PolitiFact

President Donald Trump headlined the first night of the Republicans’ first-ever midterm convention in Dallas, spotlighting policies about transgender people, illegal immigration and opponents who align with democratic socialism. “We’re going to prove that America does not belong to those who hate it. America belongs to those who love it,” Trump said. First-night speakers largely avoided the topic polls show is top of mind for voters: the cost of living.

In a pair of recently released political ads attacking former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, two North Carolina fathers describe their children’s killings. The ads’ framing makes it sound as though Cooper agreed to release their children’s imprisoned perpetrators. That’s not what happened. “As the governor, Mr. Cooper was allowing these criminals back on the streets,” Ronald Hayes says in one of the ads after telling about the fatal March 2024 shooting of his 23-year-old son, Shemar, in Charlotte.

President Donald Trump will deliver tonight’s keynote address at 9 p.m. EDT. According to the RNC, Wednesday’s speakers will focus on themes like taxes, immigration and crime. PolitiFact will be watching and fact-checking tonight’s speeches starting at 4 p.m. EDT. Follow along with our live fact-checking below and across our social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok and X.

President Donald Trump recounted his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in an interview and event leading up to the 25th anniversary this week, repeating statements that lack evidence about aiding in the recovery. “I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter, the following day — couldn’t go down the same day — but the following day,” Trump said in the interview with Fox News’s Trey Gowdy that aired Sept. 6.

For a lot of Americans, the first time they heard the letters “mRNA” was during the early, panic-filled months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as scientists raced to develop a vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccines became the first mRNA — or messenger RNA — vaccines ever approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The researchers whose scientific discoveries fueled the vaccines’ successful development were awarded a 2023 Nobel Prize. Yet skeptics worried.

It’s been one year since Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder, was shot and killed at Utah Valley University. Misinformation swelled almost immediately after the 31-year-old’s assassination on Sept. 10, 2025, evolving from chaotic breaking news rumors into complex, unfounded narratives — many pushed by people who share Kirk’s political beliefs.

You’ve probably heard that using artificial intelligence consumes a lot of water. But how does it measure up with snacking on almonds? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made the comparison in a recent interview. OpenAI is the company that makes ChatGPT, the popular AI chat app. “For every 38,000 ChatGPT queries, that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California,” he said in a Sept. 1 episode of the Sources Podcast.

Casi nueve meses después de que Estados Unidos depusiera al líder venezolano Nicolás Maduro, el presidente Donald Trump cerró un acuerdo para otorgar a EE.UU. un papel clave en la industria petrolera de Venezuela — una nación con enormes reservas de crudo pero con una infraestructura en decadencia.

Skip to content Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help. More Info I would like to contribute A boy sits on an inactive oil pumpjack in Cabimas, Venezuela, on Aug. 31, 2026.

The low-calorie sweetener xylitol, found in chewing gum, jams, and cough drops, is making headlines as a potential heart risk. Sounds alarming, but don’t clear out your pantry just yet. The findings come from research that hasn’t been peer-reviewed or published, and the xylitol levels the study detected could be from what human bodies naturally produce, not food. Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about this common sugar substitute. What is xylitol?