not enough homes for sale,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a press release announcing the updated June data. “Limited supply is still leading to multiple-offer situations, with one-third of homes getting sold above the list price in the latest month.”

After a swing in prices over the last year, the June median price was 35.1% higher than the price in January 2021, when Biden took office.

Homeownership — Nearly 9 in 10 Americans consider “owning a home … an important factor in the ‘good life’ or the life they would like to have,” according to a recent survey by Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research Group. 

Yet, homeownership rates have remained stubbornly unchanged under Biden.

The homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of “occupied housing units that are owner-occupied,” was 66.0% in the first quarter of 2023 — not much higher than the 65.8% rate during Trump’s last quarter in office. (Usual word of caution: The bureau warns against making comparisons with the fourth quarter of 2020, because of pandemic-related restrictions on in-person data collection.) 

The rate peaked under Trump in the second quarter of 2020 at 67.9%. The highest homeownership rate on record was 69.2% in 2004, when George W. Bush was president.

Refugees

Biden still remains far from fulfilling his ambitious campaign goal of accepting up to 125,000 refugees a year, although admissions have substantially increased in recent months.

As president, Biden set the cap on refugee admissions for fiscal year 2023 at 125,000 – just as he did in fiscal year 2022. To achieve that goal, the Biden administration would have to admit an average of 10,417 refugees per month.

However, in fiscal year 2022, the administration accepted only 25,465 refugees, or 2,122 per month, according to State Department data. The number of refugees admitted so far this fiscal year already exceeds last year’s total — but it is still well off the pace needed to reach 125,000.

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2023, which began Oct. 1, the administration welcomed 38,653 refugees, or 4,295 per month. Most of those admissions occurred in the last three months. (See “Refugee Admissions Report as of June 30, 2023” for monthly data since fiscal year 2001.)

Overall, the U.S. has admitted 74,126 refugees in Biden’s first full 29 months in office, or 2,556 refugees per month, the data show. That’s about 38.5% higher than the 1,845 monthly average under Trump, who significantly reduced the admission of refugees. (For both presidents, the averages include only full months in office, excluding January in 2017 and 2021, when administrations overlapped.)

In its report to Congress for fiscal year 2023, the State Department said it was making “progress towards fulfilling President Biden’s ambitious admissions target.” That’s true. The 38,653 refugees in the first nine months of fiscal year 2023 is already higher than any fiscal year total since 2017, which spanned the end of President Barack Obama’s second term and the beginning of Trump’s tenure.

Obama set the cap on refugee admissions at 110,000 for FY 2017, but the number of admissions slowed after Trump took office. That year, the U.S. admitted 53,716 refugees — which the Biden administration could reach or exceed by the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30.

But the Biden administration isn’t likely this fiscal year to reach 125,000 — which is a high bar for any administration. The U.S. has not admitted 125,000 or more refugees since FY 1981, when the U.S. welcomed more than 159,000 refugees, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Crime

The latest figures from the Major Cities Chiefs Association show the number of murders has continued to decline in 70 large U.S. cities after two years of increases from 2019 to 2021. Murders declined by 7.7% in the first three months of 2023 compared with the same time period in 2022.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association reports found a sizable 33.4% jump in the number of murders in large cities from 2019 to 2020, before Biden took office, and a 6.2% rise in Biden’s first year as president, from 2020 to 2021. But as we reported in the last Biden’s Numbers, there was a drop in murders last year of 5.1%.

AH Datalytics, an independent criminal justice data analysis group, also has found a drop in murders in 2023 compared with 2022, according to publicly available data from 105 U.S. cities. The decline was 11.5% as of July 27, with most cities reporting figures through at least late June.

We won’t have the FBI’s annual report on nationwide crime figures for 2022 until sometime this fall. In its latest report, the FBI estimated that “violent and property crime remained consistent between 2020 and 2021.”

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Days after the horrific video of two women paraded naked in Manipur going viral, another video is being circulated widely on social media. In the 3-minute-long clip, a group of people are seen marching in uniforms. A few people holding posters can also be seen standing in front of a ‘Wall of Remembrance’. The posters read, “Enough With Meitei Mob Rule if the central government is incapable to institute peace. Meitei fascism is not curtailed”. The marching women are holding a poster on which is written ‘We are ready to sacrifice our lives’. In the video, a coffin has been placed in a line in front of which people are standing and clapping. The video is being shared with the claim that this was a march by the Kuki people calling for the massacre of Meiteis. The video also contains subtitles which read as follows:

00:37 – Meiteis leave, 00:49 – If any Meitei is spotted, his head will be blown off, 00:54 – Got it? Got it?, 1:09 – SONG: This land belongs to the Kukis, Kukis will stay here!, 1:14 – SONG: Listen carefully, Meiteis! We Will Make You Cry Tears of Blood!, 1:17 – Kill the Maitais! Kill the Meteis! Beat the Meteis!, 1:23 – Crowd: Hit them! Beat them! Hit them!, 1:28 – We need not fear, we have support from Burma and Christian states. We will continue our movement. The Indian army will do nothing. 1:51 – Leave three lines for the marching soldiers, 2:13 – Zomi Revolutionary Army soldiers march, 2:57 – Get ready, Meitis, we are going to behead you!, 3:05 – We will take your girls as mistresses and your children as slaves!

Right-Wing influencer Bala made the same claim while sharing the video in a now-deleted post. (Archived link)

Abhay Pratap Singh of Sudarshan News also tweeted this video, writing, “This video from Manipur is very scary. Genocide calls towards the Meitei people are being raised openly.” (Archived link)

A user named Sunanda Roy amplified the clip with the same claim. (Archived link)

Similarly, a number of other users also promoted the visuals with this claim.

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Fact-check

The words ‘Wall of Remembrance’ can be spotted in one frame of the video. Alt News performed a related keyword search, and found a longer video uploaded by a YouTube channel named ‘HORNBILL DIGITAL CABLE’ on July 5. Its title reads, “Youth Protest against Fascist Rule in Manipur”. In this hour long video, scenes from the viral video appear between the 26:50 mark and 30:06 mark.

East Mojo had also covered this protest on July 5. According to reports, hundreds of locals took to the streets in Churachandpur to protest against the brutal killing of a tribal youth named David Thiek in Langza village. The rally was organised amid efforts by the Army to destroy bunkers set up by locals in different parts of the state. The rally was led by Village Defense volunteers. Many of them were in black uniforms and bullet-proof jackets, and it concluded at the Wall of Remembrance. At least 2,000 Village Defense volunteers were part of the rally. The locals present at the demonstration paid their respects at the symbolic coffins placed in the memory of those who lost their lives. The protesters sang mournful songs in memory of the dead, while raising slogans and demanding the intervention of the central government to resolve the deadly conflict.

The Times of India and India Today North East also coveted the rally held in Churachandpur on July 5.

To gather more information related to this video, we reached out to a local resident of Manipur, who understands this language. He sent us a transcript of the video with timestamps, which is given below:

00:38 (Paite): amka Tuailaite (2 times)

Translation: Youths of Lamka (crowd cheering)

00:50 (Paite): Hongpai khawmnal unla (2 times)

Translation: Come closer (The speaker signals the youth to come closer towards the stage)

00:53 (Paite): Huaizah chiang in ahi panding ahi

Translation: And then we will begin (the speaker says, as an indication to start the program)

00:55 (Paite): Hon Pitou Lal unla’ n (repeating it a couple of times)

Translation: Keep coming forward (addressing the crowd)

01:23 Crowd(In Paite): Hat Un. Hang Un

Translation: be strong, be brave

01:28 (Paite): Vest silhtengteng in ah hankuangtemalah ki line dinginahiki theihsakahi.

Translation: Anyone wearing a vest is requested to please come forward and line up in front of the coffins (the coffins were placed to depict the dead who lost their lives during the conflict)

01:33 (Paite): Vest silhloukhaloumipite stage lam hon phatouun

Translation: Those of you without vests, please come towards the stage

01:40 (Paite): Vest silh kha tangval te hankuang lam ah hon ki line unla, adanften, hiailam ah hon pha you un

Translation: All the men wearing vests, please line up in front of the casket. Those of you without vests, please come this way.

01:52 (Paite): Vest silh te 3 lines. Adangtehuaibang inah linekhat hiailam, line khatin huailamah.

Translation: People wearing vests in three rows. Similarly, for those without vests, one line is on this side and the other line is on that side.

02:10 (Paite): 3 lines in ah

Translation: (As addressed earlier, the speaker was instructing the crowd to stay in three lines.)

02:57 (Paite): Hon paitou lal vuau

Translation: Please keep coming forward (This is because the youth have reached and are coming towards the venue)

02:58 (Paite): Ipasalte kon vaidawnna un kon sawm uhee…

Translation: To the men, we invite you to ours with a warm welcome,

03:05 (Paite): Tuinnah programipan ding wa, Pithu Thianmang muangin chih laa is a phawt ding wa. Unanu Mangnunmawi kagenahi.

Translation: Let us now begin our program with the song ‘Pithu Thianmangmuangin’ (Trust in the Lord who leads us) by our sister Manganunmawi (singer).

To sum it up, several social media users shared the video of Kuki community members marching in Manipur with false subtitles, claiming that the people in the video were chanting slogans calling for the genocide of the Meitei community and making objectionable statements.

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