An Arizona judge revived a ban on abortion that dates back to the mid-19th century, lifting a decades-old injunction that means the procedure is effectively illegal in the state at all times except when a pregnant person’s life is at risk.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson’s ruling was released Friday, a day before a law that restricts abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy was due to take effect. The conflicting restrictions on abortion had created confusion, with state Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) pushing to enforce the tougher prohibitions and Gov. Doug Ducey (R) previously insisting that the 15-week ban was the law of the land.
Johnson cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which established a fundamental right to abortion, as rationale for lifting the injunction. Roe had been the basis of the 1973 injunction that prevented bans on abortion from being enforced, Johnson ruled. And because the nation’s top court had returned decisions on the procedure to Congress and the states, that injunction can also be annulled, she wrote.
The Arizona law threatens abortion providers with between two and five years in prison. It originated from a 1864 law, and has no exception for victims of rape or incest. Some states did not update the laws on their books after Roe was decided in 1973, and the overturning of that decision has caused confusion from Michigan to West Virginia as to whether those laws still apply.
Johnson indicated that the older law, which was updated and codified in 1901, supersedes the recently passed law that was to take effect Saturday. “Most recently in 2022, the Legislature enacted a 15-week gestational age limitation on abortion. The legislature expressly included in the session law that the 15-week gestational age limitation does not ‘repeal’” the older ban, she wrote.
Abortion is now banned in these states. See where laws have changed.
Ducey’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday. Brnovich thanked Johnson on Twitter, saying that the court had provided “clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.”
Planned Parenthood Arizona, which was a plaintiff in the case, criticized the court for reviving an “archaic” law that it said would send “Arizonans back nearly 150 years.” The reproductive health organization, which can appeal the ruling, also said it “will never back down.”
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs said in a statement that she was “mourning” the decision and pledged to veto antiabortion legislation if elected.
Johnson’s ruling means the older abortion ban “is no longer unenforceable” and Brnovich’s position as the state’s chief law enforcement officer “opens the door to prosecutions under that law,” said Kaiponanea Matsumura, a family law professor at Loyola Marymount University who previously taught in Arizona.
Barbara Atwood, a law professor emerita at the University of Arizona, predicted further legal and legislative wrangling over abortion in Arizona.
The 1901 law “directly conflicts with many laws regulating abortion in Arizona enacted since 1973,” she said, including those that permit the procedure in emergencies such as pregnancies that can result in the loss of major organ function for pregnant women and other pregnant individuals.
Russia has nationalized a major factory that belonged to Renault and intends to use it to revive the famous Soviet-era Moskvitch car in what the French automaker categorized as a “responsible choice” for its thousands of employees in Russia.
The move appears to be the first major transfer of private assets into state hands after Russian officials threatened to nationalize Western businesses exiting over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I’ve decided to list the factory as the city’s asset and resume production under the historical brand Moskvitch,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced.
“We will open a new page in the history of the Moskvitch in 2022,” he added, vowing to keep “most” of the Renault plant’s staff and subcontractors.
An iconic Soviet brand, Moskvitch cars were ubiquitous on the streets of the Soviet Union for decades. The production company was declared bankrupt in 2006, 75 years after rolling out its first model and five years after producing its last vehicle.
In a statement carried by Reuters, Renault described the sale of its majority stake in Avtovaz to NAMI and 100% shares in Renault Russia to the city of Moscow as a “responsible choice.”
“Today, we have taken a difficult but necessary decision, and we are making a responsible choice toward our 45,000 employees in Russia,” CEO Luca de Meo was quoted as saying.
De Meo said the move preserved Renault’s performance and ability to return to Russia in the future under a different context.
Renault confirmed a non-cash writedown of nearly $2.29 billion to reflect the potential costs of suspending operations in Russia.
Renault began car production in Russia as part of a joint venture with the city of Moscow in 2005.
Renault, which had the most exposure to the Russian market among Western carmakers, suspended operations at its Moscow plant in March 2022 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The French company was also assessing options on its majority stake in Russia’s top carmaker Avtovaz.
Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry said Renault’s 68% stake in Avtovaz will transfer to the ministry’s automotive institute NAMI, which had taken part in creating a fleet of presidential vehicles.
The ministry said Renault will have the option to buy back its stake in Avtovaz, which will service Renault vehicles in Russia, within the next six years.
It did not indicate whether the same option exists for Renault’s nationalized plant in Moscow.
The comedy satire in which Volodymyr Zelenskiy unexpectedly becomes Ukraine’s president will be aired again on Netflix in the US.
The resurrection of the TV series Servant of the People comes amid a global outpouring of praise for the former comedian who is now leading his country’s fight against the Russian invasion. “You asked and it’s back,” Netflix announced.
On Tuesday, Zelenskiy received a standing ovation as he addressed the US Congress via video link with an impassioned plea for more weaponry and the establishment of a no-fly zone to help Ukraine survive the Russian invasion, which began on 24 February.
Before politics, Zelenskiy wrote and produced standup comedy shows, TV series and films, and sold tickets to live concerts.
Servant of the People sees Zelenskiy, who is now 44, play a teacher who unexpectedly becomes president after a video of him complaining about corruption goes viral.
Once elected, Zelenskiy’s character faces a difficult task to reform Ukraine, fight corruption and unify the nation despite resistance from politicians serving the interests of oligarchs. The show resonated with Ukrainians and audiences in other former Soviet countries
The first two seasons released in 2015 and 2017 were a hit. The series was also an integral part of Zelenskiy’s own triumphant presidential campaign in 2019.
The third season was released under the tagline The Choice in March 2019, just a few days before the first round of elections, and promotion of the show was planned to coincide with Zelenskiy’s real-life campaign. Clips from earlier seasons of the satire circulated on the campaign’s social media accounts, blurring the lines between Zelenskiy’s life and that of his on-screen character.
He was elected to the presidency in a landslide in 2019, securing more than 70% of the vote. Later that year, Zelenskiy’s personal fame and appeal helped his new party, named after the TV series, win parliamentary elections.
After Zelenskiy won the presidency, some of his friends and business partners from his film production business, Kvartal 95, joined his administration.
The French-German TV channel Arte has been showing Servant of the People online since 19 November, citing huge interest. Since the first days of the invasion, channels that have acquired the rights to air the series include Channel 4 in Britain, ANT 1 in Greece and PRO TV in Romania.
The series was first on Netflix from 2017 to 2021.
Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Will Forte returned to host the show for the first time Saturday, enlisting familiar faces to reprise his character MacGruber on a night when James Austin Johnson’s rambling Donald Trump appeared in the cold open.
Kate McKinnon kicked off the NBC show by parodying Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in a cold open that spoofed Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, tennis star Novak Djokovic and conservative author Candace Owens.
“The Ingraham Angle,” sponsored by a Paula Dean hummus substitute and a COVID-19 test that always comes up negative — even if you have it, begins with McKinnon grumbling about the first year of President Joe Biden’s term.
“Inflation’s out of control, gas is $19 a gallon and the Green M&M has been canceled just for being a whore,” she deadpanned.
She then welcomed Aidy Bryant as Cruz, who pledged to degrade himself to stay in Trump’s good graces.
Will Forte, a former cast member for Saturday Night Live, returned to the show by showing a familiar face in his role of MacGruber.Saturday Night Live
“My beard is like January 6th: shocking at first, but it’s been normalized,” the fake Texas senator said.
Pete Davidson played the anti-vaccination athlete Djokovic, who was asked about his COVID-19 related expulsion from the Australian Open.
“I never thought I would hear myself use deported in a bad way, but what happened?,” the fake Ingraham asked as she drooled over the Serb’s accented answer.
“I’m a fan of your sport, because in tennis love is bad,” she deadpanned.
McKinnon’s character also fawned over Owens, played by Ego Nwodim.
“It’s my greatest honor to fight for African Americans, no matter how many times they ask me to stop,” Nwodim said.
Johnson-as-Trump then delivered a free association rant that touched on booster shots, John Mayer, “How I Met Your Father,” Jason Momoa, Prada, and his ambition for another run at the White House in 2024.
From left to right –Damiano David and Ethan Torchio, host Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Thomas Raggi, and Victoria De Angelis pose for a group photo on the set of Saturday Night Live on January 20, 2022.Rosalind O’Connor/NBC
In his monologue, Forte, 51, who left “SNL” in 2010, complained he hadn’t been asked to host sooner, unlike contemporaries Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Myers, Adam Samberg and John Mulaney — a writer on the show who had taken center stage four times.
“Save the best for last right? Save the best for waaay last!,” Forte said. “But tonight it’s all about me,” he promised, as Wiig came out to steal his thunder, getting “more applause.”
Executive Producer Lorne Michaels then appeared with next week’s slated guest host Willem Dafoe, saying there had been a mistake and he meant to feature the dramatic actor Saturday, but his phone’s auto correct mistakenly texted “Will.”
Several pre-taped MacGruber bits reunited Forte with Wiig and Ryan Phillipe as the MacGyver-esque character’s assistants. MacGruber was more interested in burning masks and using unsanctioned COVID-19 treatments than deactivating bombs. He also dressed as the “QAnon shaman” and confused the terms “asymptomatic” and “anti-Semitic.”
“I feel like you’ve gone down some sort of alt-right misinformation rabbit hole,” Phillipe said, as their hideout exploded.
Will Forte, reunited with Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillipe, was more interested in burning masks and using unsanctioned COVID-19 treatments than deactivating bombs, playing his role as MacGruber.Twitter
In a Nickelodeon game show spoof, Forte played a sadistic host that reveled in insisting that Bryant (playing a little girl) dig a miniature flag from a spinning, oversized cream pie.
“The whip cream is adversity and the flag is your unfulfilled potential,” he told her.
Kenan Thompson’s pretentious pipe-smoking classic film reviewer returned with a fresh take on the Ingrid Bergman classic “Gaslight,” as Forte and Wiig updated scenes from the 1944 psychological thriller.
Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner played a couple who arranged a threesome with a sleazy Cialis-popping Forte character, only to find that the interloper was only interested in Gardner.
In his monologue, Will Forte, who left “SNL” in 2010, complained he hadn’t been asked to host sooner, unlike contemporaries like Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen.Saturday Night Live
“Remember it’s a three-way not a me-way,” the creepy character said to Gardner’s delight and Day’s dismay.
On “Weekend Update,” Davidson joined Colin Jost to poke fun at their new purchase — a decommissioned Staten Island ferry vessel that they planned to turn into a performance venue.
“Even the mayor tweeted about it which is how I found out we had a new mayor,” Davidson said. “What happened to Bloomberg?”
Sarah Sherman also drew big laughs by accusing Jost of being an elitist pervert who was out of touch with younger struggling comedians.
Additional “Update” jokes mocked Biden’s two-hour press conference (“that’s how long it took to list everything that went wrong”) and other recent current events.
“The oldest person in America died at the age of 115. It’s a powerful reminder to always test your cocaine for fentanyl,” fake co-anchor Michael Che cracked.
Forte and Wiig teamed up again to play a hokey country-and-western duo whose songs kept getting more avant-garde as their infomercial continued.
Italian glam rockers Måneskin energized Studio 8H with lively performances of the Four Seasons’ tune “I’m Begging” and their hit “I Wanna Be Your Slave.”
“SNL” was slated to return to the airwaves next week with Dafoe on hosting duties and musical guest Katy Perry rounding out the season’s 12th episode.
Passersby wearing protective face masks walk past an electronic board displaying world stock indexes, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Tokyo, Japan November 1, 2021. REUTERS/Issei Kato
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SYDNEY, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Stocks fell on Friday after Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi said it would delist in New York, renewing concern about U.S.-China tensions and tech regulation, while oil headed for a sixth consecutive weekly drop on Omicron and rate hike worries.
S&P 500 futures fell about 0.5%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng (.HSI) dropped 1.3%, dragged by big tech names. MSCI’s index of Asia shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) fell 0.7%.
The risk-sensitive Australian dollar fell 0.3% and at just below 71 cents is close to a one-year low.
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Didi (DIDI.N) ran afoul of Chinese regulators by pushing ahead with its $4.4 billion U.S. IPO in July and said on Weibo it was looking to move its listing to Hong Kong. read more
“Delistings starting to happen gives some jitters over the uncertainty as to how this impacts on the broader U.S.-China picture,” said Bank of Singapore analyst Moh Siong Sim.
The news about Didi comes a day after Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery firm Grab (GRAB.O) slid more than 20% on its Nasdaq debut. The listing is the biggest on Wall Street by a Southeast Asian firm. read more
More broadly markets have lurched around on little hard news about Omicron this week, driving the CBOE volatility index (.VIX) toward its biggest one-week leap since the pandemic chaos of February 2020. Short-term yields have also jumped as investors bet on higher rates, even with the Omicron uncertainty.
Traders will need to wait at least another week or so for an early read on the variant’s virulence or vaccine resistance. U.S. labour data due later on Friday is also in focus as a guide to rates.
Benchmark brent crude futures finished higher overnight at $69.67 a barrel, but have dropped more than 3% this week and are down more than 18% from October’s three-year high.
So far, in the absence of Omicron details some governments have scrambled to shut borders anyway. But other policymakers – most notably the Federal Reserve – are cautiously proceeding apace with plans to move away from crisis-mode responses.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said central bankers will talk about a faster pullback to bond buying at this month’s meeting and stop describing inflation as transitory. Oil cartel OPEC is going ahead with planned production increases. read more
“The Fed is not ignoring the threat from Omicron, but are choosing not to let it delay policy responses that suggest a more business as usual outlook,” said Commonwealth Bank of Australia strategist Tobin Gorey.
“OPEC+ has done a similar thing,” he added. “Neither has iced their planned policy changes…and both are perhaps examples that suggest lockdown responses to epidemic surges are becoming less likely.”
The bond market’s response to Powell’s hawkish shift has been to jack up short term rates and push down long ones, reckoning that sooner hikes will end up curbing future inflation and growth, and sharply flattening the U.S. yield curve.
Two-year Treasury yields were steady in early Asia trade for a weekly gain of nearly 10 basis points.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields , on the other hand, have dropped nearly 6 bps to 1.4291% this week and 30-year yields are down 7.3 bps to 1.7545%.
“It’s inflation, not growth, which is making the Fed accelerate tightening plans,” said Kit Juckes, a strategist at Societe Generale in London.
“For the first time in ages, the risk to this U.S. economic cycle is that it comes to an end sooner than consensus forecasts expect,” he said, forecasting that the U.S. dollar’s upward momentum could slow into a peak around the middle of next year.
Investors sold riskier currencies on Friday. The risk-sensitive Australian and New Zealand dollars lost about 0.3% each. The euro was steady at $1.1298 and the yen firm at 113.08 per dollar.
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Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Sam Holmes
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
The Hubble Space Telescope continues to bounce back from its latest glitch.
In late October, the famous space observatory suffered a problem with the synchronization of its internal messaging, causing all five of its main scientific instruments to go into a protective “safe mode.”
Hubble team members managed to bring one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online on Nov. 7. And they just scored another success, recovering the observatory’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on Sunday (Nov. 21), NASA officials wrote in an update Monday (Nov. 22). The WFC3 is scheduled to resume science observations on Tuesday (Nov. 23), agency officials added.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
The Hubble team recovered the ACS and WFC3 without making significant changes to their parameters. But engineers have been devising and testing potential changes as they’ve worked to bring the instruments back, while investigating the root cause of the synchronization issue as well.
“These changes would allow the instruments to handle several missed synchronization messages while continuing to operate normally if they occur in the future,” NASA officials wrote in Monday’s update.
“These changes will first be applied to another instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, to further protect its sensitive far-ultraviolet detector,” they added. “It will take the team several weeks to complete the testing and upload the changes to the spacecraft.”
The WFC3 is Hubble’s most heavily used instrument, representing more than one-third of its observing time, NASA officials said. The WFC3 was installed by spacewalking astronauts in 2009, during the last of five servicing missions to Hubble.
Those missions repaired, maintained and upgraded the telescope, which launched to Earth orbit in April 1990. Such attention explains how Hubble has remained so active and productive for more than 30 years.
Still, the scope has begun to show some signs of its advanced age recently. For example, the entire observatory went offline for more than a month this summer after suffering a glitch with its main payload computer. The Hubble team eventually fixed that problem by switching to backup hardware.
Hubble’s five main science instruments today are the ACS, WFC3, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. The telescope’s fine guidance sensors can collect scientific data as well.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
Risk appetite returns as strong earnings lift Wall Street
Euro firmer against dollar ahead of ECB policy decision
Musk hints Tesla will accept bitcoin as payment again
TOKYO, July 22 (Reuters) – The safe-harbour U.S. dollar and yen were on the back foot on Thursday, after pulling back from multi-month highs amid a recovery in risk appetite as strong earnings lifted Wall Street stocks.
Cryptocurrencies held gains after Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk said the company would “most likely” resume accepting bitcoin for payment. read more
The dollar index , which measures the currency against six major peers, stood at 92.770 after pulling back from a 3 1/2-month high of 93.194 touched on Wednesday.
The yen traded at 129.950 per euro , from an almost four-month top of 128.610 earlier this week, and at 81.07 to Australia’s dollar , from a 5 1/2-month peak of 79.85.
“Strong earnings have swept away Delta concerns in the U.S.,” weighing on haven currencies, National Australia Bank analyst Tapas Strickland wrote in a note to clients.
“The consensus is that (the Delta strain) does not pose an immediate risk to the recovery,” delaying reopening by three months at the most as countries ramp up vaccination drives in response, he said.
Sterling traded at $1.3717, recovering from a 5 1/2-month trough of $1.35725 reached on Tuesday, despite rising Delta variant cases in Britain and confusion about the lifting of restrictions in England.
The Aussie changed hands at $0.7350, from an eight-month low of $0.72895 the previous day, even as coronavirus cases spiked despite half the Australian population being under lockdown. read more
The euro stood at $1.1789, rising off Wednesday’s 3-1/2-month low of $1.1752 ahead of a closely watched European Central Bank policy decision later in the global day.
Policymakers will implement for the first time changes to their strategy and are all but certain to promise an even longer period of stimulus to make good on its commitment to boost inflation. read more
Analysts generally see ECB dovishness weakening the euro over the medium-term.
“On balance, the ECB’s new inflation target suggests monetary policy will remain ultra‑accommodative for an even longer period of time,” which will act as a headwind for the euro, Commonwealth Bank of Australia strategists Kim Mundy and Carol Kong wrote in a research note.
“Indeed, we expect the ECB will be one of the last central banks under our coverage to tighten policy.”
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin held Wednesday’s 7.9% jump – the biggest since mid-June – to trade just north of$32,000.
Rival ether traded slightly below $2,000 following a 12% surge.
The Hubble Space Telescope has powered on once again! NASA was able to successfully switch to a backup computer on the observatory on Friday (July 16) following weeks of computer problems.
On June 13, Hubble shut down after a payload computer from the 1980s that handles the telescope’s science instruments suffered a glitch. Now, over a month since Hubble ran into issues, which the Hubble team thinks were caused by the spacecraft’s Power Control Unit (PCU), NASA switched to backup hardware and was able to switch the scope back on.
With Hubble back online with this backup hardware, the Hubble team is keeping a close watch to make sure that everything works correctly, according to a statement from NASA.
Read more: Hubble trouble is latest glitch in space telescope’s long and storied history Related: The Hubble Space Telescope and 30 years that transformed our view of the universe
“So far so good – just so proud of the @NASAHubble team as I received the updates all day. Assuming continued progress, Hubble will be in science mode later this weekend! Looking forward to that first “after” picture,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the science mission directorate at NASA tweeted following the news that Hubble was on the road to recovery.
So far so good – just so proud of the @NASAHubble team as I received the updates all day. Assuming continued progress, Hubble will be in science mode later this weekend! Looking forward to that first “after” picture.. 🛰🌌 https://t.co/waRN7gX28cJuly 16, 2021
See more
Included in this switch to backup hardware, the team brought the backup PCU online as well as the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), which is on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, according to the statement. The PCU diverts power to the SI C&DH while the CU/SDF formats and then sends data and commands throughout the scope.
Other pieces of hardware were also swapped to their backup versions to allow the telescope to function.
After carefully switching to the alternative hardware on Hubble, the team turned on the scope’s backup payload computer, loaded it with flight software and returned Hubble to “normal operations mode,” according to the statement.
In addition to monitoring the scope and its “new” hardware following this change-up, the Hubble team has also begun recovering Hubble’s science instruments from the “safe mode” configuration that they entered following the June 13 glitch.
Getting all of the science instruments back online will take more than a day, according to the NASA statement, because the team has to ensure that the instruments are at a stable temperature and are able to run safely. After the telescope’s science instruments are out of safe mode, the Hubble team will calibrate them and then return to science work, according to the statement.
This is not the first time that Hubble has had technical issues in space, but the telescope, which launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990, has not been serviced by astronauts since 2009, with the shuttle program ending just two years later. Despite some technical bumps in the road, like a flaw with its primary mirror that was fixed in 1993, Hubble has consistently captured some of the most breathtaking views of the cosmos ever seen.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Former President Donald J. Trump, in his first public appearance since leaving the White House, mounted inaccurate attacks against his successor and revived familiar falsehoods in a speech on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In a speech replete with false and misleading claims, Mr. Trump again repeated the lie that he had won the 2020 election, falsely claiming that President Biden and the Democrats had “just lost the White House.”
Here’s a fact check.
What Mr. Trump Said
“We brought illegal crossings to historic lows.”
False. Apprehensions of unauthorized migrants are the best gauge of illegal border crossings. Under Mr. Trump, there were 200,000 apprehensions at the southern border in the 2020 fiscal year; just over 850,000 in 2019; just under 400,000 in 2018; and about 300,000 in 2017. None of those numbers are unprecedented.
The figure for the 2020 fiscal year — during which a pandemic began — was the lowest since the 1970s, while the figures for Mr. Trump’s first two years in office were on par with the numbers under President Barack Obama.
what Mr. Trump said
“First Fauci said you don’t need masks, no masks, no good. Then all of a sudden, now he wants double masks.”
This is misleading/exaggerated. Initial government guidance on mask-wearing was muddled, but health agencies promoted the practice long before Mr. Biden took office.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in the early days of the pandemic that it did not recommend that the general public wear masks. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, said last March that “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” because it could lead to shortages for health care workers, but he was “not against” the practice.
But by April, when the virus had spread more rapidly across the country, Dr. Fauci and the C.D.C. had begun to encourage wearing cloth masks. (Mr. Trump, meanwhile, eschewed wearing a mask and mocked Mr. Biden for doing so into the fall.)
Dr. Fauci has previously said that Mr. Trump misrepresented his remarks, noting that he had been consistently “begging” people to wear masks for months.
what Mr. Trump said
“He has effectively ordered a shutdown of ICE, halting virtually all deportations. Everyone, murderers, everybody.”
False. The Biden administration ordered a 100-day pause on deportations, but it did not apply to “murderers” and everybody. In a memo in February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would “focus the agency’s civil immigration enforcement and removal resources on threats to national security, border security and public safety.” That would include anyone convicted of an aggravated felony, such as murder.
Moreover, deporting immigrants is not the agency’s sole function. As ICE has scaled back removal operations, it has continued to conduct investigations into other illegal activity.
what Mr. Trump said
“Border security is just one of the many issues on which the new administration has already betrayed the American people. He didn’t talk about this stuff. I debated him. He wasn’t talking about this. He wasn’t — what he signed with those executive orders, they weren’t things that were discussed.”
This is misleading. Immigration policy was briefly discussed during the second presidential debate. Mr. Biden was not asked about and did not mention most of his proposals, but Mr. Trump is wrong that Mr. Biden’s immigration executive orders are a surprise. In fact, Mr. Trump explicitly criticized and ran ads attacking those very proposals.
Mr. Trump repeatedly warned of — and often mischaracterized — Mr. Biden’s plans to increase refugee admissions, place a moratorium on deportations and create a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.
what Mr. Trump said
“And when I asked the questions on television, on the debate, Chris Wallace in this case and others refused to let him answer.”
This is misleading. During the first presidential debate, Mr. Trump repeatedly interrupted Mr. Wallace, the Fox News anchor and moderator, to ask Mr. Biden questions, and then repeatedly interrupted Mr. Biden as he tried to answer them — prompting Mr. Wallace to intervene in several instances. But none of those questions were about immigration policy.
Mr. Trump interrupted to ask Mr. Biden about Roe v. Wade; whether he agreed with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on health care; whether he was in “favor of law and order”; and about packing the Supreme Court, the H1N1 flu pandemic and his son Hunter. Mr. Biden made an attempt to answer all those questions.
what Mr. Trump said
“With me at the top of the ticket, not a single Republican member of Congress lost their race for the first time in decades.”
False. While no Republican incumbent in the House lost their race to a Democrat, Republican incumbents lost two Senate seats in the November elections while Mr. Trump was a presidential candidate. Martha McSally of Arizona and Cory Gardner of Colorado lost their re-election bids to Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper.
Other claims
Mr. Trump repeated a number of claims The New York Times has previously debunked:
He falsely said that “nobody knows anything about” refugees and “we don’t have crime records, we don’t have health records” for them. (Background checks for refugees take one to two years to complete.)
He claimed that the Keystone XL pipeline created “42,000 great-paying jobs.” (This is an estimate of the temporary jobs the pipeline would support in two years.)
He misleadingly claimed that Mr. Biden reversed his position from opposing fracking during the Democratic primary to saying “we love fracking” during the general election. (Mr. Biden has consistently said he opposes fracking on public lands.)
He falsely blamed “the windmill calamity” for blackouts in Texas, and criticized windmills for killing birds. (Wind power is not the chief reason for the power outages, and birds die far more frequently from collisions with buildings and cars than with windmills.)
He misleadingly claimed that the United States became the top “energy superpower on earth” under his watch. (The United States became the world’s top oil producer in 2013 and overtook Russia as the world’s leading gas producer as far back as 2009.)
He falsely claimed credit for the “strongest economy in the history of the world.” (Metrics did not show a historical record.)
He misrepresented tariffs as “taking billions and billions of dollars from China.” (Tariffs are paid for by American consumers, not China.)
He claimed “we used to lose $504 billion trade deficit with China.” (This was a reference to the trade deficit in goods — which does not include services and is not a “loss” — with China, which grew to $538 billion under his watch.)
He falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants and dead people are voting in “voluminous” numbers. (There is no evidence of this.)
He falsely claimed that there were “more votes than people” in Detroit and Pennsylvania. (This is not true of either location.)
Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.
