Trump's Immigration Talking Points

As he did in his 2016 presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump is making illegal immigration and its impact on the U.S. a focus of his 2024 campaign.

Managing Editor Lori Robertson and Staff Writer D'Angelo Gore reviewed Trump's speeches in the southwestern swing states of Arizona and Nevada, and found several of Trump's talking points on immigration that were wrong or misleading. 

Here's a sample of what Lori and D'Angelo wrote:

• Trump falsely claimed that “virtually 100% of the new jobs under Biden have also gone to illegal aliens.” Since Joe Biden became president in January 2021, employment of U.S.-born workers has increased more than employment of foreign-born workers, which includes those in the U.S. legally.
• He distorted reporting by the New York Times to misleadingly claim that “88,000” unaccompanied minors who came to the U.S. illegally and were processed by the Biden administration “are missing” and “many of those children are dead.”
• Trump also distorted how a mobile app for asylum appointments operated, saying it allows “free entry to be released into the United States at the push of a button.” Applicants are screened, and appointments are limited.

Read the full story, "FactChecking Trump’s Immigration-Related Claims in Phoenix and Las Vegas."

Reader: Was the COVID-19 vaccine legitimate? Is the following article just another conspiracy? The following was sent to me:
 
Both BioNTech (Pfizer’s company) and Moderna once referred to the mRNA injections as “gene therapies.”
 
Now, pharma execs are laughing because they know that if they had called the shots what they were (gene therapies), nobody would have taken them.
 
Instead, they called it a vaccine and got away with it.
 
Here’s what’s even worse. Scientific studies before 2018 indicated that pseudouridine “was known to be a cancer promoter.”
 
Guess what’s in the mRNA injections? Pseudouridine. Now, young people are getting cancer, unlike at any other time in history.
 
FactCheck.org Staff Writer Kate Yandell: COVID-19 vaccines have saved many lives, and there isn’t evidence they are causing cancer in young people. There have been increases in certain cancers in young people, but these trends started well before the pandemic.
 
We’ve written a few articles on this topic, as there have been a variety of misleading or false claims surrounding COVID-19 vaccines and cancer. This one specifically discusses an unsupported claim about breast cancer in young women: "TikTok Video Mangles American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Estimates."
 
When people say that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy, they are often trying to claim that the vaccines alter people’s DNA and cause cancer. There isn’t evidence for these claims. If you want to read about this in more detail, here are a couple of articles I wrote about why this is unlikely: "COVID-19 Vaccines Have Not Been Shown to Alter DNA, Cause Cancer" and "Posts Spread False Claim About Moderna Patent Application."
 
I see that the email you were sent also references pseudouridine. One of the innovations behind mRNA vaccines is that uridine – a building block of mRNA – is modified to become pseudouridine so that the mRNA doesn’t activate the body’s immune defenses prematurely.
 
There aren’t any studies supporting a link between the version of pseudouridine found in COVID-19 vaccines and cancer, as this article by my colleague, Catalina Jaramillo, explains:  "Still No Evidence COVID-19 Vaccination Increases Cancer Risk, Despite Posts."

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Posts Misrepresent Old Video of Missile Test as Russian Ships Visit Cuba": Russian warships conducted simulated military exercises on their way to Cuba in June. But social media posts share clips from a 2018 Russian video of missile tests in the White Sea to claim the warships fired live missiles “off the coast of Florida” before arriving in Havana. A Department of Defense spokesperson said the claim is “not true.”
• "Posts Misrepresent Ruling on COVID-19 School Mandate Lawsuit": A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District for its now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine requirement. The court said the case should be allowed to develop beyond the preliminary arguments. But anti-vaccination activists have twisted the opinion to falsely claim the court had “declared that the mRNA covid jab is NOT a vaccine.” 
• "Israel Will Participate in Olympic Games in Paris, Contrary to Threads Post": Israel will send a delegation of about 85 athletes to the Olympic Games in Paris in July. Protesters opposed to the war in Gaza have called for limited participation by the Israelis, and a post on Threads falsely claimed Israel is "out" of the Games. The International Olympic Committee has said Israeli athletes will be allowed to compete.

• "Las repetidas afirmaciones de Trump sobre su juicio en Nueva York":
  En los últimos días, en sus palabras fuera de la sala del tribunal, en discursos y en las redes sociales, el expresidente Donald Trump ha hecho reiteradamente declaraciones falsas y engañosas sobre el caso, el juicio y su condena.
• "Preguntas y respuestas sobre la orden fronteriza de Biden": El 4 de junio, el presidente Joe Biden anunció una nueva orden ejecutiva fronteriza para restringir la elegibilidad de asilo para aquellos detenidos mientras intentaban ingresar ilegalmente a EE. UU. a través de la frontera sur. Aquí respondemos varias preguntas sobre la acción de Biden. 
• "Verificando las promesas ‘cumplidas’ de Biden": En un discurso de campana en Filadelfia, el presidente Joe Biden repitió la frase “una promesa hecha y una promesa cumplida”, al recontar varias iniciativas que su gobierno ha comenzado. Pero en algunos pocos casos, el presidente no cumplió su promesa, y en otros, describió sus logros de manera engañosa.