MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We are already awash in campaign ads - so many, it can be hard to know what to believe about what's in all those ads, let alone really fact-check them. So we called Louis Jacobson to take a look at a few of them. He is chief correspondent at PolitiFact. That's a nonpartisan, nonprofit fact-checking news outlet. We started with an ad from Kamala Harris' campaign that ties Donald Trump to Project 2025. That's the policy document written by a coalition of conservative outside groups, many of which do have ties to Trump and his campaign.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #1: Donald Trump's back, and he's out for control - complete control - and he has a plan to get it. It's called Project 2025.
MARTIN: Former President Trump - candidate Trump says that that is not true. So what is true? Is it accurate to say that Project 2025 is Trump's plan for governing?
LOUIS JACOBSON: Well, it gets complicated. Project 2025 was written by a coalition of conservative outside groups, and there's a lot of overlap between those groups and Trump supporters. But it was written independently, and Trump has set forth his own extensive policy agenda.
MARTIN: OK. So with the caveat that Project 2025 is not necessarily a complete road map to a second Trump administration, do the authors of Project 2025 or Trump want to eliminate the Department of Education and defund K-12 schools? That's another claim that's made in this Harris campaign ad.
JACOBSON: Yeah. So this is one where the ad is pretty much accurate. Getting rid of the Education Department is something that conservative figures have been calling for for decades. It would mean basically scaling back the federal government's role in education policy and devolving the functions that are left to other departments. Much of this, of course, would take Congress agreeing, but both Trump and Project 2025 are on the same page in terms of wanting this to happen.
MARTIN: And what about Harris' campaign's claim that Trump would make severe cuts to Medicare and Social Security?
JACOBSON: So we found this is exaggerated. Before the current campaign cycle, Trump has said on several occasions that he's open to cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age. But for the current campaign, he has been largely consistent and quite forceful, actually, that he would not cut Social Security. As for Medicare, Trump has also said repeatedly during the current campaign that he will not cut Medicare.
MARTIN: OK. Let's listen to an ad from the Trump team now. And this one is all about immigration, which I think most people know has been a signature issue for Trump since his first run for the presidency.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL AD)
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #2: This is America's border czar, and she's failed us. Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.
MARTIN: The first question about this is kind of a yes or no. Is Harris America's border czar?
JACOBSON: Well, she had a responsibility for trying to address the root problems causing a lot of migrants to come to the U.S., in Central America, for instance. But she certainly was not all-powerful in terms of determining America's policy on immigration. For instance, you know, Congress has to get involved. She can't do it all by herself, nor could Joe Biden.
MARTIN: So let's parse the sentence over 10 million people here illegally. Is that accurate?
JACOBSON: The numbers of migrants has been high by historical standards under Harris and Biden, but they've recently been falling, and the figure is exaggerated. The number of border encounters is what he's talking about. That is close to 10 million. But a person who's been stopped by border officials on three separate occasions would be counted as three encounters. As far as we can tell, there have been more than 3.6 million removals, returns and expulsions between February 2021 - which was Joe Biden's first full month in office - through September 2023. And that number has gone up since then.
MARTIN: OK. And here's something else that we hear a lot from the Trump campaign. And it's about taxes.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLTICAL AD)
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE ACTOR #3: Harris not only supports taxing service workers' tips - news reports confirm Biden and Harris have weaponized the IRS to confiscate your tip money.
MARTIN: All right, let's take those separately. What is Harris' position on taxing service workers' tipped wages?
JACOBSON: So Trump actually was the first person who said that he does propose lifting the tax on tips. Shortly thereafter, Harris backed the same idea. So basically, the ad is misrepresenting what Harris' current position is.
MARTIN: And did the Biden administration weaponize the IRS? I'm just not really sure what he's talking about here in this ad. I mean, I think that he's talking about a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022, which called for hiring more IRS employees, but to confiscate your tip money - I think that's what this is about. So what about that?
JACOBSON: Yeah. So we have rated this false. You are correct that the Inflation Reduction Act did include funding to hire 86,000 new employees over a 10-year period, but those employees would not all be working in enforcement. And those that did work in enforcement would be told to focus on the wealthiest taxpayers, not on modest-income taxpayers who get tips.
MARTIN: Lou Jacobson is chief correspondent for PolitiFact. Lou, thank you so much for checking the facts with us.
JACOBSON: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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