Analysis | Fact-checking Day 1 of the 2024 Republican National Convention

“More than 10 million illegal immigrants have flooded across our border [during the Biden administration].”

— Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley

Whatley carefully uses the word “flooded” to keep his statement technically correct. Customs and Border Protection recorded about 10 million “encounters” between February 2021, after President Biden took office, through June. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.

CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million — about half the figure Whatley suggested had remained in the United States.

“They [the Biden administration] promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.”

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)

Since 2009, when Trans Day of Visibility was first recognized, it has always fallen on March 31. This year, March 31 happened to fall on Easter Sunday. President Biden had nothing to do with it.

“They claim that our economy is thriving, yet hundreds of thousands of American-born workers lost their jobs these past few years. The Democrats economy is of, by and for illegal aliens.”

Greene falsely suggests that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs from U.S. citizens. Employment for the native-born population has increased by more than 7.2 million under Biden, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (We start from February 2021, the first full month that reflects employment under Biden.) Meanwhile, employment of foreign-born workers increased about 5 million from February 2021 though June, BLS says. The agency says this figure includes more than just undocumented immigrants; it also includes legally admitted immigrants, refugees and temporary residents such as students and temporary workers.

“When President Trump left office, gas cost only $2.20. Under Biden and Harris, gas skyrocketed to the highest price in history, over five bucks a gallon.”

— Voice-over of RNC video

This statement lacks context. First of all, gasoline prices are closely connected to crude oil prices — and a president has virtually no control over that.

Trump left office in the midst of the pandemic. The price of crude oil was unusually low because the coronavirus pandemic flattened economies around the world. After mass vaccination helped to reopen many economies, demand increased again. But supply was lacking because oil producers decreased their production levels. That sent prices much higher. Gasoline prices then soared even more because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, leading to a high of just over $5 in June of that year.

The price of regular gasoline now averages $3.52 a gallon, according to AAA. On an inflation-adjusted basis, that’s slightly higher than the average of $3.20 since 1918.

“Under President Trump, we had the strongest economy in history.”

— Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.)

Britt is repeating one of Trump’s favorite falsehoods. Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses and sent unemployment soaring, the president could certainly brag about the state of the economy in his first three years as president. But he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books to say it was the best economy in U.S. history.

By just about any important measure, the economy under Trump did not do as well as it did under Presidents Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton. The gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in 2019, slipping from 2.9 percent in 2018 and 2.4 percent in 2017. But in 1997, 1998 and 1999, GDP grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Yet even that period paled in comparison with the 1950s and 1960s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In postwar 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

The unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but for several months in 2023, the unemployment rate under Biden fell to as low as 3.4 percent. The unemployment rate dipped as low as 2.5 percent in 1953.

“Sixty-six percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.”

— Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R)

There are various surveys that measure this statistic — Youngkin appears to be referring to May’s MarketWatch survey — but he misleadingly suggests that this statistic is the result of Biden’s policies. A 2019 survey by the American Payroll Association — when Trump was president — found that 74 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck.

“When he [Trump] was president, young people were richer than ever before, and he will do it again.”

— Charlie Kirk, executive director of Turning Point USA

Kirk didn’t offer a source for this sweeping claim but data suggests he’s wrong. An analysis of Federal Reserve data this year by the Center for American Progress says the average wealth of households under 40 was $259,000 in the fourth quarter of 2023 — a 49 percent increase since the fourth quarter of 2019, even after adjusting for inflation.

“No other age group has seen anywhere near this level of wealth accumulation during and after the pandemic,” the report said. “Looking specifically at millennial households — those born from 1981 to 1996 — their inflation-adjusted wealth more than doubled during this period.”

The report said that the wealth of young Americans was static for three decades before the pandemic.

“President Trump will make those [2017] tax cuts permanent. But if Joe and Kamala are reelected, they say they’re going to let them expire. That will be the biggest tax increase in American history.”

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

The Trump tax cuts passed in 2017 largely expire in 2025 — corporate tax cuts were made permanent — meaning individual taxes will go up sharply if Congress and the next president do not act. But Biden has also pledged to extend the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 a year.

“This was one of the most egregious and fiscally reckless budget decisions in modern history,” Biden’s 2025 budget says, referring to the 2017 tax cut. “The President, faced with this fiscally irresponsible legacy, will work with the Congress to address the 2025 expirations, and focus tax policy on rewarding work not wealth.”

Among the principles the president listed to guide this debate is a commitment to handle the problem in a “fiscally responsible manner” by paying for “extending tax cuts for people earning less than $400,000 with additional reforms to ensure that wealthy people and big corporations pay their fair share.”

“They hired 85,000 new IRS agents to harass hard-working Americans.”

This 85,000 figure is a common GOP talking point but it is wildly exaggerated to speak of “agents” as Blackburn did. When Congress passed a bill to provide the IRS with an additional $80 billion in funding over 10 years, that money was to be used in part to hire 86,852 full-time employees in the next decade. But many of those employees would not be enforcement “agents” but people hired to improve information technology and customer service.

Treasury officials say that because of attrition, after 10 years of increasing spending, the size of the agency will have grown only 25 to 30 percent when the hiring burst is complete. The administration’s strategic plan for the IRS estimated that an additional 1,543 full-time employees would be hired for enforcement in 2023, or about 15 percent of newly hired staff. That would grow to 7,239 in 2024, or 37 percent of new staff. Biden administration officials have pledged that enforcement efforts to collect unpaid taxes will concentrate on those earning more than $400,000.

“Joe Biden is the one who’s trying to throw his political opposition in jail. Joe Biden is the one who’s trying to undermine American law and order.”

— Vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, in an interview with Sean Hannity

There is no evidence Biden was involved in the Manhattan criminal case that found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts related to payments to a former adult-film star. It was brought by Alvin Bragg, a local Democratic prosecutor. Bragg inherited the file from a previous prosecutor, Cyrus Vance Jr.

The tenuous connection cited by Trump supporters is that Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors working for Bragg, served as acting associate attorney general, the third-ranking position at the Justice Department, before joining Bragg’s office in late 2022. But prosecutors change jobs all the time.

There is also no indication that Biden has been involved in the Justice Department prosecutions, which are handled by a special counsel.

“We’re sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Joe Biden would rather buy the stuff from Iran than buy it from Pennsylvania workers.”

Joe Biden promised to end drilling on public lands but broke that promise. U.S. oil production has boomed under his presidency, with the United States now producing more crude oil than any country in history, according to the Energy Department.

Some scattered Iranian oil has landed on U.S. shores in the Biden presidency, as it did under Trump, when the oil is seized on the high seas because of U.S. sanctions.

“President Trump beat the caliphate, beat ISIS, which people said literally couldn’t be done. And he did it in a matter of months.”

It took the United States and coalition partners more than two years to defeat ISIS after Trump took office. In fact, former president Barack Obama set up virtually all the structure that did the key fighting against the Islamic State under Trump, and more fighters were trained and munitions dropped under Obama than under Trump.

Under Obama, all Iraqi cities held by ISIS (with the exception of the western half of Mosul) — such as eastern Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit — were retaken by the end of his term, as was much of the northeastern strip of Syria along the Turkish border. The basic plan of attack in 2017 was also developed under Obama, though Trump sped up the tempo by changing the rules of engagement.

“Now the Democrats are saying taxpayer funded [abortions] up until the moment of birth. Unlimited. That’s ridiculous.”

This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.

The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful emotional and even moral decisions.

About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer

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