Vice President JD Vance gave the keynote address on the second night of the Republican midterm convention, which also featured Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., House Speaker Mike Johnson and a final send-off from President Donald Trump. Here’s what we found in fact-checking their remarks:
In a nearly two-hour speech at the first Republican midterm convention, President Donald Trump promised to pay Americans if Republicans won, and he repeatedly said communists could take over Congress if they didn’t, among other familiar claims.
Democratic ads in the Ohio Senate race are highlighting a political bribery scandal involving an energy company that benefited from a 2019 nuclear-power bailout law. It’s true, as the ads say, that Republican Sen. Jon Husted backed the legislation and that the company supported his campaigns. But Husted hasn’t been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing in the scandal, which is the impression the ads may leave with voters.
In his campaign’s latest TV ad, Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper of North Carolina highlights the issue of affordability using direct quotes from his Republican opponent. They are, in fact, direct quotes from Michael Whatley — but they are a bit dated, and some of the comments were more defensible or true at the time when Whatley made them.
In the Georgia Senate race, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has been running TV ads that take a sound bite from his opponent about Social Security out of context.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Republican from Florida who is running for governor, has blamed “rampant illegal immigration” during the Biden administration for measles outbreaks. But we found no link to illegal immigration in several recent large outbreaks, and infectious disease experts told us that the main driver of the cases is falling measles vaccination rates in the U.S.
President Donald Trump and other administration officials are claiming credit for a recent drop in prescription drug prices, citing deals they’ve struck with drugmakers and the launch of the online direct-to-consumer platform TrumpRx. But experts are skeptical those measures have had much impact on prices overall, and they say other factors likely explain most of the decline.
After the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two cases of measles-related deaths in one county, the local coroner appeared to contradict the account. And in an ongoing spat with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that a Shapiro staffer may have even “fabricated” the deaths. We’ll lay out what we know.
A Republican ad attacking Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson in Maine says under his “failed leadership” the state’s high schools “dropped to dead last” in the country, according to annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But that’s not the whole story.
An ad from a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley features a heart-wrenching testimonial from the father of a woman who was murdered in 2025. The ad falsely implies the accused murderer was one of the prisoners released during the COVID-19 pandemic when Whatley’s Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, was governor of North Carolina. Cooper had nothing to do with the accused murderer’s release.
