A top North Carolina lawmaker on Wednesday said he supports a suspension of the state’s gas tax — comments that came after he dismissed the idea earlier this year.

Senate leader Phil Berger was among the Republicans in his chamber who announced a legislative proposal to suspend the state’s 41-cent-per-gallon gas tax through November. The bill — which enjoyed bipartisan support when it passed the Legislature Wednesday — goes now  to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. The governor has 10 days to sign it, veto it, or let it become law without his signature. 

Berger’s Democratic critics said his support of the gas-tax suspension shows a lack of consistency in his position. 

“As recently as this past May, when gas prices were significantly high, just like today, Phil Berger told all of us that suspending the gas tax was ‘more of a feel-good kind of thing,’” Minority Leader Sydney Batch, D-Wake, said during a press briefing Wednesday. 

She continued: “Suddenly, gas prices are an emergency. What changed? It’s certainly not your gas prices. Perhaps it’s the reality that they’re 27 days away from being sent packing by the voters of this state, who are frankly sick and tired of their childish games.”

All 170 seats in the North Carolina General Assembly are up for election in November and voting is underway. Election officials mailed absentee ballots to voters last month and early, in-person voting starts Oct. 15.

The GOP currently — and for nearly all of the last decade — has held enough seats to enact many of their proposals with ease, even over objections of Democratic governors. Political analysts say the midterms offer Democrats the best chance of gaining power in years and Republicans have expressed concern about losing influence in the Legislature. 

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 43% among likely voters in North Carolina, according to a poll released late last month by High Point University. Meanwhile, inflation and gas prices have remained elevated into campaign season, even as polls have shown affordability to be a top concern among voters. 

Let’s take a look at what Berger has said about repealing gas taxes, and put his comments through our Flip-O-Meter. The Flip-O-Meter measures how much someone’s position has changed. It doesn’t assign a value judgment about that change. 

‘Temporary gimmicks’ and ‘feel-good’ thing

In 2022, gas prices rose across the U.S. and in North Carolina after Russia invaded Ukraine. To blunt the impact on U.S. motorists, President Joe Biden called for a three-month suspension of the federal taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel.

That summer, Berger was asked if he supported Biden’s proposal. Lauren Horsch, Berger’s communications director, told the Charlotte Observer in a statement that Biden should instead “reevaluate his administration’s policies.”

“Instead of these temporary gimmicks, we should focus on permanent, long-term tax relief and reining in inflation,” Horsch said on Berger’s behalf, according to the newspaper’s June 27, 2022, article.

Separately, Democratic state lawmakers proposed legislation in May 2022 that would’ve provided most North Carolina drivers a tax rebate of $200. Horsch told the Charlotte Observer that her statement also applied to the rebate idea.

Fast-forward to this year. 

President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb. 28, when the average gas price in the U.S. at the time was just under $3 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By mid-May, it had risen to $4.49 a gallon. 

Reporters asked Berger on May 19 if he was considering a pause on collecting the gas tax. Berger said: “It strikes me that that’s more of a feel-good kind of thing than something that actually would make a whole lot of difference with reference to individuals.”

‘They need real relief’ 

In an Oct. 3 social media post, Berger said that he and Republican House Speaker Destin Hall had agreed to call a special legislative session “to provide relief from high gas and diesel prices for all North Carolinians.”

“North Carolina families and farmers are feeling the impacts of rising fuel costs every day,” Berger said in the post. “They need real relief and they need it now.” 

In a press briefing Wednesday ahead of the Senate’s votes, Berger said that “every member of the Republican caucus in the Senate and every member of the Republican caucus in the House stands behind what has been said this morning and is supportive of the measure that will be taken up later today.”

“Everyone has been hearing from people across the state about high gas prices and about the difficulties that they’re having — whether they are families trying to get their kids to school, to buy groceries, or small business people trying to do their deliveries or make sure their supplies are available, or larger delivery efforts that involve large trucks and that sort of thing,” Berger said during the briefing. “And so we are here today to answer that call.”

Change in position?

During Wednesday’s press briefing, PolitiFact read to Berger his comments from May and asked if his opinion on a gas tax repeal had changed. 

“Sure, because at that time, what was the price of gas? Is it over $4? I don’t think so. The pressure on individual citizens is much greater now than it was then,” Berger responded. 

The U.S. average price of a gallon of regular gas was $4.49 on May 18, a day before Berger made his comment, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s 3% higher than it was on Monday. AAA records show regular gas in North Carolina averages about $4.12 per gallon, which is lower than what they were on May 19: $4.17 per gallon.

After a reporter told Berger that the price of gas was, indeed, above $4 per gallon in May, Berger then said two factors contributed to his decision to move forward with a gas tax suspension this October: Demand for the suspension had grown — particularly from those in agricultural industry; and legislators reached a consensus on how they could suspend the tax without jeopardizing funding for the state’s Department of Transportation. The DOT uses the tax revenues for road improvements. 

“We didn’t want to do something that would impair the transportation budget or stop projects that are already slated to go forward,” Berger said. “Now, again, because our members are hearing from constituents, we’re hearing from people, we’re hearing from folks in the farming community.”

When PolitiFact asked Berger about his 2022 statement describing Biden’s gas tax holiday as “gimmick” that merited Biden reevaluating his policies, Berger said he stood by those comments.

Our ruling

In May, Berger said suspending North Carolina’s gas tax would be “more of a feel-good kind of thing than something that actually would make a whole lot of difference with reference to individuals.”

Now, as he’s helping lead the charge to suspend the gas tax ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Berger acknowledged that his opinion had changed, saying: “The pressure on individual citizens is much greater now than it was then.”

In terms of gas prices, current conditions are almost identical to what they were in May.

We rate Berger’s position change a major reversal, or a Full Flop.

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U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, praised Republicans’ tax cuts as the largest in history as he campaigns for reelection to Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. 

In a Sept. 8 social media video, Nunn said, “We have cut the largest taxes in U.S. history,” when addressing volunteers door-knocking. 

Nunn is referring to President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which became law in summer 2025. The bill extended tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that were set to expire and added several new tax cuts. 

Other Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, have also called the legislation the largest tax cut in history, and PolitiFact rated that Mostly False. 

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the average income tax rates for all income groups,  with the largest cuts concentrated among the top 5% of earners. The act was set to expire on Dec. 31, 2025.

With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, those tax cuts were extended. The legislation also enacted tax breaks for people who work overtime or receive tips. The marginal rates were also adjusted for tax year 2026.  

Measured against the size of the economy, the tax savings in the 2025 law were smaller than earlier laws. Where the law ranks depends on whether you count extending the tax cuts that were set to expire, or only the law’s new tax cuts.

When PolitiFact Iowa asked Nunn’s campaign for more information to support his statement, a spokesperson pointed to an article by Heritage Action, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. It says Americans would face the largest tax increase in “generations” if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were to expire. 

Independent economists disagree that it’s the largest tax cut. 

“The 1981 Reagan tax cut was substantially larger relative to the economy,” said Anne Villamil, University of Iowa professor of economics.

The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act cut marginal taxes by more than 25% over three years. The act was aimed at encouraging economic growth by reducing corporate income tax for businesses making less than $50,000 annually and introducing more benefits for married couples. 

How do economists measure tax cuts? 

When calculating tax cuts, economists consider multiple factors. 

OBBBA is projected to gross $4.5 trillion over 10 years,  according to the Congressional Budget Office. Tax bills’ total value increases over time because of inflation. So the ideal way to understand tax cuts is as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP. This put the cuts into the context of inflation and the overall economy. 

Counting just the new tax cuts in the OBBA, they make up 0.5% of GDP . When looking only at the new tax cuts added by the bill, it ranks tied for sixth-largest cut overall since 1980, PolitiFact previously reported. 

When factoring tax cuts extended from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the OBBBA ranks third largest since 1980. Economists have previously told PolitiFact it’s legitimate to measure the size of the tax cuts either way. The law resulted in taxes being lower than they’d be if the 2017 tax cuts expired, but many taxpayers could see little change in taxes because rates stayed the same as in recent years. 

Carrie Houchins-Witt, an enrolled agent professional at Carrie Houchins-Witt Tax and Financial Services, said “a large swath of taxpayers are not seeing any tax cut,” and some people saw their taxes increase. The senior deduction —  $6,000 for people 65 and older making less than $75,000 a year — did benefit many of her clients, she said.  

Our ruling 

Nunn said, “We have cut the largest taxes in U.S. history.”

While the tax cuts are projected to be nominally large, the more effective way of understanding them is in the larger context of the economy.

When looking exclusively at new tax cuts, the OBBBA is tied for sixth-largest since 1980. But, when viewing the OBBBA as an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the bill sits at third largest. 

This statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the statement Mostly False. 

CORRECTION, Oct. 8, 2026: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s senior deduction applies to people 65 and older. An earlier version of this fact-check listed an inaccurate eligibility age.

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An ad against Josh Turek, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Iowa, portrays him as someone who doesn’t care about border security and would rather have “amnesty” for people in the country illegally.

“Liberal politician Josh Turek supports amnesty for illegals,” the ad’s narrator says before a video clip shows Turek saying, “We need an easier pathway to citizenship.” 

The ad from the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC shows images of people crossing a river and pulling down wire fencing while the narrator argues Turek has lax policies on border security and immigration. It aired nationally during the Sept. 26 University of Iowa-University of Michigan football game.

Turek, a state lawmaker and two-time Paralympic gold medalist in wheelchair basketball, faces Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, a former journalist, in the competitive race to fill the seat vacated by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who is not seeking reelection. Republicans have painted Turek as supporting broad protections for people in the country illegally.

But this ad oversimplifies Turek’s position and relies on a very narrow interpretation of “amnesty,” a term with no legal definition in immigration policy. 

Although Turek is critical of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, he says he supports strict border security. He has also said it should be easier for immigrants to obtain citizenship, often pointing to his wife, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic. But he stops short of endorsing citizenship for all immigrants in the country illegally, saying some people should be permitted to stay if they meet certain conditions.

The ad’s clip of Turek’s comments comes from a May debate between Turek and his primary election opponent in which he said he supports the Dignity Act, a bipartisan congressional proposal that would let some immigrants who are illegally in the country gain limited legal status if they meet certain requirements; it would not provide a guaranteed pathway to citizenship.

As a super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign for federal candidates. When PolitiFact asked the group for evidence Turek supports amnesty, spokesperson Chris Gustafson pointed us to his debate comments and the Dignity Act’s details.

Here’s more to know about the group’s ad.

What is ‘amnesty’? And would the Dignity Act provide it?

At its most broad, amnesty can mean any policy waiving punishments for immigration violations. More narrowly, it’s sometimes understood as a widespread granting of citizenship to people in the country illegally.

Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, said the word is ultimately a political term with no legal definition, and it’s used by immigration opponents to disparage any loosening of immigration penalties. 

One thing is clear: The Dignity Act that Turek said he supports does not meet the latter interpretation.

“If you think that amnesty is complete forgiveness at no cost, then this isn’t it,” Somin said of the Dignity Act.

The Dignity Act, led by Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, has 38 additional House cosponsors split evenly among Democrats and Republicans. The sponsors introduced the latest version in July 2025, and it has not received any committee action.  

The bill would let immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally before 2021 receive a new “dignity status” if they are employed or in school, pass a background check and pay $7,000 in fines, as well as back taxes and extra taxes going forward. It bars anyone who has committed a felony from qualifying.

Those who get “dignity status” would not be permanent residents and would need to renew their status every seven years. They wouldn’t be eligible for U.S. citizenship or federal benefits, either. 

The proposal would also let immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — aka “Dreamers” — obtain legal status and eventually be eligible for permanent residence. At that point, they’d be eligible for U.S. citizenship under the usual paths for permanent residents. 

The bill also includes a slew of immigration enforcement measures: mandating businesses to hire workers with legal status; providing increased funding for border barriers and monitoring;  and increasing penalties for illegally crossing the border.

Steve Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports strict immigration laws, said even though the bill includes these conditions, it’s fair to call it amnesty because it waives penalties for an offense.

“You pay this penalty, you behave in this way, you wait this long, and that’s also a type of amnesty,” he said. “And that’s what this one is.”

Even the bill’s sponsors disagree on whether the Dignity Act qualifies as “amnesty.” The Senate Leadership Fund pointed us to an article in which Republican Rep. John Duarte of California said, “if you want to call it, an amnesty. I’m comfortable with the word.”

But other Republican cosponsors reject that sentiment. Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in an April radio interview, “This is not an amnesty bill.” Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Gabe Evans of Colorado made similar points.

Examining Turek’s past immigration votes and comments

Turek broke with his party and joined Republicans to back stricter immigration laws in 2024. He was one of three Iowa House Democrats that year who voted for a measure that made being in the country illegally a state crime in Iowa, and gave state officials power to enforce immigration laws. 

And although Turek said in his primary debate comments that he would support “permanent residency or citizenship” for some immigrants in the country illegally who qualified under the bill, that goes further than the actual Dignity Act does.

Yet, Turek’s campaign told PolitiFact he does not support a pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally, and spokesperson Hannah Goss called the ad’s claim “categorically false.” Goss pointed to Turek’s break with his party and said he supports making citizenship easier for people who immigrated to the U.S. legally.

Our ruling

A Senate Leadership Fund ad said Turek “supports amnesty” for immigrants illegally in the country. 

Turek has called for letting some immigrants in the country illegally be eligible for a restricted legal status. But they’d need to pay a fine and wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship. Some advocates of stricter immigration policies consider that amnesty, because it waives punishments.

In other cases, Turek has said he supports a “pathway to citizenship,” without making clear whether that applies to people illegally in the country.

What counts as amnesty is debated, but the context of the Dignity Act matters. It wouldn’t grant citizenship and it places a high bar for people to achieve a limited legal status.

The ad is partially accurate, but it leaves out important details about Turek’s position. We rate it Half True.

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In a warm-up speech before President Donald Trump addressed Oklahoma rally-goers, Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin told the crowd in his home state that Trump took a financial hit to serve as president. 

“He doesn’t have to do this,” Mullin, a former U.S. senator, said at the Oct. 1 rally in Durant. “There’s no financial gain like the past presidents have had. It’s cost him to be in office.”

That’s not what Trump told the federal government.

His 927-page financial disclosure form for 2025 shows at least $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency revenue alone.

A New York Times analysis estimated that overall, Trump “pulled in at least $2.2 billion” in 2025. That was up from $622 million in 2024, which was before he began his second term.

And a September analysis by Forbes — which has been tracking the holdings of the super-wealthy for decades — found that Trump “is an estimated $2.7 billion richer than when he won the 2024 election.” The Forbes analysis runs through 2026.

“2025 was the most lucrative year of Trump’s life, by far,” said Robert Maguire, vice president of research and data at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy group that has sued Trump and his administration over such issues as foreign emoluments and a proposed fund to compensate people who experienced what Trump called “government weaponization.”

“There is essentially no scenario, based on public information, where the presidency hasn’t made Donald Trump far richer than he’s ever been,” Maguire said.

White House says to look at Trump’s first term

Mullin’s department did not respond to our questions about his remarks, but the White House did.

In a statement to PolitiFact, the White House cited Forbes data showing Trump’s net worth fell from $3.7 billion in 2016 — the year before his first term — to $2.5 billion in 2021, the year after he left the White House. That’s a 32% decline in net worth during his first term. (For comparison, the median U.S. household net worth with members at least 75 years old — which is close to Trump’s age — is $335,600.)

Mullin’s statement would have been accurate if he’d said it in 2021. But Trump’s financial picture is vastly different in 2026. 

Forbes currently calculates Trump’s net worth at $7 billion. That’s almost double the $3.7 billion Trump held before he became president the first time, and it’s also far above his pre-presidential high of $4.5 billion in 2015.

The White House also said Trump has not taken a salary. The White House hasn’t always provided documentation of this, but even if it’s correct, that’s only $400,000 a year foregone — a tiny fraction of Trump’s $2.2 billion in 2025 revenues. 

Cryptocurrency accounts for a clear majority of Trump’s 2025 revenue, bringing in $1.4 billion. His 2025 disclosure showed another $400 million from sources such as real estate, legal settlements, overseas licensing agreements and branded merchandise such as watches and footwear.

Could Trump’s added expenses have canceled out his gains?

Experts said it was unlikely that the $2.2 billion or more that Trump has taken in would have been gobbled up by added expenses from being president.

“The only extra expenses I think he could possibly have incurred as president would come from things like extra security costs or travel, but the taxpayers have footed the bill to increase security at the president’s private properties,” said Danielle Caputo, senior legal counsel for ethics with the Campaign Legal Center, which tracks campaign finance and ethics issues.

MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC, has reported paying for some of Trump’s travel, but that’s not considered Trump’s own money, Caputo said. “I don’t think that either could account for $1.6 billion in expenses,” Caputo said.

As for traditional overhead expenses that might stem from Trump’s businesses, Maguire said that the biggest sources of revenue disclosed in Trump’s 2025 form are from enterprises that are relatively free of overhead, such as cryptocurrency and licensing deals. These are “about as close to pure income that you can get,” Maguire said.

How do previous presidents compare?

Trump entered office both times with the highest net worth of any recent president — $3.7 billion the first time and $3.9 billion the second time. The next closest was John F. Kennedy, who had family wealth; pre-presidency, Kennedy is estimated to have been worth $100 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. 

Two recent Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — saw their net worth skyrocket after leaving office. They both entered office with an estimated $1.3 million and finished up their tenures with $120 million and $70 million, respectively. 

Those are significant increases, but Trump’s wealth has grown by far more.

Our ruling

Mullin said that for Trump, “There’s no financial gain like the past presidents have had. It’s cost him to be in office.” 

Trump’s own financial disclosure form shows he made at least $2.2 billion in revenues in 2025, up from $622 million in 2024, before he began his second term. A Forbes analysis estimated that Trump is $2.7 billion richer than in 2024.

It’s not plausible that overhead or added expenses could have consumed all that extra income, experts said. And the scale of Trump’s presidential wealth gains dwarf those of recent presidents.

From the best information we have, Mullin’s comment is off by more than $1 billion. We rate the statement Pants on Fire!

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President Donald Trump pointed to quick results in the first round of voting in Brazil’s presidential election to denounce the pace of ballot counting in Democratic U.S. areas as “corrupt.”

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro — the son of Brazil’s former president who was sentenced to prison  following an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election — was leading Oct. 4 in the first round of voting ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 47% to 45%. They will proceed to a runoff Oct. 25.

Trump posted Oct. 4 on Truth Social, “125 Million People voted today in the first round of Brazil’s Presidential Election. The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY! In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!”

In a different late night post that is no longer available, Trump made the same statement about India, which did not hold a presidential election over the weekend.

By the time of Trump’s Brazil post, it was clear the candidates were headed to a runoff and nearly all votes were cast.

The pace of vote counting is not a sign of election rigging. Brazil and the U.S. have different voting systems and election laws.

For years, Trump has repeatedly spread falsehoods about “rigged” elections, including in California. Officials abiding by state law is not a sign of fraud.

How Brazil administers elections

An electronic voting machine displays a test screen as local electoral court workers test and seal voting machines ahead of Brazil’s October general election in Brasilia, Brazil, Sept. 23, 2026. (AP) 

Brazil has no mail-in voting. Voting is in person, at electronic voting machines, and it is mandatory for citizens between ages 18 and 70, said Pablo Ortellado, University of São Paulo professor of public policy. Voting takes place on a single day that is a national holiday. 

Elections are run by a specialized branch of the judiciary, the Electoral Justice system. At the top is the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), a national court that sets the rules and coordinates 27 regional electoral courts that handle elections on the ground.

“It is a single, nationally standardized system: the same machines, the same procedures and the same counting process across the whole country,” Ortellado said. “That is a big part of why results come out within hours.”

Brazilian officials have worked to increase transparency. In 2021, the Superior Electoral Court created the Electoral Transparency Commission, which includes experts, civil society entities and public institutions in inspecting and auditing the electoral process. 

The country has used electronic voting machines since 1996. Voters cast ballots on dedicated machines protected by multiple layers of testing and auditing.

“Curiously, Brazil’s electronic voting system, which is indeed very fast and quite secure, draws heavy criticism precisely from the Brazilian right that is sympathetic to Trump,” Ortellado said. “Critics argue, among other things, that because there is no printed record of each vote deposited in a ballot box for physical verification, the system cannot be properly audited.”

Since the late 1990s, the nation’s election results have been available quickly.

As soon as the polls close at 5 p.m., results are gathered, said Paulo Valle, a political scientist and researcher at the University of Central Florida and FGV in Brazil. “By the end of the evening we have 99.9% of the ballots counted.”

Brazil has a completely paperless system, said Eduardo Repilloza Fernández, coordinator general for Transparencia Electoral, an organization that encourages elections held according to internationally recognized integrity standards.

“There’s no signatures to check, no physical paper-ballot tabulation systems. Voters do not get an individual receipt of their vote,” Fernández said.

How the U.S. administers elections

A sheriff’s deputy and his dog inspect ballots at the L.A. County Ballot Processing Center during the California primary election on June 2, 2026, in City of Industry, California. (AP)

In the U.S., each state sets its own election laws, and cities and counties administer elections.

State laws cover the deadline for receipt of mail ballots, when election officials can open mail ballots and prepare them for tabulation and the dates by which they must certify official results. All of those laws play a role in how long it takes to complete the official count.

Some contests have wide enough margins between top candidates that media outlets can project a winner based on partial results. But the final official results are often certified weeks later. If the vote is close, even an election with little mail balloting can take time to call.  Some elections with lots of mail balloting can be called quickly if a candidate is far ahead.

No state completes an official count on election night. 

Trump singled out California, which often takes longer than the rest of the country because nearly everyone votes by mail and it counts ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received not later than seven days after Election Day. 

Expansive voting by mail is convenient for voters — even Trump frequently votes by mail. But it takes longer for local election officials to process and verify mail ballots.

We asked the White House for Trump’s evidence that the pace of counting ballots in California or the cities of Detroit, Philadelphia or elsewhere is a sign that people are rigging the election. We did not get an immediate response. 

Falsehoods followed Brazil’s 2022 election

A forensic investigator Jan. 10, 2023, stands outside the Brazilian Supreme Court that was damaged by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro angered over election results. (AP)

President Jair Bolsonaro, father of Flávio Bolsonaro, narrowly lost in 2022 and claimed the election was fraudulent, sparking protests by his supporters.

More than 1,000 people stormed Brazil’s government buildings including Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices on Jan. 8, 2023, smashing windows and setting fires. In March 2026, Bolsonaro received permission to serve his sentence for the coup attempt at home because of poor health.

The Atlanta-based Carter Center, which sent observers to Brazil for the election, said it was not aware of any evidence of fraud in the 2022 election, and none of the international or Brazilian observers reported any evidence of significant fraud. The center similarly sent experts to watch the 2026 election.

Cesar Zucco, a Columbia University professor of Brazilian studies, told PolitiFact that voter registration, voting and counting “are electronic and safe” and that “the only people that ever questioned the mechanics of the elections were Bolsonaro and his allies in the recent past.”

Our ruling

Trump said Brazil’s same-day election results are proof that places like Detroit, Philadelphia and California “take weeks to rig” their elections. 

His frequent critique after other countries’ speedier election results still lacks evidence.

Brazil and the U.S. have different voting systems and laws. Brazil has a nationally standardized system that uses the same machines, the same procedures and the same counting process across the whole country, and doesn’t have voting by mail, which is expansive in some U.S. states, including California. Voting by mail takes longer for local election officials to process mail ballots and verify they were cast by the voters whose names are on the envelopes. 

The pace of vote counting is not proof of election rigging.

We rate this statement Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Trump’s midterm rallies: A fact-checked guide to talking points, falsehoods

RELATED: Trump said the pace of California ballot counting proves a rigged election. Pants on Fire!

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Critics of former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper falsely claim that he was miles away from the Tar Heel State when Hurricane Helene made landfall two years ago. 

Cooper is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, who’s not seeking reelection. Cooper faces Republican Michael Whatley, Libertarian Shannon Bray and Green Party candidate Michael Dublin for the seat. 

Cooper served as governor from 2017 through the end of 2024 and led the state’s initial response to Hurricane Helene, which caused an estimated $60 billion in damage in North Carolina in September 2024. Now, with Cooper now running for U.S. Senate, critics are resurrecting a claim that PolitiFact debunked in 2024.

“This Saturday marks two years since Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina and nearby Southern states. Where was Roy Cooper when Helene slammed into North Carolina? In New York speaking at a New York Times ‘Climate Forward’ event,” President Donald Trump’s campaign account said in a Sept. 21 X post. Trump’s X account repeated the claim in a Sept. 26 post. 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a GOP political action committee, posted a similar claim on Sept. 23: “Where was Roy Cooper two years ago when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina? At a climate conference in New York City touting Green New Deal policies.” 

In a Sept. 28 Republican National Committee email to supporters, the RNC said that “during the storm itself, Cooper was at a climate change gala in New York City.”

Those claims are wrong. 

On Sept. 25 — a day before Helene had even made landfall in Florida — Cooper attended a New York Times conference about climate change and was back by 3 p.m. that day, the governor’s office told media outlets at the time and Cooper’s campaign confirmed to PolitiFact. 

On Sept. 27, Cooper was in Raleigh when the most damaging wind and rain hit western North Carolina. We found no evidence that he left the state. 

Timeline of events

PolitiFact North Carolina first investigated the claim about Cooper’s September 2024 trip to New York following a social media post by Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial nominee that year. Here’s a review of Cooper’s actions leading up to Helene hitting North Carolina, based on a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. 

• Sept. 24, 2024: Helene became a Tropical Storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Cooper formally asked top members of the state’s executive branch for approval of emergency powers. He also placed the State Emergency Operations Center on Enhanced Watch, meaning the state should prepare to assist local governments that might need help following the storm. 
• Sept. 25, 2024: Helene became a Category 1 hurricane off the coast of Florida. Rain fell in Asheville — but it wasn’t from Helene’s outer bands, WRAL meteorologist Kat Campbell told PolitiFact. Asheville’s rain that day was the result of a stalled front pulling in moisture from Helene in the Gulf. Cooper declared a state of emergency, allowing state emergency responders to begin deploying equipment, personnel, and resources across the state. He also flew to New York City and was one of many speakers — including zoologist Jane Goodall, NBC weathercaster Al Roker and Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali — who spoke at the public event hosted by The New York Times.
• Sept. 26, 2o24: Cooper held an 11 a.m. briefing at the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh. He urged North Carolinians to prepare for life-threatening flooding as well as high winds, tornadoes and heavy rain throughout the state. He also announced that 175 soldiers and airmen from the NC National Guard had been activated. Tropical-storm-force winds reached Tampa Bay around 3 p.m. and intense rainfall in Florida and the Appalachian Valley caused river levels to rise. Helene strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane as it careened toward Florida. By 6 p.m., the eye of the hurricane was located 150 southwest of Tampa. 
• Sept. 27, 2024: Helene officially made landfall at 3:10 a.m. near Perry, Florida and moved northward through the morning into North Carolina. Cooper held an 11 a.m. briefing in Raleigh, where state Emergency Management Director William Ray announced that the National Guard had deployed more than 350 guardsmen and that the state Emergency Operations Center deployed 30 swift-water rescue teams. Cooper also asked the Biden administration to expedite a federal major disaster declaration — which the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared on Sept. 28 and was announced on Sept. 29.

Whatley recently recited the correct date of Cooper’s 2024 trip to New York — albeit while criticizing Cooper for going. At a Sept. 25 campaign event in Pittsboro, Whatley said: “We’re here on the 25th, that Roy Cooper on this day two years ago was up in New York at a climate change gala ball. He was not preparing this state.”

PolitiFact reached out to the White House, the Republican National Committee, and Never Surrender Inc., a political action committee linked to the Team Trump X account. None of them immediately responded to requests for comment. 

Our ruling

Trump’s X account said: “Where was Roy Cooper when Helene slammed into North Carolina? In New York speaking at a New York Times ‘Climate Forward’ event.”

Cooper attended the New York Times conference about climate change on Sept. 25, 2024, and returned to North Carolina the same day — before Helene made landfall in Florida. The most damaging wind and rain didn’t hit western North Carolina until Sept. 27, 2024. We rate Trump’s claim False.

RELATED: ‘Blood-soaked killing fields’: Fact-checking Trump and Whatley’s claims about Cooper and crime in North Carolina

RELATED: Trump said North Carolina Gov. Cooper, Democrats blocked aid. That’s not what their actions show

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A Democrat-backed ad in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race said Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson took money from people named in the Jeffrey Epstein files and then voted to withhold the files from public view.

“Her top donors appear in the Epstein files over 700 times,” the ad from WinSenate super PAC said, referring to thousands of documents related to criminal investigations into Epstein, the convicted sex offender. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

“In Congress, Hinson voted against releasing the files,” the ad continued. “When given another chance, she skipped the votes. Instead, she was raising money from a billionaire who’s in the Epstein files over 20 times.”

In a separate ad from WinSenate, a woman tells viewers that Hinson “took nearly $90,000 from people in the Epstein files and voted to keep those files secret.”

As a super PAC, the pro-Democrat WinSenate may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, including from corporations and unions, to campaign independently for candidates for federal office. Hinson faces Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek in the race to replace Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is not seeking re-election. 

Federal Election Commission data show that Hinson received donations from people who were mentioned in the Epstein files. They’re among hundreds named in the files — but that alone doesn’t mean they were involved in wrongdoing or had close ties with Epstein, who interacted with many influential people regardless of political affiliation.

WinSenate’s ads mislead about Hinson’s votes on the Epstein files’ release.

Hinson opposed procedural efforts, but voted in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act

On July 14, 2025, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced an amendment requiring the attorney general to release the Epstein files within 30 days. The House Rules Committee voted against attaching that amendment to a cryptocurrency bill to be voted on the House floor.

The next day, Democrats pushed to defeat a motion to “order the previous question,” a procedural maneuver that would end debate and force a vote on the legislation at hand, which on that day included a defense appropriations bill and the cryptocurrency bill. If the “previous question” motion failed, it would have allowed further consideration of Khanna’s amendment on the Epstein files’ release. But the procedural vote passed 211-210 along party lines, with Hinson and other Republicans in the majority. The ad cited this vote as evidence for its claim.

Hinson called Epstein a “disgusting human being and an absolute pedophile” around that time, but said she disagreed with a separate effort to force a vote on the Epstein files’ release.

We found that Hinson also voted with the majority for other “previous question” motions in July 2025 and September 2025 that stopped a stand-alone bill on the Epstein files from being brought to the House floor. And she didn’t sign a discharge petition led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that eventually obtained enough signatures to force a floor vote on the Epstein files’ release.

But the ad did not mention that Hinson later voted in favor of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act introduced by Massie and Khanna. Facing increased pressure to release the files, President Donald Trump directed lawmakers to pass the measure requiring the Justice Department to publish online all its files on Epstein. It passed the House, 427-1, in November 2025. 

The ad also cited an Aug. 27 article from the liberal American Journal News. The article said Hinson missed votes for Epstein-related motions in September 2025, including motions to restrict funds in favor of enabling the release of the Epstein files. Her campaign didn’t tell us why she didn’t vote.

Asked about WinSenate’s ad, Hinson spokesperson Billy Fuerst pointed to Hinson’s vote on the Transparency Act and described the July vote that the group cited as a “procedural motion to advance several bills, including a defense appropriations bill.”

Donations from people mentioned in the Epstein files does not equate to wrongdoing

This midterm election season, both parties have turned to the Epstein files to lob campaign attacks at one another. 

WinSenate’s ad did not specify which of Hinson’s donors it was referring to, but news reports and FEC data show that Hinson received donations from current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Blackwater CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, all of whose names appear in the Epstein documents. They are not accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

The Daily Beast reported that Hinson and her affiliated PACs accepted nearly $90,000 over three campaigns from donors whose names appear in the files. PolitiFact was unable to confirm the figure.

And not just Republican donors appear in the Epstein files. Hinson’s opponent Turek, for example, received a donation from venture capitalist and chairman of Kleiner Perkins John Doerr, who was also mentioned in the files. Doerr is not accused of wrongdoing, and the files don’t reflect that he directly corresponded with Epstein. 

Our ruling

A WinSenate ad said Hinson voted against releasing the Epstein files.

Hinson opposed a procedural maneuver allowing a vote on the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files. She opposed two other similar procedural efforts related to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but later voted for the bill in November 2025. The measure passed.

We rate the claim Mostly False.

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Polls show midterm voters are angry that the Iran war — which President Donald Trump told them would be over in a matter of weeks — has led to higher inflation and energy prices, including for gasoline. 

Now seven months into the conflict, Trump is defending his decision to attack Iran with Israel on Feb. 28, but he’s recasting his initial timeline for what he once labeled a “little excursion.”

“I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night!” Trump wrote in an Oct. 1 Truth Social post. “The rest of the time is just to make sure it stays that way. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Later that day, Trump said during an Oklahoma rally that he is ensuring Iran will never have a nuclear weapon and that he said “numerous times that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat and I did it in one night.”

In a Sept. 28 Time Magazine interview, when reporters asked him why the war continued several months later, Trump said: “Only because I wanted to go further. I took them out. I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further. I didn’t want them — because I met my timeline.”

Time asked: “Do you think the American people misunderstood that? I feel like most people heard you say four to six weeks.”

Trump said, “No, I think the press fed it to them.”

Trump’s rewrite needs a fact-check; he was the frequent source for the four- to six-week estimate.

As he made the case to prevent a nuclear Iran, Trump repeatedly predicted the war would last weeks. He did not specify that it would take four to six weeks to get rid of the Iran nuclear threat.

When we asked the White House for examples of Trump making that distinction, a spokesperson responded with a statement that didn’t cite any such comments.

Trump said the war would last weeks at least five times

March 1: Trump said in a speech that “combat operations continue at this time in full force, and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved.” When The New York Times asked him how long the United States and Israel would continue the attacks, Trump said: “We intended four to five weeks.”

March 2: Trump said at a White House ceremony: “We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections. But whatever the time is, it’s OK.” He repeated that the initial projection was “four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that.”

March 2: Trump told CNN, “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.” 

March 7: While speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump called it “a short excursion.” When asked how long he expected the attacks to continue, Trump didn’t directly answer the question: “I think we’ve accomplished more in one week than anyone thought possible.” On Truth Social he said “we’ve already won.” 

March 13: When asked about gas prices, Trump told reporters he needed to end the nuclear threat first, “We had to end the nuclear threat in the Middle East and throughout the world, and we will have done that.” When asked about how long the war will last, he said, “I can’t tell you that. I mean, I have my own idea. But what good does it do? It’ll be as long as it’s necessary.”

Trump told Fox News Radio that day, “I don’t think it’s gonna be long” and said he would know when it is over when “I feel it in my bones.”

March 26: During a Cabinet meeting, Trump mentioned the four-to-six-week estimate twice, adding, “And we’re way ahead of schedule.”

March 31: During an Oval Office event held about a month after the war started, Trump said, “We hit them hard. We got rid of a lot of the radicalized lunatics along the Strait (of Hormuz),” and then added, “I would say that within two weeks maybe, two weeks, maybe three.”

A reporter asked Trump to clarify if the U.S. would be done with the war in two weeks.

“I think two or three weeks,” Trump said. “Yeah.”

After that, Trump said he had one goal: “They will have no nuclear weapon and that goal has been attained.” Then he said the U.S. military is finishing the job. “And I think within maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer to do the job, but we want to knock out every single thing they have.”

April 20: In a Truth Social post, Trump said Democrats “like to say that I promised 6 weeks to defeat Iran, and actually, from the Military standpoint, it was far faster than that, but I’m not going to let them rush the United States into making a Deal that is not as good as it could have been.” He said he was “under no pressure whatsoever” to make a deal, “although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!” 

Hegseth: ‘As long as it takes’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth often made broader statements about how long the war would last. During a March 2 press conference, a reporter asked him if Trump’s four-week timeline “is wrong.” Hegseth said, “Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back.” 

A few days later, Hegseth said, “Our timeline is ours and ours alone to control as long as it takes to ensure the United States of America achieves these objectives.”

During a March 10 press conference, a reporter asked Hegseth how far the U.S. was into its air campaign against Iran. Hegseth said: “From the beginning, from this podium, we haven’t stated how long it will take.” 

Trump “gets to control the throttle,” he said. “So it’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle, or the end” of the conflict. 

‘One night’?

Trump said he got rid of the Iran nuclear threat in “one night.” 

The U.S. and Israel bombed Iran for hours Feb. 28, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

That attack followed U.S. military strikes in 2025, which likely set back Iran’s nuclear program, but did not eliminate it, military and nuclear experts told PolitiFact in August. The attacks in this year’s war have not further weakened Iran’s nuclear capabilities, they said, and the U.S. has not secured Iran’s highly enriched uranium. It’s also unclear whether any damage has been done to the machinery used to enrich more uranium.

Nevertheless, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly sent a statement that said “President Trump is right” and recapped his 2025 and 2026 attacks on Iran in an effort to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.

Our ruling

Trump said, “I stated, numerous times, that it would take 4-6 weeks to get rid of THE IRAN NUCLEAR THREAT, and I did it in one night!”

In multiple comments in the weeks that followed the launch of the war, Trump predicted it would last four to six weeks. He did not distinguish between a timeline for getting rid of the nuclear threat, which isn’t entirely gone, and the overall war. Experts have said attacks have set back Iran’s nuclear program without completely eliminating it. 

We rate this statement False. 

RELATED: All of our fact-checks about Iran

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Multiple videos shared on TikTok about a sexual assault accusation at a Cornell University fraternity house show dramatic footage of a woman being chased down a hallway and accosted, or dragged into a room. Others show a young male suspect in handcuffs.

But they are at odds with what’s publicly known about the case, including the alleged victim’s own account of the 2024 incident described in a civil lawsuit filed Sept. 16 in New York. There had been no arrests in the case as of Oct. 1, though the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office has reopened the investigation

PolitiFact identified these videos as part of TikTok’s efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)

Videos such as these in an emotionally charged case lead to the spread of misinformation about what happened. So far, there hasn’t been any video of the assault released from officials or in credible news reports.

TikTok videos

Here’s what the TikTok videos show:

One TikTok video about the Cornell case shows a curly haired man being led down a hallway in handcuffs by two police officers. The man seen in the video is a 28-year-old man accused in 2024 of assaulting a teenage girl in San Antonio, Texas, news reports show.

Another TikTok video shows a man dragging a woman (whose face is blurred) across a front porch. That’s not from Cornell, but from a 2019 assault in California captured on a Ring doorbell surveillance video.

Several TikTok videos show a man chasing and attacking a woman in a hallway, or dragging a woman screaming and trying to escape from behind into a room. PolitiFact was unable to find the original videos in those cases, but did find that they have been used before on social media, some as early as November 2025.

The woman being chased in the hallway was used in a May TikTok video about an unrelated missing University of South Florida student. News accounts of that case do not mention videos of a woman being attacked in a hallway.

The video of the woman being dragged into a room from behind was seen in a November 2025 video about a woman killed on a cruise ship, allegedly by her brother. News coverage and information released by authorities in that case do not mention a video of that incident.

What the accuser has said

The woman, identified as Jane Doe in her lawsuit against seven Cornell students, said that after a night of drinking in October 2024, she went to the Chi Phi National’s Xi Chapter’s fraternity house, where she said she was led to an upstairs room and pressured into taking ketamine, before eventually being assaulted over several hours by the students. 

She did not describe being physically chased down a hallway and attacked, or being dragged from behind into a room she was trying to flee.

The New York Times obtained documents from a university review of the case, and did not mention any video of the assault in the case in an Oct. 1 report.

What police have said

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a Sept. 28 news release that he had been asked by the community to review the decision not to file charges in the case.

That release also did not mention any video evidence of the assault or descriptions that match the TikTok videos.

Our ruling

Several TikTok videos about the Cornell University sexual assault case share dramatic videos of women being attacked or a suspect in handcuffs.

But the videos are from unrelated cases. They do not match descriptions of the Cornell incident by the accuser or police, and no one has been arrested in the case as of Oct. 1.

We rate them Pants on Fire!

Digital Research Program Manager Sara Swann and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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Florida’s governor race has a new battleground: offshore drilling.

In a new ad, GOP gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds said Democratic nominee David Jolly lobbied for more offshore drilling in Florida waters after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“While Florida was still cleaning up, lobbyist David Jolly was already cashing in,” the ad’s narrator says. “Just months after the spill, Jolly was in Washington, pressuring Congress to expand drilling off the Florida coast, over $5 million in billings.”

Jolly, who was a lobbyist before he was elected to public office in 2014 as a Republican, says he is against drilling off Florida’s coast and as a former congressman advocated for keeping the practice away from the state. (After his stint in Congress, Jolly became an independent, then a Democrat in 2025 to run for Florida governor.)

So did he previously lobby for drilling? 

Donalds’ campaign said yes, and pointed to a 2014 PolitiFact Florida fact-check from Jolly’s successful U.S. House race. Jolly said he “never” lobbied for offshore oil drilling, which we rated Mostly False. 

Jolly’s campaign pointed to a different fact-check from his unsuccessful 2016 run against former Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist said Jolly “used money and power to try to … drill off our beaches,” which we rated Mostly False.

Here’s what’s accurate: As a lobbyist, Jolly once attended a meeting where offshore drilling legislation was a topic of discussion; experts say that’s technically lobbying. What’s misleading is that Donalds’ ad misattributes his firm’s overall billings exclusively to drilling and ignores Jolly’s efforts as a congressman to keep drilling away from Florida.

In 2014, we reported that a lobbyist disclosure form contradicted Jolly’s statement about never lobbying for offshore oil drilling. He later said that he attended the 2011 meeting but didn’t advocate for the bill. Crist in 2016 gave the impression that Jolly spent significant time and money lobbying for offshore drilling in Florida, ignoring Jolly’s efforts in Congress to block the practice off Florida’s coast.

In response to Donalds’ ad, Jolly’s campaign said that, as a lawmaker, Jolly consistently opposed drilling near Florida.

Donalds’ campaign said a failed bill that Jolly’s client, Free Enterprise Nation, supported in 2011 would have “fast-tracked” the federal offshore oil and gas leasing program and that Jolly wrote a blog post supporting it. 

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What happened in 2011?

Jolly owned a lobbying firm, Three Bridges Advisors, from 2011 to late 2013.

A lobbyist disclosure form showed that Jolly’s firm did work for Free Enterprise Nation — a pro-business, anti-regulation advocacy group — in the first quarter of 2011. (The group is now inactive.)

Free Enterprise Nation supported H.R. 909, a bill that would have expanded offshore oil and gas leasing and exploration by lifting restrictions in federal waters, including in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico. The legislation stalled in committee.

Jolly previously told PolitiFact that he listed H.R. 909 on his lobbyist disclosure form because he was at a meeting where Free Enterprise Nation discussed it, but said he “did not lobby on its behalf.” Jolly said he “had a practice of always overcomplying,” and that he supported offshore drilling outside the 230-mile Florida moratorium area.

Drilling off Florida’s coast was largely illegal when Jolly was a lobbyist. The federal law — the 2006 Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act — prohibited drilling within 230 miles of Tampa Bay and 125 miles from the Panhandle. It expired in 2022. In 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot amendment to ban offshore oil and gas drilling in state-controlled waters.

Lobbying experts said in 2014 they thought it was unlikely that Jolly would have listed the bill if he hadn’t discussed it, although there was no way to verify that. 

It’s not unusual for lobbyists to overreport their activity out of an abundance of caution, said Kenneth Gross, a lawyer who advises clients on how to comply with political law, including lobbying.

In an April 2011 blog post, Jolly wrote that Free Enterprise Nation supported H.R. 909 and quoted an endorsement from founder and former CEO Jim MacDougald. In 2014, MacDougald, who was serving as Jolly’s House campaign finance co-chair, said Jolly “was never employed to advocate” for the bill on behalf of the company and represented the organization on different issues. 

Federal law says lobbyists must report any issue in which they engage for their clients, including preparing information, communicating with government officials and participating in planning activities.

Donalds’ ad ignores Jolly’s efforts in Congress to block drilling in Florida

Donalds’ ad overstates Jolly’s lobbying for offshore drilling and omits that he opposed the practice near Florida.

The ad says Jolly took in over “$5 million” in billings to pressure Congress to drill off Florida’s coast. Public disclosure records show that the $5 million figure represents Three Bridges Advisors’ total billings across all clients and issues, rather than revenue tied exclusively to offshore drilling. 

Jolly’s firm in 2011 reported $30,000 in income from Free Enterprise Nation. Our search of Three Bridges Advisors’ reports did not turn up additional income from Free Enterprise Nation.

As a Republican congressman in 2014, Jolly opposed expanding exploration off Florida’s Atlantic coast using sound waves, out of concern it could be used in the Gulf of Mexico and lead to another oil spill. He signed a bipartisan letter to then-President Barack Obama opposing so-called seismic testing. (The Atlantic drilling was later called off.)

He co-sponsored bipartisan legislation in 2015 to extend the federal ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf until 2027. He also introduced an amendment that year heading off a Senate plan that would have potentially expanded drilling off Florida’s Gulf coast.  

Jolly supported drilling for oil as a practice, just not in Florida. In a 2015 op-ed, he said Florida didn’t need to risk its beaches simply to increase oil production.

He told PolitiFact in 2016 that he supported drilling in the western and central Gulf, while strengthening the ban in the eastern Gulf.

Jolly’s gubernatorial campaign told us he no longer believes new drilling leaseholds are necessary amid emerging energy technologies. “We should eventually move away from offshore drilling altogether,” Jolly said in an emailed statement. “This must be done in a commercially practicable way, but should fully be our long-term national energy goal.”

Our ruling

Donalds’ ad said that months after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, “Jolly was in Washington, pressuring Congress to expand drilling off the Florida coast, over $5 million in billings.”

As a lobbyist, Jolly attended a 2011 meeting with a client who supported a bill that could have expanded offshore drilling in Florida; he listed the bill on a lobbyist disclosure form. He later said he did not actively lobby for the bill during the meeting. We don’t know the specifics of what was said in the meeting, but lobbying experts said attending a meeting during which a bill is discussed still counts as lobbying. 

Donalds’ ad inaccurately linked Jolly’s firm’s total billings across all clients and issues exclusively to offshore drilling. The ad also ignores Jolly’s congressional efforts to keep drilling away from Florida’s shores; today he doesn’t support offshore drilling anywhere.

The statement contains an element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

RELATED: $1,000 hurricane tax? Fact-checking claims about Jolly’s proposal for Florida homeowners insurance

Read all our Florida fact-checks here.

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When then-Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio was running for reelection in 2024, the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund aired an ad saying the Democrat supported sex change surgeries for minors.

Brown lost in 2024 but is a candidate again this year, and the Senate Leadership Fund political action committee has reprised its attack. Brown is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat in 2025 when it was vacated by Vice President JD Vance. 

In a Sept. 16 ad — featuring images of kids, a surgical scalpel, a bearded man in a dress and several progressive Democratic politicians — the voice-over says, in part:

“Abused and exploited by an extremist agenda. Forcing childhood sex change surgery. But Sherrod Brown stands with these extremists. Brown supports sex change surgery for kids — permanent surgical decisions with devastating consequences. The extremists demand it. Sherrod Brown complies, and Ohio’s children pay the price.”

The same group is also airing other ads that attack Brown over the same issue. One says, “Sherrod Brown supports sex change surgery for minors and admitted he would never oppose it.”

Gender transition surgery for minors is exceedingly rare, and no medical guidelines support providing it for young children. Any medical care for transgender minors — which may include puberty blockers and hormone therapy — requires parental consent.

We found no evidence that Brown has ever said he supports forcing gender-transition surgery for children.

The Ohio ads are some of several focusing on transgender issues that have aired in competitive Senate races nationally.

What evidence does the ad cite?

Brown has long supported policies advocated by LGBTQ+ rights activists. In 2017, he introduced the Senate’s first Pride Month Resolution. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group, has endorsed him in both of his recent campaigns. In 2020, he issued a statement supporting the “humanity of transgender people” in the face of what he called discriminatory housing policy.

But we found no evidence Brown has said he favors forcing minors to undergo gender-related surgery.

When contacted by PolitiFact about the 2026 ad, Senate Leadership Fund spokesperson Chris Gustafson cited Brown’s July 19, 2023, interview with WSYX-TV in Columbus, Ohio. That was also the sole source cited in the group’s 2024 ad, and in its other 2026 Ohio ads.

The segment discussed legislation backed by then-Sen. JD Vance, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which Brown opposed. The measure would have made it a felony for doctors to provide surgery or prescribe puberty blockers to anyone younger than 18. 

In the interview, Brown said, “A child’s health care decisions are between them, their parents, their families, their doctors — not politicians. I will never agree with anybody that wants to bring politics into the family situation with health care, period.’”

Gustafson said this means Brown “does not support any limitations on transgender or gender-affirming procedures on children.”

The wording of the 2026 ad goes further than the 2024 ad, which also mentioned “puberty blockers.” 

Nothing in Brown’s remarks to WSYX shows that he would force surgery on anyone.

Brown has responded with an ad of his own in which supporters question the Republican focus on transgender policy versus the cost of living. The ad notes that in Ohio, the issue is moot because a 2024 state law bans physicians from performing gender-reassignment surgery on a minor. 

Our ruling

A Senate Leadership Fund ad said Brown supports “forcing childhood sex change surgery.”

The ad cites a 2023 television interview when Brown said children’s healthcare decisions are “between them, their parents, their families, their doctors — not politicians.”

Brown did not say in the interview that he supports “forcing” any healthcare on children. We found no evidence he has ever made such a statement. 

We rate the statement False.

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In New Hampshire, raising taxes has been a political taboo for generations. In the state’s competitive U.S. Senate race, Republican John E. Sununu is painting his Democratic opponent Rep. Chris Pappas as an aggressive tax raiser.

“Chris Pappas voted to raise taxes 68 times,” Sununu, a former U.S. senator, said in his primary night victory speech Sept. 8. “Every tax vote he’s made was to raise taxes.”

When we asked Sununu’s campaign for a list of the 68 tax votes he was referring to, they sent us this document. When we went through it, we found that the 68-vote figure is padded by procedural votes. It also portrays votes misleadingly and includes votes in which Pappas was joined by an overwhelming majority of Republicans.

“Many of these claims go well beyond any reasonable view on what it means to vote to raise taxes,” said Joseph Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center.

Here are some of the reasons why the 68-vote figure is wildly inflated.

Procedural votes account for most of those on the list

The Sununu campaign’s list included both final votes on passage and a variety of procedural votes. These procedural votes pushed the bill through the legislative process but did not, in a literal sense, “raise taxes.” 

The list cites 16 distinct congressional bills but counts an average of more than three procedural votes per bill in its overall tally.

Many of the bills cited are only partly about taxes

Among other votes Sununu’s campaign cited were votes on the HEROES Act, a $3 trillion COVID-19 relief measure proposed in 2020 that Pappas voted for but didn’t become law. It would have included stimulus checks and other pandemic-related spending increases. To the extent that it would have changed tax law, some taxpayers would have benefited from expansions of tax credits and deductions, while others would not have. 

Sununu’s campaign also included the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2022, known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This law allocated $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure spending; Pappas voted for it. The Sununu campaign’s list cites a provision repealing a tax credit for businesses designed to help employers offset the costs of keeping employees during the pandemic. (The law covered a lot more than that.)

Another law on the list that Pappas voted for, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, can be fairly described as a tax-focused measure. It increased taxes on corporations, especially the biggest corporations, but it also enacted tax breaks for clean energy usage in homes and automobiles. The list cited a provision in the law to increase the number of IRS employees, but this increase — which was aimed at modernizing the IRS and increasing audits — would not have been a tax hike per se.

“These bills were not meant as revenue-raising bills,” said Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “Some of them did have tax and revenue provisions in them, but you have to use an expansive definition of ‘tax increase.’”

The Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 is among the bills on the Sununu campaign’s list that Pappas voted against. This bill was intended as a vehicle to raise the debt limit, but it included a range of other Republican policy priorities, repealing many of the clean-energy tax credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed under former President Joe Biden.

In other words, the Sununu campaign is casting Pappas’ vote to lower certain taxes under this act as a vote to “raise taxes” — then labeling his vote against a bill that would repeal them as a separate vote to “raise taxes.”

In another instance, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 — which Pappas and a large majority of Democrats and Republicans voted for — “would have cut taxes for many Americans and businesses and was paid for by cutting off employee retention credits, a program ripe with questionable and fraudulent claims,” Rosenberg said. With the bill both cutting taxes and ending a tax break, any vote Pappas could have made — for or against — could have been framed as a vote to raise taxes.

Garrett Watson, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, said the inclusion of certain votes that are “narrow and not really about taxes” make the strongest case that the list portrays a misleading picture of Pappas’ record on taxes. This and other factors “suggest that this claim is overstated, at least,” Watson said.

The list cherry-picks some of Pappas’ votes

The list also dings Pappas for voting for a bill that ended employee retention tax credits, but it doesn’t give him credit for voting for the bill that created those tax credits in the first place, the CARES Act of 2022.

Some of the measures on the list were passed in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion

The list criticizes Pappas for certain votes without noting that virtually every House Republican also supported the measures. 

One action Pappas voted for, the Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022, passed the House by a 414-5 margin. Another, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024, passed by a 357-70 margin. And the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 passed by a 417-3 margin. Each of these bills attracted overwhelming Republican support.

Some of the measures cited didn’t raise taxes 

Pappas voted against a measure “expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.” The measure passed with mostly Republican support, but such measures are rhetorical and have no practical effect.

We asked the Sununu campaign for comment on PolitiFact’s findings, but we did not hear back.

Here are the strongest cases of Pappas voting to raise taxes

Pappas voted against President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending law — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — in 2025.

This was a bill that included far-reaching provisions on taxation that would affect many American taxpayers, including those who work overtime, collect tips or are 65 and older. The bill also extended tax cuts from Trump’s first term. 

The Sununu campaign counts six total votes, including procedural votes, against the bill; one of those is Pappas’ vote against final passage. It also counts five votes involving a required precursor measure for the bill — a congressional budget resolution.

Pappas’ campaign told PolitiFact that his vote was premised on the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and its failure to extend health insurance subsidies, which could affect millions of Americans nationally. He also cited the bill’s rollbacks in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.

A few other bills on the list were primarily about taxation, but their reach was more limited. For instance, two measures involve the state and local tax deduction. This affects high-earning households, generally in Democratic states with relatively high levels of taxation.

The list also includes votes Pappas cast in the New Hampshire legislature more than two decades ago in favor of a state estate tax and against a property tax cut. 

Pappas also voted to cut taxes

Sununu said, “Every tax vote he’s made was to raise taxes.” But that’s not accurate.

In addition to the examples of votes for tax cuts cited above, Pappas’ campaign pointed to a vote to repeal a tax on certain employer-sponsored health plans; an amendment to expand tax credits for small businesses that establish retirements plans; and his vote for the American Rescue Plan Act, which enacted expanded child tax credits.

Pappas also introduced legislation to ban states from taxing a nonresident’s income earned when they were not physically present in that state; sponsored legislation to provide a refundable tax credit for people struggling with high energy costs; and co-sponsored a bill to provide a 10% tax credit for first-time homebuyers. 

Our ruling

Sununu said, “Chris Pappas voted to raise taxes 68 times. Every tax vote he’s made was to raise taxes.”

Pappas did vote against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and he voted for higher taxes or against lower taxes on three occasions as a state legislator more than two decades ago.

But the Sununu campaign’s list of congressional votes is inflated by counting procedural votes, and it includes a wide range of bills that aren’t clearly votes to raise taxes, including several measures that were largely about other issues. Several bills Sununu criticized Pappas for supporting also received overwhelming Republican support.

Pappas also voted on numerous other occasions to lower taxes, and he sponsored bills to cut taxes.

We rate the statement False.

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In Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Mike Rogers criticized Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s response to a March synagogue attack in their state. 

In a Sept. 24 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Rogers said El-Sayed failed to condemn the man who drove his truck into a synagogue where children were attending preschool. The assailant died from what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound; no one else was killed.  

“(El-Sayed) could not condemn the terrorist who tried to attack and kill 140 Jewish children right here in Michigan,” said Rogers, a former Republican congressman, referring to Ayman Mohamad Ghazali’s attack on a synagogue in the Detroit area’s West Bloomfield Township. “‘Hurt people hurt people’ is all he could come up with.” 

The day of the attack, before many details were known about the attacker and his motives, El-Sayed issued an initial statement denouncing antisemitism and saying he was “standing in solidarity with all of us who value our right to pray how we choose to pray against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.”

In a separate video statement the next day, after the attacker had been identified, El-Sayed twice condemned the attack and said “there is no justification for what (Ghazali) did.” But he also said “hurt people hurt people,” comments that drew criticism from people who said El-Sayed was seeking to justify the attack by also pointing to how Ghazali’s family was affected by violence in the Middle East prior to Ghazali targeting the synagogue.

In August, El-Sayed apologized and said he should have ended his comments at condemnation.

When we asked Rogers’ campaign for information to support the statement, his campaign spokesperson called El-Sayed’s apology inauthentic. 

“The only reason he issued a fake apology five months later is because the polling told him to,” Rogers spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said, calling it “an insult” to Michigan’s Jewish  community.

Ghazali was armed with a rifle March 12 when police say he drove a truck filled with fireworks and gasoline into the Temple Israel synagogue. About 140 people, mostly children, were in the building. Ghazali and security guards shot at each other before police said he shot himself. The FBI described it as a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism deliberately targeting Michigan’s largest Jewish synagogue.

El-Sayed’s statement at the time of the attack

In his first statement on March 12 about the incident, El-Sayed said, “To my Jewish sisters and brothers, you have a right to worship in peace. You have a right to send your kids to the synagogue in the morning and know they’ll come home safely at night. And you have a right to know that your religious identity and faith practice are respected.”

In a longer video statement released the next day, he noted that the investigation found Ghazali was Arab-American and Muslim. 

“I condemn what he did,” El-Sayed said. “There is never a justification for attacking innocent people or houses of worship. Never.”

He called it a “heinous attack” for which there was no justification and said “antisemitism has no place in our communities.” He described the attack as part of a cycle of violence, saying Ghazali’s family members, including children, had been killed in an air strike in Lebanon the week before the Michigan attack.

“As an epidemiologist, I’ve spent my career studying the worst things that happen to people to understand how to stop them from happening, and I’ll never forget one of the simplest lessons I learned while on my psychiatry rotation in medical school: hurt people hurt people,” El-Sayed said in the video. 

“Violence is a cycle,” he continued. After Ghazali’s family members were killed in Lebanon, El-Sayed said, Ghazali acted “in an evil act of displaced rage.” 

“He tried to take it out on innocent children, who had nothing to do with the loss of the innocent children he lost, except that they share a faith,” El-Sayed said before referring to Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. “We can and must condemn the attack on Temple Israel, and we can and must condemn the violence 6,000 miles away.”

Reflecting on the attack at Temple Israel. pic.twitter.com/u9p4BwdzoA

— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) March 13, 2026

El-Sayed’s campaign pointed us to multiple instances after the March incident in which he called the attack “horrific” and said he condemned it. In those interviews, he made the same comments about Israel’s conduct, a cycle of violence and the attacker’s anger being directed at innocent people. 

El-Sayed apologized in August for March comments

El-Sayed’s “hurt people hurt people” comments drew criticism from Temple Israel congregants and Jewish Democrats, who said he was justifying or excusing the synagogue attack. 

Addressing Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus in August, El-Sayed apologized in response to a question about the statement. He said his comments were meant to “offer broader context,” The New York Times reported. “If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry,” El-Sayed said. 

“I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop,” he said, according to the Times. 

Jewish voters’ reactions to the apology have been split, according to reporting from NPR and local outlets. Other issues have caused division between El-Sayed’s candidacy and the Jewish community; El-Sayed has called Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide, called to end U.S. military aid to Israel and declined to affirm Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state.  

Our ruling 

Rogers said El-Sayed “could not condemn the terrorist who tried to attack and kill” children in a Michigan synagogue in March. 

El-Sayed said on the day of the attack “there is no room for antisemitism in America” and he stood with Jewish people. 

The next day, he released a video statement in which he said of the attacker, “I condemn what he did.” He also said “hurt people hurt people,” drawing criticism for appearing to justify or excuse the attack by connecting it to the attacker’s family members killed in the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah war. 

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

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Across advertisements and interviews, U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, has repeatedly criticized Iowa Rep. Josh Turek, D-Council Bluffs, for missing a substantial number of Iowa House votes during the 2026 legislative session. 

“Josh Turek skipped 58% of the votes at the Statehouse this year,” Hinson said in one ad, posted Sept. 2 on Facebook. 

Hinson, who represents Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, is running against Turek for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, currently held by retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. 

It’s accurate that Turek missed a substantial number of votes in the Iowa House this session. Some experts said they don’t consider the absences to be unusual for a candidate who is on the campaign trail, but they also noted that Turek’s number of absences still far outpaces others.  

Turek’s missed votes

Politifact Iowa did the math. According to the Iowa House Journals, of the 445 votes held on the House floor during the Jan. 12 to April 2 legislative session, Turek missed 261 — which is roughly 58%. The numbers align with findings from KCRG and KTIV. 

In a statement to PolitiFact Iowa, the Hinson campaign said, “The bottom line is that Josh Turek skips votes to support farmers, veterans, and rural communities but votes like a liberal when he does show up.” 

Kedron Bardwell, Simpson College professor of political science, told PolitiFact Iowa its analysis is accurate, based on the tracking of legislative votes.  

The number, though, only applies to House floor votes. It does not take committee or subcommittee votes into consideration. 

Turek had the second-most absences of any member in the Iowa House during the 2026 session. Only Rep. Jerome Amos Jr., D-Waterloo, missed more votes, according to KTIV. 

Bardwell said it is not uncommon for representatives to be absent on occasion, but the large volume of missed votes is what stands out in Turek’s case.

“Even going back a few years, there’s very few candidates that I can find that ran for higher office and missed as many [votes] as he did,” he said. 

Bardwell said his research of legislative votes this year shows the percentage of missed votes for representatives rarely exceeded 20 to 30% — a stark contrast to Turek’s figure, which is nearly double that. 

Jack Hunt, editor and publisher of the Iowa Legislative News Service who has 30 years of experience covering the Statehouse, said a large number of absences are not unexpected in this case. 

“Any legislator running for another office tends to miss days out at the Capitol,” Hunt said. 

Hunt said in Iowa, a bill doesn’t reach the floor unless the majority party expects it to pass, and he couldn’t recall a single instance this session when a bill was decided by a single vote. 

Because of this, Hunt said, in his opinion, floor votes are “simply performance,” and Turek’s absence is not as significant as his opponent says. 

“When I see the ads, ‘Oh, [Turek] missed 58% of the votes,’ my honest thought is ‘So what?’ Hunt said. “It’s probably absolutely true, and it is utterly meaningless.”

When contacted by PolitiFact Iowa , the Turek campaign said, “Josh Turek is one of Iowa’s most effective and bipartisan legislators, voting with Republicans more than 700 times to lower costs, cut taxes, and keep Iowans safe.”

Turek’s longer voting track record

The 58% figure stands out among Turek’s career voting record. As Iowa Capital Dispatch reported, Turek has had an 81% attendance record since taking office in January 2023, according to Legiscan data. 

In 2025, the Iowa House recorded 379 House floor votes. Turek missed 37, or 9.8%. 

In 2024 and 2023, Turek missed 12.2% and 5.4%  of votes, respectively. 

Our ruling

Hinson said Turek “skipped 58% of the votes at the Statehouse this year.” 

Of the 445 votes held on the House floor during the Jan. 12 to April 2 legislative session, Turek missed 261, or roughly 58%.

Some experts said absences aren’t unusual for someone campaigning, but they also noted that Turek’s number of absences still far outpaces others. 

We rate the statement True. 

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In the high-stakes Michigan race for U.S. Senate, Republican Mike Rogers is accusing his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, of supporting policies that could compromise people’s safety while simultaneously portraying himself as “tough on crime.”

In a Sept. 23 X post, Rogers said El-Sayed “supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.” His post included an ad, which is running on TV and digital platforms in the Detroit market, in which a woman says she doesn’t trust El-Sayed with her four children’s safety. 

“Is this guy for real?” the woman says after a clip of El-Sayed talking about releasing people from jails and prisons.

Abdul El-Sayed supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.

Michigan families can’t afford his pro-crime policies. pic.twitter.com/WVZV3UIEu0

— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) September 23, 2026

El-Sayed said he supported defunding the police in the past, and spoke about reducing incarceration rates and prison sentences broadly. Rogers’ X post is written in current tense as if El-Sayed “supports” these positions now, while the ad uses past tense to describe El-Sayed’s statements. During his Senate campaign, El-Sayed has not supported defunding the police and said he wants to increase funds for certain aspects of policing. He has not called for emptying prisons.   

Rogers’ campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said El-Sayed’s recent positions backtrack on his past statements. “Now, his insulting disapproval of law enforcement is coming back to haunt him, so he’s lying to Michiganders,” she said.

As a Senate candidate, El-Sayed isn’t calling to defund police

In 2020, El-Sayed advocated several times for defunding the police, as the idea gained popularity among the Democratic Party’s left flank after a May 2020 video showed George Floyd’s murder while in Minneapolis police custody. Proponents of defunding the police argued that some law enforcement agencies were abusing their power and not keeping people safe. Some supporters called for moving some funds from police to social services, while others advocated for completely eliminating modern policing systems. 

“I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” El-Sayed said in a Detroit Public Radio interview in June 2020. He said he supported “investing less in police.” 

CNN reported that El-Sayed in 2020 posted about a dozen times on social media about defunding the police. The posts have since been deleted.

Rogers’ campaign pointed us to a 2024 episode of El-Sayed’s podcast during which he said America should “rethink policing” and suggested the “redeployment of civic resources away from punishment and toward public welfare.” 

In that episode, he also said: “Perhaps rather than invest so much money in buying military grade weapons to deploy into our streets, we might instead figure out how to deploy social workers to the scene of domestic disturbances.”

More recently, El-Sayed said he has a more “nuanced” position on police funding.

In a Sept. 19 campaign video, El-Sayed said, “We’ve got to fund all of the things we need. For some problems, that is going to be a person with a gun.”

“We’ve got to fund recruitment, retention, and retirement, so that we can actually get people from in the community,” he said. 

He has also said armed officers don’t need to respond to all mental health crises and the federal government should fund programs for responding to mental health-related emergencies and community programs to reduce violence.

“No, Abdul El-Sayed does not support defunding the police,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said in an email to PolitiFact. “As he’s consistently said, Abdul believes we absolutely need to fund law enforcement to identify, prosecute, and protect communities from violent crime.”

Rogers’ campaign also pointed us to El-Sayed’s calls during this campaign to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying it’s an attempt to eliminate a law enforcement agency. El-Sayed has called for abolishing ICE but said he supports continuing immigration and border enforcement. He said ICE is “about normalizing paramilitary force on our streets.” 

El-Sayed has not called for emptying prisons

Rogers’ ad includes a clip from a webinar El-Sayed spoke at in August 2020, called “I Don’t Want to Die in Prison,” which was organized by the University of Michigan’s Carceral State Project. During the event, El-Sayed and people who had been incarcerated discussed prison living conditions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The speakers discussed a report about COVID-19 in prison that called for reducing prison populations.

El-Sayed said he supported reducing prison populations because COVID-19 spread easily in crowded jails and prisons. He also backed policies to reduce jail and prison populations even after the pandemic. 

“Any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in,” he said. “Particularly right now, but this doesn’t end when the pandemic’s over, right? We shouldn’t have to have a global pandemic to force us to find our humanity. This should just be what we do because it’s the right thing to do.” 

During the webinar, an event organizer said the report said “the only humane response to the crisis of incarceration itself is abolition.” But El-Sayed didn’t say he wanted to “empty” or abolish prisons.

In recent campaign events, El-Sayed has said he opposes private prisons because he doesn’t think people should profit from imprisoning people. He supports investing in mental health services and job training for people leaving prison, to prevent reoffending.

At a Sept. 19 town hall, a corrections officer asked El-Sayed whether he wanted to release prisoners and decrease law enforcement in Michigan. El-Sayed said he wanted more money to help keep officers and prisoners safe.

“So the idea of somehow pulling back on folks like you is ridiculous,” he told the officer. “You need more people. That’s how you keep things safe.”

Our ruling

Rogers said El-Sayed “supports defunding the police and emptying prisons.” 

In 2020, El-Sayed called to defund police amid protests about police officers abusing their power. As he campaigns for the Senate, El-Sayed has spoken about increasing funds for police recruitment and retention, and said he supports more funding for mental health responses and violence intervention programs.

During the pandemic, he said prisons should release people to help lower the number of people becoming sick with COVID-19, and he said that should be extended after the pandemic. He did not say he wanted to empty prisons.

The statement contains an element of truth: El-Sayed previously supported diverting funding from police and spoke about releasing some prisoners amid the pandemic. But Rogers’ statement ignores that El-Sayed during his campaign has called for funding for police and he isn’t saying prisons should be emptied.

We rate the statement Mostly False. 

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An ad accuses Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, of opposing the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender at the center of multiple midterm attacks.

In the Sept. 24 ad, a woman identified only as “Debbie” says, “As a retired junior high teacher, I’m horrified. Susan Collins voted to cover up the Epstein files. She knew 14-year-old girls were raped.” The ad then shows a photo of Collins next to a photo of President Donald Trump and Epstein.

The ad continues: “Turns out that Jeffrey Epstein’s business partner funneled $3 million” to Collins’ super PAC.

The ad is from WinSenate, a super political action committee linked to Democrat-affiliated Senate Majority PAC. A super PAC is a political action committee that can spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign for federal candidates. On Nov. 3, Collins will face Democratic candidate Troy Jackson, a former Maine state senator.

The ad misleads about both Collins’ position on releasing the Epstein files and the PAC donor.

Ad cherry-picks Collins’ voting record

The ad cites a Sept. 10, 2025, vote on an amendment to a defense authorization bill, directing the attorney general to release Epstein investigative files. Collins joined most of her Republican colleagues voting in favor of a motion to table the amendment, essentially blocking it, which passed 51-49. 

The amendment “does not belong on the Department of Defense policy bill,” Collins said at the time.

However, she said she previously supported a similar provision in a funding bill.

A few months earlier, during a July 10, 2025, Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that Collins chaired, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., proposed an amendment to a funding bill, directing the attorney general to “retain, preserve and compile” all Epstein files and report the findings to lawmakers within 60 days. The committee unanimously voted in favor.

The funding bill stalled in the Senate.

But pressure on Congress and Trump to release the files grew. After undermining efforts to release them, Trump that fall directed lawmakers to pass such a measure.

On Nov. 18, 2025, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House 427-1 and then passed the Senate via unanimous consent. 

“This is an important step for the survivors of these heinous crimes,” Collins said after the vote.

Super PAC donor was a member of same club as Epstein

The ad doesn’t name the PAC donor, but the donation dates cited in the ad match donations by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. He donated a combined $3 million to Pine Tree Results PAC, a pro-Collins group, in 2025 and 2026.

Schwarzman’s tie to Epstein is weak; we found no evidence they were business partners. Both men were early members of the Core Club in New York City. A club spokesperson told The Real Deal that Epstein paid $100,000 as a founding member alongside 150 other investors.

We asked Lauren French, a spokesperson for WinSenate, for information showing that Schwarzman and Epstein were business partners. 

“Being founders of the same exclusive club inherently makes individuals partners in business,” French said.

When the club launched in 2005, The New York Times described it as a “place for a geographically and socially diverse set of wealthy people to gather and meet others of the same disparate tribe.” Its membership list included high-profile people in politics, real estate, the arts and sports.

The Wall Street Journal, The Real Deal and the Daily Beast reported that Schwarzman was also a member in their stories about the club, but none said he and Epstein were business partners.

Blackstone spokesperson Thomas Clements told PolitiFact in an email, “It would be categorically false and reckless to claim or imply that Steve had any relationship with this despicable individual.” 

Schwarzman’s name appears in the Epstein files, but we found no evidence there or elsewhere that they were business partners. For example, the file showed an invitation to Epstein to a 2015 cocktail party at Schwarzman’s home to celebrate the release of a movie, “The Imitation Game,” which Schwarzman’s son produced. Clements said a public relations firm working with the film distributors invited Epstein, and he did not attend.

RELATED: The Epstein midterms: Why the deceased felon appears in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, MA Senate attacks

Our ruling

A WinSenate ad said, “Susan Collins voted to cover up the Epstein files” and Epstein’s “business partner funneled $3 million” to a Collins super PAC.

Collins voted against a September 2025 amendment to release the Epstein files, saying it didn’t belong in the defense spending bill to which it was attached. A few months earlier, the Senate appropriations committee which she chairs unanimously voted to direct the Justice Department to preserve Epstein files and provide a report to lawmakers.

In November 2025, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to release the Epstein files and Collins praised that action.

Schwarzman, who donated to a pro-Collins PAC in 2025 and 2026, was one of the early members of an exclusive New York City club along with Epstein. But we found no evidence the two were business partners. 

We rate this statement False.

RELATED: All of our fact-checks related to Jeffrey Epstein

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In a gubernatorial campaign ad posted on his public social media accounts, Democrat Rob Sand said Iowa’s public schools have slipped in national rankings. 

“I want us to get back to having the best public schools in the country, not in the bottom half,” he said.

Sand, the state auditor, has criticized Iowa’s Education Savings Account program, which allows families to use a student’s state funding to pay for private school education. Sand has called for annual audits of the program, income eligibility limits, and limiting tuition increases for private schools. 

Sand’s campaign sent PolitiFact a statement from Sand about schools’ quality when he was growing up, but did not point to specific data placing Iowa at number one.

“When I was growing up in Decorah, Iowa had some of the best schools in the nation,” Sand said in an email statement to PolitiFact. “It’s our state’s crown jewel, so much so that we put ‘Foundation in Education’ on our state quarter… I want every Iowa kid to have access to the best education, just like I did.” He said public schools have been underfunded to favor private school vouchers.

Iowa schools spend $17,804 per pupil from federal, state and local sources, placing them 34th in the nation in K-12 education funding and 35th in spending, according to the Education Data Initiative, an organization that researches education statistics.

There’s no clear data that ranked Iowa’s schools as the best overall, but Iowa students did achieve top ranks in some subjects in the 1990s, when Sand attended. Public education rankings are issued annually by myriad organizations, using different criteria to determine where each state lies. In 2017, the first year U.S. News and World Report ranked K-12 public education, Iowa placed sixth in the nation, but that rank has fallen in the years since. Iowa ranked 26th nationally for K-12 in 2026.

Iowa tied for the top state in the nation in eighth-grade math in 1992 and 1996, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s “The Nation’s Report Card” data. Iowa’s fourth-grade math was second in the nation in 1992. In different years in the ‘90s, Iowa’s fourth-grade reading and math scores were 11 points above the national average. 

However, Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a public education advocacy organization, said her organization gave Iowa a “D” in its 2026 report card, receiving 47 out of 100 possible points. The metrics are based on privatization — or voucher programs — home-schooling oversight, school funding, and conditions for teaching and learning. She said this places Iowa 19th from the bottom for public school rankings. 

“What we’re ranking is how much support does the governor’s office, does the state house give to public education?” she said. “So we’re looking at laws, policies, and practices.”

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2026 report, which covers 2024, Iowa’s education has worsened, with fewer preschoolers enrolled in school, lower reading proficiency in fourth and eighth grades and a lower high school graduation rate. The organization, a private philanthropy providing education resources to underserved children, ranked Iowa 27th overall in education. 

In 2024, 70% of fourth graders were not proficient in reading, compared to 66% in 2019. Additionally, eighth grade math proficiency has worsened, with 67% of students not proficient in 2019 to 73% not proficient in 2024. 

It’s not just Iowa that’s gotten lower marks, 47 states also fared worse in 2024 compared with 2019, the foundation’s report said. At the national level, three of the four education indicators worsened in the five-year period — math proficiency, reading proficiency and preschool attendance.

Margaret Buckton, a long-time Iowa lobbyist for the Rural School Advocates of Iowa and Urban Education Network of Iowa — nonprofit K-12 advocacy organizations — backed Sand’s statement. She said Iowa’s public school ranking has significantly dropped in the last couple of decades. 

“Iowa was late to the game in having state standards,” she said. “We changed our state assessment and went through a couple of years of adapting to changes. We haven’t had the support other states have made, and the change in our population would indicate we’ve got to provide additional resources, programming, and staff for those students that are starting further behind to begin with.”

Buckton said Iowa was revered for its education in the 1990s, particularly in standardized testing. In fourth grade reading and eighth grade math in 2024, Iowa students scored close to the national average.

Our ruling

Sand said Iowa once had “the best public schools in the country,” but is now “in the bottom half.”

Several institutions rank public education by state, and by some metrics, Iowa placed highly in the past, but not number one. The state’s rankings have dropped over the last 30 years; one group ranks Iowa’s K-12 schools 26th nationwide.

We rate Sand’s statement Half True.

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Republicans are accusing Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper of mismanaging the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles while he was governor. 

Cooper is running for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, who isn’t seeking reelection. Cooper faces Republican Michael Whatley in a race that could help determine party control of the U.S. Senate. Green Party candidate Michael Dublin and Libertarian Shannon Bray are also running.

The Republican National Committee, which Whatley chaired prior to his Senate run, targeted Cooper in a Sept. 2 social media post.

“54% of North Carolina commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals,” the RNC Research’s account posted, adding: “More Americans are put in harm’s way every day because of Democrat Governor Roy Cooper.”

Is it true that more than half of North Carolina’s commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals?

No. That’s a misleading figure based on an incomplete data sample. Only a fraction of 1% of the state’s CDLs were incorrectly issued to noncitizens, according to records from the North Carolina DMV, and none of the drivers who received them were in the country illegally.

Where the RNC got its number

Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation — reviewed commercial drivers licenses, or CDLs, issued in 25 states and discovered errors in North Carolina’s database. 

The administration looked at a sample of CDLs issued to 50 noncitizens. Of those 50 CDLs, the administration found that 27 of the records — or 54% of the sample — failed to comply with federal law for issuing CDLs.

For instance, in 19 of the cases, the DMV issued CDLs that were valid longer than the license-holder was allowed to reside in the U.S. In eight of the cases, the federal agency found the state DMV issued licenses without verifying that the driver was legally allowed in the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Transportation outlined its findings in a Jan. 8 letter to North Carolina’s DMV, calling on state leaders to take corrective action or risk losing federal funding. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that he would withhold $50 million from North Carolina if the state didn’t fix the problems identified in the letter.

“North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful — it’s dangerous,” Duffy said in a statement calling on the state’s DMV administrators to “clean up their system.” 

What full records show

The North Carolina DMV responded by reviewing all of its licenses issued to noncitizens, said Marty Homan, a spokesperson for the North Carolina DMV. Among its 325,114 active CDLs, the state found that 8,540 — or about 2.6% — had been issued to noncitizens, Homan said.

Among the noncitizens’ licenses, 1,149 — or about 0.35% of all CDLs — had administrative errors, but none were issued to immigrants in the country illegally. The primary issue with more than 900 of the 1,149 licenses with issues: a discrepancy between the license’s expiration date and the driver’s U.S. work authorization expiration date, Homan said. 

If the DMV’s review found that a CDL wasn’t issued correctly, the agency downgraded the driver’s license. The DMV also mailed the driver a letter to say that his license would be canceled entirely if he didn’t visit a DMV office to rectify the issue within 20 days, Homan said. 

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on July 21 approved the DMV’s plan for correcting the issues. As a result, federal funds for North Carolina’s transportation projects are no longer in jeopardy, Homan said. 

In a July 21 letter to the DMV, the federal agency said it  “acknowledges the actions the State has taken to address previously issued non-compliant licenses” and “appreciates North Carolina’s continued efforts to address the deficiencies identified.”

After PolitiFact shared the state DMV’s statements with the RNC, the organization credited the Trump administration for the changes, saying in an email that “Roy Cooper’s Democrat buddies caved to Republicans’ pressure and cleaned up their act.”

Our ruling

The RNC said that “54% of North Carolina commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals.”

That’s wrong. A thorough review of North Carolina’s 325,000-plus CDLs found that 1,149 — or 0.35% — were issued incorrectly to noncitizens, state officials said, and none of the drivers were in the country illegally. The RNC drew its figure from a sampling of commercial driver’s licenses issued in North Carolina, but it misconstrued the number’s meaning. 

We rate the RNC’s claim False.

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CORRECTION, Sept. 25, 2026: We updated the fact-check to include additional information about SB 14 and James Talarico’s 2023 comments about it. The rating remains unchanged.

Republicans focusing on transgender issues in competitive midterm races leveled accusations against Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico.

“Talarico supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children,” said the ad from Texas PAC, connected to the Senate Leadership Fund. Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.

The ad ended with an echo to the last federal election cycle.

“Radical Liberal James Talarico, for they/them, not you,” the ad said, referencing President Donald Trump’s 2024 ad that used the phrase “Kamala Harris is for they-them, not you.” 

Similar messaging has been used in midterm election ads across the country, an effort to tap into a strategy that was successful for Trump in 2024 — although experts told PolitiFact it’s unclear whether the attacks will benefit Republicans this year. 

The Senate Leadership Fund did not respond to a request for comment. 

Gender transition surgery for minors is exceedingly rare, and no medical guidelines support providing it for young children. Any medical care for transgender minors — which may include puberty blockers and hormone therapy — requires parental consent.

The attack centers on a 2023 vote by Talarico, who is a state representative, against SB 14, which banned gender-affirming medical interventions for children. The ad also cited Talarico saying in 2019 that it was “abusive” to deny a child’s gender identity and in March that protecting transgender Texans is something “we have to do every day.”

The claim rests on his vote against a bill that would have prohibited surgeries and other gender-affirming medical interventions for children and the use of public money for such procedures. Talarico said this month the legislation was overly broad and potentially harmful to medical care for people who aren’t transgender. In 2023, the year the bill passed, he called it one of the “three most dangerous LGBTQ attack bills” that year in Texas and said gender-affirming care is “important healthcare” for transgender children.

When contacted for comment, Talarico’s campaign called the ad a “lie.”

“As James has said, he opposes gender reassignment surgery for minors,” said campaign spokesperson JT Ennis. 

Talarico made multiple comments in 2023 about leaving decisions regarding gender-affirming care to doctors and families, including during the Aug. 7, 2023, Pflugerville Pride Legislative Panel, when he said about SB 14, “The reason I oppose that bill is because I trust parents and doctors to make decisions for kids, and not politicians in Austin.” 

Talarico’s 2023 vote

SB 14, which became law, “prohibits medical professionals from providing puberty-inhibiting drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions to children under 18 for the purpose of altering a child’s biological characteristics to align with their perceived gender identity.” It also bars the use of “public money or public assistance to provide those procedures and treatments.” 

Talarico said this month that his aim in 2023 was to narrow the legislation’s scope.

“If you go back and check, I voted for a major amendment to limit the bill to banning surgeries for minors,” Talarico told Fox News earlier this month. 

We checked: Talarico voted for all 18 unsuccessful Democratic amendments. Talarico also requested to add a provision that would have killed the legislation if the Health and Human Services Commission determined there were “high-quality, long-term studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of” therapies, puberty blockers or surgery that helped children overcome gender dysphoria.

Talarico was one of the 56 lawmakers who voted against the bill May 15, 2023. It passed the Texas House with 87 yeas, was approved by the state Senate 31-0 two days later and became law Sept. 1, 2023.

Talarico’s campaign told PolitiFact that part of his rationale was that the bill would negatively affect Texans who aren’t transgender but need hormonal therapies as part of their medical care. That turned out to be true, according to a March 2026 story by The Texas Tribune chronicling one family’s struggle for endocrinology healthcare after the bill passed.

“It’s why I try to use amendments, to narrow the focus of the bill so that it does exactly what we intend it to do,” Talarico told Fox News on Sept. 9. “It’s what I tried to do with that piece of legislation, and unfortunately, the amendment I supported was unsuccessful.”

“As a lawmaker, my job is to try to sift through everything the bill does,” Talarico told Fox News. “And sometimes there’s stuff in it that’s really harmful, and I have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole.”

The year SB 14 became law, Talarico talked about its potential harms to transgender children. He said during the Pflugerville Pride 2023 Legislative Panel that the legislation would deny “life-saving health care from our trans youth in Texas.”

In June, Talarico began moderating his stance about two weeks after he won the primary runoff. When asked on the podcast “Codgell Law Uncensored” if he was “pro sex surgery for minors,” Talarico said: “I oppose gender-reassignment surgeries for minors.” He recently said he’s in favor of a national ban on gender-reassignment surgery for minors. 

Our ruling

An ad from Texas PAC says Talarico “supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children.”

In 2023, Talarico voted against Texas’ SB 14, which prohibited gender-affirming medical interventions for children and the use of public money for such procedures. The ad singles out gender transition surgery, which is rare for minors and not recommended for young children.

Talarico said this month he voted against the bill because it was too broad and would take healthcare away from people who are not transgender. The year the bill passed, he expressed concern about the harm it could cause to transgender children.

Talarico did not vote in support of public funding for surgeries for young children. 

We rate this claim False.

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John E. Sununu hasn’t held public office since the aughts. But New Hampshire politics has a long memory.

“John Sununu led efforts to privatize Social Security,” Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas said of his Republican U.S. Senate competitor in a Sept. 15 press release. He made similar claims in his Sept. 8 primary victory speech, saying Sununu “wrote the plan to privatize Social Security,” and  in an August X post, calling Sununu “a lead architect” of Social Security privatization plans.

Sununu and Pappas are running for the open seat of the retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Analysts consider the contest competitive. 

A look back at Sununu’s record shows that Pappas’ assertion is largely accurate. Although Sununu hasn’t made Social Security privatization a centerpiece of his agenda this year, as a member of Congress two decades ago, he was a leading voice in the effort to change how people can access their Social Security benefits. 

A recap of the Bush-era privatization debate

In the 1990s and early 2000s, lawmakers debated whether to shift some or all of Social Security’s finances into private accounts invested in stocks or other securities. That would have been a departure from the program’s traditional structure of paying beneficiaries from payroll tax revenues held in the federal treasury.

The battle played out over several years during the presidency of George W. Bush, who backed the concept. However, Congress never fully bought into the idea, and no form of Social Security privatization was enacted.

As early as 2000, when Bill Clinton was president, Sununu, then a House member, cosponsored the Personal Lockbox Act of 2000, which would have allowed Americans to direct a portion of their Social Security benefits, plus other assets held for retirement, into personal accounts.

In 2001, Sununu joined dozens of other lawmakers, mostly Republicans, in signing an open letter to the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security that said in part, “Personal retirement accounts will transform Social Security from a government IOU into personal property and real assets that workers can own and pass along to their children.”

In 2004, as a senator, Sununu introduced the Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act. Then-Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., introduced a companion bill in the House. The measure was modeled on a 2003 proposal by well-known conservative figures, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and activists Grover Norquist and Steven Moore.

The proposal would have allowed workers under 55 years old to voluntarily allocate a portion of their payroll taxes to individual accounts invested in stocks and other securities. Neither measure advanced to a vote.

In 2005, Sununu cosponsored the Stop the Raid on Social Security Act, which would have created automatic personal accounts unless the beneficiary opted out. This bill never received a vote, either.

Also in 2005, Sununu, along with most Senate Republicans, voted against a nonbinding resolution that said Congress should reject any Social Security plan that would require deep benefit cuts or a massive debt increase.

The debate over Social Security privatization became a centerpiece of Bush’s agenda in early 2005, but the effort petered out by that summer, as critics called the plan risky for beneficiaries. 

In 2005, the New Hampshire Sunday News, the Sunday edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader, described Sununu as “a key national player in the effort to solve Social Security’s financial problems and enable participants to invest a portion of their Social Security in personal savings accounts.”

A nuance not captured by Pappas’ phrasing is that Sununu’s proposals would not have been mandatory for all Social Security beneficiaries. The plans would have been limited by age, voluntary, or a combination of the two.

Sununu explains his record on Social Security

In an Aug. 31 interview with WMUR-TV, PolitiFact’s New Hampshire partner, Sununu acknowledged his actions from two decades earlier and said the challenges have changed since then, requiring different solutions.

Sununu said his earlier legislation “gave younger workers a choice if they wanted to invest in a retirement plan, like the one members of Congress have. It maintained a guaranteed benefit for all retirees. And it made the system solvent.”

Pressed by WMUR political director Adam Sexton whether he still supported privatizing Social Security, Sununu said, “That was 20 years ago. If we had passed that bill, the system would be solvent today and most retirees would have a greater benefit.” 

A retrospective analysis in 2025 by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that if the plan had been enacted, beneficiaries would have become better off financially.

Our ruling

Pappas said Sununu “led efforts to privatize Social Security.”

As a member of Congress two decades ago, Sununu co-sponsored several bills to enact Social Security privatization, including two introduced before the issue became a Bush administration priority in 2005. However, they would not have privatized Social Security for everyone.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

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