8 Claims. 8 Fact Checks. The Gap Between What They Said and What the Data Shows.

The Claims vs. the Data

Policy gets built on claims. When those claims are false, the policy harms people for no reason. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable statements compared against the available evidence.

$170B in DOGE savings? Actual: $2-7B. Spending rose $301B. Tariffs paid by foreigners? 96% paid by Americans. Immigrant crime wave? Arrested at half the citizen rate. 6% of feds show up? 54% work fully on-site.

1. DOGE Saved $170 Billion

The claim: Musk and the administration said DOGE saved $170 to $215 billion, with a “wall of receipts” at doge.gov.

The evidence: NPR found actual documented savings of approximately $2 billion. Budget experts put the range at $1 to $7 billion. The wall of receipts contained an $8 billion typo, listed procurement lines of credit that were not actual spending, and included billions in contracts that were never actually terminated.

A DOGE staffer testified under oath that DOGE “did not reduce the federal deficit.” Federal spending actually increased by $301 billion in FY2025 compared to FY2024. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, confirmed spending kept rising.

The consequence: 264,000 federal workers lost their jobs. The IRS lost 27% of its workforce. 25,000 fired workers were rehired as “essential,” including 322 of 350 nuclear security workers rehired within 24 hours of being fired.

2. Other Countries Pay the Tariffs

The claim: Trump repeatedly said foreign countries pay U.S. tariffs and that tariffs bring money into the country from abroad.

The evidence: Harvard and University of Chicago economists found 94 to 96% of tariff costs were passed to U.S. buyers. Foreign exporters absorbed about 4%. Corporate executives publicly told investors they were passing tariff costs to consumers.

The Joint Economic Committee calculated American families paid over $231 billion in tariff costs between February 2025 and January 2026, averaging $1,745 per family. The Tax Foundation estimated $1,000 to $1,300 per household.

The consequence: The Supreme Court struck down IEEPA tariffs 6-3 on February 20, 2026, ruling the president lacks authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Trump immediately pivoted to Section 122, imposing 10 to 15% across-the-board tariffs. Grocery prices rose as a direct result.

3. Immigrants Are Causing a Crime Wave

The claim: Trump described immigrants as criminals flooding the country, used this framing in the 2026 State of the Union, and built mass deportation policy on it.

The evidence: A January 2024 National Institute of Justice study found undocumented immigrants were arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens. Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in the first year had violent criminal records. Less than 2% had homicide or sexual assault charges. More than one-third of people deported had no criminal record at all.

Crime was already falling before Trump took office. The decline started in 2023 with record drops in murder in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The 2025 homicide rate is on pace to be the lowest since 1960.

The consequence: 393,000 ICE arrests in the first year, with 153,000 being “administrative arrests” of immigrants with zero criminal record. Enforcement expanded to churches, courthouses, and school drop-off zones. 11,000 U.S. citizen children lost a parent to ICE detention.

4. Noncitizens Are Voting in Elections

The claim: Trump claimed noncitizen voting is widespread and threatens election integrity.

The evidence: Georgia audited 8.2 million registered voters and found 20 noncitizen registrations. Nine of them had actually voted. Iowa confirmed 277 noncitizen ballots statewide. Louisiana found 79 out of 2.9 million registrants. The Heritage Foundation’s own database documented 24 instances of noncitizens voting across the entire country from 2003 to 2023.

Trump’s DOJ struggled to find cases to prosecute despite White House pressure.

The consequence: The SAVE America Act passed the House in February 2026, requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. An estimated 21.3 million voting-age American citizens lack ready access to proof-of-citizenship documents. The DOJ demanded full unredacted voter rolls from nearly every state to build an unauthorized national voter database. An executive order attempted to require USPS to refuse to deliver ballots to anyone not on approved voter lists.

5. Vaccines May Cause Autism

The claim: RFK Jr. promoted the debunked claim that vaccines may cause autism and that vaccine safety has not been adequately studied.

The evidence: Decades of research involving millions of children have found no link. In November 2025, Kennedy personally ordered the CDC to alter its website language. The site previously stated “Vaccines do not cause autism.” The revised text now says this “is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility.” Career CDC scientists were not consulted.

The consequence: MMR vaccination coverage dropped from 95.2% to 92.5% and continues falling. 2,288 confirmed measles cases in 2025, the highest since the U.S. declared measles eliminated in 2000. Over 4,240 total cases by May 2026. At least 4 deaths. 93% of cases were in unvaccinated people. The U.S. is on track to lose measles elimination status by January 2027.

6. Only 6% of Federal Workers Show Up

The claim: A White House fact sheet cited “only 6% of federal workers report to work in-person on a full-time basis.”

The evidence: The Office of Management and Budget’s own report showed 54% of civilian federal employees worked fully on-site. Only about 10% worked fully remote. The “6%” figure came from a non-scientific, opt-in survey that the publishing outlet itself flagged as unrepresentative. FactCheck.org concluded the claim was “grossly exaggerated” by a factor of nine.

The consequence: Executive order mandating full return-to-office for all federal employees. Used as justification for mass firings and “deferred resignation” offers. A net reduction of 264,000 federal workers degraded services from tax processing to nuclear security to veterans’ benefits.

7. USAID Is Full of Fraud

The claim: The administration said USAID was rife with “billions and billions in waste, fraud and abuse,” citing “$100 million in condoms to Hamas” and “$9.3 million to advise Russian doctors on abortions.”

The evidence: USAID Inspector General Paul Martin, fired on February 11, 2025, said fraud was not rampant. The condom claim was fabricated. The Russian doctor claim was false because federal law prohibits using funds for overseas abortions and USAID has not operated in Russia since Putin expelled them. Administration officials provided no documentation when pressed at Senate hearings.

The consequence: USAID effectively dismantled. $7.9 billion in foreign aid rescinded. Harvard School of Public Health estimates the shutdown led to approximately 600,000 to 762,000 deaths in one year, including over 500,000 children. UCLA projects 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if defunding continues.

8. I Fixed the Crime Rate

The claim: After claiming a crime wave during the 2024 campaign, Trump switched to claiming credit for “the lowest crime rate in 125 years” at the 2026 State of the Union.

The evidence: FBI data shows the crime decline began in 2023 under Biden, with record drops in murder in 2023, 2024, and 2025. During the campaign, Trump dismissed FBI crime statistics as “fake news.” After taking office, he cited the same data to take credit. The “125 years” claim was rated “Half True” because data before 1960 is not comparable to modern statistics.

The consequence: The false crime wave narrative was used to justify emergency border declarations, expanded ICE operations, and deployment of military resources. The actual declining crime rate began before any of these policies took effect.

The Pattern

Every claim follows the same structure. Make the claim. Build policy on it. When the evidence contradicts the claim, ignore the evidence. When the policy fails, blame someone else. The claims in this brief are not edge cases. They are the stated justifications for the administration’s largest policy initiatives. Every one of them is wrong, and the data proving it was available before the policy was enacted.

Read more on the Rule of Law hub and the false news analysis.