You should be scared....

Polls show increasing concerns about Trump’s mental acuity

Analysis by Aaron Blake

President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential race after his initial opponent, then-President Joe Biden, withdrew over worries about his age and mental sharpness.

But a year-plus into Trump’s four-year term, polls suggest the American people aren’t just increasingly unhappy with his job performance; they’re increasingly concerned about his mental capacity as well.

The unease is not at the levels it was with Biden, who was 81 when he dropped out of the race, but it’s growing as an issue for the 79-year-old Trump.

In fact, multiple recent polls show a majority of Americans questioning it in one way or another. And even many Republicans seem to have concerns.

Perhaps the most striking poll came Tuesday, ahead of Trump’s first State of the Union address of his second term, which beat his own record for the longest speech to Congress.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll showed 61% of Americans agreed that Trump has “become erratic with age.” Even 30% of Republicans agreed with that sentiment.

The survey harks back to some surveys in Trump’s first term, when many Americans grew to question his mental acuity. But while the percentage of registered voters saying he wasn’t “mentally stable” approached 50% in Quinnipiac University polling following the attack on the US Capitol in 2021, it never crested a majority — much less hitting 61%. (“Erratic” is, of course, not the same as “unstable.” But they are along the same lines.)

The Reuters-Ipsos poll also showed a decrease in the percentage of Americans who say Trump is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges.” That number has dropped from 54% in September 2023 to 45% today.

But Trump — who often boasts about acing cognitive tests and who spoke for an hour and 47 minutes on Tuesday night — is still nowhere close to where Biden was; only around one-quarter of Americans said Biden was mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges in July 2024, the month he dropped out of the race.

Other polls echo these findings, including one from CNN last month.

That survey showed the percentage saying Trump has the “stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president” declining from 53% in late 2023 to 46% today.

That 46% is still well clear of where Biden was in 2023 (between 25% and 32%).

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll last week showed majorities said Trump didn’t have the mental sharpness (56%) or physical health (51%) it takes to serve effectively.

The former is up 13 points from May 2023, while the latter is up even more – by 23 points.

Those numbers aren’t where Biden was late in his presidency, when he was in the 60s on both measures. But the percentage who doubts Trump’s mental sharpness (56%) is actually similar to where Biden was at this point in his term. In February 2022, Biden was at 54% on this question.

And, finally, is a Pew Research Center survey conducted last month.

It showed the percentage of Americans who are at least “very confident” that Trump has the mental fitness to do the job dropping from 39% a year ago to 32% today.

The percentage who are at least “very confident” that he has the physical fitness has dropped from 35% to 28%.

And similar to the Reuters-Ipsos poll, the numbers among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents should raise some eyebrows. The percentage of them who are “very confident” in Trump’s mental fitness has dropped from 75% to 66%. On physical fitness, he’s dropped from 65% to 55%.

So in both the Reuters and Pew polls, we’re seeing 3 in 10 people (or more) in Trump’s own base express some concern about this issue.

Again, Biden had worse numbers overall. By April 2024, the percentage of voters saying they were “very confident” was only 21% for mental fitness and 15% for physical fitness. CNN polling showed as much as half of his base said Biden didn’t have the requisite stamina and sharpness.

But why might Trump’s numbers on these measures be worsening?

One explanation is that they’re simply falling alongside his popularity. As people sour on Trump overall, perhaps they’re more likely to view his often-strange public performances in a more negative light.

But we’re also seeing these concerns register even with some Americans who are more inclined to view Trump favorably. It’s certainly possible that his verbal stumbles — things like repeatedly mixing up Iceland and Greenland — are registering. It’s also possible that scrutiny of bruises on Trump’s hands and whether he’s fallen asleep during public events — as well as the White House’s slow disclosures about his medical testing and his more limited public schedule — are leading some people to raise more questions than they otherwise might.

Regardless, what’s clear is that the oldest president ever elected is now having to deal with this issue, just like the previous holder of that title did a few years ago.

Dangerous Talking Points

Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Proves Devoted to MAHA’s Dangerous Talking Points

The wellness influencer deflected on key issues such as vaccines and birth control.

Alex Nguyen

President Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general, wellness influencer Casey Means, parroted various MAHA talking points throughout a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, while deflecting on key issues such as vaccines and birth control. Some of Means’ responses even appeared to contradict previous public health-related statements she’s made in order to fall in line with the administration.

The MAHA talking points included a push for “informed consent” where “patients [or parents] need to have a conversation with their doctor” to ensure “faith in public health.” Then, “I don’t think it’s responsible to make a blanket statement for all Americans” when discussing the safety of vaccines and birth control pills. Instead, Means claimed, that public health officials should “focus on the root causes of why we are sick.”

Her remarks on vaccines and birth control pills were particularly troubling. She largely disregarded decades of overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines do not cause autism, insisting that “we should not leave any stone unturned” to promote further investigation. Means also backed her previous claim that birth control represents a “disrespect for life” and carries “horrifying health risks” for women, telling senators Wednesday that “all medications have risks and benefits” and provided the example of “blood clots and stroke risk in women who have clotting disorders, who are smokers, who have obesity.”

In a telling exchange, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) cited a newsletter from August 2024, in which Means pointed to the World Health Organization’s warning against glyphosate and argued that people should avoid conventionally grown foods that hurt, among several other reasons, “your cellular health.” But when asked about Trump’s executive order last week that sought to ensure “an adequate supply” of glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, Means appeared to deflect. Instead, Means backed her previous claims on removing toxic chemicals from food but refused to note the difference in the Trump administration’s position. 

“I’m just trying to help you to agree with yourself,” Markey said.

“We are in a very complicated moment for agriculture and food,” Means responded. “We cannot overturn the entire agriculture system overnight.” 

As my colleagues Kiera Butler and Anna Merlan wrote last May after Means’ nomination, the wellness influencer was a campaign adviser during now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential bid and a key promoter of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. 

Means has even appeared to alarm some of Kennedy’s allies, who have criticized her as “sinister [functionary] of Big Pharma, Big Food, or something much worse.” At Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats pointed to Means’ history of promoting products while rarely disclosing that she was earning financial compensation from their developers.

In little over a year, Kennedy has proven that, in the Trump administration, what is said during one’s confirmation hearing testimony can’t exactly be relied upon. The secretary hasn’t followed through with many of the promises he made last year, including supporting childhood vaccines and not scaling back vaccine funding. Taken together, there might be little to believe when Means claims that she will protect things like birth control or that “anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of [her] message.”

IC 5332

   

What does the universe look like through infrared goggles? Our eyes can only see visible light, but astronomers want to see more. Today’s APOD shows spiral galaxy IC 5332 as seen by two NASA telescopes: Webb in mid-infrared and Hubble in ultraviolet and visible light. To toggle between the two space-based views just slide your cursor over the image (or follow this link). The Hubble image highlights the spiral arms of the galaxy separated by dark regions, whereas the Webb image reveals a finer, more tangled structure. Interstellar dust scatters and absorbs light from the stars in the galaxy, causing the dark dust lanes in the Hubble image, and then emits heat in infrared light, so dust glows in this Webb image. The Mid-InfraRed Instrument on Webb needs to operate at a chilling temperature of -266ºC (or - 447ºF), otherwise it would detect infrared radiation from the telescope itself. Combining these observations, astronomers connect the “small scale” of gas and stars to the truly large scale of galactic structure and evolution.

Israel strikes Iran first????

White House officials believe ‘the politics are a lot better’ if Israel strikes Iran first

As the administration mulls military action in Iran, officials argue it’d be best ifIsrael makes the first move.

By Dasha Burns and Nahal Toosi

Senior advisers to President Donald Trump would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country, according to two people familiar with ongoing discussions.

These Trump administration officials are privately arguing that an Israeli attack would trigger Iran to retaliate, helping muster support from American voters for a U.S. strike.

The calculus is a political one — that more Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first. Recent polling shows that Americans, and Republicans in particular, support regime change in Iran, but are unwilling to risk any U.S. casualties to achieve it. That means Trump’s team is considering the optics of how an attack is conducted in addition to other justifications — such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“There’s thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” said one of the people familiar with discussions. Both individuals were granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

With hopes dimming in Washington for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Iran, the primary question is becoming when and how the U.S. attacks.

Regardless of the desire for Israel to act first, the likeliest scenario may be a jointly launched U.S.-Israel operation, the two people said.

In response to a request for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “the media may continue to speculate on the president’s thinking all they want, but only President Trump knows what he may or may not do.” The Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House last week pressing the administration to do what it must to derail Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile infrastructure and its support for proxy militias in the region. Meanwhile the president’s go-to negotiating team of special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner are heading to Geneva on Thursday to try to make a deal with the Iranians.

This is a serious effort, but the thinking among those closest to the president is that “we’re going to bomb them,” according to the first person familiar with discussions.

The question of scope, however, also remains. The person familiar with discussions said two key considerations include the risks of depleting U.S. munition stockpiles, which the administration worries could give China an opening to take Taiwan, and the likelihood of American casualties should the U.S. go for the most aggressive option.

“If we’re talking about a regime-change scale attack, Iran is very likely to retaliate with everything they’ve got. We have a lot of assets in the region and every one of those is a potential target,” said the first person familiar with discussions. “And they’re not under the Iron Dome. So there’s a high likelihood of American casualties. And that comes with lots of political risk.”

Even in calmer times, the U.S. has thousands of troops stationed at bases across the Middle East. Now, Trump has sent two aircraft carrier strike groups and dozens of fighter jets, surveillance aircraft and aerial refuelers to target Iran in the biggest accumulation of U.S. firepower in the region since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In recent weeks, Pentagon officials and Hill lawmakers have increasingly warned that prolonged Iran strikes could stress U.S. military stockpiles.

The U.S. intelligence community is “concerned and monitoring” potential asymmetric retaliation by Iran on U.S. facilities and personnel in the Middle East and Europe, per a senior U.S. intelligence official.

Trump has an array of options for how to hit Tehran. They include an initial, limited strike that could act as leverage to force the Islamist regime into a deal the U.S. can accept, according to a U.S. official familiar with the Iran discussions. If no deal is reached, Trump could order a larger set of strikes later, the official said.

The military options would almost certainly target Iranian nuclear sites — or the remnants that exist after U.S. strikes last June, the official said. Also sure to be hit is Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure, which Israel views as a major threat to its safety.

In terms of damage to the regime itself, the official said a “decapitation strike” is an option, meaning targeting Iran’s elderly supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s governing system, however, consists of more than just one man, and it is designed to have people step into higher roles when those are vacated. That said, the U.S. could still aim for facilities and multiple layers of the government, including the top ranks of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Such an operation could last days or weeks, and its results could be unpredictable, especially if the U.S. relies solely on airpower. Last June, during Israel’s war with Iran, which the U.S. joined, Netanyahu urged ordinary Iranians to seize the moment and overthrow their rulers.

Trump claimed that U.S. strikes last June had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But in recent weeks, Trump has suggested he’s not convinced Tehran has given up on having such a program.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), said he received a briefing from administration officials Wednesday morning providing details of Iran’s efforts to restart its nuclear program. He said the evidence is clear, and presents a compelling case that U.S. officials may need to intervene militarily.

“They are trying to get that equipment,” he said.

But Rogers could not say when the classified information may be shared more broadly. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said he was told lawmakers will get additional details on the nuclear threats soon. Democrats on the committee said they have not been briefed or told when they may receive answers to their questions on Iran.

The Iranian government has long insisted that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon, but it also says it has a right to a peaceful nuclear program, including for scientific and medical purposes. The U.S. has long been skeptical of Iran’s promises, especially considering its levels of uranium enrichment.

An Iranian government official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Texas Senate race

Republicans are freaking out over Texas Senate race

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the man to beat ahead of Tuesday’s primary — and could put Senate Republicans’ majority at risk

By Liz Crampton, Jordain Carney, Samuel Benson, Alex Gangitano and Adam Wren

With just days until Texas’ primary, Republicans in Washington are growing more alarmed that their increasingly vicious intraparty contest could cost them a must-win Senate seat.

Sen. John Cornyn appears to be headed to an expensive and nasty 10-week runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with a strong chance that Paxton wins the nomination even after national Republicans spent months airing his dirty laundry all over the Texas airwaves in an effort to boost Cornyn.

“Honestly, if you look at the polling in a general election setting, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the seat [flips], depending on who the Democrats nominate,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, when asked about the possibility that Republicans could lose the race if Cornyn, who he endorsed, is not the party’s nominee.

If Cornyn loses the primary, Senate Republicans worry they could be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars that could otherwise go toward key battleground races in expensive states like North Carolina, Georgia or Michigan, complicating their path toward holding Senate control.

Republicans have already spent nearly $100 million on TV advertising in the primary, which also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), according to data from AdImpact. And Cornyn launched new ads this week, with support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that hammer Paxton in ways that could hurt him in the general election too: highlighting his messy ongoing divorce and accusations of corruption and calling Paxton a “wife-cheater and fraud.”

But those attacks haven’t stopped Paxton, a MAGA hero more aligned with the party base who has been bolstered by positive polling and a wave of grassroots enthusiasm.

“All signs indicate that Paxton probably finishes first,” a Washington GOP operative close to Cornyn who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the race told POLITICO. “We’re just hoping the gap is close enough the narrative isn’t ‘Paxton kicked the crap out of Cornyn.’”

Paxton attended the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night as a guest of Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who called warnings of an expensive general election a “scare tactic.”

“What you’re doing now is you’re telling Texas you can’t elect Ken Paxton, not because you do a better job than me, but it’ll cost too much to win it,” said Nehls. “What a desperate attempt to convince voters to not vote for Ken Paxton because it could cost too much money in November. That’s ridiculous.”

Paxton is predicting a massive victory. Speaking with reporters after a campaign rally in the Houston suburbs last Friday, he suggested he may win the race outright and avoid a runoff.

Both Paxton and Cornyn allies have been running ads attacking Hunt in recent days, a sign either that they see a chance that Hunt could edge Cornyn for a spot in the runoff — or that Paxton could win outright.

If the race does extend until the end of May, Paxton said he doesn’t intend to change his strategy.

“It’ll be grassroots, just like it always has been, and we’ll be out trying to compete,” Paxton said. “Obviously, [Cornyn] has got a lot of money, D.C. money. I don’t have that money. We’ll have our money from Texas.”

A spokesperson for Hunt said the congressman told NRSC chair Sen. Tim Scott last year before he got into the race that Cornyn was going to lose, but “Washington ignored it.” They also warned that Paxton could be vulnerable in the general election.

“If Senate Republicans lose the majority, it will be because the NRSC failed to plan for the future and chose to spend a record-breaking sum meddling in a Republican primary in Texas, of all places, where the GOP nominee is almost always favored to win,” the spokesperson said. “That’s malpractice.”

Republican Party officials and Senate GOP leaders think Cornyn has a far better chance than Paxton of staving off a Democratic challenger in the general election. When asked for comment on the race, the NRSC pointed to a memo it circulated to donors earlier this month that said that “John Cornyn is the only Republican candidate who reliably wins a general election matchup,” and warned “Paxton puts this seat at risk.”

“We have to be prepared to spend there, and that’s a very different scenario if Cornyn’s the nominee,” Thune said. “He is by far, I think, the best candidate on the ballot in a general election, not only for the Senate, but also for down-ballot races in the House that could be impacted by the Senate race too.”

The polls bear that out. The NRSC released polling toplines showing Cornyn leading state Rep. James Talarico by 3 points and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) by 7 points in general-election matchups. Paxton would trail Talarico by 3 points and lead Crockett by just 1 point. Nonpartisan public polls have found similar numbers.

A Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate election in Texas since 1988.

Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), who hasn’t made an endorsement in the race, said she hopes the Republican primary avoids a runoff. “We’ve got to keep Texas red,” she said. “That is not a choice, and so the faster we can get someone in place, the better it is for all Texans.”

During a Fox News appearance Monday, Cornyn said he anticipates he will face Paxton in a runoff and warned that a Paxton victory would give Democrats a boost in November.

“Unfortunately, the attorney general has got so much baggage and corruption in his wake that he will jeopardize our chances of keeping this seat red in November,” Cornyn said. “I believe that I can help President Trump in [the] end of his second term by not only winning this race, but bringing along some of these congressmen who are running in these five new congressional seats. Ken Paxton jeopardizes all of that.”

Paxton has led or been in a statistical tie with Cornyn in nearly every primary poll since launching his bid in April of last year, despite campaigning minimally and spending a small fraction compared with Cornyn’s war chest. It’s a testament to Paxton’s status as an aggressive MAGA figure in Texas, a reputation he has forged while serving as Texas’ top lawyer for a decade. Paxton used the power of his office to stoke the culture wars in court, like suing to overturn the 2020 election and defending the state’s strict abortion ban.

Dave Carney, an adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, predicted that Cornyn and Paxton will face off in a runoff, where he suggested Paxton would have the edge. The most conservative candidate tends to win because they often have the most driven supporters in low-turnout primary runoff elections.

“They have to run real campaigns, both of them, they got to model their voters and turn them out,” said Carney.

To date, Trump has resisted making an endorsement in the primary. “I’m friendly with all of them,” he said earlier this month. “I like all of them, all three.”

Thune and other Senate Republicans for months privately lobbied to get Trump to endorse Cornyn, believing he would be the most formidable candidate in the general election. Thune has been careful not to predict what Trump will do in the future. Some top Trump political aides are working on Cornyn’s campaign — but the president has a longstanding relationship with Paxton. There is lingering skepticism in and outside of the Capitol that Trump would endorse Cornyn if the senator comes in second heading into the runoff.

Trump is scheduled to make an appearance in Corpus Christi on Friday to deliver a speech on the economy. A White House aide, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the president will not endorse at the event. The White House hasn’t announced if any of the GOP Senate candidates will join Trump on the trip.

Top GOP donors, too, worry that the party is burning money — and that Paxton still has the upper hand in spite of the huge spending against him, with some concerned about an outright Paxton win.

“Nobody truly knows what is going to happen based on the polling,” said one GOP donor. “There is a scenario [where] Cornyn doesn’t make it into a runoff. But even if he does, a runoff with Paxton will be very tough because of [the] low number of voters who turn out — most of whom are very conservative and viewed as Paxton voters.”

The person added that there is “frustration from everyone that Trump lets this happen by not endorsing.”

Another GOP donor said there’s “not a lot of cautious optimism” among donors that Cornyn will even make it to a runoff. “It’s going down to the wire,” the donor lamented.

Same shit, another day...

Tensions simmer over Howard Lutnick, Trump’s favorite dealmaker

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has a knack for landing big deals. But some of his critics question whether they’ll live up to their promises.

By Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman

In a White House that prizes spectacle, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has mastered the art of the announcement. But behind the scenes, his habit of jumping into complex projects and claiming the win has created growing resentment among other officials irritated at having to clean up the details once the cameras are off.

Lutnick, a New York businessman and longtime friend of the president, has spent the better part of last year executing the kind of last-minute dealmaking that creates the headlines President Donald Trump loves. Even some of his internal critics concede he brings the energy to get the deal.

Now, though, Lutnick finds himself facing bipartisan calls for his resignation after his name surfaced in files about the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and even frustration from Trump himself about how much Lutnick’s family has been profiting off their association with the president’s brand.

Plus, some Cabinet secretaries and senior officials in the administration are increasingly wary of what they describe as his brash and controlling style – and whether he can deliver on the $18 trillion in pledged investments Trump claims he’s promised, according to 15 people interviewed for this article, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.

“The reality is that only a small fraction of that [promised sum] has any specifics behind it and can really be considered new investment. So the rest of it is just repackaged stuff that they were already going to do, or stuff that’s related to the AI boom and has almost nothing to do with tariffs,” said Scott Lincicome, the vice president of general economics at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

Lutnick’s ability to ink deals has helped keep him in the president’s good graces and while most interviewed for this article don’t believe his job is in jeopardy, a failure to deliver might give his myriad critics the ammo they need to sideline him. It could also crater a key pillar of Trump’s second term: Bringing in an unprecedented amount of new investment, from energy to pharmaceuticals. Beyond calling that strategy into question, it could also embolden countries and businesses to abandon their own pledges.

“If we’re sitting here in three years and the investment data show a really modest bump in domestic investment outside of the AI boom, then it’ll be a significant black mark against the tariff record and Lutnick himself to the extent that he’s the engineer of all of it,” said Lincicome.

When asked for comment about POLITICO’s reporting, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that Trump “maintains complete confidence in Secretary Lutnick because he has been the most transformative Commerce Secretary in modern history and is a champion of the President’s America First trade and tariffs policies.”

“Fabricated smears from anonymous sources don’t change the fact that Secretary Lutnick played a key role helping President Trump secure historic trade deals with the European Union and Japan as well as a $250 billion investment deal with Taiwan,” he said.

A person close to Lutnick said the Commerce secretary “meets regularly with top tech CEOs to ensure they are on track with their investments to America, and will use the power of tariffs if they’re not on track both against the companies and the countries.”

Beyond concerns about substance, Lutnick’s tendency to centralize power has alienated some colleagues, while others complain that he leaves no room for differing views.

“No one’s allowed to talk to the interagency without Howard giving explicit approval,” an administration official said. “Even when his staff show up to meetings at the White House, they’re under a gag order, and they literally just say, ‘Hi, I don’t have a position from the Secretary on this, so Commerce has no position at this time.’”

One former Trump administration official described some meetings he attended where Lutnick shouted down dissenting views.

“When you’re in a meeting with him, if he disagrees with what you’re saying, or if you are trying to offer, even diplomatically, an alternative view, he just completely shouts over you,” the official said, recalling one tense discussion about trade rules last year.

Three people – the first administration official and two others familiar with the matter – said, based on conversations with others in the administration, Commerce appears to be experiencing higher-than-typical departure rates for political appointees, with some people blaming Commerce’s work culture at its political level for why they’re leaving.

Desai disputed the idea that Commerce is experiencing more departures than is typical, saying in a statement that Commerce “has one of the lowest staff turnover rates of any major agency one year into the Trump administration.”

Lutnick during the transition

According to three other current and former officials, Lutnick’s troubles didn’t begin with his approach to the trade deals or Epstein headlines. They began at Mar-a-Lago, where Lutnick and other members of Trump’s senior staff and allies decamped shortly after Trump’s 2024 election win to pick Trump’s Cabinet and top political appointees.

Lutnick played an outsized role in helping assemble the Cabinet, including making sweeping assurances to prospective secretaries that they would have broad latitude to hire trusted allies, according to the three people, including one current administration official who worked on the transition who heard Lutnick make the commitments first hand.

“He indicated [that] without even thinking about the vetting ramifications,” said the official with direct knowledge. “This is a total outsider, and it was his show for a while, and he kind of thought he could do whatever he wanted,” the official said.

Those promises quickly ran into reality, after former White House Presidential Personnel Office Director Sergio Gor instituted stringent loyalty tests that sidelined many experienced candidates, including some favored by Cabinet members. (Gor is now serving as U.S. ambassador to India.)

The person close to Lutnick denied this happened, saying the transition had a thorough vetting process for all levels of staff.

Lutnick lost a battle for Treasury secretary to Scott Bessent.

The Oval Office regular

Once Trump returned to office, Lutnick was a near constant presence at the White House.

“Howard, for a while, didn’t know how to not appear all the time,” said the official who had worked on the transition. “Every day he was there getting into the Oval, asking to see the president there. You can’t be there all the time. You don’t want to be there all the time. It’s not a good thing.”

Five Trump administration officials – four current and one former – interviewed for this article described a dynamic in which Lutnick would insert himself into negotiations of all kinds that are already underway, sometimes accelerating them, sometimes complicating them.

“Lutnick is sometimes very helpful and sometimes an annoyance,” one of the current officials said. “There are some issues where if you get close alignment with him, it can be very effective in doing things and driving things forward.” But, the official added, “a ton of issues – so many things that you need Commerce to move on – they won’t move until Lutnick signs off on it, even for kind of routine decisions, and it just has a lot of friction. … In terms of the general workings, there’s a ton of frustration with how things are running at Commerce across not just the White House, but the broader interagency.”

One White House official close to agency decisionmaking said the White House often has to wait for Commerce to do their part of interagency tasks, and said it’s largely due to Lutnick and his tendency to centralize decisionmaking. Asked about potential delays, Desai denied that Commerce “is a particular laggard,” adding: “Sometimes they’re slower than ideal, sometimes they’re much faster. As with every other agency and component.”

Over time, Lutnick developed a reputation for jumping into deals on subjects on which he has little expertise and not enforcing follow through with companies and countries compared to the other trade heavyweight U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, according to four current and former administration officials and allies. The difference in how the two men operate is so stark that foreign governments are being informally encouraged by Trump administration officials to negotiate with Lutnick instead of with Greer, the people said.

“Jamieson is a professional and he knows what countries need to give up to get market access for American companies,” the first administration official said. “And Lutnick just chases a headline. And so if he thinks there’s a headline, he can seize quick victory.”

A Commerce spokesperson said in a statement: “At President Trump’s direction, Secretary Lutnick has delivered important wins for the American people, including negotiating a stake in Intel, securing the U.S. Steel Golden Share, bringing manufacturing back to American soil where construction has already begun, and securing over $550 billion in investment from Japan, with projects now actively underway.”

“Secretary Lutnick is relentlessly focused on delivering for the American people, securing trillions of dollars in investment, delivering historic trade deals, and fighting for the American worker,” the spokesperson said.

In a statement sent post-publication, a USTR spokesperson said: “USTR and the Commerce Department work together closely on a daily basis to execute the President’s historic trade and investment agenda.”

That perception has had consequences. According to three administration officials, some in the White House are beginning to try to keep Lutnick out of some administration projects that already have momentum because he might hijack it and try to take credit for a deal that may not ultimately achieve the end goal.

“People will use the phrase there are ‘too many cooks in the kitchen,’ to keep Howard out,” an administration official said. “What they mean is don’t let Howard in the kitchen.”

The Westinghouse deal

A deal the administration struck with Westinghouse Electric Co. offers something of a case study in Lutnick’s operating style.

The Department of Energy had spent months building a broader nuclear strategy and negotiating a deal with Westinghouse to help increase America’s nuclear energy capacity when Lutnick arrived and took it over last summer, according to another three administration officials familiar with the deal. Lutnick began negotiating directly with Westinghouse, catching Energy Secretary Chris Wright by surprise, two of the officials said.

In a statement to POLITICO, Wright called Lutnick “a tremendous partner in advancing the president’s energy dominance agenda and delivering for the American people” who has helped secure “transformational commitments for investments that are restoring American energy leadership and driving economic growth across the country.” Wright did not directly address questions about whether he was upset with Lutnick over the Westinghouse deal.

In late October, the Commerce Department unveiled a splashy agreement with Westinghouse, framing it as a monumental step toward rebuilding American nuclear capacity. On the surface, the eye-popping $80 billion framework for potential Japanese purchase of at least 10 large-scale reactors looked like a classic win for Trump, who has been pushing to meet America’s surging energy demands in part by increasing nuclear capacity.

In a statement, Westinghouse said it’s “working to deliver on the Administration’s plan to build a fleet of large nuclear reactors with the AP1000® plant – the only construction-ready, gigawatt-scale, advanced modular reactor that is fully licensed and operating in the U.S.” A spokesperson added that the company and its partners are “prepared to start nuclear construction at scale in the United States, supporting tens of thousands of high-paying, highly skilled American jobs and delivering more than $92 billion in U.S. GDP.”

“The moment the deal was signed with Japan, Secretary Lutnick invited Secretary Wright to talk about the deal. They’ve continued to work together,” a person close to Lutnick said.

But to Lutnick’s critics, it was an example of Lutnick closing a deal with few details and without ensuring that the nuclear reactors get built properly. Westinghouse has built the only two new nuclear reactors in the U.S. over the last three decades, but the project was $18 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule, which contributed to Westinghouse’s eventual bankruptcy filing.

“Nobody knows how much it’s going to cost to actually build a reactor,” the administration official said.

From that vantage point, the Westinghouse framework was “very high-level, very pie in the sky,” the official argued – long on ambition, short on the mechanics of cost certainty, labor constraints and project execution.

“The initial deal warped incentive structures in a way that was not conducive to our goal of putting new nuclear capacity into operation and getting large reactors built right,” the second administration official said.

But the second official argued that Lutnick’s “act now, details later” stance ultimately proved beneficial, as the administration was able to increase competition in the space by engaging with other companies that produce nuclear reactors after the first deal. That includes GE Hitachi, the joint venture between the U.S. energy behemoth GE Vernova and the Japanese industrial heavyweight Hitachi. “But over time, this has evolved, and now we’re in a better position than we would have been had the deal not come about,” the official said.

The family business problem

Complicating Lutnick’s standing is his family’s expanding financial footprint during Trump’s second term – a fact that hasn’t escaped Trump’s notice.

Lutnick stepped into government from Cantor Fitzgerald, where his sons, Brandon and Kyle, have taken controlling roles. The firm has had a blockbuster year amid a surge of major transactions. It posted revenues of $2.5 billion in 2025, up 25 percent from the previous year.

The president has been upset that Lutnick’s family is profiting so aggressively off of his popularity and he confronted Lutnick directly about it during an episode at Mar-a-Lago over the winter holiday, said two people familiar with the exchange, one of whom witnessed it.

“There definitely is this thing where a lot of people in business… just want to do deals with whoever is closer to the administration,” one of the officials said.

One of the officials familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president reacts viscerally when someone else profits off of what Trump considers his own brand – even though he may personally like the person.

Desai and the Commerce spokesperson did not respond when asked about the Mar-a-Lago episode.

A Cantor Fitzgerald spokesperson said the company’s “growth across Cantor, BGC, and Newmark is not an overnight success, but as a result of having the foresight over many years to invest in capabilities and talent to support clients’ evolving needs in high growth sectors.” (Cantor Fitzgerald has controlling stakes in brokerage and financial technology company BGC and commercial real estate advisory Newmark.)

Then came Epstein

Two weeks ago, Lutnick faced renewed questions about his past relationship with Epstein, his former neighbor, after the release of records and Lutnick’s own testimony acknowledging a 2012 trip to Epstein’s island after he previously claimed to have severed ties.

“We had lunch on the island – that is true – for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies and my wife all together. We were on family vacation,” Lutnick said at a congressional hearing earlier this month.

Lutnick’s critics seized on the news to argue that he’s a distraction at a moment when Trump wants his economic team focused on delivery. Lutnick has not been accused of a crime in association with Epstein.

And if they hoped it would kick Lutnick from his beachhead in the Trump administration, Lutnick doesn’t appear to be going anywhere – so far.

Lutnick threw a party at his Washington mansion earlier this month, attended by six members of Trump’s Cabinet, senior White House officials and a handful of Republican members of Congress. Last week Trump gave Lutnick a shout-out and praised his “good ideas,” calling him “a very very successful guy.” And he’s been on at least two Air Force One rides with the president since the new revelations about his trip to Epstein’s island.

“He is thumbing a middle finger to anyone who thinks he’s on the outs because the president has really given a lot of his Cabinet the assurance that they’re not going anywhere until he wants them to go somewhere,” the person close to the White House said.

A bad sign.....

Anthropic ditches its core safety promise in the middle of an AI red line fight with the Pentagon

By Clare Duffy, Lisa Eadicicco

Anthropic, a company founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI, is loosening its core safety principle in response to competition.

Instead of self-imposed guardrails constraining its development of AI models, Anthropic is adopting a nonbinding safety framework that it says can and will change.

In a blog post Tuesday outlining its new policy, Anthropic said shortcomings in its two-year-old Responsible Scaling Policy could hinder its ability to compete in a rapidly growing AI market.

The announcement is surprising, because Anthropic has described itself as the AI company with a “soul.” It also comes the same week that Anthropic is fighting a significant battle with the Pentagon over AI red lines.

It’s not clear that Anthropic’s change is related to its meeting Tuesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei an ultimatum to roll back the company’s AI safeguards or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract. The Pentagon threatened to put Anthropic on what is effectively a government blacklist.

But the company said in its blog post that its previous safety policy was designed to build industry consensus around mitigating AI risks – guardrails that the industry blew through. Anthropic also noted its safety policy was out of step with Washington’s current anti-regulatory political climate.

Anthropic’s previous policy stipulated that it should pause training more powerful models if their capabilities outstripped the company’s ability to control them and ensure their safety — a measure that’s been removed in the new policy. Anthropic argued that responsible AI developers pausing growth while less careful actors plowed ahead could “result in a world that is less safe.”

As part of the new policy, Anthropic said it will separate its own safety plans from its recommendations for the AI industry.

Anthropic wrote that it had hoped its original safety principles “would encourage other AI companies to introduce similar policies. This is the idea of a ‘race to the top’ (the converse of a ‘race to the bottom’), in which different industry players are incentivized to improve, rather than weaken, their models’ safeguards and their overall safety posture.”

The company now suggests that hasn’t played out. A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The new safety policy

Anthropic’s new safety policy includes a “Frontier Safety Roadmap” that outlines the company’s self-imposed guidelines and safeguards. But the company acknowledged the new framework is more flexible than its past policy.

“Rather than being hard commitments, these are public goals that we will openly grade our progress towards,” the company said in its blog post.

The change comes a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a Friday deadline to roll back the company’s AI safeguards, or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract and being put on what is effectively a government blacklist.

Anthropic has concerns over two issues that it isn’t willing to drop, according to a source familiar with the company’s meeting with Hegseth: AI-controlled weapons and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. Anthropic believes AI is not reliable enough to operate weapons, and there are no laws or regulations yet that cover how AI could be used in mass surveillance, a source said.

AI researchers applauded Anthropic’s stance on social media on Tuesday and expressed concerns about the idea of AI being used for government surveillance.

The company has long positioned itself as the AI business that prioritizes safety. Anthropic has published research showing how its own AI models could be capable of blackmail under certain conditions. The company recently donated $20 million to Public First Action, a political group pushing for AI safeguards and education.

But the company has faced increasing pressure and competition from both the government and its rivals. Hegseth, for example, plans to invoke the Defense Production Act on Anthropic and designate the company a supply chain risk if it does not comply with the Pentagon’s demands, CNN reported on Tuesday. OpenAI and Anthropic have also been locked in a race to launch new enterprise AI tools in a bid to win the workplace.

Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, suggested in an interview with Time that the change was made in the name of safety more than increased competition.

“We felt that it wouldn’t actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models,” Kaplan told the magazine. “We didn’t really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments … if competitors are blazing ahead.”

Sat like piles of shit...

Supreme Court justices sit in silence at State of the Union as Trump slams their tariffs decision

By John Fritze

President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday to slam the Supreme Court’s decision against his sweeping emergency tariffs, repeatedly calling the ruling “unfortunate” even as he suggested his administration would quickly move past it.

With four justices sitting mere feet away, their hands folded over their robes, Trump touted what he described as a vast economic benefit from the global tariffs before lamenting the “unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court.”

“It just came down,” the president said. “Very unfortunate ruling.”

Though it was likely an awkward moment for the justices, Trump’s criticism of the court was far more tempered than on Friday, when he railed against the justices who voted against his tariffs. In an angry press conference at the White House, he described the court’s decision as a “disgrace” and at one point said that justices in the majority were an “embarrassment to their families.”

Four justices showed for the president’s speech: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, a first-term Trump appointee. Three of them — Roberts, Kagan and Barrett — voted against his tariffs. Kavanaugh, whom Trump also appointed to the high court in his first term, wrote the dissent from that decision.

The justices themselves have made clear for years they would prefer to be almost anywhere besides a State of the Union address. Stone-faced and silent, their front-row presence is an oddity at an event where lawmakers repeatedly erupt into applause or jeers.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia once described the speech as a “childish spectacle.” Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged the awkwardness and in 2010 complained that jurists essentially had to sit in the chamber “like the proverbial potted plant.”

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that Trump could no longer rely on an emergency law enacted in the 1970s to impose his tariffs on a whim. Nothing in the court’s decision barred Trump from relying on other laws to raise tariffs, though many of those other measures come with strings attached.

Trump last week praised Kavanaugh, who penned the dissent in the case, but called those who voted against him a disgrace and suggested without evidence that their decision may have been driven by foreign influence.

But Trump said the justices were still invited to his speech.

“Barely,” he added.

On Tuesday, Trump exchanged pleasantries and shook hands with all four justices in attendance as he worked his way through the chamber before the speech.

After calling the decision “unfortunate” and “disappointing,” he framed its impact as limited.

“The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made,” the president said.

Sixteen years ago, President Barack Obama during his State of the Union took a similar swipe at the court for its decision days earlier in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums in candidate elections. Six justices who attended the speech offered little reaction at first as Obama began speaking about that decision.

“With all due deference to separation of powers,” Obama said, “last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

Obama’s scolding is perhaps best remembered for one justice’s reaction. Alito, a conservative who supported that decision, could be seen shaking his head and mouthing the words, “Not true.”

A media firestorm followed and Alito never returned to another speech, saving his expressions of agreement or disapproval for the bench.

But even when the president — any president — is not reeling from a significant legal loss, the presence of the justices can often make for awkward moments on the House floor. Last year Trump was caught on a microphone giving a hearty thanks to Roberts months after the court granted the president immunity from criminal prosecution for some official actions.

“Thank you again,” Trump could be heard telling Roberts on the House floor. “I won’t forget it.”

The president later said on social media that he was thanking the chief justice for swearing him in at his inauguration.

In 2018, Trump touted his “great new Supreme Court justice,” referring to Neil Gorsuch, who sat so expressionless that his locked face became a social media meme. Two years later, Trump boasted about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as the camera panned to both men as they offered tight-lipped smiles to each other.

“To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally,” Roberts said in 2010, “I’m not sure why we’re there.”

False claims.......

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about the economy, elections and crime in State of the Union

By CNN staff

President Donald Trump made numerous false or misleading claims in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

Many of them were long-debunked falsehoods familiar from his rallies, interviews and social media posts. These include various lies disparaging the fairness of US elections, his false claim that he ended wars that were never actually wars or never actually ended, and his fictional “$18 trillion” figure for supposed investment in the US over the past year.

The subject on which he was most frequently inaccurate was the economy. Among other things, Trump overstated the performance of the economy during this presidential term to date, overstated the inflation he inherited from the Biden administration, used highly misleading figures when discussing gasoline prices, and wrongly asserted, twice, that foreign countries are paying the tariffs that are actually being paid by US importers.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks:

Economy and inflation

Fact check: Trump falsely claims US has secured ‘$18 trillion’ in investments

Trump repeated his regular false claim that he has secured $18 trillion in investments in the US since returning to office, saying, “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”

The $18 trillion figure is fiction. As of the night of Trump’s address, the White House’s own website said the figure for “major investment announcements” during this Trump term was “$9.7 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US and vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s misleading claims on gasoline prices

Trump claimed gas prices are “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places, $1.99 a gallon.” But no state had an average gas price on Tuesday below $2.37 per gallon, according to AAA; only two states had an average below $2.50 per gallon. And while there are some individual gas stations selling gas for below $2 per gallon, they are scarce; Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the firm GasBuddy, said during the speech that the firm found just four stations across the country below $2 (aside from special discounts) out of the roughly 150,000 stations the firm tracks, so about 0.003% of the total.

Trump could fairly say gas prices have fallen during this presidency. They have declined from a national average of $3.12 per gallon on his inauguration day in January 2025, according to AAA, to a national average of $2.95 per gallon on Tuesday.

In addition, Trump claimed, “And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline.” We don’t know what Trump saw, but the average price for a gallon of regular gas in Iowa on the day of the January 27 speech was $2.57, according to data published that day by AAA – and Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, told CNN at the time that GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling for $1.97 per gallon (aside from special discounts) out of 2,036 total stations the firm tracks, so 0.19% of the total.

Trump was fact-checked on this subject by an attendee at the Iowa speech he was referring to. When he spoke of gas in Iowa being $1.95 or $1.85 per gallon, someone in the crowd shouted, “No, $2.63,” according to CNN reporter Steve Contorno, who was on scene. Contorno saw that the gas station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was selling for $2.69 per gallon.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he inherited record inflation

Trump falsely claimed that when he gave his previous address to Congress early last year, he had “just inherited … inflation at record levels.” He added a bit later that former President Joe Biden and his congressional allies “gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country.”

Trump didn’t inherit the worst inflation in US history, and Biden never had the worst inflation in US history. The year-over-year inflation rate in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, was 2.9%, and the rate in the month in which Trump took over partway through, January 2025, was 3.0%; the most recent rate, for January 2026, is 2.4%. The rate did hit a 40-year high, 9.1%, in June 2022, but that was far from the all-time high of 23.7%, which was set in 1920. Regardless, the rate then fell sharply over Biden’s last two-and-a-half years in office.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s baseless claim about the economy

Trump claimed that he inherited a “stagnant economy” from the Biden administration and that it is now “roaring like never before.” Though there is no firm definition of “stagnant” or “roaring,” the facts don’t corroborate the suggestion that he has presided over a massive economic boom since returning to office in January 2025. The US economy grew 2.2% in 2025, which was lower than in any year of the Biden presidency; there was 2.8% growth in 2024. (The fall 2025 government shutdown likely reduced growth in late 2025.) The unemployment rate, meanwhile, increased from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026.

The year-over-year Consumer Price Index inflation rate did fall from 3.0% in January 2025 to 2.4% in January 2026, and Trump certainly has some other positive data points to cite. But his story about taking the economy from deceased to scorching is just not supported by the overall numbers.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims foreign countries are paying his tariffs

Trump repeated his regular false claim that tariffs are “paid for by foreign countries.” In fact, tariff payments are made by importers in the US, not foreign countries, and those importers often pass on some of their costs to consumers. While foreign exporters may sometimes drop their prices to try to keep their products competitive, various analyses have found that the overwhelming majority of the costs of the tariffs Trump has imposed this term are being covered by a combination of US businesses and US consumers.

In an analysis released in February, officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote, “We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.” The nonpartisan federal Congressional Budget Office wrote in a February report that “the net effect of tariffs is to raise U.S. consumer prices by the full portion of the cost of the tariffs borne domestically (95 percent),” from a combination of price hikes by US businesses that are importing tariffed products and price hikes by US businesses that are facing less foreign competition because of the tariffs.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s claim that more Americans are working today than ever

Trump repeated his regular claim that there are more people working today in the US than ever before. That’s true, but the claim needs context: the number of people working tends to rise over time because the US population tends to rise over time. Economists say there are far better measures of the health of the labor market.

The employment-population ratio, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed, is down slightly this presidential term so far, going from 60.1% in January 2025, the month Trump returned to office, to 59.8% in January 2026. The unemployment rate, which measures unemployment as a percentage of the labor force, has increased, going from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.3% in January 2026; it hit a four-year high of 4.5% in November before easing. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the population that is employed or actively looking for work, has been almost unchanged, ticking down 62.6% in January 2025 to 62.5% in January 2026.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Taxes and the budget

Fact check: Trump’s claim he passed largest tax cuts in American history

Trump once again claimed that the sweeping domestic policy agenda that he signed into law last summer contained the largest tax cuts in American history. But that is not actually the case.

The so-called big, beautiful bill made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, giving additional tax relief to senior citizens and parents of young children and allowing companies to deduct certain investments more quickly. The tax cuts amount to $4.8 trillion, or 1.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), over a decade, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office analysis, released earlier this month.

However, the bill is not the largest tax cut in history, experts said. It ranks seventh in terms of share of GDP since 1918, according to Chris Towner, policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The largest was former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax package, which cost 2.9% of GDP over four years. (Looking at revenue changes as a share of GDP is a common way to assess the size of tax cuts because it shows the changes relative to the size of the economy. It allows for comparisons across time despite shifts in inflation and population, for example.) Similarly, the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, found that the bill is the sixth largest tax cut since 1940, in terms of share of GDP.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he achieved no tax on Social Security

Trump again falsely claimed that he eliminated taxes on Social Security, one of his key campaign promises in 2024.

“With the great ‘big, beautiful bill,’ we gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security,” he said during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

The massive domestic policy package that Trump signed last summer did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more). But as the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn’t apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Fact check: Trump’s false claim on balancing the federal budget by ending fraud

Trump baselessly claimed that eliminating fraud in federal programs would balance the federal budget, saying, “If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly.”

The annual budget deficit far exceeds the estimated amount of money the federal government loses to fraud each year.

A first-of-its-kind estimate that the federal Government Accountability Office released in 2024 found that between $233 billion to $521 billion is lost to fraud annually. But the federal budget deficit came in at just under $1.8 trillion for the most recent fiscal year, which ended in September, according to the Treasury Department – more than triple the highest estimated fraud total.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Immigration and foreign affairs

Fact check: Trump falsely claims that Biden allowed ‘11,888 murderers’ to enter US as migrants

While criticizing the Biden administration’s border policies, Trump repeated his regular claim that the Biden administration allowed 11,888 murderers to enter the US as migrants – saying, “They were murderers, 11,888 murderers. They came into our country.”

Trump was inaccurately describing federal data. The Department of Homeland Security and independent experts have noted that the figure it appears Trump was referring to when he uses the “11,888” number is about non-citizens who entered the US not just under Biden but over the course of multiple decades, including during Trump’s own first administration. They were convicted of homicide at some point, usually in the US after their arrival, and are still in the US while being listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket” – which includes people who are currently serving their prison sentences, not roaming free as Trump has also claimed.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims he ended eight wars

Trump repeated a familiar false claim about his role in foreign affairs: “My first 10 months, I ended eight wars.” While Trump has played a role in resolving some conflicts (at least temporarily), the “eight” figure is a clear exaggeration.

Trump explained during the speech that his list of supposed wars settled includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia, but that wasn’t actually a war; it is a long-running diplomatic dispute about a major Ethiopian dam project on a tributary of the Nile River. Trump’s list also included another supposed war that didn’t actually occur during his presidency, between Serbia and Kosovo. (He has sometimes claimed to have prevented the eruption of a new war between those two entities, providing few details about what he meant, but that is different than settling an actual war.) And his list included a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that war has continued despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration in 2025 – which was never signed by the leading rebel coalition doing the fighting.

Trump’s list also included an armed conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, where fighting temporarily erupted again in December despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier in 2025.

One can debate the importance of Trump’s role in having ended the other conflicts on his list, or fairly question whether some have truly ended; for example, killing continued in Gaza after the October ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, and Trump said in the speech, “The war in Gaza, which proceeds at a very low level; it’s just about there.” Regardless, Trump’s “eight” figure is obviously too big.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s inaccurate claims about NATO

Trump repeated his claim that before he prodded NATO members to spend more on defense, the US was “paying for almost all of NATO.” That’s an exaggeration. NATO figures show that in 2016, the year before Trump took office the first time, US defense spending made up about 72% of total NATO defense spending; in 2024, the year before he returned to office, it was about 63%. Both figures are big, of course, but “almost all” is a stretch” – and the US contributes a smaller percentage to NATO’s own organizational budget. Under an agreed formula, the US provided about 16% of that budget at the time Trump returned to office in 2025. When he took office in 2017, the US was contributing about 22% of the budget.

In addition, Trump touted NATO members’ 2025 commitment to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense-related and security-related spending by 2035 – including at least 3.5% of GDP on the “core” defense requirements that were covered by the previous target of 2% of GDP – saying they agreed “to pay 5% of GDP for military defense, rather than the 2% which they weren’t paying … Now they’re paying 5 (percent) as opposed to not paying 2 (percent).”

But most NATO members are not yet meeting the new higher target, which, again, they have given themselves a decade to meet. NATO estimates show that just three members, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, were at or above 3.5% in core defense spending in 2025, though they may be joined by others in 2026.

“It’s absolutely not true that the Allies are currently ‘paying 5%’ on hard defense, and even by 2035 they’ve only committed to 3.5%, in terms of their defense budget conventionally-understood. As of mid-2025, *no* Ally is spending 5%, in fact not even 4.5%,” professor Erwan Lagadec, who leads the NATO and European Union studies program at George Washington University’s international affairs school, said in a January email.

Lagadec added: “In 2025 the U.S. was ‘only’ at 3.2%, *down* from 2014 in terms of ratios to GDP (the only country in that situation). Hence the case can be made that the U.S. is now the ‘laggard’ going ‘in the wrong direction’; although of course the fact that the U.S. was spending a lower ratio in 2025 than 2014 on defense could be seen as a sign of success, i.e. the outcome of the other Allies doing more.”

Trump’s claim that “they weren’t paying” when the target was 2% needs context. Although most NATO members were not hitting the 2% target as late as 2023, a majority hit the target in 2024; NATO figures show that 18 member countries were at or above 2% out of 31 countries subject to the target.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Elections and crime

Fact check: Trump’s multiple false claims about US elections

Trump made a rapid-fire series of false claims about US elections while calling on Congress to pass a bill requiring voter identification and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Trump falsely claimed, “Cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.” It’s simply not; all evidence suggests fraud makes up a minuscule percentage of votes cast. Trump referred to “crooked mail-in ballots”; the incidence of fraud is also tiny with mail-in ballots, though experts say it is slightly higher than with in-person voting, and there is no basis to categorically describe them as “crooked.” And Trump said, “They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat.” That is a lie, as Democrats, like Republicans, are elected all the time in free and fair US elections.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump falsely claims a Charlotte killer ‘came in through open borders’

Trump lamented the murder last summer of a refugee from Ukraine, Iryna Zarutska, who was killed on public transit in Charlotte, North Carolina. But Trump added a false claim that the alleged killer had migrated to the US, saying Zarutska “had escaped a brutal war only to be slain by a hardened criminal set free to kill in America – came in through open borders.”

In reality, the man charged with first-degree murder over the killing was, according to all available evidence, from the US. The Charlotte Observer has reported that the man’s Facebook page said he was born in Charlotte and attended high school there, and the newspaper has interviewed his American mother.

The Observer published its own fact check on Tuesday night noting Trump’s claim was not true.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s two false claims about crime in Washington, DC

Trump claimed that after his takeover of law enforcement and deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC, last summer, the capital is “now one of the safest cities in the country.” That’s not true. Nor is his claim that the capital has “almost no crime anymore,” as a cursory glance at public data or police press releases shows; more than 1,300 crimes were reported in the last month.

Crime data expert Jeff Asher told CNN in a February email: “DC crime fell substantially in 2025 but it was not anywhere near the safest city in America.”

Of the 50 largest cities tracked by Asher’s Real-Time Crime Index, he said, “DC had the 9th highest murder rate and 12th highest violent crime rate in 2025 of the 50 largest cities in the Real-Time Crime Index.” Trump’s intervention happened in August; in the period running from August through December 2025, Asher said, “DC had the 18th highest murder rate and 17th highest violent crime rate.”

“Even in the post-intervention period, DC’s murder rate was more than 5 times higher than San Diego and San Jose and roughly 3 times higher than cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle,” he said. And he added that crime in the capital was “falling considerably” prior to Trump’s Guard deployment, and continued to fall after the deployment, “in a way that is hard to determine the impact of the deployment itself.”

Trump could have accurately said the capital has had some prolonged recent stretches without a murder; the Washington Post reported that it began the year with a highly unusual three-week period with no homicides. But that stretch ended January 21.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Fact check: Trump’s unproven claim on fraud in Minnesota

Trump repeated his claim that Somali residents of Minnesota have committed $19 billion in fraud, saying: “There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that.”

It’s possible this “$19 billion” figure will be proven true, but nothing close to that figure has been proven to date.

In December, a federal prosecutor, Joseph Thompson, claimed that “half or more” of $18 billion in federal funds billed by 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota deemed at high risk for fraud – and now under a third-party audit ordered by Gov. Tim Walz – might be fraudulent.

But $9 billion is not $19 billion, Thompson didn’t say all of the possible fraud was committed by Somali residents, and Walz’s administration challenged Thompson’s claim.

One Walz administration official said in December that they had “evidence of tens of millions of dollars in fraud to this point,” not $9 billion; Walz himself said, “You should be equally outraged about $1 or whatever that number is, but they’re using that number without the proof behind it.” And Thompson – who resigned in January amid tension with the Trump administration over its handling of an ICE officer fatally shooting Renée Good – made clear at the time that the “half or more” comment was an early estimate rather than a firm number.

Promised $400 Million.... Ghosted Them....

Farmers Were Promised $400 Million in Drought Aid. Trump’s USDA Ghosted Them.

More than a year later, not a penny has been spent and no one knows what happened to the money.

Ayurella Horn-Muller

For those coaxing thirsty crops like alfalfa from the parched fields and withered pasturelands in Eloy, Arizona, water is as good as gold—and just as scarce. “We’ve had nothing from the Colorado River for the last two or three years. I mean, we’ve had to cut back the volumes to the growers and have had to reduce acres and stuff to make it work,” said Ron McEachern, former general manager of the Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District, which serves the Eloy area.

The agricultural hub draws from the Colorado River basin through a vast canal network, but drought, overexploitation, and aging irrigation equipment are draining what little remains. “We got gates that are leaking and leaking downstream,” McEachern said. “The water spills and it spills, and nobody’s getting any use out of it.”

Nearly two years ago, the irrigation district was invited to apply to a new non-competitive grant program that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Biden administration was launching to help farmers in areas grappling with devastating droughts. McEachern collaborated with the federal agency to identify what his team would do with the grant: replace and upgrade the 35-year-old deteriorating radial arm gates in their local canal system. The district needed the components to more precisely regulate water levels in the canals, but they are much too expensive for them to buy and install on their own.

Then, in late 2024, they got the break they’d been hoping for. The Central Arizona operation was one of 18 irrigation districts spread across 12 western states initially selected to receive up to $15 million each from the USDA. The agency’s Water-Saving Commodities program also earmarked grants for three tribal communities and two state associations of conservation districts. In total, the USDA planned to spend a $400 million pool of funds on the initiative. 

Gloria Montaño Greene, who served during the Biden administration as Deputy Under Secretary for USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation, told Grist that the idea for the program started back in 2021, as severe drought conditions enveloped agricultural powerhouse states across the country. The $400 million, according to Montaño Greene, was set to be distributed through the Commodity Credit Corporation, a financial institution used to implement specific agricultural programs established by the federal government. By the close of 2024, she said the Biden administration had entered final agreements with selected recipients and notified Congress of how they intended to use the money. 

“When we left the administration, we already had the signed agreements and the commitments that were going to be going through with the process,” said Montaño Greene. Based on those final agreements, the money, which was structured to be either reimbursement-based or in the form of advance payments—or both, depending on the agreement—should have started flowing last year, as part of a five-year payment plan. “Everything was done, vetted, and reviewed,” she said. But because this money wasn’t voted on by Congress, the USDA may have the authority to backtrack on its commitments under an earlier administration.

Another former top USDA official familiar with the program, who requested anonymity, confirmed that the agreements were “100 percent” finalized before the end of 2024—with the expectation that the incoming administration would need to honor them. “I can speak to the assumptions and guidance that we were working on from legal counsel at that time, which was by entering into these agreements with the districts and other partners, we’re committing those dollars to this purpose,” the former official added. “From our perspective, we were operating under a framework and counsel that we were committing those funds to the USDA partners.” 

Beginning last January, the Trump administration threw that into a tailspin. Federal monies were frozen, grant programs culled, and an unprecedented number of federal staffers were forced out of work. Many operations at USDA have since resumed to some semblance of normalcy. But the $400 million promised to the irrigation districts, associations, and tribes in 2024 remains unaccounted for, and the grant recipients have received no indication of whether the program would start or the money would be paid out. 

In fact, McEachern no longer even knew whom at the USDA to ask for help. The last he heard from the agency about the water-saving grant was an email from his former point of contact to let him know they were leaving the USDA. That was over a year ago. “I think some of the people that were involved are probably no longer there, and nobody was really kind of pushing to get this off the ground,” said McEachern. “One thing is, they haven’t swept the money. So the money is there. It’s just getting them to release it.” 

Dan Crabtree, superintendent of Palisade Irrigation District, based in Colorado, one of the other 18 irrigation districts, has had much the same experience. “Since the election, we have not heard anything from USDA, other than to say they were evaluating the program and the application,” said Crabtree. Another recipient—Greybull Valley Irrigation District in Wyoming—told Grist in an email that it also knew nothing about the program’s status. 

Randall Winston, general manager of Hidalgo & Cameron Counties Irrigation District 9, in Texas, another of the USDA’s selected recipients, said that while they’ve been waiting, the severe drought in the Rio Grande Valley has only gotten worse. As a result, they have been forced to dramatically reduce how much agricultural land the district is able to irrigate—last year, they supplied water for roughly 8,000 acres, when on a typical year they irrigate 120,000.

“Every drop of water, we’re trying to maximize that and save as much as we can,” said Winston. Prices for the equipment they need to manage the water they do have have also continued to climb, according to Winston, further setting them back. “We are concerned because we need to know the direction to take…We’re not mad at USDA, we just need to find out where we’re at with this,” he said.

Exactly why the administration has kept the funding locked without any communication to grantees for over a year is difficult to discern, according to Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck. “Is this specifically because it’s intended to help farmers adapt to climate change, and climate change is a bad word in the administration, or it’s simply just trying to cut corners wherever they can?” said Starbuck. 

The USDA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

During one former USDA staffer’s last few months working at the Farm Service Agency, they claim they were forced to partake in information “gatekeeping” as it related to the water-saving program. According to the staffer, who left their role in 2025 and asked to remain anonymous, “I was getting a lot of questions about, like, ‘Can we start or not?’ and I didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t get an answer. I really wasn’t allowed to communicate with them directly. Like, I couldn’t tell them ‘Your grant is frozen. Don’t spend any money because the money may never come to you.’ It was just ‘Tell them it’s under administrative review’…And then I couldn’t get a clear answer out of my leadership, or my direct manager, or my manager’s manager, about where the program was in the review process.” 

As for the suspicion that the program may have been targeted in the way that other Biden-era programs geared toward mitigating climate change have been, the former staffer isn’t convinced. “To me, it does seem pretty neutral from a climate perspective, because a lot of the states that have water problems are not necessarily blue states,” they said. “So I don’t think it was something that someone, like a high level official, would come in and say, ‘That’s the program I want to gut.’”

Although they can’t be certain, the former staffer believes the explanation is actually quite simple: There are no employees left to distribute the money.