The Dictatorship

A look at Trump’s false and misleading claims ahead of the State of the Union

Published

2 months ago

February 25, 2026

A look at Trump’s false and misleading claims ahead of the State of the Union

WASHINGTON (AP) — On inflation, immigration, tariffs and matters of war and peace, President Donald Trump presented a frequently distorted account of the state of the nation Tuesday as he claimed a “turnaround for the ages” and myriad achievements that don’t pass scrutiny.

Trump has spent the last year boasting of his accomplishments while mocking the record of his predecessor, Joe Biden. But much of this bluster has been based on misinformation, which he again fell back on during his State of the Union address.

President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Jessica Koscielniak/Pool Photo via AP)

Here’s a closer look at the facts:

THE ECONOMY

CLAIM: “When I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy.”

THE FACTS: Not quite. Voters were unhappy with high inflation in the 2024 election, but the U.S. economy was far from stagnant. The U.S. gross domestic product rose 2.8% in 2024 after adjusting for inflation. That’s a stronger pace of growth than the 2.2% achieved last year during the start of Trump’s second term. ___

TRUMP: “Incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.”

THE FACTS: Not so. After-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, rose just 0.9% in 2025, down from 2.2% in 2024, Biden’s last year in office. The annual gain in Trump’s first year is the smallest since 2022, when inflation soared and caused Americans’ inflation-adjusted income to drop.

Wages and salaries are the largest component of incomes, and their growth has slowed as companies have sharply slowed hiring. Workers typically command smaller wage gains in such an environment.

INVESTMENT

CLAIM: “I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

JOBS

CLAIM: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”

THE FACTS: Yes, but the number of Americans with jobs always rises as the population grows. The relevant figure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, which has fallen significantly in the last quarter-century, partly because the workforce is aging and more people are retired. The proportion of Americans with jobs peaked at 64.7% in April 2000, and was 59.8% in January.

The unemployment rate is a low 4.3%, but was lower when Biden left office in January 2025, at 4%. During Biden’s presidency, the rate fell to a 50-year low of 3.4%.

FOREIGN WARS

CLAIM: “My first 10 months I ended eight wars.”

THE FACTS: This statistic, which Trump frequently cites, is highly exaggerated.

Although he has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it seem. In at least two instances of peace he claims credit for achieving, there were no wars to end: no fighting between Serbia and Kosovo, and friction rather than fighting between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The other wars Trump counts as those that he has solved were between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand. His influence varied in those conflicts.

TARIFFS

CLAIM: Tariff revenues are “saving our country, the kind of money we’re taking in.”

THE FACTS: Though Trump has imposed massive tax hikes on imports, they’re not sizable enough to make a dent in the government’s annual budget deficits. Nor have the tariffs corresponded with manufacturing job gains.

President Donald Trump speaks during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House, April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Before the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs based on an emergency declaration, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that his new taxes would raise $3 trillion over 10 years, or $300 billion annually.

That’s not enough to cover the cost of his $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, including additional interest cuts, that favored companies and the wealthy. Nor is it enough to pay down an annual budget deficit that last year was $1.78 trillion.

___

CLAIM: “Tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax.’’

THE FACTS: Not likely. Under Trump, tariff revenues have swelled — to $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 from $77 billion the year before. But the import taxes accounted for less than 4% of federal revenue. Income taxes and payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare account for 84%.

MEDICINE

CLAIM: “I took prescription drugs, a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more.”

THE FACTS: This is impossible. Although the Trump administration has taken steps to lower drug prices, cutting them by more than 100% would theoretically mean that people are being paid to take medications.

Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center, said in August that this claim is “total fiction” by the president. He agreed that it would amount to drug companies paying customers, rather than the other way around.

CRIME

CLAIM: “Last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline. Think of it in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years.”

THE FACTS: Trump takes credit for a significant decrease in violent crime during 2025, claiming the murder rate in the U.S. dropped to its lowest in 125 years. But this is misleading. Crime had already been trending down in recent years.

A study released in January by the independent Council on Criminal Justice, which collected data from 35 U.S. cities on homicides, showed a 21% decrease in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025.

The report noted that when nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes is reported by the FBI later this year, there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900.

FBI reports for 2023 and 2024 show significant reductions in violent crimes.

Crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. But violent crime dropped to near pre-pandemic levels around 2022 when Biden was president.

IMMIGRATION

CLAIM: “We will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

THE FACTS: Trump has actually taken steps to restrict who can emigrate to the U.S., often in the name of protecting national security.

He suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and in October resumed the program but only in limited numbers for white South Africans.

Trump has also placed restrictions on who can travel or emigrate to the U.S. from nearly 40 countries around the world. Many of those countries are in Africa.

TAXES

CLAIM: “With the great big beautiful bill, we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security.”

THE FACTS: Though the president frequently says his big tax cut bill means no tax on Social Security, that’s not true for everyone. Not all Social Security beneficiaries will be able to claim the deduction, which lasts until 2029.

Those who won’t be able to do so include the lowest-income seniors who already don’t pay taxes on Social Security, those who choose to claim their benefits before they reach age 65 and those above a defined income threshold. The deductions also phase out as income increases.

ELECTIONS

CLAIM: “I’m asking you to approve the Save America Act to stop illegal aliens and other who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections. The cheating is rampant in our elections.”

THE FACTS: He and his allies have never produced evidence of rampant election cheating. Experts say voter fraud is extremely rareand very few noncitizens ever slip through the cracks.

For example, a recent review in Michigan identified 15 people who appear to be noncitizens who voted in the 2024 general election, out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast in the state. Of those, 13 were referred to the attorney general for potential criminal charges. One involved a voter who has since died, and the final case remains under investigation.

1776

CLAIM: “The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.

___

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Fatima Hussein, Josh Boak, Paul Wiseman, Christopher Rugaber, Elliot Spagat and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

___

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

The Dictatorship

Trump administration admits error in New York health care fraud probe

Published

10 hours ago

April 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump administration admits error in New York health care fraud probe

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.

The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made about New York’s Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.

“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.

The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Ozthe administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation.

Oz claimed that New York’s Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.

“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid program.”

But the real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told the AP this week. He said the agency misidentified New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.

“CMS is committed to ensuring its analyses fully reflect state-specific billing practices and will continue to work closely with New York to validate data and strengthen program integrity oversight,” he said in an emailed statement.

Krepich said the probe was ongoing as the administration still has concerns with New York’s oversight of personal care services and the Medicaid program and is reviewing the state’s response to last month’s letter. CMS had raised other flags about New York’s program, including that it spends more per beneficiary and per resident than the average state, has high personal care spending and employs so many personal care aides that the job category is now the largest in the state.

Health analysts said the state’s high spending reflected both high costs for services in New York and a policy choice to provide robust at-home care. Cadence Acquaviva, senior public information officer for the New York Department of Health, called Oz’s initial mischaracterizations “a targeted attempt to obscure the facts.”

“New York State remains committed to protecting and preserving vital Medicaid programs that deliver high-quality services to New Yorkers who depend on them,” she said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “The initial claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it.”

“Governor Hochul has been clear that New York has zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, or any other state programs, and will continue her efforts to root out bad actors, protect taxpayer dollars, and safeguard the critical programs that New Yorkers rely on,” spokesperson Nicolette Simmonds said.

New York probe is part of a larger crackdown

The Trump administration’s investigation into New York comes as it has similarly approached at least four other states, including California, FloridaMaine and Minnesota, with investigations into potential health care fraud. The anti-fraud effort appears to be expanding as voters in the upcoming midterm elections say they’re concerned about affordability.

Trump last month signed an executive order to create an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance. As part of that project, Vance announced the administration would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns, a move over which the state has since sued.

Kinnucan, the analyst with expertise in New York’s Medicaid program, said he’s concerned that the Trump administration’s adversarial approach to targeting fraud in some states “politicizes” a conversation that should be a team effort.

“We want to think collaboratively among all the stakeholders in the program about how we can actually fix it,” Kinnucan said. “We don’t want to have fraud be this political football.”

Oz made other claims New York advocates say are inaccurate

In his video, Oz made at least two other claims about New York that Medicaid advocates and beneficiaries say distorted the facts.

In one instance, he said the state recently made its screening for personal care eligibility “more lenient by allowing problems like being ‘easily distracted’ to qualify for a personal care assistant.”

Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said the opposite was true — that the state in a rule change that went into effect last September instead made its program requirements more stringent. She said being “easily distracted” doesn’t appear anywhere among them.

Krepich said the administrator was referring to whether New York’s standard for personal care services was “sufficiently rigorous.”

“When standards are overly permissive, it risks diverting resources away from individuals with the highest levels of need and placing long-term pressure on the sustainability of the Medicaid program,” he said.

Oz in the video also referred to personal care services as “something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.”

Kathleen Downes, a 33-year-old who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and uses personal care services in New York’s Nassau County, said she was offended by the notion that all Medicaid beneficiaries have family members who are willing and able to help.

Downes, who has been disabled since birth and needs personal care help for things like showering, using the toilet and eating, said she hires both her mother and outside assistants for personal care services, so her aging mother doesn’t have to take on those tasks full time. She said her mother did the labor unpaid for years, precluding her from pursuing other career opportunities.

“He’s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free forever,” Downes said. “And that’s not feasible for a lot of people.”

___

Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.

The Dictatorship

Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA are an insult to astronauts like the Artemis crew

Published

20 hours ago

April 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 10, 2026, 8:22 PM EDT

Friday’s splashdown of the Artemis II crew, the first to travel to the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972, is a moment of celebration for all of us on Earth.

But it’s also an important reminder that, despite this success, the current administration’s Office of Management and Budget is proposing budget cuts that will all but dismantle much of NASA. It’s surprising, illogical and very troubling.

The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment.

The proposed cuts would terminate 53 NASA Science missions, throwing away more than $13 billion in taxpayer investment and halting the development of nearly every future NASA Science mission.

These cuts would be an insult to our astronauts and entire NASA workforce. Astronauts and their colleagues are civil servants who work hard, accomplish nearly impossible things and represent our country to the world.

It’s an odd choice from an administration that has pledged to put America first, to be sure. But stranger still, and quite personal to me, is the OMB’s proposal to completely end NASA’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) outreach program, which supports students and teachers nationwide. Programs like this have helped the United States be a world leader in science and technology.

We cannot allow this.

The U.S. has many great institutions, but NASA is a unique part of the American story. NASA is the best brand our nation has. When people around the world think of the U.S. at its best, they think of astronauts exploring the moon, telescopes opening new windows on the cosmos and spacecraft making profound discoveries on other worlds. NASA is who we are when we’re curious, bold and united.

There is also a growing consensus in Washington that we are in a new space race, this time, with the China National Space Administration, which, by the way, is planning to have taikonauts walk on the Moon in 2030. If the race is on, why abandon so much? Why cede the lead? The U.S. cannot be first in space if it is second in science and technology.

The administration proposed almost the same draconian cuts to NASA last year. When it did, we the people fought back. The Planetary Society, along with more than 300 advocates and 19 other partner organizations, went to Washington and organized the largest grassroots advocacy outreach for space science in history. Tens of thousands of citizens from every state and congressional district wrote, called and made their case to their elected officials. Together, we successfully saved NASA.

Now, this year, we have no choice but to fight back. On April 20, we will return to Washington, where people can join in person or join our Save NASA Science campaign online.

Science is not a luxury. It is a responsibility. Our founders knew it; you will find “Science” cited in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Only a public space agency can sustain decades-long investments in the kind of science that tells us whether life ever existed on Mars, that tracks the asteroids that could threaten every living thing on Earth and that reveals the story of our origin.

NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar.

Cutting science would not just delay discovery; it would destroy it. It would shatter our STEM talent pipeline. It would abandon our international partners. And, it would cede U.S. leadership in space science to China and other nations.

NASA’s science program is a bargain for Americans. It accounted for one-tenth of 1% of the nation’s expenditures last year, a tenth of a penny of every tax dollar. And for every dollar spent, three come back into the economy. Every year, NASA generates $75 billion of economic growth and supports over 300,000 jobs in all 50 states.

Members of Congress and the Senate agree: NASA is a remarkable investment. I’ve met with both Republicans and Democrats, all of whom support space science. And last year, an overwhelming bipartisan majority rejected these same cuts.

NASA is what makes America great. It represents our best values: curiosity, determination, tenacity, and global cooperation. It proves that we are capable of extraordinary things. When we invest in scientific exploration, we invest in ourselves — in our economy, security and future.

If we concede and retreat from the frontier of space after a half century of leadership, it would be an unworthy choice. If Artemis II has showed us anything, it’s that the public, across the political spectrum, strongly supports space exploration, scientific discovery and a deeper understanding of the universe and our place within it.

Bill Nye is the chief ambassador at The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.

The Dictatorship

Artemis II mission splashes down, returning to Earth

Published

20 hours ago

April 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Artemis II mission splashes down, returning to Earth

Apr. 10, 2026, 8:08 PM EDT

After making history as the farthest journey into space humans have ever made, NASA’s Artemis II mission returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down off the coast southwest of San Diego.

The Artemis II crew splashed down successfully at 5:07:47 p.m. PT. The Orion spacecraft launched last weekfrom the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the first crewed flight to the moon in more than 50 years. The entire mission from liftoff took a total of nine days, one hour, 31 minutes and 35 seconds, which NASA rounds up, to call it a 10-day mission.

In the buildup to the mission, questions about the craft’s heat shield led to concerns among some experts about whether Orion would hold up on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere, the most perilous part of any crewed mission. A NASA-commissioned panel ultimately deemed the ship safewith the astronauts themselves endorsing it ahead of time.

The four-member crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — embarked on the 10-day mission to fly around the moon, setting the stage for future missions aimed at establishing a permanent lunar base.

After splashdown, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman praised the crew, calling them “wonderful communicators, almost poets,” during an interview Friday evening.

“These were the ambassadors from humanity to the starts that we sent out there,” Isaacman said.

He also emphasized that this mission set the stage for a future moon landing — and base.

“This is not a once in a lifetime … This is just the beginning,” he said during the interview. “We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon, until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.”

On April 6, the spacecraft reached 252,756 miles from Earth, the farthest distance traveled by humans. Artemis II broke the Apollo 13crew’s record of 248,655 miles, set in 1970.

The crew conducted a seven-hour lunar flyby, coming within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface and seeing areas of the moon never before seen by the naked eye. In addition to testing the spacecraft, the astronauts studied the far side of the moon during a solar eclipse and observed lunar geological features and color variations.

Now back on Earth, the astronauts will undergo medical evaluations before heading to shore and traveling to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The next such mission, Artemis IIIis expected to launch next year.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.