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Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz
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Biden’s Presidency: By the Numbers
This week, thanks to contributions from multiple FactCheck.org staffers, we published our second quarterly update for “Biden’s Numbers.”
We started the feature in 2012 with "Obama's Numbers" and continued the feature for the subsequent occupants of the White House.
To cite just a few of the indicators: Since President Joe Biden took office, the economy has added nearly 9 million jobs – with employment at about half a million less than the peak level before the COVID-19 pandemic. Inflation is up 12.6%. Wages rose by 7.7%, but after adjusting for inflation, weekly earnings actually went down 5.3%.
The federal deficit has declined, but the public debt still went up by 10.4%. The economy contracted at an estimated annual rate of 1.6% during the first three months of this year, after rising 5.7% in 2021. The number of Americans without health insurance dropped slightly, and the trade deficit is on pace for a new annual high.
There are many more facts and figures on issues ranging from illegal immigration to corporate profits, oil production to gun sales. As we note in the article, opinions will differ on how much blame or credit the president deserves for these measures. We take no position on that. We simply provide the facts.
Read the full story, “Biden’s Numbers (Second Quarterly Update).”
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When social media posts made claims about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s income, we found that a Ukrainian fact-checking project, StopFake, had written about this issue before. Like FactCheck.org, the project is a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network. StopFake cited a report on Zelensky’s financial disclosure for 2020. That document showed his salary, royalties and real-estate proceeds totaled about $623,000 that year. Read more.
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President Biden set the cap for the number of refugees the U.S. would accept in fiscal year 2022 at 125,000. But through the first nine months of FY 2022, the U.S. has admitted only 15,100 refugees. That’s according to State Department data. The department has said the COVID-19 pandemic and staffing cuts during the prior administration have affected its ability to process refugees. The monthly average under Biden is 20% lower than the average under President Trump. Read more.
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This week, staff writer D’Angelo Gore attended a workshop for fact-checkers and political journalists hosted by the Poynter Institute, a journalism education organization, and the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan research group. The daylong “masterclass” featured experts from RAND who spoke on issues including the research process, gun violence and policy, Russian disinformation, and China.
“We hope that the masterclass and our other educational programming will deepen journalists’ understanding of today’s most pressing global issues as well as how researchers themselves navigate scientific data,” Jennifer Gould, RAND vice president and chief of staff, said in the announcement of the collaboration.
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“Immunobridging is a common way to extend an existing vaccine into new populations. We leverage the extensive efficacy and safety data from other populations, and so do not need to start from scratch in generating evidence.”
— Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University who specializes in methods evaluating the effectiveness of vaccines, explaining the primary way the Food and Drug Administration evaluated the COVID-19 vaccines for young kids. "Immunobridging" looked at whether vaccinated children mounted similar antibody responses against the coronavirus as those of vaccinated adults.
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Wrapping Up
Here's what else we've got for you this week:
- "Posts Misleadingly Omit Critical Data Supporting COVID-19 Vaccines for Youngest Kids": In young children, the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are expected to primarily protect against severe disease. Both shots successfully met the set benchmarks for vaccine effectiveness, which involved comparing antibody responses to those of adults. Online posts critical of government recommendations for the pediatric vaccines, however, fail to mention these essential data.
- "Social Media Posts Make Unsupported Claims About Zelensky’s Income, Net Worth": Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had an income of about $623,000 in 2020, according to his financial disclosure submitted to the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption in Ukraine. But posts on social media claim, without evidence, that he has a monthly income of $11 million.
- "Ocasio-Cortez Was Arrested at Abortion-Rights Protest, Contrary to Social Media Posts": Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of 17 members of Congress arrested at an abortion-rights protest on July 19. But social media posts falsely claim she was “pretending to be arrested.” Capitol Police records show the arrests did occur, and the congresswoman posted the arrest paperwork on her Instagram account.
- "Posts on Social Media Misinterpret Biden’s Quote on Previous Cancer": President Joe Biden claimed in a July 20 speech that growing up in Delaware near oil refineries gave him cancer. Posts on social media misinterpreted that to mean he currently has cancer. A White House spokesperson said Biden was referring to a skin cancer that was removed before he became president.
Y lo que publicamos en español (an English version is accessible in the story):
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Have a question about COVID-19 and the vaccines? Visit our SciCheck page for answers. It's available in Spanish, too.
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