fact

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents they are legally protected from prosecution and local officials cannot arrest them.

Fox News host Will Cain questioned Miller during an October 24 interview. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Cain said, “talked about interfering with, arresting, ICE agents in Illinois”.

Cain asked Miller under what federal authority the Trump administration could arrest Pritzker if the governor tried to arrest ICE agents.

“To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties,” Miller said. “And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”

Miller said his answer applied to any local or state official “who conspires or engages in activity that unlawfully impedes federal law enforcement conducting their duties”.

The day before Miller’s comments, Pritzker signed an executive order establishing the Illinois Accountability Commission to document federal law enforcement actions and refer possible law violations to local and state agencies for investigation. Chicago is the latest target in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and agents have arrested more than 3,000 people there.

Pritzker acknowledged in an October 16 interview that “federal agents typically have federal immunity, but they’re not immune from the federal government holding them accountable and responsible”.

His statement is less sweeping than Miller’s, and Pritzker noted that the federal government can prosecute federal agents.

Immigration agents, like other law enforcement officers, have broad protections when conducting official duties. That doesn’t mean they can’t be held legally accountable if they break state or federal law.

“Federal officials are not categorically immune from state criminal prosecution, even while on duty,” Bryna Godar, a lawyer at the University of Wisconsin’s State Democracy Research Initiative, wrote in a July 17 report.

When contacted for comment, the White House pointed PolitiFact to an October 23 letter that US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote to California officials.

“The Department of Justice views any arrests of federal agents and officers in the performance of their official duties as both illegal and futile,” Blanche wrote.

He cited several federal laws and provisions, including the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The clause limits when states can prosecute federal agents who break state law, but it does not act as blanket immunity, legal experts said.

Miller’s statement is “wrong on its face”, Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University constitutional law professor, wrote in his October 27 newsletter.

The federal government can prosecute immigration agents who break the law

Federal immigration agents can’t break the law with impunity.

In 2024, a federal judge convicted and sentenced to federal prison a US Customs and Border Protection agent for using excessive force against two people at the southern border. Department of Homeland Security watchdog officers investigated the case.

The federal government has cited its power to hold agents accountable in court arguments. After a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy at the southern border in 2010, the Justice Department said in a 2019 Supreme Court brief that the federal government investigates allegations of excessive force by agents “and may bring a federal criminal prosecution where appropriate”.

Non-government organisations can also sue the federal government for its agents’ actions. Several groups in Chicago, including journalism organisations, sued the Trump administration saying federal agents are using “a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians”.

In that case, federal District Judge Sara Ellis ordered immigration agents not to use tear gas and other riot control tactics unless people are posing an immediate threat. If the agents are going to use tear gas, they are required to give a verbal warning first.

After reports that agents weren’t following the court order, Ellis ordered Gregory Bovino, the senior Border Patrol official overseeing the federal immigration actions in Chicago, to meet with her every weeknight to report all confrontations officers have with the public. A federal appeals court has since temporarily paused Ellis’s order.

Vladeck wrote that even if the Trump administration does not investigate or prosecute immigration agents who might have broken the law, it doesn’t mean the federal government doesn’t have the power to do so.

Pritzker said his state’s commission seeks to document actions that could be prosecuted in the future.

State governments aren’t barred from prosecuting federal agents

State governments can also prosecute immigration agents if they break state law. However, there is a limitation known as supremacy clause immunity, which comes from the US Constitution’s clause that says federal law supersedes conflicting state laws.

Protections against state prosecution for federal agents date back to a 1890 Supreme Court decision. David Neagle, a US marshal assigned to protect a Supreme Court justice, shot and killed a man who assaulted the justice. California arrested Neagle and charged him with murder. The Supreme Court ruled that the state couldn’t prosecute Neagle because he was carrying out official duties.

Generally, federal agents are protected from state prosecution if their actions were authorised by federal law, and if the actions were “necessary and proper” for agents to fulfil their duties.

A federal court ruled in 1990 that a customs agent was immune from state charges for speeding while driving during a drug operation. The agent acted under US laws and was justified in concluding speeding was necessary to fulfil his duties, the court said.

But a US marine wasn’t given immunity in 1990 after he killed a person in a car accident while he was driving in a military convoy in North Carolina.

“In short, while Supremacy Clause immunity grants federal officials a partial shield from state prosecution, that immunity is not absolute,” Godar wrote.

Contrary to Miller’s statement, Vladeck wrote, it’s not a felony “for local or state authorities to arrest someone who they have probable cause to believe committed a state crime”.

If a state brought charges against federal immigration agents, the court would have to determine whether an officer reasonably would have thought the actions were necessary to carry out federal duties.

“That’s a generous standard, to be sure,” Vladeck wrote. “But it is by no means a get-out-of-prosecution-free card.”

Our ruling

Miller said: “To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”

Immigration agents, like other law enforcement officers, have broad protections when they’re conducting official duties. But they’re not immune from prosecution if they break state or federal law.

The federal government can and does prosecute federal officers who break the law.

States can’t prosecute agents for breaking state law if the agents were acting under the reasonable confines of their official duties. But those restrictions aren’t absolute.

The statement contains an element of truth; federal immigration agents have some immunity from state prosecution. But the protections aren’t as sweeping as Miller made them sound, giving a different impression. Federal agents can and have been prosecuted by states.

We rate Miller’s statement Mostly False.

With millions of people in the United States at risk of losing access to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – also known as food stamps – from November 1, a viral chart has claimed to show the majority of the nation’s food stamp recipients are non-white and noncitizens.

The chart, titled Food Stamps by Ethnicity, listed 36 groups of people and said it showed the “percentage of US households receiving SNAP benefits”.

The groups were labelled by nationality, such as “Afghan”, “Somali”, “Iraqi”, along with the racial groups “white”, “Black” and “native”. The chart appeared to show that Afghan people were the largest group receiving SNAP benefits, at 45.6 percent, followed by Somali (42.4 percent) and Iraqi (34.8 percent). White people, represented on the chart with the US flag, were third to last at 8.6 percent.

The federal government shutdown, which started on October 1, is the cause of the looming SNAP funding lapse. SNAP provides food purchasing benefits to low-income households. Conservatives have peddled the misleading narrative that Democrats are pushing for healthcare for undocumented migrants, and people commenting on the chart rehashed a similar talking point.

“Who is getting their EBT cut?” read the caption of an October 25 X post sharing the chart, which had 3.1 million views as of October 27. EBT stands for Electronic Benefits Transfer, which is a SNAP payment system.

“Only 18.7% of EBT or food stamp recipients are American. Let that sink in …” read another post sharing the chart, seemingly mistakenly referring to the figure next to the word “Armenian”; there was no “American” category in the chart. “We are subsidizing foreigners on the taxpayers dime.”

Who is getting their EBT cut pic.twitter.com/el8x9X5iVX

— The General (@1776General_) October 25, 2025

The chart doesn’t show the full picture of SNAP recipients by race or ethnicity. The most reliable source for the breakdown of SNAP recipients by demographics comes from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the programme.

According to the most recent USDA data available, from 2023, white people are the largest racial group receiving SNAP benefits, at 35.4 percent. African Americans are next, making up 25.7 percent of recipients, then Hispanic people at 15.6 percent, Asian people at 3.9 percent, Native Americans at 1.3 percent and multiracial people at 1 percent. The race of 17 percent of participants is unknown.

The same report found that 89.4 percent of SNAP recipients were US-born citizens, meaning less than 11 percent of SNAP participants were foreign-born. Of the latter figure, 6.2 percent were naturalised citizens, 1.1 percent were refugees and 3.3 percent were other noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents and other eligible noncitizens.

While large shares of the groups listed in the chart may receive food stamps, “they are certainly a tiny share of the households and spending on SNAP”, said Tracy Roof, University of Richmond associate professor of political science.

Survey data shows an incomplete picture on SNAP recipients

The chart shared on social media originated from a June blog post from The Personal Finance Wizards, which cited “US Census Table S0201” as its source. The site offers financial advice, but published a disclaimer saying it cannot guarantee the “completeness, accuracy, or reliability” of its information.

The site’s authors appeared to cherry-pick groups to include in the chart, noting, “It’s important to note that the graph highlights a selection of ethnicities we felt would be most relevant and engaging for our audience.” It did not name an author.

In a comment on an Instagram post sharing the chart, Personal Finance Wizards shared a link to the US Census table it used. It shows data from the 2024 American Community Survey, filtered by 49 racial and ethnic groups. The filtered groups don’t completely overlap with the groups in the chart, but the dataset has a column for “households with food stamp/SNAP benefits”, which shows percentages similar to the ones in the chart.

The data does not show what percentage of all SNAP beneficiaries belong to an ethnic or nationality group.

Joseph Llobrera, senior director of research for the food assistance team at the liberal think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the chart appeared to show the shares of households receiving SNAP based on the household respondents’ reported ancestry, which is different from citizenship status.

“Without context, this graphic is misleading and may lead some to conclude that many non-citizens are participating in SNAP, which is not true,” he said.

The American Community Survey allows respondents to self-identify their race. It also defines ancestry as a “person’s ethnic origin or descent, roots or heritage, place of birth, or place of parents’ ancestors before their arrival in the United States”.

Colleen Heflin, Syracuse University expert on food insecurity, nutrition and welfare policy, said the American Community Survey data on SNAP receipts is self-reported, and that question “is known to have a great deal of measurement error” when compared with SNAP administrative data.

Chart reflects higher levels of need in groups with higher shares of SNAP participation

Groups such as Afghans and Iraqis, who are first and third on the chart, would have been more likely to have immediately qualified for the SNAP programme before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s passage because of their special immigration status.

Before the law’s passage, refugees and people who had been granted asylum were also eligible for SNAP without a waiting period. Somalis, who were second on the chart, are “more likely” to qualify based on those criteria, Roof said.

Other noncitizens, such as lawful permanent residents, could be eligible for SNAP only after a five-year waiting period.

But the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed the eligibility, making refugees and asylum seekers ineligible. Immigrants in the country illegally are not and have never been eligible for SNAP.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appears poised to recognize President Trump’s authority to send soldiers to Portland, Ore., with members of the court signaling receptiveness to an expansive new read of the president’s power to put boots on the ground in American cities.

A three-judge panel from the appellate court — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — heard oral arguments Thursday after Oregon challenged the legality of the president’s order to deploy hundreds of soldiers to Portland. The administration claims the city has become lawless; Oregon officials argue Trump is manufacturing a crisis to justify calling in the National Guard.

While the court has not issued a decision, a ruling in Trump’s favor would mark a sharp rightward turn for the once-liberal circuit — and probably set up a Supreme Court showdown over why and how the U.S. military can be used domestically.

“I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of ‘executing the laws’ is right or wrong,” said Judge Ryan D. Nelson of Idaho Falls, Idaho, one of the two Trump appointees hearing the arguments.

“That’s an internal decision making, and whether there’s a ton of protests or low protests, they can still have an impact on his ability to execute the laws,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her temporary restraining on Oct. 4.

The facts about the situation on the ground in Portland were not in dispute at the hearing on Thursday. The city has remained mostly calm in recent months, with protesters occasionally engaging in brief skirmishes with authorities stationed outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.

Instead, Nelson and Judge Bridget S. Bade of Phoenix, whom Trump once floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, questioned how much the facts mattered.

“The president gets to direct his resources as he deems fit, and it seems a little counterintuitive to me that the city of Portland can come and say, ‘No you need to do it differently,’” Nelson said.

He also appeared to endorse the Department of Justice’s claim that “penalizing” the president for waiting until protests had calmed to deploy soldiers to quell them created a perverse incentive to act first and ask questions later.

“It just seems like such a tortured reading of the statute,” the judge said. He then referenced the first battle of the U.S. Civil War in 1861, saying, “I’m not sure even President Lincoln would be able to bring in forces when he did, because if he didn’t do it immediately after Fort Sumter, [Oregon’s] argument would be, ‘Oh, things are OK now.’”

Trump’s efforts to use troops to quell protests and support federal immigration operations have led to a growing tangle of legal challenges. The Portland deployment was halted by Immergut, who blocked Trump from federalizing Oregon troops. (A ruling from the same case issued the next day prevents already federalized troops from being deployed.)

In June, a different 9th Circuit panel also made up of two Trump appointees ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — discretion to determine whether facts on the ground met the threshold for military response in Los Angeles. Thousands of federalized National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines were deployed over the summer amid widespread protests over immigration enforcement.

The June decision set precedent for how any future deployment in the circuit’s vast territory can be reviewed. It also sparked outrage, both among those who oppose armed soldiers patrolling American streets and those who support them.

Opponents argue repeated domestic deployments shred America’s social fabric and trample protest rights protected by the 1st Amendment. With soldiers called into action so far in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, many charge the administration is using the military for political purposes.

“The military should not be acting as a domestic police force in this country except in the most extreme circumstances,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That set of circumstances is not present right now anywhere in the country, so this is an abuse of power — and a very dangerous one because of the precedent it sets.”

Supporters say the president has sole authority to determine the facts on the ground and if they warrant military intervention. They argue any check by the judicial branch is an illegal power grab, aimed at thwarting response to a legitimate and growing “invasion from within.”

“What they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said in an address to military top brass last week. “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

The 9th Circuit agreed to rehear the Los Angeles case with an 11-member “en banc” panel in Pasadena on Oct. 22, signaling a schism among Trump’s own judges over the boundaries of the president’s power.

Still, Trump’s authority to call soldiers into American cities is only the first piece in a larger legal puzzle spread before the 9th Circuit, experts said.

What federalized troops are allowed to do once deployed is the subject of another court decision now under review. That case could determine whether soldiers are barred from assisting immigration raids, controlling crowds of protesters or any other form of civilian law enforcement.

Trump officials have maintained the president can wield the military as he sees fit — and that cities such as Portland and L.A. would be in danger if soldiers can’t come to the rescue.

“These are violent people, and if at any point we let down our guard, there is a serious risk of ongoing violence,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said. “The president is entitled to say enough is enough and bring in the National Guard.”

President Trump has often locked horns with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the once left-leaning court putting a persistent drag on his first-term agenda.

And now, even after remaking the bench with his own appointees, the president is still tangling with the West Coast’s federal appellate court — a situation poised to boil over as the circuit juggles multiple challenges to his use of the National Guard to police American streets.

“I appointed the judge and he goes like that — I wasn’t served well,” Trump told reporters Sunday, lashing out at U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland after she temporarily blocked the deployment federalized troops.

“To have a judge like that, that judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump said, referring to Immergut, who is a woman.

The president has long railed against judges who rule against him, calling them “monsters,” “deranged,” and “radical” at various points in the past.

Trump has also occasionally sniped at conservative jurists, including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he called “disgraceful” after the court rejected his bid to overturn the 2020 election.

But this weekend’s spat marked a shift in his willingness to go after his own appointees — a turn experts say could become much sharper as his picks to the appellate bench test his ambition to put boots on the ground in major cities across the U.S.

“The fact that a pretty conservative judge ruled the way she did is an indication that some conservative judges would rule similarly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.

The 9th Circuit handed the administration an early victory in the troop fight this spring, finding that courts must give “a great level of deference” to the president to decide whether facts on the ground warrant military intervention.

That ruling is set to be reviewed by a larger appellate panel, and could ultimately be reversed. The circuit is also now set to review a September decision barring federalized troops in California from aiding in civilian law enforcement, as well as Immergut’s temporary restraining order blocking the deployment over the weekend.

In the meantime, the 9th Circuit’s June decision has served as a guidepost for states seeking to limit what Oregon called a “nationwide campaign to assimilate the military into civilian law enforcement.”

“That decision is binding, and it does require a substantial degree of deference on the factual issues,” Somin said. “[But] when what the president does is totally divorced from reality, that limit is breached.”

Immergut appeared to agree, saying in her ruling that circumstances in Portland this fall were significantly different than those in L.A. in the spring. While some earlier protests did turn violent, she wrote, recent pickets outside Portland’s ICE headquarters have featured lawn chairs and low energy.

“Violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to execute the laws using nonmilitary federal law enforcement,” the judge wrote, addressing the 9th Circuit decision.

“The President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference,’” Immergut continued. “But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. … The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

But exactly where the appellate court may draw the line on presidential fact-finding is tricky, experts said.

“How much deference is owed to the president? That’s something we’re all talking about,” said John C. Dehn, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Whether courts can review the president’s judgment at all is a matter that splits even some of the president’s most conservative judicial picks from his current justice department attorneys.

So far, Trump has relied on an esoteric subsection of the U.S. Code for the authority to send soldiers on immigration raids and to control crowds of protesters.

Dehn and others have characterized that reading of the code as semantic and divorced from its legal context.

“They’re looking at the words in a vacuum and arguing the broadest possible meaning they could can think of,” Dehn said. “The administration is not engaged in good faith statutory interpretation — they’re engaged in linguistic manipulation of these statues.”

Immegur agreed, quoting Supreme Court precedent saying “[i]nterpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text.”

For some conservative legal scholars, Trump appointees’ willingness to push back on repeated deployments could signal a limit — or a dangerous new escalation in the administration’s attacks on jurists who defy them.

“It’s obvious the administration is trying to do this on a bigger scale,” Somin said. “Ideally we would not rely on litigation alone to deal with it.”

In 2013, then-businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump shared his vision on Fox News about the role a United States president should play in a government shutdown: “You have to be nice and be angry and be wild and cajole and do all sorts of things, but you have to get a deal.”

Now, as president, Trump has taken a different approach. After failing to reach a bipartisan agreement, he mocked Democrats by posting an expletive-laced video generated by artificial intelligence and set to mariachi music, falsely showing US Representative Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and US Senator Chuck Schumer saying that “nobody likes Democrats any more”, so the party is seeking favour with “illegal aliens”.

Welcome to the 2025 US government shutdown.

At PolitiFact, we have fact-checked lawmakers’ and pundits’ statements about government shutdowns for more than a decade. When Congress can’t reach a funding agreement, both sides of the political aisle whip up talking points about what a shutdown means for the economy, immigration, worker paycheques, disaster response and services for low-income families. The blame is nearly always placed on the other party.

A reminder: Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. But passing legislation to extend government funding at current levels would require, under longstanding rules, more than half a dozen Democrats to side with Republicans in order to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance to a vote. This gives Democrats some negotiating leverage, which they are seeking to use in the spending fight.

Social services

Women, Infants, and Children programme will ‘not be funded’

House Speaker Mike Johnson, in September 29 remarks to reporters.

Johnson omits that enrollees will still likely get services, at least initially. But much depends on how long the shutdown lasts.

The Agriculture Department’s shutdown plan said its Women, Infants and Children nutrition programme, which provides food to low-income families, shall continue operations “subject to the availability of funding”. The WIC has 6.9 million participants.

WIC should be able to continue for at least one week, said Alison Hard, National WIC Association policy director. After that, operations will vary by state, depending on their funds.

During a shutdown, state WIC programmes have options to temporarily fill the funding gap, including various USDA sources, state money and requesting early rebate payments from their contracted infant formula manufacturers.

Past shutdowns

‘Back in 2013, Trump said it was the President’s job to negotiate and avoid a shutdown’

Senator Jeff Merkley, in a September 29 X post

That’s an accurate paraphrase of Trump’s remarks.

In an October 7, 2013, interview with then-Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, Trump criticised then-President Barack Obama for not being a dealmaker during the shutdown. In full, he said: “You have to get everybody in a room. You have to be a leader. The president has to lead. He has to get [the Speaker of the House] and everybody else in a room, and they have to make a deal. You have to be nice and be angry and be wild and cajole and do all sorts of things, but you have to get a deal.”

Trump made similar remarks in a September 2013 Fox & Friends phone interview: “Problems start from the top, and they have to get solved from the top, and the president’s the leader, and he’s got to get everybody in a room, and he’s got to lead.”

Healthcare

Republicans are spiking health insurance premiums by 75 percent for everyday Americans if they don’t extend enhanced ACA subsidies

Representative Katherine Clark, in a September 12 X post.

This is mostly true.

If the Republican-controlled Congress does not extend Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies before they expire at the end of this year, enrollees will have to pay more.

A KFF analysis of federal data found that the average increase in out-of-pocket coverage cost for enrollees would be 79 percent, with state-by-state average increases ranging from 49 percent to 195 percent.

This cost increase would come from a combination of insurance premium increases and the disappearance of subsidies, rather than from “spiking health insurance premiums” alone.

More than two weeks after Clark’s statement – and after we published the fact check – KFF produced a revised figure for average increases based on new data: 114 percent.

‘Democrats so-called proposal is a partisan wish list with a $1.5 trillion spending increase tacked onto a four-week funding bill’

House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a September 29 news release.

The Republican talking point misses the context of the Democrats’ proposal.

The September 17 Democratic proposal latches government funding up until October 31, known as a “continuing resolution”, to some Democratic priorities, including healthcare assistance and limiting Trump’s ability to claw back funds previously approved by Congress.

The bill calls for permanently extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that were passed in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and extended in 2022. Those are set to expire on December 31 this year. The Democratic bill would also reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programmes that Republicans enacted in their signature tax and spending legislation.

The Democrats’ measure would restore funding for public broadcasting that Republicans nixed in July and includes at least $320m for security for lawmakers, the executive branch and the Supreme Court. (Republicans have proposed $88m in security funding in their resolution bill.)

The bill also contains mandates for how the Trump administration can spend money and would hinder the White House’s recent attempt to cancel almost $5bn in foreign aid.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that’s hawkish on the deficit, said in a September 18 news release that Democrats’ proposal in its entirety would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

“The [continuing resolution] itself – the part that funds the government – would not add $1.5 trillion to the debt, but the bill that Democrats have proposed includes other provisions that would,” Chris Towner, the group’s policy director, wrote in an email. “The bill repeals the health spending cuts that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would cost about $1.1 trillion over a decade to repeal.”

Towner also said the Democrats’ provision to make the enhanced ACA subsidies permanent would cost about $350bn over a decade.

If enhanced subsidies are not extended, people with insurance through the Affordable Care Act will see their premiums rise ‘twice as much in the rural areas’

Senator Amy Klobuchar, in a September 28 interview on CBS’s Face the Nation

This is mostly true.

There are at least two ways to interpret Klobuchar’s statement: that she was comparing rural enrollees’ costs with people living elsewhere, or comparing their costs with what they paid before.

Klobuchar’s office told PolitiFact that the senator was referring to rural enrollees seeing increases that were double what they had paid before, and that interpretation aligns with what Klobuchar has said in other settings.

An analysis by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found that out-of-pocket insurance costs would increase on average in rural counties from $713 to $1,473 – a 107 percent increase, or slightly more than a doubling.

Comparing rural enrollees’ cost increases with people elsewhere, it amounts to a disproportionately large increase for rural areas, but it’s not twice as much.

Enrollees in rural counties would see average out-of-pocket losses of $760 from expiring enhanced subsidies, compared with $624 for all counties and $593 for urban counties. That’s 22 percent more for rural enrollees compared with all others, and 28 percent more compared with urban enrollees.

Government workers

‘If the government shuts down, members of Congress still get paid. The janitors never get paid’

Daniel Koh, on The People’s Cabinet podcast episode, September 29.

This is mostly true.

Members of the House and Senate continue to get paid during a shutdown. Federal law says federal employees get back pay, but the law does not extend to contractors, a group that includes many janitors. Some private employers with federal contracts may find ways to pay their employees, but there is nothing in federal law that requires it.

‘FEMA won’t be funded’ during hurricane season because of the shutdown

House Speaker Mike Johnson, in September 29 remarks to reporters

Johnson was correct that Congress had not agreed on Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding, but a Department of Homeland Security shutdown procedures plan estimates that 84 percent of FEMA employees will continue working. (The DHS oversees FEMA.)

“Bottom line: hurricanes don’t care about politics. FEMA will still respond. But recovery will stall if Congress can’t do its job,” said Craig Fugate, who led FEMA during President Barack Obama’s administration after leading Florida’s emergency management under then-Republican Governor Jeb Bush. “This isn’t new – both parties own the blame.”

The agency’s recovery efforts are most at risk, Fugate said, because they depend on how much money remains in the Disaster Relief Fund. “Those dollars aren’t tied to the shutdown, but they usually run low this time of year. Normally, Congress passes a continuing resolution to add money. A shutdown means that doesn’t happen. That slows recovery projects, not the immediate response.”

The fund had about $2.3bn at the end of August, which is considered low.

President Donald Trump said US workers are already benefitting from his economic policies.

“The average American worker has already seen a $500 wage increase this year,” Trump said during an August 26 Cabinet meeting.

Trump’s White House cherry-picked data that favours a higher earnings gain. Experts prefer a different measure, based on a larger sample size, that shows a smaller increase.

How the White House calculated a $500 pay bump

When we asked the White House press office for Trump’s data source, a spokesperson pointed us to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, seasonally adjusted.

This data shows that median weekly earnings rose from $1,185 in the fourth quarter of 2024 to $1,206 in the second quarter of 2025, which closely aligns with Trump’s second term in office.

Because those figures represent weekly earnings, we multiplied them by 26 to see how much a typical worker gained during the half-year period. Multiplying by 26 weeks produces a cumulative $546 rise in wages. This measure does not include part-time workers, who account for about a quarter of the workforce, or account for inflation.

Experts consider other measures more reliable

Economists said the White House’s chosen dataset isn’t as reliable as a different set – and the more reliable study shows a smaller wage increase.

The other dataset – average weekly earnings of all private-sector employees – is produced monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Over the first six months of 2025, this statistic found a cumulative pay increase of about $121. That’s about one-quarter of what Trump said.

Several economists told us this is the preferred statistic for measuring wages, because it’s based on the Current Employment Statistics programme, which surveys 121,000 businesses and government agencies, collectively representing approximately 631,000 worksites. By comparison, the Current Population Survey, from which the White House’s data is drawn, samples 60,000 eligible households.

“I always trust the payroll series more,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the centre-right American Action Forum.

Dean Baker, cofounder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, agrees, saying the data in the smaller household survey “is highly erratic”.

In addition, according to this dataset, the wage rise during President Joe Biden’s last two quarters was $884. This undercuts the notion that Trump’s gains have been unusually high.

Factoring in inflation

Because both of these measures fail to factor in inflation, they overestimate workers’ gains.

Another statistic, median usual weekly inflation-adjusted earnings for full-time wage and salary workers, 16 years and over, also from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, is produced quarterly using the smaller sample-size household survey and takes inflation into account.

By this metric, workers’ pay increased by $1 per week between the final quarter of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025.

Multiplied by 26 weeks, this adds up to a $26 pay rise after inflation.

Our ruling

Trump said: “The average American worker has already seen a $500 wage increase this year.”

The White House cited wage statistics that show median wages for full-time workers rose by a cumulative $546 during the first two quarters of 2025.

A different set of statistics – one that economists consider more accurate because it’s drawn from a much larger sample that includes full- and part-time workers, and with less volatility – shows a much smaller rise in the average US worker’s pay over that period, about $121 over six months.

When inflation is factored in, full-time workers’ take-home pay rose by even less – by about $26 during the first six months of 2025.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.

The parade of Trump terribles is a long one, starting in Washington and stretching clear across this beleaguered nation.

A bumbling Defense secretary who lacks the competence to organize a two-car military procession.

A screw-loose Health secretary who seems not to care if measles and other plagues descend on America.

A director of national intelligence who’s shown no great abundance of that quality but, rather, an eagerness to twist and bend facts like a coat hanger, serving whatever cockamamie claim the president burps up.

Because, after all, obeisance and lay-down-your-life loyalty are the main prerequisites for service in the Trump administration, along with the all-important consideration of how one comes across on television.

How else to explain the chief federal prosecutor he’s imposed on Nevada, Sigal Chattah?

Chattah, 50, devoted years to a not-particularly-noteworthy legal career, practicing domestic and international law at her Las Vegas firm and teaching political science for a time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 2022, Chattah was the Republican nominee for state attorney general, losing rather handily to incumbent Democrat Aaron Ford.

But not before distinguishing herself as a notably reprehensible candidate.

Among other things, Chattah compared Ford to the leader of Hamas and said that her opponent, who happens to be Black, “should be hanging from a f— crane.” (The Israeli-born Chattah told the Las Vegas Review Journal the “smart-ass comment” was a tongue-in-cheek expression derived from her Middle East background.)

A pugnacious poster on social media — another perceived asset in Trump World — Chattah called a Black member of Congress a “hood rat,” a Black female prosecutor “ghetto” and a Black “Saturday Night Live” cast member a “monkey.”

She suggested immigrants — make that “invaders” — and college protesters should be shot and transgenderism should be treated with “meds or commitment to an in-patient facility.”

But what might have particularly endeared her to Trump is her embrace of his ego-salving Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from under him. Chattah even served as legal counsel to one of the fake electors who tried to overturn Joe Biden’s clear-cut victory and swipe Nevada for Trump.

It’s hardly unusual for a president to pick a member of his party to serve as U.S. attorney, replacing the choice of a previous administration. In fact, even though justice is supposed to be blind and thus, theoretically above political considerations, that’s how the selection process usually works.

But Trump has broken new and treacherous ground by installing not just partisans as federal prosecutors but lackeys — starting with Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — who’ve shown their allegiance not to fair-minded application of the law but rather delivering on the feral impulses of their White House patron.

Trump’s pick for top prosecutor in the Los Angeles area is Bill Essayli, a former state assemblyman from Riverside County whose main qualification seemed to be his loud, performative approach to serving in Sacramento’s GOP minority.

Bondi appointed Essayli on an interim basis in early April. His appointment was limited to 120 days; normally within that time he would have been formally nominated and faced confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Knowing the latter was unlikely, the Trump administration executed an end run and named Essayli “acting U.S. attorney,” which gives him an additional 210 days in the job before he faces formal confirmation.

As it happened, the very same day that maneuvering took place, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges in a criminal case involving one of Trump’s political donors.

Coincidence?

The same sleight-of-hand — interim appointment, designation as “acting U.S. attorney” — was used to extend the tenure of Trump sycophants as chief federal prosecutors in New Jersey, New Mexico, upstate New York and, in Chattah’s case, Nevada.

(In a setback for Trump, a federal judge ruled last week that his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, was unlawfully serving as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, though the order was put on hold pending appeal.)

Chattah’s partisanship is plain as a desert squall. In a remarkable breach of protocol and ethics — not to mention the federal law forbidding employees from mixing work and politics — she kept her position as Nevada’s representative on the Republican National Committee even as she served as interim U.S. attorney.

Chattah abandoned the post only after the Nevada Independent reported on the obvious conflict of interest.

Last month, in the final days before Chattah’s interim appointment ended, more than 100 retired state and federal judges wrote Nevada’s chief federal district judge to object to her continued service. The group said Chattah’s history of “racially charged, violence-tinged, and inflammatory public statements” was disqualifying.

The Trump administration extended her tenure nonetheless.

As part of their unavailing effort, the judges quoted a 1940 speech then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert H. Jackson delivered, citing the immense power and responsibility that rests with a U.S. attorney.

“The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous,” said Jackson, who went on to serve as one of the Supreme Court’s most distinguished justices. “… The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial.

“While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”

Obviously, Jackson never knew Chattah or other Trump appointees besmirching the halls of justice. But the late justice, buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Frewsburg, N.Y., is doubtless turning somersaults in his grave.

In the early 20th century it was widely thought that there was intelligent life on Mars, and that we actually knew something about the inhabitants. Fringe theorists and yellow journalists spread this view, but so did respected scientists and the New York Times. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world had Martians on the brain. The mania could be summed up by the philosophy of Fox Mulder, the paranormal investigator played by David Duchovny on “The X-Files”: “I want to believe.”

How this came to pass is the subject of “The Martians.” David Baron’s deeply researched and witty book explores what happened when “we, the people of Earth, fell hard for another planet and projected our fantasies, desires, and ambitions onto an alien world.” As Baron writes, “This romance blazed before it turned to embers, and it produced children, for we — the first humans who might actually sail to Mars — are its descendants.”

Well before there was Elon Musk, there was Percival Lowell. A disillusioned, admittedly misanthropic Boston Brahmin, Lowell came to see himself as a scientist with the soul of a poet, or a poet with scientific instincts. He was also filthy rich, and he poured much of his money into equipment and research that might help him prove there was life on Mars.

David Baron, a Colorado-based science writer, approaches his subject with clarity, style and narrative drive.

(Dana C. Meyer)

He was hardly alone. Other movers and shakers in the Martian movement included French astronomer and philosopher Camille Flammarion, who brought missionary zeal to the task of convincing the world of extraterrestrial life; and Giovanni Schiaparelli, the colorblind Italian astronomer who observed “an abundance of narrow streaks” on Mars “that appeared to connect the seas one to another.” He called these “canali,” which in Italian means “channels.” But in English the word was translated as “canals,” and it was quickly and widely assumed that these canals were strategically created by agriculturally-inclined Martians. Lowell, Flammarion and Schiaparelli collaborated and communicated with one another throughout their lives, in the interest of spreading the word of life on Mars.

Baron, a Colorado-based science writer, approaches his subject with clarity, style and narrative drive, focusing on the social currents and major figures of his story rather than scientific concepts that might go over the head of a lay reader (including this one). The Mars craze unfolded during a period defined by the theory of evolution, which expanded our conception of gradualism and inexorable progress, and tabloid journalism, which was quick to present enthusiastic postulation and speculation as fact, whether the subject was the Spanish-American War or life on other planets. Science fiction was also taking off, thanks largely to a prolific Englishman named H.G. Wells, whose widely serialized attack-of-the-Martians story “War of the Worlds” piqued the Western imagination. All of the above contributed to Mars fever.

One by one Baron introduces his protagonists, including Musk’s hero Nikola Tesla. An innovator in wireless communication and what would now be called remote control, Tesla won over the press and public with his enigmatic charm, which led his pronouncements to be taken seriously and literally by those who should have known better. “I have an instrument by which I can receive with precision any signal that might be made to this world from Mars,” he told a reporter. Tesla briefly had a powerful benefactor in Wall Street king J.P. Morgan, who funded Tesla’s wireless research before deciding the Mars obsession was a bit much and cutting him off.

Baron comes not to bury the Mars mania, but to examine the reasons why we choose to believe what we believe. Lowell, spurned in his romantic life and treated as a black sheep by his dynastic family, found in Mars a calling, a raison d’être. As Baron writes, “Mars gave his life purpose; it offered him the means to prove himself a success worthy of the Lowell pedigree.” The Mars believers were dreamers and misfits, all with something to prove (or, in the case of some publishers, papers to sell).

As Baron points out, the scientific method often fell by the wayside amid the hullabaloo. An acquaintance of Lowell’s bemoaned the habit Lowell had of “jumping at some general idea or theorem,” after which he “selects and bends facts to underprop that generalization.” Lowell himself once advised an assistant, “It is better never to admit that you have made a mistake.” Or later, as he sought photographic evidence of the Mars canals: “We must secure some canals to confound the skeptics” — which, today, carries eerie echoes of “Find me the votes.”

None of which should denigrate the dreams of space exploration. Nobody, after all, imagined we would actually walk on the moon. Carl Sagan, the great science popularizer and member of the Mariner 9 team that captured groundbreaking images of Mars in 1971, concluded that those canals were, as Baron puts it, “mere chimeras, an amalgam of misperceptions due to atmospheric distortion, the fallible human eye, and one man’s unconstrained imagination.” But that imagination, Sagan added, had value of its own: “Even if Lowell’s conclusions about Mars, including the existence of the fabled canals, turned out to be bankrupt, his depiction of the planet had at least this virtue: it aroused generations of eight-year-olds, myself among them, to consider the exploration of the planets as a real possibility, to wonder if we ourselves might go to Mars.”

L.A. Times contributor Vognar recently joined the staff of the Boston Globe.

Before trade rumors heated up and dream scenarios were briefly envisioned, before the Dodgers were linked to a string of big names who all wound up anywhere but Los Angeles, the team’s front office foreshadowed what proved to be a rather straightforward, unremarkable trade deadline on Thursday afternoon.

“This group is really talented,” general manager Brandon Gomes said last week. “I would argue it’s better than the team that won the World Series last year.”

“It’s really about our internal guys, and the fact that these are veteran guys that have well-established watermarks,” echoed president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, amid a July slump that fueled deadline speculation about what the team would need.

“I think the fact that we see the work they put in, how much they care, just makes it easier to bet on.”

On Thursday, maintaining faith in their current group is exactly what the Dodgers did.

The team did address its two main needs ahead of MLB’s annual midseason trade deadline. In the bullpen, it reunited with right-handed veteran Brock Stewart in a trade with the Minnesota Twins. In the outfield, it added solid-hitting, defensively serviceable 30-year-old Alex Call in a deal with the Washington Nationals.

But compared with the flurry of blockbuster deals that reverberated around them in the National League — from a head-spinning seven-player shopping spree by the San Diego Padres, to a bullpen arms race between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies — the Dodgers’ moves were mild, tame and certainly cost-conscientious.

They didn’t splurge for one of the several established closers that were dealt for sky-high prices throughout the league. They didn’t remake their lineup by landing someone such as Steven Kwan, or any other hitter with anything close to All-Star pedigree.

In fact, the Dodgers hardly gave up much at all, content to round out the margins of their roster while parting with little in the way of prospect capital.

High-A pitchers Eriq Swan and Sean Paul Liñan (the 16th- and 20th-ranked players in their farm system by MLB Pipeline) were shipped to Washington. But otherwise, the only other departures were 40-man roster players unlikely to factor much into the team’s late-season plans: James Outman, who went to Minnesota in exchange for Stewart; Dustin May, who was dealt to the Boston Red Sox for a prospect a few months before entering free agency; and minor league catcher Hunter Feduccia, who was part of a three-team deal late Wednesday night that netted the Dodgers two pitching prospects and a journeyman catcher.

The Dodgers’ James Outman (33) celebrates after hitting a three-run home run during a game against the Miami Marlins in May.

(Marta Lavandier / Associated Press)

Compared to last year — when the Dodgers added Jack Flaherty (their eventual Game 1 starter in the World Series), Tommy Edman (the eventual National League Championship Series MVP) and Michael Kopech (a key piece in a bullpen that carried the team to a World Series title) — it all felt rather anticlimactic.

Which, as the Dodgers’ top two executives had noted the week before, appeared to be perfectly fine by them.

In Stewart, the team got a lower-cost addition in what was an expensive seller’s reliever market.

The 33-year-old has only two career saves, and is unlikely to fix the Dodgers’ ninth-inning problems. But, he is having a strong statistical season with 14 holds and a 2.38 ERA, 14th-best in the American League among relievers with 30 innings. He will give the Dodgers a stout option against right-handed hitters, who have just a .104 average and .372 OPS against him. And he comes with familiarity in the organization, still thought highly of after starting his career with the Dodgers from 2016-2019 — back before he reinvented himself with a fastball that now sits in the mid-to-upper 90 mph range.

In Call, the Dodgers gave themselves more versatility in the outfield.

The right-handed hitter has appeared in just 277 career games over four MLB seasons with the Nationals and Cleveland Guardians.

But the former third-round draft pick is having a nice 2025 season, highlighted by a .274 batting average, .756 OPS and decent (if unspectacular) defensive grades at all three outfield positions.

While Call’s role wasn’t immediately clear, he could factor into a platoon with recently resurgent left-handed hitting outfielder Michael Conforto. He also gives the Dodgers another option in center field, specifically, which would allow Andy Pages to spend more time in a more naturally suited corner outfield spot.

For those Dodgers, the moves checked off their two big priorities: Adding another dependable right-handed reliever in the bullpen, and improving their defensive options in the outfield.

What was missing from the Dodgers’ deadline, however, was the kind of big splash so many other contenders reeled off this week. The Padres acquired Mason Miller, Ramon Laureano, and Ryan O’Hearn without sacrificing any key big-league pieces. The Mets added Tyler Rogers, Ryan Helsley and Gregory Soto to their already stout bullpen, while the Phillies upgraded theirs with the addition of Jhoan Durán.

Already this year, the rest of the NL was keeping pace with what was billed as a seemingly invincible Dodgers team. Suddenly, the competition looks that much stronger, not only for the club to defend its World Series, but even to preserve the narrow three-game lead it holds over the Padres in the NL West.

The Dodgers, however, see internal improvement as the key to the rest of the season.

Already, their pitching staff is getting healthy. Tyler Glasnow, Blake Treinen and (as of this coming Saturday) Blake Snell are all back from extended injuries. Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol, Tanner Scott and Roki Sasaki are also scheduled to return over the final two months.

Offensively, the club is confident that slumping stars Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Tesocar Hernández will get back on track, and that Max Muncy will provide a jolt in his return from injury next week. All that — coupled with the MVP-caliber play of Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith — they believe should yield a lineup capable of repeating a run to the World Series.

“It’s always tricky when you’re in the midst of a swoon in team performance, because in those moments you feel like we need everything,” Friedman acknowledged leading into the deadline, with the team enduring a 10-14 slide in July. “So for us, it’s about, all right, let’s look ahead to August, September. Let’s look at what our best-case scenario is. Let’s look at, if we have a few injuries here and there, what areas are we exposed? What areas do we feel like we have depth?”

Apparently, the Dodgers still liked what they already had, rolling the dice on their current group while other contenders stocked up all around them.

President Donald Trump’s administration dished out a cold burn to Trump’s ice-cream-loving predecessor, Joe Biden, saying he led the US ice cream industry down an economic rocky road.

“America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President Trump’s leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President Biden’s watch,” the Office of the US Trade Representative wrote July 20 on X. The post included a chart that shows the US ice cream trade deficit with Japan, South Africa, the European Union, Brazil, Canada and Turkiye.

The US ice cream trade balance did change dramatically in 2021, the year Biden took office. The trade balance officially flipped negative – which means imports outnumber exports – in 2022 and has remained so since then.

But industry experts caution that US ice cream imports account for a minuscule fraction of all the US ice cream consumed in the US, and exports account for a tiny fraction of all US ice cream produced.

The trade change was driven mostly by a jump in imports. Exports have remained largely unchanged since 2020.

And the cherry on top? Disagreement over which products to classify as “ice cream” also affects data, experts say. For example, the data referenced by the office of the US Trade Representative also includes “edible ice”, which some experts (and dairy defenders) say doesn’t qualify as ice cream.

Removing edible ice shows that “the US is a net exporter by a significant margin of ($193 million) or +85% larger by value,” International Dairy Foods Association Executive Vice President Matt Herrick told PolitiFact via email.

Ice cream imports increase causes US trade deficit

From 1995 to 2020, the US had an ice cream trade surplus, ranging from about $20m to about $160m, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online economic data platform. Longtime customers include Mexico, followed by Saudi Arabia and Canada.

In 2021, that surplus nearly vanished, and in 2022 and 2023, the US notched up an ice cream trade deficit of $92m and $33m, respectively.

At first glance, importing frozen foods doesn’t seem practical.

“Shipping refrigerated and frozen products overseas is expensive,” dairy economist Betty Berningat of HighGround Dairy said. “Mexico is the top destination for US dairy exports.”

But many US and European companies have tapped into global markets.

“Consumers may also want a specific treat that is styled after or known to be from another country,” Herrick said.

Italy, the birthplace of gelato, is now the United States’ largest single source of imported ice cream. Italian ice cream imports more than quintupled from about $12m to almost $65m between 2020 and 2021 alone, before decreasing somewhat in 2023, the last year for which data is available.

Some of this stems from increased consumer demand for specialty pints. A report by Mordor Intelligence, a global market research firm, said “product innovation and premiumisation” have become key in the US ice cream industry.

“This trend is particularly evident in the growth of premium pint offerings and individually wrapped novelties that cater to both indulgence and portion control preferences,” the report said.

The US produces far more ice cream than it imports or exports

To get to the pint: The vast majority of ice cream consumed in the United States is made there, not overseas.

The Trump administration is cherry-picking stats from a fraction of a sliver of the US ice cream industry.

According to US Agriculture Department data, US ice cream makers churned out 1.31 billion gallons of ice cream in 2024. This includes regular ice cream, low-fat and nonfat ice cream, sherbet and frozen yoghurt.

By comparison, the US imported 2.35 million gallons of traditional ice cream in 2024 – that’s 0.18 percent of the amount produced domestically, Herrick said.

The US exported 16.4 million gallons of that domestic production, which is also a tiny fraction of 1.31 billion gallons of ice cream – a little more than 1 percent.

Factoring in ice cream mixes, excluding ‘edible ice’ products

Another caveat about the international trade data: It does not include “mixes”, which skews the totals, said Herrick of the International Dairy Foods Association.

Mixes are used to make ice cream shakes and soft-serve products, and they account for a significant portion of US ice cream exports. “Inclusion of such data points would change the picture quite significantly,” said Herrick. “While it is true that traditional ice cream and edible ice exports have seen decreased exports, the same cannot be said for exports of mixes.”

US milk-based drink exports increased 621 percent over the past five years, he said. In 2024, the US exported nearly $35m in mixes to the European Union.

Americans and dairy-based ice cream: A centuries-old love affair melting away?

The White House has churned out plenty of ice cream devotees.

George Washington stocked the capital with ice cream-making equipment. Thomas Jefferson is credited as being the first American to record an ice cream recipe. Ronald Reagan declared July National Ice Cream Month in 1984. Barack Obama even slung scoops back in the day.

Biden, who was often sighted with a cone in hand, proclaimed while visiting Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream headquarters in 2016: “My name is Joe Biden, and I love ice cream.”

But consumption of regular dairy ice cream – a category that does not include frozen yoghurt, sherbet or nonfat and low-fat ice creams – has been trending down for years.

In 1975, Americans ate an average of 18.2 pounds each of ice cream per year. That figure fell to 11.7 pounds by 2023.

Our ruling

The office of the US Trade Representative purported a summertime scoop: “America had a trade surplus in ice cream in 2020 under President Trump’s leadership, but that surplus turned into a trade deficit of $40.6 million under President Biden’s watch.”

It’s accurate that the US ice cream trade balance had a surplus for a quarter of a century before turning negative while Biden was president.

But the US Trade Representative’s statement makes the US ice cream deficit appear out of cone-trol.

There are three scoops of context on this trade sundae:

The change was driven mostly by a jump in imports. Exports have remained largely unchanged since 2020.

US ice cream imports and exports are a negligible amount compared to domestic production.

There’s also disagreement over which products should or shouldn’t be included in the data set, which can skew trend interpretations. Excluding edible ice products and factoring in ice cream mixes leaves the US with a surplus.

The statement is accurate but needs a sprinkling of clarification and additional details, so we rate it Mostly True.

Louis Jacobson contributed to this report.

There’s a lot of schadenfreude on the right, and even more lamentation on the left, about the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

Donald Trump leads the schadenfreude caucus. “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump crowed on social media. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” (It is remarkable that a president who campaigned with a vow to end “cancel culture” is so uninhibited in his celebration of cancel culture when it’s on his terms.)

The lamentations from the left are just as exuberant, from the other direction. They hail Colbert as a heroic martyr for free expression and speaking truth to power. “Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country’s leader on TV without repercussions,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes declared.

In a sense, both sides essentially agree that Colbert was canceled because of his politics. The argument from the left is that this was unfair and even illegitimate. The illegitimate claim rests on the fact that CBS’s parent company Paramount has been trying to curry favor with the administration to gain approval for the sale of the network to Skydance Media. Shari Redstone, Paramount’s owner, approved a settlement of Trump’s dubious lawsuit against “60 Minutes” (which Colbert had criticized days earlier as a “big fat bribe”). Colbert’s scalp was a sweetener, critics claim.

I think that theory is plausible, given the timing of the decision and the way it was announced. If this was the plan all along, why not announce the decision at the 2025 upfronts and sell ads in tandem with the wind-down? That’s the way this sort of thing has been done in the past.

But Colbert’s critics on the right have an equally plausible point. Colbert made the show very political and partisan, indulging his Trump “resistance” schtick to the point where he basically cut the potential national audience in half. He leaned heavily on conventionally liberal politicians (tellingly, on the night he announced the news of his cancellation, his first guest was California Sen. Adam Schiff — a man who couldn’t get a laugh if you hit him in the face with a pie).

But both the left-wing and right-wing interpretations have some holes. The theory that this was purely a political move overlooks the fact that CBS didn’t merely fire Colbert, it’s terminating the iconic “Late Show” entirely and giving the airtime back to local affiliates. If they solely wanted to curry favor with Trump, they could have given the show to more Trump-friendly (funnier and popular with the young’ns) comedians such as Shane Gillis or Andrew Schulz. The show was reportedly losing some $40 million a year. Even if they hired someone for a quarter of Colbert’s $15- million salary, it would still be losing money.

On the right, many — Trump included — have pointed to the fact that Greg Gutfeld’s not-quite-late-night Fox show has better ratings than his competitors on the three legacy networks. That’s true, but it’s hardly as if Gutfeld is any less partisan than Colbert, Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon.

It’s also true that the titans of previous eras — Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien — tended to avoid strident partisanship. But the nostalgia-fueled idea that a more mainstream, apolitical host would garner similar audiences again gets the causality backward.

Those hosts were products of a different era, when huge numbers of Americans from across the political spectrum consumed the same cultural products. The hosts, much like news networks and newspapers, had a powerful business incentive to play it down the middle and avoid alienating large swaths of their audiences and advertisers. That era is over, forever.

Now media platforms look to garner small “sticky” audiences they can monetize by giving them exactly what they want. There’s an audience for Colbert, and for Gutfeld, but what makes the roughly 2 million to 3 million nightly viewers who love that stuff tune in makes the other 330 million potential viewers tune in to something else. The “Late Show” model — and budget — simply doesn’t work with those numbers.

Cable news, led by Fox, ushered in political polarization in news consumption, but cable itself fueled the balkanization of popular culture. Streaming and podcast platforms, led by YouTube, are turbocharging that trend to the point where media consumption is now a la carte (artificial intelligence may soon make it nigh upon bespoke).

The late-night model was built around a culture in which there was little else to watch. That culture is never coming back.

X:@JonahDispatch

Democratic members of Congress who saw Florida’s new immigration detention centre, Alligator Alcatraz, said they witnessed dozens of people in metal enclosures, bugs and mosquitos in bunk areas, indoor temperatures above 80 degrees and people screaming for help.

Republicans who also toured the facility tell a different story, describing the space as safe, clean and well-run. The federal Homeland Security Department, which oversees immigration detention, has called characterisations of inadequate conditions at the state-run Alligator Alcatraz “false”.

Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem was asked about Democrats’ accounts during a July 13 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. She said the Florida-run facility is “held to the highest levels of what the federal government requires for detention facilities”.

“Our detention centres at the federal level are held to a higher standard than most local or state centres and even federal prisons,” Noem said. “The standards are extremely high.”

White House border tsar Tom Homan also touted the nation’s immigration detention standards as being a cut above those for prisons and jails.

When a reporter asked Homan about a 75-year-old Cuban man who had been living in the US for 60 years before he died in detention in Miami in June, Homan defended federal facilities.

“People die in ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] custody,” he said, before saying ICE has “the highest detention standards in the industry. I’ll compare an ICE detention facility against any state prison against any federal facility. I’ll go head-to-head with any of them. … People say, ‘The detention centres are horrendous.’ Go look for yourself then come back and talk to me.”

Isidro Perez was the 11th person to die in ICE custody, almost six months into Trump’s second term. Twelve people died during former President Joe Biden’s last fiscal year in office.

ICE detention centres have standards akin to prisons. But it’s difficult to assess blanket statements about the standards of immigration detention compared with state, local or other federal facilities for a few reasons.

• ICE detention standards aren’t codified into law, so it’s difficult to enforce them.
• Different ICE detention centres are upheld to different standards based on the terms of their individual contracts.
• There isn’t one set of standards for local, state and federal prisons and jails. Some standards are mandatory or codified into law, others aren’t.

Several government watchdog agencies, advocacy organisations and news reports have long documented inadequate conditions at immigration detention centres.

In May, human rights group Amnesty International reported “physical abuse by guards, use of solitary confinement, unsanitary and overcrowded living spaces including dysfunctional toilets, inadequate medical care and poor-quality, expired food” at an El Paso detention centre.

Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, a Duke University associate professor who studies the health impacts of the criminal legal system, called Homan’s statement “very misleading”.

“In most respects, ICE facilities operate with less consistent oversight and legal accountability than state or federal prisons or local jails,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said. “ICE detention facilities and people that run them tend to be much less transparent about their operations.”

ICE has detention standards, but they aren’t set in law or universally applied

Several federal agencies and private companies run immigration detention facilities. ICE, the main agency tasked with immigration detention, has standards that all its detention centres are supposed to abide by.

For example, facilities have to be sanitary and have potable water. Detainees must have access to medical and mental healthcare, including getting prescription medications. Physical force should only be used when “necessary and reasonable” and not as a punishment. And detainees must be able to meet with their attorneys confidentially.

There are different sets of standards for facilities that hold immigrant detainees and other non-immigration-related detainees, such as local prisons, and for facilities that exclusively hold immigrants.

The standards for centres that also hold non-immigrant detainees “were based on jail standards in use by many jails”, University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger said, describing them as “the most stripped down version of jail standards”.

It’s unclear what standards Alligator Alcatraz is held to. The centre is state-run even though courts have repeatedly held that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. However, in a court declaration, Thomas P Giles, an ICE official, said the agency had toured the facility “to ensure compliance with ICE detention standards”.

Both sets of immigration standards are periodically updated, but there’s no timing coordination between ICE standards’ updates and other facilities’ updates. Standards are individually negotiated and implemented in separate contracts leading “to varying degrees of protection across detention facilities”, a 2021 Harvard Law Review article about immigration detention said.

Additionally, detention standards aren’t codified into law, making their enforcement difficult. Detainees’ complaints about the facilities’ conditions have little legal support to stand on because the industry is largely self-regulated, one immigration scholar argued.

“Standards are often merely guidelines and largely unenforceable. They are pliable and weak,” David Hernández, a professor at Mount Holyoke College who specialises in detention and deportation policy, said. “Very few facilities lose their contracts due to failing standards, or even deaths of detainees.”

Government watchdogs, nonprofit organisation, news reports detail inadequate conditions at detention centres

The Homeland Security Department is largely responsible for conducting inspections to ensure detention centres are meeting ICE’s standards. However, for years, government watchdog agencies and advocacy organisations have questioned the efficacy of these investigations, pointing to several instances of facilities not complying with ICE standards.

In 2020, Congress created the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman to conduct unauthorised investigations of detention centres and to allow immigrants to file individual complaints for the office to review.

In March, the Trump administration tried to close the office. A civil rights group sued the administration. In response, DHS said in a declaration that the office would stay open but with a smaller staff. Immigration experts said this decision has severely limited oversight of detention centres.

News outlets and advocacy organisations have warned of inadequate immigration detention conditions, including overcrowding. The Trump administration is currently detaining about 60,000 people – that’s 20,000 more people than it has congressional funding to detain.

The external reports describe detainees in different locations being denied medical care, being placed in solitary confinement after complaining about conditions, not having access to legal resources and being targeted for being Venezuelan. Catholic University immigration law professor Stacy Brustin said these stories “mirror accounts” she and her students witnessed when visiting several detention centres.

“We heard shocking descriptions of overcrowding, sewage leaks, inoperable toilets, water running down cell block walls, insufficient access to water, spoiled or inedible food, inability to move freely in cell blocks for prolonged periods, and substandard medical care for individuals with serious, life-threatening conditions,” Brustin said. “All of these conditions violate ICE detention standards.”

For example, ICE standards say centres must provide detainees “a nutritionally balanced diet that is prepared and presented in a sanitary and hygienic”. Spoiled food is a violation.

Differences between ICE detention and prison standards

Some states have codified standards that their detention facilities are required to follow, others don’t. Some facilities are accredited by the American Correctional Association, which has its own set of standards.

All facilities have to comply with the US Constitution – particularly the 8th Amendment prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments” in criminal cases and the 14th Amendment protecting people against deprivation of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Prisons and jails must also abide by federal laws related to sexual violence, inmates’ access to religious facilities, and people with disabilities.

“Courts have ruled that people who are incarcerated in these facilities have the right to care, safety, and humane treatment,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said.

Generally, prison and jail standards have similar provisions to the ones for immigration detention, such as access to healthcare and legal resources and having sanitary facilities.

Oversight practices also vary based on the facility. Some places are subject to independent oversight; others rely only on internal oversight.

The consequences for prisons and jails that don’t follow standards also vary.

“If the facility is under a consent decree and court supervision, the judge may require regular reports, appoint an independent monitor or a manager or even a receiver to operate all aspects of the facility,” said Andrea Armstrong, Loyola University New Orleans professor and prison conditions expert.

Some places may lose their contracts depending on the severity of the situation, Schlanger said. In other cases, facilities may face lawsuits.

Immigrants have more restrictions when trying to access courts to claim detention facilities are not upholding their standards. That’s because immigration detention is a civil rather than criminal form of detention.

That classification “creates a dangerous loophole where people can be held in carceral conditions without the constitutional protections that apply to those in the criminal legal system,” Brinkley-Rubinstein said.

What is it about brothers? So competitive, so determined to outshine the other, so very male. In popular music, there are numerous examples of passionate sibling partnerships that have burned bright only to flame out, leaving recriminatory anger and the occasional lawsuit in their wake.

The Everly brothers were no exception. Foundational pillars of 20th century popular music, they formed the first great harmony vocal duo to bridge country music and pop. Over a five year period from 1957 to 1962, the brothers recorded a series of singles — “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” among them — that imprinted themselves into the pop-music canon, their soaring, wistful, close-interval harmonies gliding straight into our souls.

You don’t have to look too hard to find Phil and Don Everly’s traces. The Beatles regarded them as the harmony group they longed to emulate; you can hear them sing a snatch of “Bye Bye Love” in Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary, and Paul McCartney name-checked them in his 1976 song “Let ‘Em In.” Simon & Garfunkel wanted to be the Everlys and included “Bye Bye Love” on the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album. In 2013, Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones recorded “Foreverly,” an album of Everly Brothers songs.

And yet, biographies of them are scant. Barry Mazor’s “Blood Harmony” is long overdue, a rigorously researched narrative of the duo’s fascinatingly zig-zaggy 50-plus-year career, as well as a loving valentine to the pair’s enduring musical power.

In his book, Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths that have accreted around the pair, starting with the backstory that the brothers were reared in Kentucky, a cradle of bluegrass, and that their dad, an accomplished guitarist and singer, nurtured them up from rural poverty into spotlight stardom. In fact, Mazor’s book points out that the brothers, who were born two years apart, moved around a lot as kids — Iowa and Chicago, mostly — soaking in the musical folkways of those regions and absorbing it all into their musical bloodstream. Though they were apprenticed by their father to perform as adolescents, they were their own men, with a sophisticated grasp of various musical genres as teenagers.

“They were as much products of the Midwest as they were of Kentucky,” says Mazor from his Nashville home. “The music they learned and the culture they absorbed was in Chicago, where they lived with their parents for a time, and they picked up on the R&B there. All of this eventually adds up to what we now call Americana, which is music that has a sense of place.” The Everlys brought that country-meets-the-city vibe to pop music.

Another misconception that Mazor clears up in “Blood Harmony” is the notion that the Beatles were the first musical group to write and play its own songs. In fact, Phil and Don wrote a clutch of the Everlys’ greatest records, including Phil’s 1960 composition “When Will I Be Loved,” which became a mammoth hit when Linda Ronstadt covered it in 1975. It’s also true that Don is rock’s first great rhythm guitarist, his strident acoustic strum powering ”Wake Up Little Susie” and others. George Harrison was listening, as was Pete Townsend.

The Everlys produced hits, many of them written by one or both of the husband-and-wife team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant: “Bird Dog,” “Love Hurts,” “Poor Jenny” and others. But the Beatles’ global success became a barricade that many of the first-generation rock stars couldn’t breach, including the Everlys. “Even though they were only a couple of years older than the Beatles, they were treated as old hat,” says Mazor.

Complicating matters further: A lawsuit brought by their publishing company Acuff-Rose in 1961 meant that the brothers could no longer tap the Bryants to write songs for them. The same year, they enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and found, just as Elvis had discovered a few years prior, that military service did little to help sell records. By the time the lawsuit was settled in 1964, both brothers had descended into amphetamine abuse.

The Everlys had to go back to move forward. Warner Bros. Records, their label since 1960, had become the greatest label for a new era of singer-songwriters taking country-rock to a more introspective place. Future label president Lenny Waronker, an Everlys fan, wanted to make an album that would place the brothers in their proper context, as pioneers who bridged musical worlds to create something entirely new.

Author Barry Mazor is quick to refute many of the myths surrounding the Everlys.

(Courtesy of the author)

The resulting project, called “Roots,” drew from the Everlys’ musical heritage but also featured covers of songs by contemporary writers Randy Newman and Ron Elliott. Released in 1968, the same year as the Byrds’ “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and the Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” “Roots” sold meekly, but it remains a touchstone of the Everlys’ career, a key progenitor of the Americana genre. “‘The ‘Roots’ album was one last chance to show they mattered,” says Mazor. “And there was suddenly room for them again. It wasn’t a massive seller, but it opened the door.”

If anything, it was their own fraught relationship that tended to snag the Everlys’ progress. Their identities were as intertwined as their harmonies, and it grated on them. Mazor points out that they were in fact vastly different in temperament, Phil’s pragmatic careerism running counter to Don’s more free-spirited approach. This push and pull created tensions that weighed heavily on their friendship and their musical output.

“Phil was more conservative in some ways. He was content to play the supper club circuit well into ‘70s, while Don wanted to explore and was less willing to sell out, as it were,” says Mazor. “And this created a wedge between them.” Perhaps inevitably, from 1973 to roughly 1983, they branched out as solo artists, making records that left little imprint on the public consciousness. They had families and eventually both moved from their L.A. home base to different cities.

But there was time for one final triumph. Having briefly set their differences aside, the brothers played a reunion show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 1983, which led to a collaboration on an album with British guitarist Dave Edmunds producing. Edmunds, in turn, asked Paul McCartney whether he would be willing to write something for the “EB 84” album, and the result was “On the Wings of a Nightingale,” their last U.S. hit, albeit a modest one.

“The harmony singing that the Everlys pioneered is still with us,” says Mazor. “If you look back, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, all of these brother acts all loved the Everlys. But there’s also a contemporary act called Larkin Poe, who called one of their albums ‘Blood Harmony.’ They set an example for how two singers can maximize their voices to create something larger than themselves. This kind of harmony still lingers.”

The makers behind Netflix’s hit drama “Adolescence,” knew their series about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate was something special.

And while creators and executive producers Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne were thrilled after learning that the U.K. drama received 13 Emmy nominations in the limited series category, they were even more gratified that the collective efforts of the cast and crew were being honored.

“There was just something magical that happened with this show, and it was the true definition of an ensemble,” said Graham during a video interview with Thorne. The duo were nominated for writing and producing the drama, and Graham was also nominated as lead actor for his portrayal of the devastated father of the teen suspect.

“My true gratitude is not the fact that we got 13 nominations. It’s the fact that every single person, every single player, every single part of the crew is being acknowledged for what we achieved as a collective,” Graham said. “What we do is not a game of golf. We managed this collective consciousness between us.”

The four-episode series became one of the buzziest dramas of the year, and was highly praised for its approach of filming each installment in a single camera shot.

Thorne said of the hoopla surrounding the series, “I think we got very lucky in capturing a particular time, place and mood. We also got lucky with all the people we worked with.”

Win or lose, plans are already being formed for an Emmy night celebration.

“Stephen just declared that we’re all going to the Emmys in a minibus,” Thorne said. “We’re all going to stand on the red carpet as one. That will be really special.”

The minibus passengers will include Owen Cooper, who played the young suspect, and Erin Doherty, who played a psychologist. The two, who were both nominated in supporting actor categories, starred in the drama’s third episode where their characters engaged in a tense battle of wills.

Cooper and Doherty discussed the show and their nominations in a separate video interview.

Congratulations on your nominations and amazing performances. Where were you when you got the news?

Cooper: I was in my living room and I put on the TV. Then I found it we got 13 nominations. It’s just crazy.

Doherty: To be fair, I avoided it. So I was waiting for my phone to ring. My agent told me, “I’ll ring you either way.” Then she started phoning me and I thought, “Oh, what, is this going to me?” And all those nominations came in. I’m so over the moon for the show.

Owen, you’re making history as the youngest Primetime Emmy nominee in a limited series .

Cooper: I heard about that the other day. It’s hard to even think about that stuff, to be honest. It’s crazy. I don’t even know how to put that into words, really.

Did both of you know at the time you were doing the third episode that you were creating something really special?

Cooper: Yes. We knew it would hit many homes, and that it would create conversations. We didn’t know it would get 13 nominations. That’s just the cherry on top. The success of the show has been mind-blowing.

Doherty: We knew everyone who was participating on and off the screen wanted to be a part of this, having the courage to address this subject matter. We knew the importance of the story. You never know if something like this is going to hit the way that this has.

Owen, what impressed you the most about Erin’s performance?

Cooper: The fact that she could just think of things to say off the spot. I would put attitude into the line and she would put even more attitude into it.

And Erin?

Doherty: I would say the exact same thing. Like he would start yawning and start throwing around different things. It felt like the most exciting game of tennis that I’ve been a part of. You don’t get that every day with actors who have been doing this for 40 years. Owen has the ability and skill and bravery. For him to throw himself into this environment, which is nerve-wracking, overwhelming and over-stimulating. To have the ability to stay centered and be present with each other is really rare. I’m so, so proud of him and that I got to be there for his first go, because he’s going to be doing this for years and years and years.

I know it’s early, but any thoughts on how you’ll feel on Emmy night?

Cooper: I don’t think I’ll be nervous. I don’t care if I win. I’ll just get there, eat nice food, meet a lot of people. And I’ll be in L.A. where the weather is nice. I’m not bothered by the result at the end of the day.

Doherty: We’ve won. The show got 13 nominations. We’re all going to be there. It’s just going to be the best night ever. We’re going to treat it like a big party.

Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old who soared to the lead in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, describes himself as a democratic socialist. But some politicians and social media posts falsely labelled him a communist.

President Donald Trump called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic”, in a June 25 Truth Social post.

Nick Sortor, a conservative podcast host, wrote June 23 on X, “Zohran Mamdani is not even a socialist. He’s a full on COMMUNIST,” sharing a video clip of Mamdani calling for a network of city-owned grocery stores. “Even FURTHER left than Bernie Sanders. He wants government-run grocery stores.”

Ben Shapiro, cofounder of conservative website The Daily Wire, said on his podcast, “The big news of the day: A communist is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.”

Representative Elise Stefanik also wrote on X that Mamdani is a “communist”.

Mamdani’s platform calls for making transportation, housing and groceries more affordable, but experts say he hasn’t espoused key tenets of communism, such as government takeover of industry and private property.

“Mamdani is NOT a communist,” wrote Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University professor of international studies, in an email to PolitiFact. “Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority. There is no democratic political competition, and instead a single party rules the country. He is not calling for any of this.”

Accusing Democrats of being communists or communist sympathisers is a frequent misleading attack line by some Republicans. It is a red scare tactic that has existed in US politics for decades, but has been transformed by the success of some democratic socialists, including US Senator Bernie Sanders.

Mamdani made national headlines June 24 after former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the primary. When the city completes the ranked choice voting process, Mamdani is expected to win. Mamdani’s office did not respond to our requests for comment.

In November, Mamdani will face Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder of civilian crime-fighting group Guardian Angels, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Cuomo left open the door to running as an independent.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Mamdani’s platform calls for some city-owned grocery stores, other affordability policies

Mamdani, who represents part of the Queens borough in the New York State Assembly, identifies as a democratic socialist.

The New York City Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Mamdani, who is a member.

The group defines its goal as “to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation”, and to have “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighbourhoods, and society”.

Mamdani’s platform includes freezing rent for tenants in buildings with preexisting caps on price increases between lease terms. He also proposed creating city-owned grocery stores, and said in a June interview with Spectrum News NY1 that he would start with one grocery store in each borough modelled on municipality-owned stores in Kansas.

He also proposed free buses and child care, and raising the corporate tax rate and the minimum wage.

Mamdani does not call for getting rid of private ownership. One of the goals included on his website is to “make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business”.

He told The New York Times that he changed his mind about the role of the private market in housing construction, saying, “I clearly recognise now that there is a very important role to be played.” The story links to Mamdani’s website, which calls for the public sector to build affordable housing but not take over all housing.

What are the differences between communism and democratic socialism?

We sent highlights from Mamdani’s platform to seven experts across academic disciplines including political science, law and anthropology. None concluded that Mamdani is a communist.

“The idea that Mamdani is a communist is an absurd slander,” said Geoffrey Kurtz, associate professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

When US politicians use the term democratic socialism, they are referring to generous social insurance programmes often available in European countries, such as heavily subsidised child care, along with high tax rates, if needed, to pay for education and healthcare.

Mamdani doesn’t seek to do away with private property or advocate a government takeover of any industry, said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor. Instead, Mamdani proposes targeted interventions to tackle high living costs in New York City, Henken said.

“The New Yorkers who support him seem to do so not because of any communist ideology on his or their part, but because he proposes to address this crisis of affordability,” Henken said.

“For example, his city-run grocery store idea does not propose to take over or do away with the private grocery chains (they already receive city subsidies) but to complement them with nonprofit city-run stores,” Henken said.

Although Mamdani said in a campaign TikTok video that he would “redirect funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores”, he did not say he would get rid of corporate markets. Mamdani also said city-owned markets would work with privately owned small businesses and farms.

Political theory experts said many of Mamdani’s proposals have existed in other democracies for decades.

“Many western democracies – from France to Canada – have policies such as free or heavily subsidised child care and public transit,” said Oxana Shevel, a Tufts University associate professor of comparative politics.

Under a communist agenda, the government would own everything and entirely control prices, not only rent control or operating some supermarkets. And under communism, there are no political parties other than the communist party.

“This is not what he’s advocating,” Shevel said. “So no, he’s not a ‘communist’.”

Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, said Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism.

“At least in theory, they reject such communist concepts as the vanguard of the proletariat and the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said. “That said, there are a number of issues on which they agree, including hostility to capitalism.”

Experts said there are reasonable critiques of Mamdani’s proposals, but that doesn’t make his proposals communist.

Our ruling

Trump said Mamdani is a communist.

Mamdani’s mayoral platform proposes making New York City more affordable, including via free buses and day care, rent control and city-owned grocery stores. That is not akin to communism, a system in which the government controls the means of production and takes over private businesses. Mamdani has not called for the elimination of private ownership.

He also hasn’t called for eliminating democracy and political parties, another tenet of communism.

We rate this statement False.

Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check

Rep. Judy Chu first went inside the immigrant detention center in Adelanto in 2014, and conditions were bad.

When she made it back inside the privately run facility in the Mojave desert last week, things weren’t much better.

“It is just scandalous as to how it has not improved,” she told me.

Truth be told, conditions are likely to get worse, if only because of sheer numbers and chaos. Which makes it all the more important to have elected leaders like Chu willing to put themselves on the front lines to give a voice to the truly, really voiceless.

As tens of thousands of immigrants are chased down and incarcerated across the United States, oversight of their detention has become both increasingly difficult and important.

Shortly after the unannounced visit to Adelanto by Chu and four other members of Congress a few days ago, ICE announced new rules attempting to further limit access by lawmakers to its facilities — despite clear federal law allowing them unannounced entrance to such lockups. While Chu and others have called these new curbs on access illegal, they are still likely to be enforced until and unless courts rule otherwise.

The narrow, fragile line of the judicial branch is holding, for now.

But families and even lawyers are struggling to keep track of those who vanish into these facilities, many of which — including Adelanto — are operated by private, for-profit companies raking in millions of dollars from the government.

GEO Group, the publicly traded company that runs Adelanto, has reported more than $600 million in revenue so far this year and projects $31 million in additional annualized revenue from Adelanto at full capacity. Maybe DOGE wants to look into the fact that GEO often gets paid a “guaranteed minimum,” according to a report by the California Department of Justice — regardless of how many detainees are in a facility. Sounds like waste.

When the Trump administration started its attack on Los Angeles a few weeks ago, Chu started receiving calls from her constituents asking for help. She represents Altadena, Pasadena and other areas where there are large populations of immigrants, and as the daughter of an immigrant, she relates.

Her mom came here from China as a 19-year-old bride. Chu’s dad was born in the United States.

“I feel such a heavy responsibility to change things for them, to change things for the better,” she said. “I am surrounded by immigrants every day. This is a district of immigrants. My relatives are immigrants. My friends are immigrants. Yes, my life is immigrants.”

A few days ago, she tried to visit the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where many of the recent protests have been focused, and where many of the people detained in Los Angeles have reportedly been held at first. She’d heard that even though it’s not meant to be more than a stopover, folks have been staying there longer.

“The fact that these raids are so severe, so massive, it just seems very obvious to me that they would not be treating the detainees in a humane way. And that’s what I wanted to find out,” she told me.

But no luck. Authorities turned her away at the door.

So a few days later she decided to show up unannounced — which is her right as a federal lawmaker — at Adelanto.

Guess what: No luck.

Officers there chained the gate shut, she said, and wouldn’t even talk to her.

“To actually just be locked out like that was unbelievable,” she said. “We shouted that we were members of Congress. We held signs up saying that we were members of Congress, and in fact, there was a car parked only a few feet away inside the facility. The job of that person was just to watch us. Wow.”

Wow indeed.

Undeterred, she came back a few days later when the gate was unlocked. This time, she drove straight inside, not asking permission.

Her staff “deliberately dropped me off inside the lobby before they knew that we were there,” she said.

She got out at the front door and was granted entry.

“The ICE agent said, ‘Oh, well, we thought you were protesters the time before,’” she said. “And that cannot be true, you know, considering all of our yelling and signs. But anyway.”

She was armed with the names of people from her district who had been detained, and she asked to see them. She got to speak to some of them, but everyone wanted her help. At the start of the year, Adelanto held only a handful of people, having been nearly closed by a court order during COVID-19. Now it holds about 1,100, and can take up to about 1,900.

“These detainees were jumping up and down trying to get our attention,” she said. What they told her was disturbing, and casually cruel. No ability to change clothes for 10 days. Filthy showers. No access to telephones because they need a PIN number and no matter how many times they request one, it never seems to materialize. No idea how long they would be held, or what would happen next.

“It could be weeks,” she said. “It could be years.”

Vanished.

“It is horrendous,” she said. “And it is ripping our communities apart,”

Indeed it is, especially in Southern California, where immigrants — documented and not — are entwined in the fabric of our lives and our communities.

Which is why people like Chu are so vital to what happens next. Not enough of our lawmakers have spoken up, much less taken action, against the erosion of civil rights and legal norms currently underway. Chu has spent a decade trying to bring accountability to immigration detention and knows this sordid industry better than any. It’s work that many never notice but that matters to the families whose loved ones are scooped up and disappeared into a system that, even in its best days, is convoluted.

“These are not the criminals and rapists that Trump promised he would get rid of,” Chu said. “These are hard-working people who are trying to make a living and doing their best to support their families. These are your friends and neighbors, and as we’ve seen, U.S. citizens have also been arrested. So next it could be you.”

Or her. Other lawmakers have been arrested and charged for attempting to enter detention centers on the East Coast, and Sen. Alex Padilla was knocked over and handcuffed recently for interrupting a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

We are in the era when questions are often met with mockery or silence — or even violence — from authorities, and everyday champions are vital. Propaganda and lies have become the norms, and few have the ability to bear witness to truth inside places of state power such as detention centers.

So it’s also an era when having people who will stand up in the face of increasing fear and chaos is the difference between being vanished for who-knows-how-long and being found.

Even if it’s inside Adelanto.

A liberal group and social media users shared posts that say President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” for tax and spending would let him reschedule or eliminate elections.

“If the Senate passes the ‘one big beautiful bill’ and Trump signs it, that’s it. It becomes law,” said the viral graphic on Meta and X. “And here’s what that really means. He can delay or cancel elections – legally.” The post included a long list of other claims about what the bill would accomplish; for this fact-check, we are focusing on the elections claim.

The group Being Liberal, which calls itself “one of the oldest social media liberal political brands”, took down the graphic after we reached out for comment. The group told us it didn’t create the post and removed it because the elections claim wasn’t accurate.

The earliest reference for the graphic we found online was from an anonymous blog post on May 23.

The bill does not give Trump power to delay or cancel elections, an action that would be unconstitutional.

“The bill would not directly give the president any authority over elections,” said Eric Kashdan, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that advocates for voting rights and this year sued the Trump administration over a voter registration executive order.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Griffin Neal, told PolitiFact, “The bill obviously does not provide the President of the United States with the authority to cancel or delay elections.”

The US House passed the tax and spending bill May 22 and it now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers could make changes. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader, said he hopes the bill can be sent to Trump by July 4.

The bill includes one provision related to democracy and checks and balances; it would expand the executive branch’s power by curtailing judges’ ability to hold people in contempt of court. Provision critics said it could take away the courts’ power to restrain the federal government if it violates the Constitution or breaks the law.

We found no provision in the bill that says the president can delay or cancel an election.

In July 2020, amid the pandemic and a surge in voting by mail, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election. At the time, he was running for re-election.

But the Constitution empowers Congress to set the date by which states must choose their presidential electors, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found in 2020.

“Since 1845, Congress has required states to appoint presidential electors on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot for President,” the report said.

Congress still has that power, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor.

The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 added a new definition of “Election Day” that makes it clear that a voting extension can occur only through state law specified in advance and under tightly restricted conditions, such as a catastrophe, Foley said.

That means Election Day “cannot otherwise be cancelled or delayed” and the president plays no role in any alteration of Election Day, Foley said.

Congress can change the Election Day date by enacting a new statute, as it did with the Electoral Count Reform Act, Foley said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told PolitiFact nothing in the bill lets Trump cancel or delay elections.

“The Constitution provides that elections for Congress be held every two years and for President every four years,” Chemerinsky said. “There is no constitutional authority to cancel elections.”

Bill provision would make it harder for judges to find Trump in contempt of court

The bill includes a different provision that some experts called a threat to democracy, but not at the ballot box.

Section 70302 would make it harder for judges to find a defendant in contempt of court for ignoring a judge’s orders. Here’s how: The legislation would require plaintiffs to pay a security bond before a judge could find the defendant in contempt of court. That would mean judges could no longer waive the security bond requirement, something that frequently happens in cases against the government.

The section references a federal rule that says a court may issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order only if the plaintiff pays a security bond to cover costs and damages by any party “found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained”.

A security bond is an insurance policy to protect someone wrongfully accused of wrongdoing from financial losses during litigation, Kashdan said. The courts can require plaintiffs to pay money that the court holds until the end of the litigation

“If they win, they get their money back,” Kashdan said. “If they lose, and the person they sued had a right to do whatever it was they were prevented from doing during the lawsuit, they get to keep that money to help compensate them for any losses they experienced during the litigation.”

However, “those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunise unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review,” wrote Chemerinsky for the website Just Security, which publishes a Trump litigation tracker. “It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.”

A March White House memo that criticised organisations for suing the federal government said enforcement of the security bond rule “is critical to ensuring that taxpayers do not foot the bill for costs or damages caused by wrongly issued preliminary relief by activist judges and to achieving the effective administration of justice”.

The House bill provision raised concern among groups that have defended the judiciary’s role to provide a check on Trump’s power.

As of May 23, at least 177 court rulings have temporarily paused Trump administration actions, according to The New York Times.

Our ruling

Social media posts say the Republican tax and budget bill will let Trump “delay or cancel elections – legally”.

We found nothing in the bill that would let Trump cancel or delay elections. A provision would make it harder for judges to hold people in contempt of court, but that is not the same as cancelling elections.

Only Congress can change a presidential election’s date, not the president, and this bill doesn’t change that.

We rate this statement False.