Fact-checking Trump's address to Congress

CNN

05-03-2025

President Donald Trump made numerous false claims in his Tuesday speech to a joint session of Congress. The falsehoods spanned a variety of topics, including the Department of Government Efficiency, inflation and immigration.
Here is a fact check of some of Trump's statements:
Small-business optimism: President Donald Trump said during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday that 'small-business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded — a 41-point jump.'
This claim needs context. If Trump was referring to the commonly cited NFIB Small Business Optimism Index (his spokespeople didn't respond to a previous CNN request to clarify), his claim about a 41-point increase appears to be a reference to one component — the percentage of small-business owners expecting the economy to improve. That measure did soar a net 41 percentage points from pre-election October to post-election November.
And Trump didn't mention that the total index then declined in January, to a level that is still high but lower than it was under Trump in September 2020 and October 2020 – less than five years ago.
From CNN's Daniel Dale
Trump and 'the Green New Scam': In his speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed that he terminated the 'Green New Scam.'
This claim is inaccurate in various ways. Former President Joe Biden didn't pass the original 'Green New Deal,' a nonbinding resolution introduced by progressive congressional Democrats in 2019 that was never turned into law. Trump hasn't yet terminated the major environmental law Biden did pass, which is what Trump might be referring to as 'the Green New Scam.' Trump has previously claimed the policy cost $9 trillion.
Biden signed a law in 2022 known as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, containing $430 billion in climate and clean energy spending and tax credits. Independent estimates later raised the cost of that law to over $1 trillion by 2032, but the IRA actually saved the government $240 billion because of its increased tax enforcement and prescription drug savings, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And importantly, the IRA's tax credits spurred companies to build new factories and solar and wind farms in the US, creating jobs with it.
Trump and congressional Republicans haven't killed the law, although they are aiming to take parts of it out later this year. Trump has effectively killed other climate policies Biden imposed through executive order, but it will take an act of Congress to reverse the former president's signature climate bill.
From CNN's Ella Nilsen
Illegal border crossings: Trump claimed that, since taking office again, he has already achieved the lowest number of illegal border crossings 'ever recorded.' That's false.
He could have accurately said the number of Border Patrol apprehensions at the southern border in February – the first full month of his second term – is the lowest in many decades, at least if it's true that the number was 8,326, as he claimed on social media before the speech. But official federal statistics show there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest border in some of the months of the early 1960s.
From CNN's Daniel Dale and Devan Cole
Weaponizing the Justice Department: Trump claimed that then-President Joe Biden used his office to 'viciously' prosecute him. That's false.
Trump's two federal indictments were brought by a special counsel, Jack Smith. Smith was appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, but that is not proof that Biden was involved in the prosecution effort, much less that Biden personally ordered the indictments. Garland had said that he would resign if Biden ever asked him to act against Trump but that he was sure that would never happen. For Trump's part, he has never provided any evidence that Biden was personally involved in the federal prosecutions.
The two cases were dropped by Smith after Trump was reelected.
From CNN's Daniel Dale and Devan Cole