In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to levy tariffs on his own, blocking the primary tool he’s been using to reshape the U.S. and global economy.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that “when Congress grants the power to impose tariffs, it does so clearly and with careful constraints. It did neither in IEEPA.”
Trump had justified his most far-reaching assertions of tariff power by citing IEEPA, a 1977 law that allows tariffs on all imports during an “unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.”
Trump will still be able to levy tariffs using other laws, but these generally require more complicated processes.
“Trump cannot raise tariffs on his own, anywhere he pleases, any longer — that’s the biggest takeaway from SCOTUS this morning,” Ross Burkhart, a Boise State University political scientist who specializes in trade policy, said Feb. 20. Trump can still pursue his America First agenda, Burkhart said, but “he just has to convince more audiences of the national security threat than just himself and his advisors.”
The court’s decision would seem to end: the minimum 10% tariff Trump levied on most trading partners during his April 2025 “Liberation Day” announcement; higher rates that Trump misleadingly described as “reciprocal” tariffs for certain trading partners; the tariffs linked to drug trafficking on Canada, Mexico and China; and many of the tariffs placed on China, experts said.
These tariffs have been the main drivers of Trump’s second term increases in tariff revenues. Since January 2025, the U.S. has seen an increase over the existing tariff baseline of $223.5 billion.
Still in play for the administration would be other types of tariffs, including:
Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows tariffs when the president determines that a foreign country “is unjustifiable and burdens or restricts United States commerce” through violations of trade agreements;
Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which lets the president impose tariffs if national security is threatened. Trump and President Joe Biden used Section 232 as the basis for steel and aluminum tariffs imposed since 2018;
Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows the president to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits through import surcharges, quotas, or a combination;
Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, which authorizes tariffs of up to 50% if a country “discriminates” against U.S. commerce.
“Even without IEEPA, the president retains ample statutory authority to quickly recreate much of the current trade policy chaos,” wrote the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank skeptical of Trump’s tariff policy.
Trump learned of the decision during a meeting with governors at the White House, The New York Times reported. Citing two people familiar with the proceedings, the Times reported that Trump called the decision a “disgrace” and left the meeting early.
The Constitution says Congress holds the power to impose tariffs, not the president. However, over the years, Congress has passed multiple laws ceding some of that power to the president.
One of those was IEEPA, but small businesses challenged that position in court, making two key arguments. They contended that the law doesn’t explicitly let the president impose tariffs. And they argued that the tariffs didn’t rise to the level of an “unusual and extraordinary” emergency. The plaintiffs succeeded at the trial and appeals level, and now have convinced the Supreme Court as well.
Left unclear are how and when the billions in tariffs collected will be refunded; in the dissenting opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, wrote that this process “is likely” to be a “mess.”
The Trump administration revamped a tool to search citizenship status and help states find ineligible voters.
A Florida Democratic lawmaker said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is using it to target eligible voters.
“DHS is pushing states to ban naturalized U.S. citizens from voting by falsely labeling them as illegal,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Feb. 15 on X. “It’s an attack on democracy disguised as immigration enforcement. If the SAVE Act becomes law, DHS would use the same flawed, untested tool nationwide.”
Wasserman Schultz’s post linked to a news investigation that reported the Systematic Alien Verification Act (SAVE) tool has wrongly identified foreign-born, naturalized U.S. citizens as ineligible voters. Previously, the SAVE tool was primarily used to prevent noncitizens from using federal benefits, but the Trump administration rapidly expanded it in 2025, building a national citizenship lookup tool to find noncitizens on state voter rolls.
Right now, states’ participation is voluntary. But if the SAVE America Act becomes law, they would be required to use the tool.
Federal law already bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections and cases of noncitizen voting are rare. If they vote, noncitizens risk deportation, fines, or jail time.
The U.S. House recently passed the SAVE America Act, which would require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and present an approved form of photo ID when voting.
The bill has President Donald Trump’s support but faces a shaky future in the Senate.
As lawmakers consider imposing the expanded SAVE tool across the country, we looked at how Florida and other states are using it and what it means for voters.
What is the SAVE tool?
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services runs the SAVE tool, which checks immigrants’ eligibility for public assistance programs, such as Medicaid, housing loans and unemployment.
For more than a decade, some states, including Florida, have used SAVE to check people’s citizenship status for voter registration.
What changed in 2025?
The Trump administration expanded the tool by pulling in data from across the federal government to try to help states find noncitizen voters.
The overhaul started after Trump’s March executive order directing the Social Security Administration to share data on anyone who has ever applied for a Social Security number to help states verify voter eligibility. The tool continues to merge data, recently including the State Department’s U.S. passport database.
The tool now lets state election officials use the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, passport numbers, names and birth dates to check if voters are citizens. They also use it to verify whether voters have died.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has told states to turn over their voter rolls to find noncitizens, and then sued about half of those states for failing to fully comply.
What have Florida and other states discovered using the tool?
Florida is among 26 states that use or plan to use the tool for voter verification, DHS said.
In a 2025 report, Florida’s Office of Election Crimes and Security said preliminary investigations into the citizenship status of more than 835 people found that 198 were “likely noncitizens” who illegally registered or voted in Florida; it referred 170 to law enforcement. The report said it used various methods in its investigation, including DMV records, documents relevant to citizenship, and the SAVE tool to cross verify people’s status.
The office didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s questions about how many of Florida’s more than 13.3 million registered voters were confirmed noncitizens, voted in recent elections or faced criminal charges. The secretary of state’s office also didn’t say how many citizens have been mistakenly flagged by the SAVE tool.
Several Florida county elections officials told PolitiFact that the state primarily sends a list of potential noncitizens to their offices for their review.
Alachua County, which has about 162,600 registered voters, used information from the tool to remove nine people from its voter rolls for noncitizenship since January 2025, said Dillon Boatner, an information specialist at the county’s elections office. Three of the nine had cast votes within the past four years, he said.
Polk County, which has about 444,900 registered voters, confirmed 69 people flagged by the system were noncitizens and were removed from voter rolls over the last year, said Melony Bell, the county’s elections supervisor. When PolitiFact asked for the total number of people the tool flagged for review, and how many ended up being U.S. citizens, Bell said the office couldn’t pull a report providing those numbers.
Leah Valenti, Charlotte County’s elections supervisor, told The New York Times that 15 out of 176,000 names she uploaded to the tool came back as noncitizens. Of those, three people were mistakenly added to the rolls and two others had already sent in documentation to prove their naturalized citizenship.
Other states using the tool likewise haven’t reported large numbers of noncitizens casting ballots.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, said in September that officials identified 79 “likely noncitizens” who had voted in at least one election since the 1980s after running nearly all of the state’s 2.9 million voters through the tool.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, also a Republican, said in January that officials spent months examining the state’s 2 million registered voters and found one confirmed noncitizen, who never voted.
Out of 49.5 million voter registrations that have been checked in SAVE across the country, The New York Times reported Jan. 14 that federal officials referred around 10,000 for further investigation of noncitizenship, or roughly .02% of the names processed.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told PolitiFact over 59 million voter verification queries have been processed in the tool since its relaunch.
Why are people concerned about the tool’s accuracy?
Lawyers and organizations who specialize in voting rights have warned that using SAVE to verify citizenship can lead to errors because the data is sometimes based on incomplete or outdated information.
A Feb. 13 ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found that the tool has made persistent mistakes, “particularly in assessing the status of people born outside the U.S.” The tool doesn’t always reflect when people became naturalized citizens and DHS has had to correct information sent to multiple states after SAVE misidentified voters as noncitizens, the report said.
SAVE doesn’t have access to all potential data that could show whether someone is a citizen, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services told PolitiFact in a statement.
When the tool flags people who say they are citizens, the agency said it manually checks for inconsistencies before sending results back to the state for review.
Data from the Social Security Administration can be outdated for naturalized citizens because the agency has historically relied on people to voluntarily report citizenship changes in person, creating significant lags.
“This data will be reliably stale and will target naturalized citizens for undue suspicion,” Danielle Lang, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of voting rights, previously told PolitiFact. The center was one of the groups that sued the administration over Trump’s executive order.
The Social Security Administration started noting citizenship in its data 40 years ago, so the agency doesn’t have a complete database, according to the Institute for Responsive Government, an organization that provides governments with research, including about election infrastructure.
Because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services merged a massive amount of data from multiple agencies, the new features require testing and validation, the institute said in May, recommending election officials process carefully when using the tool.
“Data of unknown or unverified quality must not be used to initiate voter removals without strict adherence to all safeguards in state and federal law,” the institute said.
What can naturalized citizens do if they are flagged?
The voter removal process varies by state. If a voter is flagged as ineligible in Florida, state statute says local election officials must notify them by mail within seven days explaining why they were identified. The notice must include a request for a response within 30 days, after which the person will be removed from the voter registration system.
Eligible voters wrongly flagged by the system must provide documentation of their citizenship or request a formal hearing to contest the findings.
For naturalized citizens, valid proof of citizenship includes a U.S. passport, a certificate of naturalization or citizenship. U.S. citizens who were born outside the country would need to show a consular report of birth abroad, a State Department document certifying a child born abroad to U.S. citizen parents acquired citizenship at birth.
Cadbury Chocolate sold an “Eid Egg” in the U.K. in early 2026.
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In February 2026, as the Lunar New Year coincided with the Islamic holiday of Ramadan and the Christian period of Lent that precedes Easter, an image (archived) circulated online that claimed to show that Cadbury, the British chocolate company, was selling a sort of religious fusion product called the “Eid Egg.”
“Eid” appeared to refer to the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan (the word also features in the name of Eid al-Adha, a separate holiday honoring the Prophet Ibrahim’s devotion to Allah). The egg also appeared to be a nod to chocolate Easter eggs, typically given and received around the Christian holiday.
One X user who posted the image wrote, “ASDA in Stoke. This is the last straw”
At the time of this writing, we found no evidence that Cadbury actually sold the alleged product. The X profile that claimed to have seen the egg in a store in the U.K. included the line “Semper parodius!” in its description, which appeared to be mock Latin for “Always Parody.” The account itself appeared to acknowledge in one comment exchange (archived, archived) that the image was generated using artificial intelligence.
Therefore, we found that the image of the “Eid Egg” originated as satire.
Searches of Cadbury’s U.K. website (archived) did not return results for an “Eid Egg.” We contacted the company to confirm it did not sell the alleged product in 2026 and await a reply.
Online AI detectors SightEngine and Hive Moderation both found a high likelihood that someone generated the image using AI. (Such detectors are not always fully reliable).
The image itself also showed signs of AI. The man on the front had a misshapen left hand or possibly two thumbs. Additionally, the Cadbury logo in the image was incorrect — the real chocolatier fully joins the “d” and “b” in the company name with a horizontal swoop, as seen on its website.
(X user @BotFinderUK)
For further reading, Snopes previously investigated where Easter fixtures like the Easter bunny and egg hunts came from. It’s also not the first time we’ve fact-checked claims relating to Cadbury, which has been accused of removing the word “Easter” from its seasonal chocolatey treats since at least 2016.
Sources
‘AI Image Detector. Detect AI-Generated Media at Scale’. Sightengine, https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images. Accessed 20 Feb. 2026.
@BotFinderUK. ‘Android Otto AKA Frank 🇬🇧🏴’. X, https://x.com/BotFinderUK.
Fam, Mariam. ‘What Is Eid Al-Fitr and How Do Muslims Celebrate the Islamic Holiday?’ AP News, 29 Mar. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/eid-al-fitr-islam-ramadan-ends-016158da074557fe4e94f8e3d5cf24dc.
‘What Is Eid-Ul-Adha?’ Muslim Aid, https://www.muslimaid.org/media-centre/blog/what-is-eid-ul-adha/#:~:text=Eid%2Dul%2DAdha%20is%20a%20Muslim%20celebration%20festival%20that,month%20of%20the%20Islamic%20Lunar%20Calendar%2C%20Dhu%2Dal%2DHijjah.
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A YouTube video authentically shows conservative columnist George Will reporting that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked out of the White House after U.S. President Donald Trump triggered a North American economic crisis.
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In February 2026, a rumor circulated online that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “walked out” of the White House after U.S. President Donald Trump allegedly triggered a North American economic crisis.
The allegation spread largely through a YouTube video (archived) titled “1 Minute Ago: Carney Walks Out Did Trump Just Trigger a North American Economic Crisis | George Will.” The clip presented itself as a breaking news report and implied viewers were hearing authentic commentary from conservative columnist George Will.
The video’s text description began:
History is usually loud. This time, it was silent.
At 2:14 PM, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked out of the White House — and within minutes, markets reacted. The U.S. dollar fell. Auto stocks halted. Oil tankers turned around. What happened inside the Oval Office may mark a turning point in North American economic relations.
In this special report, we break down:
• The alleged “Northern Alignment Protocol” • The energy leverage Canada holds over the United States • The auto supply chain crisis that could hit Detroit • The critical minerals battle quietly reshaping global alliances • Why markets reacted in seconds
According to the video’s narration, Carney walked out of the Oval Office at 2:14 p.m. after refusing to sign what it described as a U.S. document called the “Northern Alignment Protocol,” which allegedly demanded sweeping concessions from Canada on energy exports, tariffs and currency policy. The video further claimed that financial markets immediately reacted, with the U.S. dollar falling and crude oil tankers rerouting away from U.S. ports.
The video also spread on other social media platforms, including Facebook.
However, we found no credible evidence that any of this happened as described. The video spreading the story was fabricated and appeared to have been created using deepfake artificial intelligence tools. The narration and visuals were manipulated to make it seem as though Will made comments he did not. We found no record of Will making these statements in his Washington Post columns, on his social mediaaccounts, or during any recent television appearances. For those reasons, we have rated the claim fake.
We contacted The Washington Post, where Will is a columnist, to ask whether the publication or Will wished to comment and will update this article if we receive a response. The YouTube channel referenced in this report did not list contact information.
Why the story doesn’t hold up
The video presented a highly specific and dramatic scenario, claiming that Trump attempted to pressure Carney into signing a document effectively subordinating Canada’s economic policy to Washington, that Carney refused and walked out and within minutes global markets reacted.
However, we found no credible reporting confirming that such a meeting or walkout occurred as described, nor that the document described in the video existed. Major U.S. and Canadian news outlets did not report on a White House confrontation matching the video’s account. We also found no evidence of a document called the “Northern Alignment Protocol,” nor corroboration that oil tankers abruptly rerouted from Maine to Europe in response to a diplomatic dispute.
If a Canadian Prime Minister had exited the Oval Office mid-meeting amid threats of sweeping tariffs and trade retaliation, and if markets had reacted in the dramatic way described, it likely would have generated extensive and immediate media coverage. The claim, however, originated solely from a sensational YouTube video.
How we know the video is fake
The YouTube video includes a disclaimer that its “sounds or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.” Some viewers may have missed the disclaimer because it is only visible in the expanded description.
(YouTube channel @AmaraVanceReports)
The video bears multiple signs consistent with AI-manipulated or artificially generated content. In the clip, Will’s facial expressions and lip movements appear slightly misaligned with the narration at several points, a common artifact in deepfake videos. Moreover, Will’s voice sounds synthetic and shows unusual emphasis patterns, typical of AI-generated speech.
As we’ve reported earlier, the background setting resembles the type of home-office backdrop seen in legitimate interviews with Will, featuring bookshelves and photo frames, suggesting that authentic footage was repurposed and digitally altered to match a fabricated script.
Moreover, the script of the video itself follows a dramatic narrative style rather than the tone typical of Will’s published columns or broadcast commentary, including detailed minute-by-minute descriptions, unnamed sources, and sweeping claims presented without verifiable evidence.
The YouTube account behind the upload, Amara Vance Reports, claims in its description that it “delivers clear, fact-based journalism in a world overwhelmed by noise,” adding that it is hosted by “investigative reporter Amara Vance” and focused on “truth, context, and real-world impact,” with promises of “verified sources” and “in-depth reporting.” However, we found no evidence that “Amara Vance” is a real journalist, and the channel provided no verifiable information about the person behind it.
The video does not authentically show Will reporting that Carney walked out of the White House after Trump triggered a North American economic crisis. Rather, the clip circulating the rumor is a fabricated or AI-manipulated production presented as breaking news.
The channel’s page shows a pattern of highly attention-grabbing, repetitive videos that appear designed to attract clicks and generate views.
(YouTube channel @AmaraVanceReports)
Many of the titles follow a nearly identical formula, beginning with phrases such as “1 Minute Ago” or “Urgent Update,” and followed by sweeping claims. The thumbnails use dramatic imagery, including explosions near government buildings, red arrows, bold capitalized phrases like “DECISION DENIED” or “EVERYTHING JUST COLLAPSED.” Several thumbnails place Trump alongside Will or other political figures in a layout resembling cable news programming. Some graphics mimic the aesthetic of major broadcast networks, including “Fox News” branding elements and banners designed to resemble live television coverage.
We’ve previously reported on similarfake videos showing Will criticizing Trump.
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Following the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s death in February 2026, his family said they did not want former President Barack Obama at his funeral.
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Following the Feb. 17, 2026, death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson — a Civil Rights icon characterized as the “living bridge” between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and former U.S. President Barack Obama’s generation — Obama published a statement thanking Jackson for a “lifetime of service.”
With the exception of a rift between Jackson and Obama in 2008 when Jackson apologized for derogatory comments he made regarding Obama when he didn’t know his microphone was still on, the two publicly maintained mutual respect. However, following Jackson’s death, detractors quickly claimed that Jackson’s family had publicly said they did not want Obama present at Jackson’s funeral.
One Facebook post (archived) received more than 31,000 reactions, with some users in the comments pointing to the 2008 incident as a possible reason for the alleged falling-out:
(Facebook user America Loves Liberty)
The claim was not true, however. It originated on an satirical social media account, America Loves Liberty, that has a history of posting unfounded, misleading and false claims. “Nothing on this page is real,” its bio read.
Snopes spoke via phone with Chinta Strausberg, Jackson’s media representative, who asked his family whether the rumor about Obama being barred from the funeral was true. A member of the family responded: “Of course not.”
The America Loves Liberty account appeared to be connected to another prolific social media account known for spreading satirical misinformation — America’s Last Line of Defense. The account’s bio also stated it was “an authorized dumping ground for used ALLOD material and other profitable right-wing propaganda.”
ALLOD posted the same claim on Feb. 19, alleging that the Jackson’s family attorney said, “Reverend Jackson was no fan of the former First Family.” The claim then spread across multiplesocialmediaplatforms.
If an attorney for Jackson’s family had made such a public statement, major news media outlets likely would have reported on the incident. We searched for evidence of the quote and found only results related to similarly unofficial social media accounts repeating the false claim:
(Google)
Creators of such satirical content capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
On Feb. 18, Jackson’s family announced that his memorial services would begin the week of Feb. 23. It was unclear, as of this writing, whether Obama would be in attendance.
Snopes has debunked similar rumors stemming from ALLOD before. For example, we debunked a false story about the White House permanently banning CNN in February 2026 and a rumor that Bernie Sanders owed $1.6 million in taxes in December 2025.
Sources
‘Jesse Louis Jackson’. Jesse Louis Jackson, https://www.jessejacksonlegacy.com. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
N, et al. ‘Obama Accepts Jackson’s Apology For Remark’. NPR, 10 July 2008. Election 2008. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2008/07/10/92421221/obama-accepts-jacksons-apology-for-remark.
Obama, Barack. ‘Our Statement on the Passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson’. Medium, 17 Feb. 2026, https://barackobama.medium.com/our-statement-on-the-passing-of-reverend-jesse-jackson-c8fc249e3d5e.
Perez, Nicole Fallert and Kate. ‘When Is Jesse Jackson’s Funeral? Here’s What We Know’. USA TODAY, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/18/jesse-jackson-funeral-observances/88736592007/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
Smith, David. ‘Jesse Jackson Was the Living Bridge between King and Obama’. The Guardian, 17 Feb. 2026. US News. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/17/jesse-jackson-legacy-king-obama.
‘The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Who Led the Civil Rights Movement for Decades after King, Has Died at 84’. AP News, 17 Feb. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/jesse-jackson-dies-43abb84d2ffc76d967f9a5596ebd0be1.
Bo French, a Republican candidate for Texas’ oil and gas regulatory body, said he wanted to deport Native Americans.
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Context
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for French said he didn’t mean all Native Americans, but rather only the ones in the photograph he shared with his comment on X.
In February 2026, a rumor spread that Bo French, a Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, wanted to deport Native Americans — people indigenous to the U.S.
Several social media posts made the claim, including on Facebook, where one user said French had called for the deportation of “third world savages” including Native Americans (archived):
The same claim also appeared on X and Instagram. Some posts linked to a Feb. 10, 2026, article in Texas Monthly (archived), which included a line that read, “One of French’s favorite phrases is ‘third world savages’—which he has applied to Afghan asylum seekers, Muslims, and even Native Americans, who he also wants deported.”
It is true that French called for the deportation of Native Americans. He did so in an Oct. 10, 2025, post on X (archived):
Since we are going to denaturalize and deport all the third world savages who hate our country, I am calling for adding these third world savages, who we conquered, then bizarrely let have a nation inside our nation, to the list.
His post included a photograph of what appeared to be three women and one girl wearing seemingly traditional clothes, raising their middle fingers to Mount Rushmore, where sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved the faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
An image search showed the earliest instance of this image being shared online was a 2024 Facebook post with the caption “The only reason Natives visit is to do this,” suggesting a protest against the history of European colonization in the United States, which resulted in the mass and systematic killing of indigenous peoples.
Asked to explain his X post, a spokesperson for the French campaign said he did not mean to say the U.S. should deport all Native Americans, but only those in the photograph.
“Mr. French never called for the complete deportation of Native Americans,” the spokesperson said in an email. “If you look at his actual tweet from last year, he was specifically talking about the four people in the picture who obviously hate America.”
We replied to ask which country he thought these four Native Americans should be deported to and will update this report should we receive a response.
For further reading, Snopes previously reported that French once spread the claim that voting machines in Tarrant County, Texas, where he was the Republican Party chair, flipped votes for Trump into votes for former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. He retracted his claim shortly thereafter.
In late February 2026, social media users allegedthat the Department of Justice’s recently released federal case files regarding the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein showed that he compared the taste of babies to cream cheese. The rumors was related to broader claims that Epstein and his associates engaged in cannibalism and “ritualistic sacrifice.”
Numerous online posts claimed the files quoted Epstein as saying babies taste like cream cheese, while others said they contained descriptions that “compared the taste of little babies to cream cheese.”
(X user @SouthpauzArt)
While the words “cream cheese” and “babies” appear in an email exchange within the Epstein files, there’s no evidence he was comparing the taste of the two or that the references are linked to cannibalistic practices.Social media analyses of the emails are purely speculative.
In an email with the subject line “Cream cheese baby,” Epstein wrote, “there are millions of babies, very little good vegatble cream cheese” (referring to vegetable cream cheese). He was responding to a redacted sender who wrote, “Lol, I don’t know if cream cheese and baby are on the same level.”
The full email exchange reads as follows (emphasis ours):
REDACTED NAME: Lol, I don’t know if cream cheese and baby are on the same level.. It’s ok, there is still enough time today. I am trying to schedule priming for 5.30; fuel explosion 9.45pm ? Will bring a new engine startup video.
EPSTEIN: there are millions of babies, very little good vegatble cream cheese
REDACTED NAME: Haha Do you want veggie cream cheese tomorrow? I would go look for it now
EPSTEIN: don’t look ” just go to toojays
REDACTED NAME: I tried but they don’t make it anymore.. I will call lake worth and pb gardens..
EPSTEIN: any good bagel place has it.
EPSTEIN: I found it at too jays lake worth.
The exchange begins with what appears to be a joke comparing babies to cream cheese before shifting to a discussion about places to purchase vegetable cream cheese. It does not provide definitive evidence that Epstein said babies taste like cream cheese, as some posts claim. However, because the exchange is presented without full context, it wasn’t possible to clearly establish the intent behind the remarks.
Other references to “cream cheese” in the files were largely innocuous. The words appeared as part of food orders, lists for Epstein’s estate and mentions of his bagelpreferences. We also looked through all references to “babies” and found nothing directly connected to cannibalism, though there were unrelated references to baby formula and an unknown sender’s email to Epstein discussing his wish to investigate gut bacteria by potentially using fecal matter from healthy babies in Tibet or Nepal.
Snopes previously reported that references to cannibalism and “ritualistic sacrifice” appeared in the released files. The mentions of “cannibal” or “cannibalism” included media digests; an academic syllabus; a transcript of a conversation between Epstein and a man named “Richard” and an email from Epstein to an unknown person about jerky and “a restaurant called Cannibal.” (Snopes also interviewed a chef included in the emails about jerky.)
Some of the files detailed a purported interview between the FBI and an anonymous man. The man claimed he witnessed “ritualistic sacrifice” and “babies being dismembered” on a yacht belonging to Epstein in 2000. According to the DOJ records, the man did not provide evidence to support his allegations. We did not investigate the claims’ legitimacy.
Christensen, Laerke. “Epstein Files Mention Cannibalism, ‘ritualistic Sacrifice.’ That’s Not the Full Story.” Snopes, 4 Feb. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/epstein-cannibalism-ritualistic-sacrifice/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
Epstein Library. United States Department of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/epstein. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
Ibrahim, Nur. “Epstein Files Don’t Show Ellen DeGeneres Is a Cannibal.” Snopes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/ellen-degeneres-cannibalism-epstein/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
Have you seen the Mike Tyson ad telling people to eat “real food?” The black-and-white spot that debuted during the Super Bowl is the latest promotion for the federal government’s new dietary guidelines.
With a quick scroll, football watchers who visited the website in the ad would have encountered the statistic that “90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease — much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle.”
This statistic also appeared in the dietary guidelines and on the CDC’s website. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it this way in his Jan. 7 announcement: “The CDC reports that 90% of healthcare spending treats chronic disease.”
This number grabbed podcaster Michael Hobbes’ attention. “I couldn’t find anyone fact-checking this number,” Hobbes said on the Jan. 30 episode of “Maintenance Phase,” a podcast that digs into the science behind health and wellness trends.
No worries — PolitiFact is here to answer the call!
The 90% figure has roots in a 2017 report by the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan research organization. But one of the researchers told PolitiFact that the claim, as stated by Kennedy and RealFood.gov, didn’t accurately reflect their findings.
The Rand report calculated all health spending on people with chronic illnesses, which includes a majority of Americans. It did not isolate the total spending on treating chronic illness itself.
Here’s another way to think about it: If someone with asthma broke a leg, got glasses or picked up antibiotics, that all counted as spending on a person with a chronic disease — even if it’s not treating the asthma.
Rand used data from an annual government-run survey. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey asks families to report a year’s worth of personal health care use and spending — including doctor’s visits, prescriptions and hospital stays. It also collects data on people’s health conditions, which can be categorized as chronic or not chronic.
The sample size has varied over the years, ranging from about 18,000 to 37,000 people. Experts said it is among the best data sources on personal health spending.
The report defines a chronic condition as a mental or physical health condition lasting over a year that either requires functional restrictions or ongoing medical treatment. Many conditions fall into this category, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, anxiety, osteoarthritis, asthma, heart disease, high cholesterol, and cancer.
Using survey data collected in 2014, Rand researchers estimated almost 60% of Americans had at least one chronic condition.
Then they looked at people’s health care costs, including payments made by insurers and out-of-pocket costs.
According to Rand, spending on the 60% of people with one or more chronic conditions made up 90% of all spending. The 40% with no chronic illnesses made up 10% of the spending.
“A person in a year spends or incurs health care costs for multiple related things,” said Christine Buttorff, a Rand health policy researcher and study co-author. “It could be their chronic disease, but it also could be something as simple as an acute illness where they had to go to the doctor or go to the emergency room for something totally unrelated to the chronic disease. So our estimates lump all of that together.”
The claim that 90% of U.S. health care spending goes to treating chronic disease is “not an accurate reflection of our report,” Buttorff said.
Limited data on chronic illness treatment spending
Estimating how much Americans spend on treating chronic illness is harder. It typically requires using insurance claims data, which is spread across government databases and private insurers.
It can be difficult to link expenses and conditions. If, for example, a person with asthma is hospitalized with pneumonia, is that part of their chronic disease treatment or an acute case? If a person pays to see a psychiatrist but has both anxiety and depression, which diagnosis is that cost linked to?
University of Washington researchers have been tackling this question. The university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in 2025 analyzed personal health care spending from 2010 to 2019 on 148 health conditions, without distinguishing chronic illnesses from other ailments.
In 2019, the top three most expensive conditions were Type 2 diabetes ($143.9 billion), musculoskeletal disorders such as joint pain and osteoporosis ($108.6 billion), and oral disorders such as cavities and orthodontia ($93 billion).
“Reality is, we spend a ton of money on things that people don’t associate with chronic diseases,” said Joseph L. Dieleman, a University of Washington health metrics sciences professor and study co-author.
PolitiFact did not find any studies since 2018 that looked specifically at past chronic disease treatment spending.
One recent report tried to model future spending on chronic disease. A 2025 report from GlobalData and the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease estimated an average of $2.2 trillion annually in medical costs over the next 15 years.
Given that current health care spending is over $5.3 trillion annually, that rate of spending would put chronic disease spending around 42% annually.
Rising chronic illness burden is not all related to diet and lifestyle
U.S. chronic illness rates are rising.
In 2010, about 50% of Americans had at least one chronic condition. The number has climbed closer to 75% in recent years, boosted in part by better diagnostics and longer lifespans.
“Chronic conditions linked to lifestyle choices such as physical inactivity or diet are a huge issue in the U.S., even if their use of this statistic isn’t quite right,” Buttorff said.
Several of the most common chronic conditions — hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and high cholesterol — have beenlinked to diet and lifestyle related risk factors.
Others can’t always be linked to lifestyle, including mental health conditions, asthma, Type 1 diabetes, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.
Our ruling
Kennedy and his department said that 90% of health care spending is for treating chronic disease.
The statistic is based on all health spending on people with chronic diseases, not spending on treatment itself.
A majority of Americans have chronic illnesses, so it’s likely the real number is high. We were unable to find a reliable report that isolated chronic illness spending in the past few years, but a predictive report estimated it could be around 2.2 trillion annually, which would be less than half of current health spending. HHS did not provide evidence to support the claim about treatment spending.
We rate this statement False.
Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report
In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has made a series of claims about the economy, a topic that should feature prominently in his State of the Union address to Congress on Feb. 24.
“We have the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said at a White House press briefing on Jan. 20, adding later that “America is booming.” He made similar comments the following day, asserting that “we were a dead country” a year ago.
But his economic boasts include false or misleading claims, and he sometimes pushes an incorrect narrative of an abrupt change in some economic indicators since he came back to the White House.
As preparation for what we might hear in Tuesday night’s speech, we offer a guide to a dozen of Trump’s recent claims about the economy, most of which we’ve written about before. They touch on inflation, economic growth, manufacturing, wages, jobs, the deficit, stock market and more.
Economic Growth
Proud of federal data showing that economic growth in the second and third quarters of 2025 exceeded expectations, Trump in Iowa on Jan. 27 falsely claimed that “under my leadership, economic growth is exploding to numbers unheard of. They’ve never had them before.”
After declining by an annualized rate of 0.6% in the first quarter of 2025, which covers the three months from January to March, real gross domestic product (meaning it has been adjusted for inflation) grew at a rate of 3.8% in the second quarter of 2025 and at a rate of 4.4% in the third quarter, according to estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But those were not record-setting numbers. They were the largest quarterly increases since the economy expanded at a rate of 4.7% in the third quarter of 2023, under President Joe Biden.
As we wrote this month, the quarterly growth record is 34.9% in the third quarter of 2020, which was at the beginning of the economic recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, according to BEA estimates back to 1947, the record was 16.7% growth in the first quarter of 1950. Yearly growth in GDP has averaged about 2.75% over the last 50 years.
Jobs
Trump told NBC News in a Feb. 4 interview: “We have, it was just announced, more jobs right now occupied in the United States of America than at any time during its existence, 250 years. There are more people working today than at any time in the history of our country. Pretty good stat.”
While accurate, the statistic loses some luster when factoring in steady U.S. population growth. In fact, job growth slowed and the employment-to-population ratio declined a bit in the first year of Trump’s second term.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 158,627,000 people employed in the U.S. in January, and that’s the highest number on record. But by and large, as the population of the U.S. has grown over the years, so too has the number of people employed in the U.S., with notable exceptions during recessions. This graph from BLS gives the long-term picture:
Since employment recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2022, jobs have reached new highs nearly every single month. Trump’s claim also overlooks that job growth was lower between January 2025 and January 2026 under Trump — a gain of 359,000 jobs or 0.2% — than it was for Biden’s final year — a gain of 1.2 million jobs or 0.8.%.
There are other, more relevant statistics, on employment growth that factor in population growth. BLS’ employment-population ratio, which is the percentage of the population that is working, declined from 60.1% in January 2025 to 59.8% in January 2026. Another measure is the labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the total population over age 16 that is either employed or actively seeking work. That rate has stayed relatively the same, going from 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026. The so-called “prime age” labor force participation rate, focusing just on those ages 25 to 54, rose from 83.5% in January 2025 to 84.1% in January 2026.
Trump has frequently cited this hollow statistic about more people being employed than ever before during both his first and second terms, including during his State of the Union address in 2019.
Inflation
In the NBC News interview, Trump repeated his false claim that he “inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country,” and added that “now we have almost no inflation.”
When Trump took office in January 2025, the annualized rate of inflation was 3%, based on the Consumer Price Index. That was far from the 9.1% rate in June 2022, under Biden, which was the highest 12-month increase since November 1981, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The worst inflation in U.S. history was not long after World War I, when the Consumer Price Index was up 23.7% for the 12 months ending in June 1920.
Trump has repeatedly mocked Democrats for raising the issue of “affordability,” which Trump says he has since solved.
“Prices are way down. You don’t hear the Democrats talking about affordability anymore, which they caused the affordability problem, very badly,” Trump said on Feb. 6. “But you don’t hear that word. I haven’t heard that word spoken in a week and a half because they can’t speak because the prices are down.”
But overall prices are not down. As of January, one year into Trump’s second term, the annual inflation rate was down to 2.4%. However, that’s above the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve. So, prices are still increasing, but at a slower pace than when Trump took office.
Stagflation
In the Jan. 20 press briefing at the White House, Trump falsely claimed to have “ended Biden stagflation,” which he said is “far worse than inflation.” The U.S. was “plagued by the nightmare of stagflation” under Biden, and now “we are witnessing the exact opposite,” Trump said at a World Economic Forum meeting on Jan. 21.
But, as we’ve written, economists told us that the U.S. economy under Biden did not experience stagflation, which Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told us “refers to a sustained period of high inflation combined with weak or stagnant real economic growth, typically alongside rising unemployment.” He said that definition did not apply to the Biden economy.
Inflation was high during Biden’s first two years in office, then declined sharply in the last half of his presidency. “However, real GDP growth during the Biden presidency was positive and often above trend, and unemployment remained historically low,” Handley said.
In addition, Aeimit Lakdawala, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University, told us that there has not been a complete economic turnaround under Trump.
“What we’re really seeing is a continuation of trends that were already well underway before Trump took office in January 2025,” Lakdawala said. He noted that the annual inflation rate is “modestly lower” under Trump, while the average annualized increase in real GDP under Trump is “a touch lower” than in Biden’s last two years. The unemployment rate, at 4.3% as of January, is also slightly higher than it was when Trump took office.
Stock Market
Trump has repeatedly boasted that the stock market has outperformed expectations. “Your 401(k)s are doing very well,” Trump said in a speech to military families in North Carolina on Feb. 13.
A Feb. 16 press release from the White House put some additional spin on the claim, saying the stock market has “rebounded strongly under President Trump’s leadership.” The release notes that the S&P 500 “surg[ed] nearly 40% from its early-year low.” That’s true. But the low in 2025 came just a few days after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2 that sent stock prices tumbling. Since then, stocks have rebounded and achieved new highs.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Jan. 12. Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images.
Since Trump took office, the S&P 500 has risen 14.5% (that’s for the period between the close of the market on Jan. 17, 2025, the last business day before the inauguration, and the close of the market on Feb. 18, 2026). Although Trump has said stocks far outperformed Wall Street expectations, that’s only a little better than many financial analysts forecast for 2025 just before Trump took office.
As Yahoo! Finance wrote on Jan. 2, 2025, “The median year-end target for the S&P 500 among strategists tracked by Yahoo Finance sits at 6,600. This would represent about a 12% increase from the index’s current level.”
“And if you remember when I was first elected, everybody said, if I got it to 50,000, the Dow, or 7,000 with the S&P, if I got it to 50,000 with a Dow, that would be an amazing — that would be in four years from then, from the election,” Trump told reporters on Feb. 13.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, reached 50,000 in early February, but has since dropped a bit, and was at 49,576 at the open of the market on Feb. 19.
But it’s misleading to suggest the stock market “rebounded strongly” under Trump. The stock market performed well in Biden’s final two years in office — with the S&P 500 rising over 20% each of those years — better than the 13% gain Trump saw in his first year. As we wrote in our story, “Biden’s Final Numbers,” the S&P 500 grew by nearly 58% over the entirety of Biden’s four years. The stock market has been on a good long-term run, with the S&P rising nearly 68% during Trump’s first four years in office and by 166% during the eight years under President Barack Obama before that.
We also note that while Trump often boasts that everyone’s 401(k) retirement account has risen, only about 62% of Americans own any stock, according to a Gallup poll in 2025. Ownership of stock skews heavily to the wealthy — 87% among those in households earning at least $100,000. It was 28% among those in households earning less than $50,000.
Gasoline Prices
In a Feb. 6 gaggle with reporters, in which he claimed that “[w]e’ve had massive price reductions,” Trump misleadingly said that “[i]f you look at gasoline, $1.99 a gallon.” That was far from the national average price.
Gasoline prices are about 19 cents (or 6%) lower than they were when Trump took office, but, as of the week ending Feb. 9, the average price in the U.S. for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.90, nearly $1 more than Trump said, according to the Energy Information Administration. One week later, the average price was $2.92, as of the week ending Feb. 16.
There also were no states in which the average price was below $2 at the time of Trump’s claim. Oklahoma had the lowest average price at $2.36 per gallon on Feb. 6, according to AAA data. That state, at $2.29, also had the lowest average price on Feb. 18.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told us in an email that, as of Feb. 14, there were “about 40 stations in the nation with gasoline below $2/gal, which is what we’ve generally seen on a daily basis for February thus far.” In a Feb. 16 post on Substack, he wrote that, as of that date, $2.79 was the “most common U.S. gas price encountered by motorists.”
Energy and Grocery Prices
In a Jan. 27 press gaggle, Trump also claimed to have “made a lot of progress” on the “very, very high prices” that he inherited. “So, we have the groceries going down. We have the energy going down,” he said. That’s misleading.
While the average price of some grocery items, such as eggs and bread, has decreased since the start of Trump’s second term, average food prices overall are up — not down. As of January, the Consumer Price Index for at-home food products purchased at a grocery store or supermarket had increased about 2.2%, year over year, according to the most recent BLS data.
As for energy prices, it’s not clear what Trump is referring to. The CPI for energy overall was down 0.3% for the 12 months ending in January, while the index for household energy specifically rose 6.6% in that period, according to BLS data. Also, the average price of electricity per kilowatt hour has risen about 7.3% in the last year.
Budget Deficit
In his Jan. 30 opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Trump exaggerated when he wrote that “with the help of tariffs, we have cut that federal budget deficit by a staggering 27% in a single year.”
Budget deficits occur when federal spending exceeds revenue. The White House has said that Trump’s figure was calculated by comparing the cumulative budget deficit from February to November in 2025 with the combined deficit for the same 10 months in 2024.
But organizations that trackthebudget deficit typically compare deficits based on months in fiscal years, not calendar years. The $1.78 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2025, which began on Oct. 1, 2024, and ended on Sept. 30, decreased about 2.3% from the $1.82 trillion budget gap in fiscal year 2024. (Trump alone was president for a full eight out of the 12 months in FY 2025.)
As of January, the budget deficit was down about 17% through the first four months of FY 2026 when compared with the same period in FY 2025. An increase in federal revenue, including from tariffs, contributed to the decline. On Feb. 9, the Congressional Budget Office said, “Customs duties, including tariff revenues, collected this year were more than four times the amount recorded in the first four months of last year, an increase of $90 billion.”
However, in its most recent long-term budget outlook, the CBO projected that the final FY 2026 budget deficit will end up being close to $1.9 trillion, higher than the deficit in FY 2025. That would be about $140 billion higher than the deficit that CBO projected for FY 2026 in January 2025, before any of Trump’s policies had been implemented.
Trade Deficit
Trump’s claim that he has “slashed our gaping trade deficit by a staggering 77%,” as he said Jan. 27 in Iowa, is misleading. In 2025, the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services decreased by 0.2%, or about $2.1 billion, from 2024, according to data the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Feb. 19. The 2025 goods-and-services trade deficit of roughly $901.5 billion was the third largest going back to 1960.
Instead, as we wrote on Feb. 3, Trump’s claim appears to compare the monthly trade deficit in January 2025 to the deficit nine months later in October, a 16-year low. That’s a decrease of 77.6%, according to BEA figures revised this month. (The decrease from January to December was 45.2%.) But economic experts told us that comparing the trade deficit in one month to another is not preferable because monthly trade figures can be volatile.
For instance, in the first three months of 2025, the trade imbalance surged to between roughly $120 billion and $136 billion, as U.S. importers loaded up on foreign goods to get ahead of tariffs on imported products that Trump had proposed. Imports went back down after the tariffs went into effect, producing smaller trade deficits in the months later in the year.
“Large month-to-month swings are common, even in periods with no underlying structural change in trade policy or economic conditions,” Handley, at the University of California, San Diego, said in an email for our story. “For that reason, economists almost never evaluate claims about the ‘trade deficit’ based on comparisons between two individual months.”
Manufacturing Construction
Trump has repeatedlyclaimed that “factory construction is up by 41%” under his second term. That’s misleading. The Census Bureau’s manufacturing construction spending data, which the White House referred us to, shows that spending has declined since Trump took office.
The quarterly data show a 6.7% decline, while the drop was 7.3% on a monthly basis, from January 2025 to October, the latest data available.
As we’ve explained, the White House gets a 41% increase by comparing the monthly average from January to August 2025 with the yearly average for 2021 to 2024. But that methodology fails to take into account the 212% increase in factory construction spending over Biden’s four years, partly fueled by the 2022 CHIPS Act, which helped fund semiconductor manufacturing facilities and continues to affect construction spending. Anirban Basu, chief economist for the Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry trade association, told us that the manufacturing construction spending in 2025 is “largely due” to the CHIPS Act.
It’s worth noting that the economy lost 83,000 manufacturing jobs in Trump’s first 12 months. In the year before he took office, the decline was 202,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Real Wages
Trump has repeatedly mentioned the decline in real wages, meaning they are adjusted for inflation, over the four years of Biden’s presidency and the increase in real wages so far under his second term. It’s true that real average weekly earnings fell 4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, during Biden’s term, and they’ve gone up 1.9% in the year since January 2025. But Trump at times has left the misleading impression that this has been an abrupt turnaround. Over Biden’s last year, real wages went up 0.7%
On Jan. 13, Trump said: “After real wages plummeted by $3,000 under sleepy Joe Biden, real wages are up by $1,300 in less than one year under President Trump.” Later that month, he said that “wages have gone up … much faster” than inflation. With Biden, he said, “it was just the opposite. Wages in the United States in the last year have gone up.”
Wages rose faster than inflation over the last year-and-a-half of Biden’s presidency. They’ve outpaced inflation since June 2023, and they’ve continued to do so since Trump took office.
“It remains the case that both at the tail end of the Biden administration and the beginning of this Trump administration, real wages have been rising. That is to say, inflation has been rising more slowly than wages have been,” Gary Burtless, a senior fellow emeritus in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told us in a phone interview when we wrote about this topic in December.
As for the specific dollar amounts Trump has mentioned — a $3,000 decline in real wages under Biden and a $1,300 increase under his term — the White House told us that’s based on weekly wage data from BLS that’s adjusted for inflation using the CPI-W, which is the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. It measures the change in prices for a basket of goods purchased by such workers, and it’s the index Social Security uses to calculate cost-of-living adjustments. Using that method, we got a decline of nearly $2,900 over Biden’s four years and an increase of about $1,400 for Trump’s first year ($1,363 to be exact), a figure that includes January data released this month.
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, cautioned against looking at wage growth only over presidential terms, calling it “deeply misleading” because “macroeconomic cycles occasionally have huge effects that have nothing to do with presidential performance.”
Bivens noted that average wages jumped up during the COVID-19 pandemic when the unemployment rate also spiked as mainly low-wage workers lost their jobs. As those low-wage workers regained employment, “it had the effect of artificially lowering measured wages in the aggregate.” (Burtless also said the pandemic had this impact on wage data.)
“The lesson is that the proper way to measure macroeconomic variables like average wages is from business cycle peak to business cycle peak, not from the trough to a peak. That’s why, for example, we measure from 2019-2024 or 2025,” Bivens said.
But presidents of both parties are apt to take credit or cast blame for increases or declines in real wage growth.
Investments
The president continues to make the exaggerated boast that “we secured commitments for a record breaking plus $18 trillion” in “new investments,” as he said in Iowa in late January. In his pre-Super Bowl NBC News interview, Trump also made the claim, saying “$18 trillion is being invested in our country as we speak.” At times, he has attributed this to his policies on tariffs.
A White House website tallying such promises puts the total at $9.6 trillion for “U.S. and Foreign Investments,” providing very few details on these agreements. But as we’ve written before, even that number is shaky because it includes pledges and planned investments that may not happen.
“[T]hey’re just promises — and often vague ones at that,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in an April 2025 analysis when Trump began making such claims.
In looking at the White House list in May, we found that some investments may not be due to Trump. A $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure project, for example, was reportedly in the planning stages in March 2024, well before the election. And both a labor union and a Democratic governor took credit for the announced reopening of an auto assembly plant that also was on the Trump administration’s list.
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Actor Woody Harrelson said of U.S. President Donald Trump: “We have a guy running this country who has unearthed a lot of bigotry and a lot of racism, and it seems to be more virulent than ever. So, yeah, it’s strange how we just, it seems like we’re going backward. And yeah, I wish that there were a way to, I wish there were a way to get rid of that son of a b**** and get in a great president, you know, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. And I don’t know how much he’s going to continue to foment hatred.”
Rating:
Context
The Associated Press recorded the interview on Oct. 25, 2017, during a film premiere for “LBJ,” a biopic about former President Lyndon B. Johnson. Users shared the video in February 2026 in posts not featuring the date of the interview, leading commenters and viewers to wrongly believe Harrelson made the remarks recently.
In February 2026, social media users virally shared a video showing actor Woody Harrelson allegedly making negative comments about U.S. President Donald Trump. In the clip, Harrelson railed against Trump, including saying, “I wish there were a way to get rid of that son of a b**** and get in a great president.”
For example, on Feb. 17, progressive political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen posted (archived) quotes from Harrelson’s interview on Facebook without sharing the video, labeling the “Cheers” and “True Detective” actor’s comments as “breaking” news. A manager of the similarly progressive NowThis Impact and Occupy Democrats organizations also shared the remarks. NowThis Impact posted the video (archived), while Occupy Democrats shared a quote meme (archived) with a text caption beginning with the words, “BREAKING: Woody Harrelson just said what millions of Americans have been thinking — and he didn’t hold back.” The three popular posts did not display the recording date of the Harrelson interview.
Other users shared the video, orquotes from the clip, on Facebook (archived) and X (archived). Some of those users also labeled Harrelson’s comments on Trump as “breaking” or “recent.” The vast majority of users submitting comments under the posts showed they believed Harrelson very recently made the remarks.
In short, Harrelson truly said these words — in 2017, at the beginning of Trump’s first term.
The Associated Press’ YouTube channel hosted the video with a description displaying the recording date and location as Oct. 25, 2017, at a film premiere for “LBJ,” a biopic about former President Lyndon B. Johnson starring Harrelson in the title role.
We traced the possible source of the old video’s resurgence in 2026 to an X post (archived) from Feb. 16 with well over 5 million views. That post also did not feature a recording date or any other context.
Snopes contacted a Harrelson representative to ask if he still felt the same way about Trump in 2026 as he did in 2017. We also emailed Cohen, as well as contacts for NowThis and Occupy Democrats, to ask if they wished to comment about the posting the remarks without a date. We will update this article if we receive further details.
Harrelson’s full comments and video
On Oct. 25, 2017, The Associated Press published the Harrelson interview video on YouTube with the title, “Harrelson: ‘I wish there was a way to get rid of Trump.’” The description read, “Speaking at the premiere of Lyndon B. Johnson biopic ‘LBJ,’ actor Woody Harrelson says the ’60s civil-rights drama resonates today, claiming U.S. President Donald Trump has ‘unearthed a lot of bigotry and a lot of racism.’”
We have a guy running this country who has unearthed a lot of bigotry and a lot of racism, and it seems to be more virulent than ever. So, yeah, it’s strange how we just, it seems like we’re going backward. And yeah, I wish that there were a way to, I wish there were a way to get rid of that son of a b**** and get in a great president, you know, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. And I don’t know how much he’s going to continue to foment hatred.
Harrelson’s ‘brutal’ dinner with Trump
In August 2019, Esquire published insight about Harrelson attending what he called a “brutal dinner” with Trump in 2002. Harrelson said Trump spoke much more, by far, than anyone else at the table, adding: “It got so bad I had to go outside and burn one before returning to the monologue monopoly. Listen, I came up through Hollywood, so I’ve seen narcissists. This guy was beyond. It blew my mind.”
Harrelson also recounted attending Hanover College in Indiana with former Vice President Mike Pence, who served during Trump’s first term. Harrelson said: “As a freshman, I gave a sermon to a youth group, and Mike was the guy running the show. He was a junior, I think. … He struck me as a nice guy, very sincere. I don’t know how well we’d get along now, but we got along okay then.”
For further reading, we previously reported about a photo allegedly showing Harrelson wearing a cap endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his 2024 presidential campaign.
It’s Black History Month — and President Donald Trump has put his stamp on the decades-old commemoration.
The White House’s 2026 Black History Month proclamation said Black history “is not distinct from American history.” Black History Month, the proclamation said, has been twisted by “the progressive movement and far-left politicians” who have “sought to needlessly divide our citizens on the basis of race, painting a toxic and distorted and disfigured vision of our history, heritage, and heroes.”
At a Feb. 18 White House event, Trump lauded Black celebrities and closed his remarks with, “Happy Black History Month! Happy Black History Year! And happy Black History Century!”
Since starting his second term, Trump has sought to reshape the government’s portrayal of Black history.
Trump has issued executive orders curtailing the government’s use of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. Since then, federal agencies have taken a number of high-profile steps to remove historical information portrayed through the lens of race.
Some have subsequently been reversed, modified or blocked in court. It remains unclear whether Trump’s executive orders and the removals could have a chilling effect on museums, historical sites and federal agencies going forward.
“No other presidential administration has interfered with these (historical) sites in this way before,” said Leslie M. Harris, a Northwestern University historian and author of five books on slavery in the U.S. “A short-term outcome could be a distrust, even an avoidance, of government sites.”
In response to our request for comment, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales outlined what she said are Trump’s accomplishments for Black Americans spanning both his presidencies, including criminal justice reform, prison reform, opportunity zones, long-term funding of historically black colleges, school choice funding, Trump Accounts and “the largest middle-class tax cuts in history.”
What did Trump’s executive orders say?
Within hours of his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, Trump issued an executive order mandating the termination of what it called “all discriminatory programs” including DEI “mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities” in the federal government.
A second March 27, 2025, executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” sought to counter what it characterized as “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
The executive order specifically addressed the Smithsonian Institution and said people visiting museums should not “be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” (In August 2025, PolitiFact visited several Smithsonian museums and rated Trump’s statement that the Smithsonian includes “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future” Pants on Fire. )
The order also directed the interior secretary — whose department includes the National Park Service that operates hundreds of historical sites and interpretive exhibits — to reinstate materials that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
How have these orders been implemented?
Here are some examples of ways the executive orders have been implemented that are still in place:
The “scarred back” photograph. An 1863 image of a man who escaped slavery and bore deep scars on his back from being whipped was removed from display at the Fort Pulaski National Monument near Savannah, Georgia, Greenwire reported in September 2025. The 1863 photo is well known because of its use by abolitionists and inclusion in modern textbooks.
Statue of Confederate general Albert Pike. Protesters tore down and burned the Washington, D.C., statue during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, but the National Park Service renovated and reinstalled it in October 2025.
A statue of Confederate general Albert Pike has been reinstalled in a park near the headquarters of the Labor Department in Washington, D.C., in 2025. (AP)
National Park Service gift shops. The Interior Department issued a November 2025 memo ordering its gift shops to remove any items promoting DEI or gender expression, The New York Times reported.
Louisiana landmark designation. Following a multi-year National Park Service review, the Great River Road, an 11-mile corridor in Louisiana with a deep history of slavery, was pulled from consideration for National Historic Landmark designation.
Black Lives Matter plaza. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser removed a mural of the words “Black Lives Matter” near the White House, painted on the street after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The removal followed the introduction of legislation by Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., to withhold federal funds from the city didn’t remove it.
Other actions were modified or reversed after public backlash, including:
Harriet Tubman web page. The National Park Service initially removed a large photo and quotations from Tubman, an anti-slavery advocate, from a web page about the Underground Railroad, but it was later restored.
Pentagon web pages. Weeks after Trump returned to office, the Pentagon marked tens of thousands of web pages for deletion based on the DEI executive order’s standards. But after an outcry about the removal of a page about Jackie Robinson, the first Black major league baseball player, Robinson’s page was restored. It’s unclear whether other pages were restored and how many that were marked for deletion were formally deleted.
Plantation grants. Two federal grants to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, which offers tours and exhibits about the realities of life under slavery, were initially rescinded, but later restored, The New York Times reported.
Jennifer Thomas of Los Angeles takes photos outside the main plantation house at the Whitney Plantation in Edgard, La., in 2017. (AP)
In at least one case, the courts have blocked an administration action — the removal of biographical panels about nine people enslaved by the nation’s first president, George Washington, when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. On Feb. 16, a federal judge ruled that the panels had to be returned; the federal government is appealing.
In a statement to PolitiFact, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said the Interior Department “is engaged in an ongoing review of our nation’s American history exhibits in accordance with the president’s executive order to eliminate corrosive ideology, restore sanity, and reinstate the truth.” Rogers said the department’s actions are not finalized and she called the lawsuits “premature.”
On Feb. 17, advocacy groups announced another lawsuit against the Trump administration, targeting the removal of civil rights information, as well as climate change and other subjects, at national parks.
What is the impact?
Historians said the administration’s moves are misguided.
“The removal of this complex history from National Park Service sites is concerning, as these places are an important source of historical information for the general public,” said Harris, the Northwestern University historian.
For example, the removal of the historical panels about people enslaved by George Washington “erases heroic and inspirational American stories of courage and patriotism” by enslaved people, said James Madison University historian Steven A. Reich.
The removal of exhibits or historical information also endangers freedom of thought, a cornerstone of democracy, Reich said.
“How to tell the story of the country’s past, in a democratic society, is as open and fluid as the debate over any matter of public policy,” he said.
For Trump, who has touted his improved performance among Black voters in the 2024 election, the executive orders he’s signed make it “hard to argue that he wants to help Black people,” said Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political scientist.
Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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A YouTube video authentically shows conservative columnist George Will reporting that Fox News cut away from U.S. President Donald Trump mid-speech during a Cabinet meeting because Trump was “falling apart.”
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In February 2026, a rumor spread online claiming that Fox News abruptly cut away from U.S. President Donald Trump mid-speech during a Cabinet meeting because he appeared to be “falling apart.”
The allegation circulated largely through a YouTube video that purportedly featured conservative columnist George Will delivering the commentary. The clip, titled “1 Minute Ago: Trump Falls Apart Staff Handling Him Legacy Panic & Black History Erasure |George Will,” has garnered more than 1.5 million views as of this writing.
The video’s text description began:
Something extraordinary happened this week — and almost nobody is talking about it.
During a cabinet meeting filled with confusing economic claims and rambling remarks, Fox News abruptly cut away from Donald Trump mid-speech. No spin. No cleanup. No defensive commentary. Just a commercial break.
When even a network that has spent years defending him decides they can’t keep airing the footage, it raises serious questions.
In this video, we break down:
• What actually happened inside that cabinet meeting • Why Trump’s own team appears to be managing him instead of serving him • The growing signs of physical and mental decline • His obsession with monuments and legacy preservation • The Gateway Project funding controversy involving Chuck Schumer • The Kennedy Center renaming situation • The pattern of authoritarian leaders accelerating monument building • The systematic erasure of Black history under this administration • Why fascism depends on historical amnesia • And why the real monument of this era won’t be buildings — but resistance
It also featured a disclaimer, stating:
This video contains political commentary and analysis based on publicly available information, news reporting, and opinion. The views expressed are for informational and educational purposes. Allegations and claims referenced in this video reflect publicly reported events and ongoing legal matters. Viewers are encouraged to consult multiple sources and form their own conclusions.
In short, the video was fabricated and appeared to have been created using deepfake artificial intelligence tools. The narration and visuals were manipulated to make it seem as though Will made comments he did not. The thumbnail image accompanying the video also appeared to have been digitally altered or AI-generated. We found no record of Will making these statements in his Washington Post columns, on his social mediaaccounts, or during any recent television appearances. For those reasons, we have rated the claim fake.
We contacted The Washington Post to ask whether the publication or Will wished to comment and will update this article if we receive a response. The YouTube channel referenced in this report did not list contact information.
Why the story doesn’t hold up
The video claims Fox News stopped airing Trump mid-speech, but we foundno evidence of such an incident occurring in the way it was described. No credible news outlets reported that Fox News cut away from a Cabinet meeting in February 2026 and we did not find verified broadcast footage supporting the video’s narrative.
If a sitting president appeared to be in visible distress during a Cabinet meeting and a major cable news network abruptly stopped broadcasting as a result, it would likely prompt widespread media coverage. That was not the case. Rather, the narrative originated from a YouTube video repeating sensational claims.
How we know the video is fake
The YouTube video includes a disclaimer that its “sounds or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.” However, some viewers may have missed it because it is only visible in the expanded description.
(YouTube channel Politics Raw)
In the YouTube video, Will’s mouth and head movements look unnatural, and the voice sounds synthetic, with odd emphasis and intonation — signs that suggest the clip was digitally created.
Google search results showed that Will has given legitimate interviews in a similar home-office setting, often seated in front of bookshelves and framed photographs. The deepfake video appears to have been created by repurposing footage from one of those authentic appearances, and digitally altering the audio and mouth movements to match a fabricated script.
A comparison of authentic footage and the fake video shows that the background, lighting, and camera angle closely resemble real interviews published by outlets such as C-SPAN, NewsNation and The Washington Post (see image below).
(Google search results)
Here is an example of an authentic video featuring Will:
The Politics Raw channel was created in mid-January 2026. Its description did not disclose that its videos were fabricated or AI-generated.
Moreover, the channel’s page shows multiple nearly identical videos that appeared to be designed for generating clicks.
Many of the titles and thumbnails follow a nearly identical formula, featuring wording such as “BREAKING” or “1 Minute Ago” alongside sweeping, dramatic claims. The visuals consistently place altered or AI-generated images of Trump and Will side by side, staged to resemble a live television broadcast. In several cases, the thumbnails incorporate graphics intended to mimic recognizable cable news branding, including elements resembling the Fox News logo and on-screen broadcast graphics.
(YouTube channel @PoliticsRaw)
We’ve previously reported on a similar series of fake videos showing Will sounding off about Trump’s administration and court opinions.
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A decades-long custom of championship-winning sports teams making a celebratory trip to the White House has become a political lightning rod throughout U.S. President Donald Trump’s time in office, leaving fans uncertain as to whether the Seattle Seahawks will make the trip to D.C. following their Super Bowl win on Feb. 8, 2026.
On Feb. 17, rumors began spreading online that the Seahawks had explicitly declined a White House invitation. The claim spread onmultipleplatforms (archived, archived, archived), including an X post (archived) that received more than 3.8 million views, as of this writing. The X user didn’t appear to have any related, official role that would lend credibility to his claim:
(X user @ronsterd89)
Other posts, including one from a sports parody X account (archived), continued to gain momentum, with many users in the comments apparently believing the claim that the Seahawks either declined an invitation from the White House or the White House rescinded an invitation to the Seattle team.
Either way, the claim lacks evidence. Neither the Seahawks nor the White House has made any official announcement, as of this writing, regarding whether the team will make an appearance at the White House. We reached out to Seahawks spokespeople and the White House, as well as top players’ representatives, and did not immediately receive responses. We will update this story if we do.
Several newsmediaoutlets, including NBC Sports, reported on the rumor, similarly noting the claim lacked supporting evidence.
The Seahawks’ official site (archived) and X account didn’t feature any news release corroborating the claim, as of this writing.
Following the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl win in 2025, several players — including quarterback Jalen Hurts — chose to skip the scheduled appearance with Trump. An NBC White House correspondent reported their expected absence just hours before the team’s visit took place in April 2025.
It’s possible, judging by precedent, that a Seahawks visit will take place that hasn’t, as of this writing, been scheduled. In 2021, for example, the Super Bowl champion Buccaneers didn’t make the trip until July.
If Trump’s White House did decline to invite the Seahawks, it wouldn’t be the first time a Super Bowl champion’s audience with the president intentionally did not take place. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, his office released a statement (archived) after several Philadelphia Eagle players publicly indicated they would decline. Trump’s statement claimed the players disagreed with Trump because “he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
Because neither the White House nor an official representative for the Seahawks confirmed whether the team will appear at the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl win, we leave this claim unrated.
Sources
Caplan, Anna Lazarus. A Dozen Philadelphia Eagles Players Skip White House Visit with Donald Trump. 29 Apr. 2025, https://people.com/dozen-philadelphia-eagles-players-skip-white-house-visit-11723633.
Corner, Ben Rohrbach |. Shutdown. ‘List of Super Bowl Champions Refusing White House Visit Grows’. Yahoo Sports, 5 Feb. 2018, https://au.sports.yahoo.com/nfl-list-of-super-bowl-champions-refusing-white-house-visit-grow-38843157.html.
‘Eagles Celebrate Super Bowl LIX Victory with White House Visit’. NFL.Com, https://www.nfl.com/news/eagles-celebrate-super-bowl-lix-victory-with-white-house-visit. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.
Shear, Michael D. . Trump Abruptly Calls Off Philadelphia Eagles’ Visit to White House. The New York Times, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/sports/philadelphia-eagles-white-house.html.
Statement by the President – The White House. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/statement-by-the-president-2/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.
‘Will Seahawks Make White House Visit?’ NBC Sports, 18 Feb. 2026, https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/will-seahawks-make-white-house-visit.
Images authentically show floats mocking U.S. President Donald Trump at a German parade, including a float of a pantsless Trump and a gagged Statue of Liberty.
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In February 2026, social media users (archived) shared images of a parade float with a caricature of U.S. President Donald Trump licking a gagged Statue of Liberty.
According to a Facebook post, the float was one of three satirizing Trump in “Düsseldorf’s infamous Rose Monday carnival parade.” Düsseldorf is a city in western Germany.
Different versions of the claim circulated on various social media platforms. For example, another Facebook post (archived) shared an image of the same float, claiming it was from a “German Presidents Day Festival.” On X, one user claimed (archived) it was from a carnival in Mainz, Germany.
A Reddit post (archived) included the image among other parade floats mocking Trump, claiming they were from “Düsseldorf’s Rose Monday Parade.” Other purported parade floats depicted Trump punching Jesus and trying to devour Europe with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The images of the satirical Trump and Statue of Liberty float, as well as other floats mocking Trump, were authentic photos depicting scenes from real German parades. While the parades were held on America’s Presidents Day, the German parades are annual traditions dating back to before that holiday existed.
Photos of the float with Trump and the Statue of Liberty were available from Getty Images, Alamy and Reuters. All three photo agencies said the float was from a Rose Monday parade in Mainz.
The city of Mainz describes Rose Monday as the highlight of carnival season, which it called its folk festival with “fantastic days and nights of revelry.” Carnival starts annually on Nov. 11 and ends on Ash Wednesday. Each year, the city hosts a parade on Rose Monday, the final Monday before Ash Wednesday.
In 2026, Rose Monday was Feb. 16, the same date that the U.S. celebrated Presidents Day. A Mainz Carnival website, which dates these celebrations back to 1838, also confirmed the annual parade was scheduled for Feb. 16.
Congress didn’t create Presidents Day, celebrated on the third Monday of February, until 1968.
The Mainz Carnival Museum says that the floats which satirize current events and politics are an “important part of the parade.”
The photo of the float with Trump and the Statue of Liberty was often shared alongside the photos of floats depicting Trump punching Jesus and trying to devour Europe with Putin. Getty Images placed the other twofloats as being from Düsseldorf.
Düsseldorf, Mainz and Cologne, another German city, are the “three strongholds of the Rhineland Carnival,” according to a nonprofit group that seeks to preserve and share Düsseldorf’s carnival traditions. Düsseldorf, like Mainz, celebrates Rose Monday with a parade that includes floats satirizing current events and politics.
One Facebook post amplified an interview of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., by Jillian Michaels, a television personality and celebrity fitness trainer, in which Greene relayed the claim that Oz had invited Epstein to a party he was hosting:
(Facebook page Occupy Democrats)
The post read, in part:
Speaking on the Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels podcast, MTG went off-script, admitting the Epstein horrors run deep across both parties. She highlighted Trump’s Medicare point man Dr. Mehmet Oz invited Epstein to a 2016 Valentine’s Day party YEARS after his Florida conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, then pivoted to the bigger picture.
Greene discussed such an email in an episode of Michaels’ podcast uploaded to YouTube on Feb. 15, 2026 (at the 1:21:46 mark):
Their exchange went as follows:
GREENE: I read this morning that Dr. Oz invited Epstein to some Valentine’s Day party he and his wife were having in 2016.
MICHAELS: This is Dr. Oz is currently serving in the Trump administration over Medicare.
GREENE: Exactly. But this is… and that was post that was after Epstein had been convicted… convicted of of pedophilia. So… it’s like, what… how did… how do these people…? And that’s the hardest part. These are people that we may love, people that we have cheered for, people that I know I supported. And it’s both sides of the aisle.
It was true that the Epstein files the Department of Justice released in early 2026 contained an invitation to a 2016 Valentine’s Day party, and it was also true that the invitation listed Oz and his wife, Lisa Oz, as the hosts. However, we have not independently confirmed that the invitation authentically came from Oz and his wife, and as a result we’ve refrained from rating the claim.
We have reached out to Oz seeking confirmation that he or his wife sent the invitation and will update this story if we learn more.
Documents in the Department of Justice’s so-called Epstein Library included an electronic invitation date Feb. 1, 2016, that reached Epstein in the form of an email with the file number EFTA01788803. The sender’s email address was redacted, but the name before the address was “Mehmet & Lisa Oz.” The subject line of the email read, “Mehmet & Lisa Oz’s Valentines Celebration.”
The body of the email included various links to Paperless Post, an online platform that lets its users design and send invitations. One link presumably allowed the recipient to view the card, and others appeared to lead to the location of the celebration and to add the celebration to the recipient’s calendar. Clicking on the links led to expired pages. Snopes could not determine when or where the celebration took place, nor whether Epstein attended it.
