In an online ad viewed millions of times, Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico appears to be wearing a dress and singing about transgender children.

Citizens for Sanity, a conservative nonprofit group, published the ad, showing Talarico wearing an outfit similar to Julie Andrews’ in “The Sound of Music.” In the ad, he sings a loose parody of the movie’s song “My Favorite Things,” with revised lyrics:

“Boys in white dresses with blue satin sashes, girls dosed with hormones ’til they grow mustaches, changing the gender of all your offspring, these are a few of my favorite things.”

The group released another ad that portrayed Talarico as a disheveled preacher standing in the middle of the street, with a sign around his neck that read, “God is nonbinary.”

“Jesus Christ was a radical feminist. He helped me reckon with my whiteness, my masculinity,” Talarico appears to proclaim in the ad as a woman hurries three children past, warning them not to make eye contact. 

The ads present a lifelike Talarico, but the events were not real. They were generated with artificial intelligence. It’s part of a changing scene in political advertising, and experts worry about an inundated public trying to make sense of what’s real.

These Talarico ads were among six Citizens for Sanity posted over several days with AI-generated content mocking the candidate. The group didn’t respond to our questions for this story, but its ads follow a series of videos in other races across the country that have contained AI, including a few from the Texas primaries, where Democrats and Republicans alike were using the technology.

“We’re almost six months out from the midterms and it’s already safe to say that AI-generated political content will play a bigger role than it did in 2024,” said Adrian Shelley, Texas director of Public Citizen. “What the actual impact will be remains to be seen.” 

Texas bans political deepfakes 30 days before an election; breaking the law would be a Class A misdemeanor. But now, months before the midterm election, organizations are using the technology to create their ads.

It’s hard to say how effective the Texas law is for voters already encountering deepfakes and disinformation, said Zelly Martin, a University of Tampa assistant professor of communication. “A lot of the damage is already going to have been done at that point.”

Ads exaggerate positions, amplify unsupported narratives

As of June 22, most of the AI ads remained on Citizens for Sanity’s X profile. On Facebook, they gained roughly 1.4 million impressions, or the number of times an ad appeared on a screen, according to data from the Meta Ad Library.

“Campaigns can benefit from technology that is able to depict their opponents as appearing to do or say anything at all,” Shelley said. “Before AI, these sorts of falsehoods would require a full movie studio for their creation, and few candidates would have gone to such trouble for results that are still easily detectable as fake. Times have changed.”

Some of Citizens for Sanity’s AI ads highlight real things Talarico said but omit context.

One ad showed Talarico in front of a border fence, sweeping and rolling out a mat that read, “Everybody is welcome,” prompting cheers from a group of men with tattoos and guns.

(Screenshots from Citizens for Sanity X post)

Talarico previously said the southern border should be like the country’s front porch, with a “giant welcome mat out front, and a lock on the door.” His critics, including his Republican opponent Ken Paxton, have often misrepresented the quote by omitting the “lock on the door” part.

Another Citizens for Sanity AI-generated ad featured two women, one talking about a new language called “Talarico.” It was taking aim at Talarico’s use of the phrase “neighbors with a uterus,” rather than “women,” when talking about reproductive issues. 

Other ads exaggerate or mislead on his positions. The “favorite things” ad makes it look like Talarico supports “changing the gender of all your offspring,” but that’s inaccurate. In a June 8 interview, Talarico said he opposes gender reassignment surgery for minors.

The claim that Talarico “loves trans children” comes from an August 2023 interview on “Superbloom.”

The interviewer asked Talarico what he loves besides family and friends, and he replied, “I love — and I’m just saying this because it’s on my mind — the trans children who showed up yesterday at the State Capitol to advocate for their humanity. They shouldn’t have to, but it was an inspiration to watch.”

(Screenshots from Citizens for Sanity X posts)

We asked Talarico’s campaign about the AI ads. Spokesperson JT Ennis said: “Ken Paxton and special interests in DC know they can’t rely on facts or defeat our movement to take on the broken, corrupt political system on its merits — so they’re distorting James Talarico’s likeness with AI to fuel their misleading attacks.”

Talarico has been the subject of deepfake videos before; in March, the National Republican Senatorial Committee published an ad that showed an AI-generated Talarico reading X posts he has written. The X posts are real, but the clips of Talarico reading them are not.

On June 9, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted an image of what appeared to be a female version of Talarico. Google’s AI tool Gemini found that “most or all of this image was edited or generated with Google AI.”

Increasing AI use in political ads is a shift from 2024

Despite fears that AI would upend the 2024 national election, it did not play an outsized role in the spread of misinformation. Bad actors still largely relied on traditional techniques, such as circulating misrepresented and staged imagery.

A November 2025 study found that campaigns and political actors were wary of using generative AI because they were concerned the media and the public would negatively respond. Now, there are signs that attitude is changing.

Because President Donald Trump’s administration uses AI imagery in its regular communication, “that’s like a really normalizing force, when someone who is so dominant in culture and the leader of the country is using that technology,” said Isabel Linzer, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

Candidates will have to spend more time responding to false narratives when they should be focusing on getting their own message out, Martin said. 

And as the public is inundated with AI-generated content, she said, voters will have “a harder and harder time telling truth from fiction.” 

My family’s morning routine is usually pretty ordinary. We wake up early, drink some coffee and get our 1-year-old ready for daycare. But one Wednesday morning last month, I found myself uttering to my wife a sentence that sounded frankly surreal to both of us: “Just to let you know, I’m about to call Trump.”

Then, hoping to avoid any urgent diaper events, I ducked into the next room and dialed up the president.

I’d been trying to reach President Donald Trump for a few days. Each time, my heart would start pounding. After nearly two decades as a journalist, I’m reasonably used to talking to powerful people. But cold-calling the president of the United States — on his personal cellphone — made me feel like a cub reporter all over again.

“Hello?” a voice said on the other end of the line. This time, the president had picked up.

I introduced myself and told Trump I’m a reporter with ProPublica.

“I’m writing a story about a big supporter of yours in the oil industry, Jeff Hildebrand,” I said. “Can I ask what you think about him?”

By this point I had spent months reporting on Hildebrand, a little-known billionaire — and major Trump donor — who owns an empire of low-producing oil and gas wells across the country. “Stripper wells” like these contribute relatively little to the U.S. energy supply but emit vast amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.

By calling the president, I was hoping for some color on his relationship with Hildebrand. He had, after all, named Hildebrand’s wife ambassador to Costa Rica. My reporting so far had also revealed that the administration was gathering advice from oil industry groups backed by Hildebrand, and that it planned to weaken environmental regulations on stripper wells — potentially making Hildebrand even richer.

“I hear he does a good job,” Trump replied. “Don’t know him very well. OK?”

At first I thought the exchange undermined my story, making Hildebrand seem less central to the president’s energy policies than I’d suspected. But I realized that Trump’s comments illustrated something important about how this administration works. Trump appeared to have little clue about Hildebrand’s business, but when I mentioned that it was threatened by the “Biden methane rules,” the president was quick to respond, “Certainly we do the opposite of what Biden did.”

Trump, in other words, may be only vaguely aware of the people and groups helping to rewrite all manner of consequential policies. But what matters in Washington right now are not so much technical policy details but support for the president and an affinity with the broader ideological project: Deregulate everything.

Even if the president is only loosely familiar with Hildebrand, the oil tycoon is someone you should know about. As a climate reporter, I’m always looking for ways to make the seemingly abstract problem of global warming feel more concrete, approachable and even personal. With Hildebrand, I felt I had found a compelling character who is also the poster boy for a hugely consequential issue: Stripper wells collectively contribute just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas, but scientists have found they’re responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution. That means they play an outsize role in climate change, which is amplifying heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

My previous reporting has shown that a former lobbyist for Hildebrand’s company — who now has a top post at the Environmental Protection Agency — has been rewriting methane regulations with advice from the oil industry. (An EPA spokesperson said the official “fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter.”)

The EPA’s press office declined to comment on the details of its plans but confirmed it is working on a proposal to “provide relief” to the oil industry, saying in a statement, “We heard consistently from American oil and natural gas producers (shocker that we meet with stakeholders) that the Biden-Harris Administration’s oil and gas methane regulations were unworkable and unnecessarily restricted American energy dominance.”

In the story we ultimately published, I took a deep dive into how Hildebrand made his fortune, racking up dozens of environmental violations across the country, and now stands to benefit from the rollback that his former lobbyist is carrying out.

I asked Hildebrand multiple times for an interview, even sending a letter to his home, but he didn’t respond. A spokesperson for his company, Hilcorp, said its operations complied with state and federal rules, adding that Hilcorp was “proud” of recent efforts to reduce its methane emissions.

As with many climate change stories, it can all sound pretty bleak. But in a world where global warming fixes can seem impossibly daunting, limiting methane pollution from stripper wells is the rare low-hanging fruit, Andrew Logan of Ceres, a climate advocacy group, told me. “If you could lose 6% of production and cut emissions in half, who wouldn’t make that trade?” Logan said.

Instead, the Trump administration is doubling down on the forms of energy that contribute most to global warming. In January, the president invited Hildebrand and two dozen other energy executives to the White House to discuss investing in Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry — which emits more methane, relative to production, than almost any other major oil producing country, according to the International Energy Agency.

Many of the executives couched their enthusiasm with caveats. ExxonMobil’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestable” without changes to its legal system. The head of ConocoPhillips wanted U.S. government financing.

But Hildebrand had already seen how loyalty could be rewarded. Even though he had no notable operations outside the U.S., he hunched toward a microphone and said in a halting voice, “Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to go to rebuilding the infrastructure in Venezuela.”

“That’s good,” Trump said. “You’ll be very happy.”

President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed U.S. Rep. John James, who is running for governor in Michigan.

“It is my Great Honor to endorse America First Congressman, John James, who is running to become the next Governor of the Beautiful State of Michigan!” the president declared in part of a Truth Social post. “John James has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Governor of Michigan — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!”

James thanked Trump, calling him “The greatest President of my lifetime” in social media posts.

SCOOP: TRUMP ALLY KID ROCK JUMPS INTO KEY GOVERNOR’S RACE WITH HIGH-PROFILE ENDORSEMENT

After Trump issued the endorsement message on Monday, Michigan state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt dropped out of the Michigan Republican gubernatorial primary and endorsed James.

“This campaign has always been about the people of Michigan and standing with President Trump to defeat the Democrats in November. Today, I am suspending my campaign and proudly joining President Trump in endorsing John James as Michigan’s next Governor,” Nesbitt declared in social media posts. “A divided primary only helps Democrats. It’s time to unite. I’m asking every one of you who supported this campaign to stand with me behind John James, roll up our sleeves, and deliver a Republican victory in November.”

James responded to Nesbitt’s move, asserting in part of a post on X, “When President Trump endorsed this campaign, Aric Nesbitt did exactly what a true Michigan CONSERVATIVE should do: He united behind the President and our mission to Save Michigan from the Libs and the RINOs destroying our Republic!”

FORMER DETROIT MAYOR BLOWS GOVERNOR’S RACE WIDE OPEN IN SURPRISE MOVE

Businessman Perry Johnson, who is also running in the Michigan Republican gubernatorial primary, suggested that the president had made the wrong move by backing James.

“President Trump received bad advice yet again. John James is a two-time statewide loser, and Michigan has already seen this movie before: Trump-backed statewide candidates like John James, Tudor Dixon, Matt DePerno, and Kristina Karamo all came up short when it mattered most,” Johnson asserted in social media posts.

TUDOR DIXON RETURNS TO MICHIGAN POLITICS WITH NEW PAC AIMED AT BOOSTING REPUBLICANS IN KEY BATTLEGROUND

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Former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who is also running, asserted in a post on X, “Like @POTUS, I’ve won Michigan twice by building a coalition of working Michiganders who are sick of being screwed by the elites. I’m proud to have voted for President Trump in each of his last three elections, to have donated thousands of dollars to support his campaigns, and to have been hired to represent him as his election integrity lawyer in Michigan in 2024. I look forward to being President Trump’s favorite Governor when I win.”

As President Donald Trump and the Iranian government reached a written agreement to end the war, Democrats honed in on a section that appeared to promise hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to Iran.

“With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in an X post. “Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran.”

Trump dismissed such concerns.

“There is no 300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.,” he said in a June 18 Truth Social post. “That’s Fake News! All there is for the U.S. is Success, Lower Oil Prices, and Victory.”

It’s hard to assess the accuracy of Trump’s statement.

Although numerous news organizations published a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, they said it was given to them by a source or senior U.S. official who provided it on condition of anonymity. 

The memo cited read, “The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least U.S.D. 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The Trump administration has since acknowledged a fund but said no taxpayer money will go toward it. 

When a reporter asked Vice President JD Vance on June 18 who would fund the $300 billion, Vance said, “There is a great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly.” 

He cited the United Arab Emirates as an example. If the country wanted to invest in building a power plant, “that actually is impossible right now because of the way that U.S. sanctions work,” Vance said. “And so what we’re saying is that if you behave, and if the Emiratis themselves want to build a power plant, then we will do the sanctions relief necessary to make that possible.”

He said he assumed private money would play a role, but even that “assumes a transformation in Iranian behavior.”

Reuters cited an anonymous source when it reported June 17 that half of the fund had already been committed as “a private investment vehicle” involving no government money or grants.

Companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa had agreed to invest in energy, manufacturing and transport, for example, Reuters said.

PolitiFact found no public information on which specific entities have pledged investments. The deal could take up to 60 days to finalize, the memorandum read. 

A separate provision in the memorandum said that the U.S. will “make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is working with Qatar to give Iran access to billions of dollars in frozen funds. 

But the money that would be freed up from lifting those sanctions would be entirely separate from the proposed $300 billion investment fund, according to Reuters’ reporting.

We contacted the White House for further clarification but did not receive a response. 

Have you called 911 for a medical emergency in Connecticut? ProPublica and The Connecticut Mirror, two nonprofit newsrooms, are examining emergency medical services in the state and want to hear from those who have had firsthand experiences seeking care. 

We would like to learn more about your story and if you faced a long wait for emergency care to arrive. 

We know people in some towns have had to wait up to 20 minutes for an ambulance, but the numbers don’t show what happens as time drags. And they can’t explain the impact on your life in the weeks and months following delayed emergency care. We’ve heard that emergency medical services are often underresourced, but in order to understand what the strained system actually looks like for communities across the state, we need to hear from you. 

If you have called 911 for a medical emergency in Connecticut for yourself or someone else, we want to hear your experience. 

You can fill out our brief form to share your experience. Our reporters read through every response and may follow up with you. You can also email CT Mirror reporter Jenna Carlesso and ProPublica reporter Cassandra Garibay at [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns. 

Don’t live in Connecticut but know someone who does? You can also help by sending this form to them. 

If you work or volunteer for emergency medical services in Connecticut, we also want to hear from you. Please fill out our EMS experience form.

FIRST ON FOX: A U.S. official involved with the U.S.-Iran peace negotiations said that Vice President JD Vance made “great progress” in the talks, adding that “foreign propaganda” spread a falsehood that the prime minister of Qatar snubbed Vance.

The U.S. official told Fox News Digital that Iranian state media originated reports of Vance being snubbed by the Qatari prime minister and Iranian leadership threatening to walk away from the negotiating table.

“The vice president and the U.S. delegation departed Switzerland today after making great progress and engaging in historic talks that lasted well into the late hours over the weekend,” a U.S. official present at the talks told Fox News Digital. “The negotiations set the framework for continued talks so that the unmatched efforts of the president can lead to a deal that’s best for the American people.”

“Those parroting foreign propaganda serve no one except the bad faith actors that want to derail negotiations,” the official added.

IRAN’S UNPRECEDENTED ‘WHOLE-REGIME’ DELEGATION AT US DEAL TALKS SIGNALS ONE GOAL: EXPERT

As Vance and White House officials deliberated a peace agreement at the Bürgenstock resort on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, a CBS poll on Sunday showed that an overwhelming 78% of Americans say that the conflict between the U.S. and Iran should come to an end.

Reports from Iranian state media created confusion about the progress of the peace talks in Switzerland, with critics alleging the Qataris snubbed Vance after Qatar’s prime minister and chief negotiator, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, walked past Vance and warmly greeted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif instead. 

“The U.S. delegation had just spent hours with the Qataris and there was no need to re-greet someone having just spent hours with,” a U.S. official said. “The decision to give statements together before the meeting was done impromptu, which is why it wasn’t a staged greeting.”

TRUMP AGAIN SAYS DEAL IS CLOSE, THEN CONFIRMS A LAST-MINUTE AGREEMENT WITH IRAN, BUT DETAILS STILL SECRET

In an interview today with Qatar’s official media outlet, Al Jazeera, Al Thani denied snubbing Vance, saying he had just spent hours with Vance and hadn’t yet greeted Sharif. He blamed the media for misrepresenting the encounter. “And they just made the issue too big,” he said.

Prospects of a peace agreement have already shown signs of life in the U.S., even without a final deal. The New York Times reported oil prices dipping on Monday amid expectations Vance would secure peace during the talks in Switzerland. 

Critics of Vance have been vocal in the media about the vice president’s handling of the talks, echoing a sentiment among protesters that have been supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran since the onset of hostilities earlier this year. Some critics allege that Vance is surrendering to the Iranians and that the Iranians are getting more out of the peace deal than the U.S.

FAR-LEFT NETWORK ACTIVATES TO FLY IRAN’S FLAG OVER AMERICA IN VICTORY AND WAGE A ‘SMOKELESS WAR’ ON THE US

A Fox News Digital investigation found that a network of pro-communist groups funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon living in China, supporting the Chinese Communist Party and allies, like the Islamic Republic of Iran, has been behind most of the protests that have taken place. 

In April, nonprofits in Singham’s network mobilized to protest President Donald Trump’s “criminal war,” painting blood on their hands to symbolize what they called the “genocidal threats” the administration was making against Iran. 

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a self-declared pro-China communist group, communicated to its followers through its propaganda platform, “Liberation News,” to “keep up the pressure” in combatting the war.

VANCE SAYS US-IRAN TALKS END WITHOUT DEAL AFTER 21 HOURS OF NEGOTIATIONS

In 2017, Singham married a co-founder of CodePink, Jodie Evans, and started pouring a documented $278 million into a network of groups that fuel anti-American protests in the United States, support the People’s Republic of China and now back the Islamic Republic of Iran, a strategic partner of China and a major source of its oil imports.

Despite the coordinated propaganda defending Iran, the administration has maintained its intention to rid Iran of nuclear capabilities. For more than three months, U.S.-Israeli forces have been fighting Iranian forces, a conflict which Americans have expressed concerns about. 

Vance’s trip to Switzerland marks his second attempt to bring the conflict to an end. In April, he traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, alongside Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Special Peace Envoy Jared Kushner to negotiate peace. The talks failed and Vance returned home, but he has remained a key figure in finalizing a ceasefire.

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His involvement with the negotiations has also led to a surge in bettors placing wagers on the vice president winning the presidency in 2028.

In March, Kalshi showed Vance being beaten out for president in 2028 by both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Since Vance has been facilitating the peace deal this month, he surged to the top spot for the next presidential election cycle.

At PolitiFact, we have been holding presidents to account for their falsehoods since 2007, covering the tenures of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and now Trump again. 

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, we examined how inaccurate or misleading statements by the nation’s chief executive influenced the long arc of history. Our list includes consequential rhetoric from Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, William McKinley, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

As we assembled this list, we found that the task was more complex than it had seemed. In our reporting, we heard a range of opinions from political scientists and historians about what to consider when assessing presidents’lack of truthfulness.

Did a president know the full facts when he spoke, or was he the recipient of bad information? Did he say something false, or mislead by omitting relevant information, or leave an inaccurate impression through silence? Are some falsehoods more justifiable than others? And should presidents be held to a higher standard than other people when they play fast and loose with the truth?

“The big problem is not so much a single lie by a single president, but the cumulative weight of all the lies that Americans have found out about,” said John J. Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. “Foreign wars and domestic scandals have eroded trust.  Presidents can no longer count on Americans to believe them.”

Even white lies corrode the public’s trust in government, according to political scientists. Here’s what else we learned from a deep dive into presidential deception. 

Not all presidential deceit is equal

James Pfiffner, an emeritus George Mason University presidential scholar, ranks presidential falsehoods from the benign to the most harmful. (He uses the word “lies” more freely than PolitiFact; our policy is to only use the term for our Lie of the Year reports.)

“Justifiable lies.” Pfiffner’s taxonomy starts with this category, which includes the White House’s statements in 1962 that John F. Kennedy had returned to Washington because he had a cold when he had actually returned to handle the then-secret Cuban Missile Crisis. 

“If Kennedy had been asked by a reporter whether a national security crisis was going on, he would have been fully justified in telling a lie,” Pfiffner said.

“Minor lies.” One step up in Pfiffner’s classification are falsehoods such as Lyndon Johnson’s claims of having ancestors at the Battle of the Alamo or Ronald Reagan’s telling of a heroic war story that was actually the plot of a movie. Bill Clinton’s repeatedly citation of an anachronistic quote attributed to the French writer and diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville could also count.

“Lies to prevent embarrassment and preserve political viability.” More serious still are falsehoods such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s hiding of his disability or Kennedy’s decision to conceal that he had Addison’s disease, a glandular ailment. 

“Lies to cover up important facts.” The second-highest category includes Barack Obama’s statement in support of his major health care overhaul: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” This may have been true for many Americans, but for millions, it was not, and providing this reassurance to those at risk of losing their coverage was misleading. PolitiFact named this its 2013 Lie of the Year.

“Lies of policy deception.” These, to Pfiffner, are the worst type, because they prevent citizens from knowing how to judge the government. Examples include Johnson’s misleading justifications for escalating the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon’s hiding the bombing of Cambodia, and Reagan’s falsehoods about the Iran-Contra Affair, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to illegally support a rebel group in Nicaragua.

Several of these made our list of significant presidential falsehoods.

Has presidential truth-telling gotten worse over time?

Public expectations for presidents upholding values of transparency and accuracy — including about their background, their private lives and their health — have varied over time, in part because of changes in how the press operated, said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University historian.

Thomas Jefferson had surrogates combat accusations that he had a child with Sally Hemings, who he enslaved at Monticello. These allegations were proven correct two centuries later, but Jefferson likely believed what happened was nobody’s business — that “gentlemen were never expected to talk about their sex lives,” Wilentz said. This was a widespread belief until about 50 years ago, around the time in 1987 that Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart was exposed as having an affair, forcing him out of the race.

Jefferson aside, historians say the earliest presidents were fairly honest with the public. “James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were pretty much models of rectitude,” Wilentz said.

President Jimmy Carter behind his desk in the Oval Office on April 18, 1977. (AP)

Jimmy Carter is an extreme modern example. When he launched his presidential campaign in 1974, Carter said that if elected, “I would not tell a lie; I would not mislead the American people. … And I would not betray your trust.” Whatever one thinks of Carter’s presidency, our research produced little evidence that he told major falsehoods as president.

One indication that past presidents took honesty seriously is that they generally accepted there’s a penalty for saying false things.

“When previous presidents have been caught making false statements, they have usually tried to equivocate or claim that they were technically not lying,” Pfiffner has written.

Historians put Trump in a different category.  

“Because democracy depends on a common set of understood facts, Trump’s approach corrodes political discourse,” Pfiffner said. “Donald Trump has lied in so many ways that the comparison with previous presidents is almost beside the point. Trump’s falsehoods are not merely different in volume. They are different in kind.”

ProPublica and The Connecticut Mirror, two nonprofit newsrooms, are examining the state’s emergency medical services and what it takes to provide lifesaving care across the state. If you work or volunteer for emergency medical services in Connecticut, we need your help. 

We know that the state’s emergency medical services have been strained for years, but that doesn’t stop paramedics, emergency medical technicians and emergency medical responders from working around the clock to serve community members in crisis. We have data on ambulance response times, but we know it doesn’t tell a full story about what is happening behind the scenes.  

If you work or volunteer for a Connecticut ambulance corps, a fire department, a law enforcement agency or an emergency room, we want to hear your experience and understand what resources you need to do this lifesaving work. 

What has changed about emergency medical services since you started? If your ambulance corps needs more staff, what are the challenges to hiring or retaining new people? What do you wish Connecticut residents or lawmakers knew about the state of EMS?

Your input is crucial and will help guide our reporting. We want to understand the issue in all its complexity — from training limitations to worker housing needs to budget cuts, and what that means for your vital work every day. 

You can fill out our brief form to share your experience. Our reporters read through every response and may follow up with you. You can also email CT Mirror reporter Jenna Carlesso and ProPublica reporter Cassandra Garibay at [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns. 

Don’t work for emergency medical services in Connecticut but know someone who does? You can also help by sending this form to them. 

If you have called 911 for a medical emergency, we also want to hear from you. Please fill out our patient experience form.

CHICAGO – A man who has lived on Chicago’s South Side for 18 years and now lives in the shadow of the newly opened Barack Obama Presidential Center described to Fox News Digital the havoc he says the years-long construction project wreaked on his housing complex.

Akoma Amanze is a local cab driver who lives in Jackson Park Terrace, a low-income housing community directly across the street from the 19.3 acre campus dedicated to the 44th president.

Over the weekend, while thousands of people from across the country — celebrities and ordinary folks alike — swarmed the area to visit Obama’s new campus that features a museum, library, gardens and recreational activities, Amanze and other residents took in the spectacle.

But Amanze told Fox News Digital the buzz across the street was nothing new. While he made it very clear that he supports Obama, and described living at Jackson Park Terrace as a “very good experience,” Amanze and others in his complex dealt with massive headaches caused by the construction.

OBAMA CENTER EMBEDS ‘INDIGENOUS’ LAND MESSAGE ON CONTROVERSIAL SITE

He described the construction process, which began in 2021, as “sometimes very, very disturbing.”

SUBCONTRACTORS SAY THEY’RE OWED MILLIONS, FACE FINANCIAL RUIN, AFTER HELPING BUILD OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER

“He’s my man, and I’m excited that this site is here” said Amanze, referring to Obama, “but as a resident, there has been a lot of things [that] have stopped us here.”

“On two occasions, my apartment flooded while they were digging the lower level of that project,” he said. “Two times. And I had to deal with the ramifications of that twice. Those ramifications were that all my apartment was flooded, and I had to throw away everything on the floor. Boxes, papers, clothes, I had to throw them away.”

BUREAUCRATS HIDE TRUE PRICE OF OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER AS TAXPAYERS HIT WITH INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

He said he had to suck the water out of his home himself, and then clean the entire mess up himself. Despite the destruction, according to Amanze, neither the complex’s management nor representatives from the Obama Center offered to help deal with the fallout, financially or otherwise.

Then there was the reverberation from the digging, he said.

“Sometimes, you stay in bed or in the apartment, [and] the digging — sometimes when they were digging deep— [it] would be shaking your bed,” he said. “I had that experience all through the construction.”

OBAMA’S LEGACY PROJECT OFFERS LITTLE HOPE FOR CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE RESIDENTS

Across the street used to be a community park where Amanze said he “more or less raised all [his] children.”

“In fact, my last child, that is 14 today, there used to be a favorite swing on that park where I took him every time he starts crying or he starts showing signs of stress,” Amanze said. “I take him there, and I put him on that swing, and I swing him up and down, and then he will fall asleep, and then I bring him back home.”

The park is gone now, but Amanze is not bitter.

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“When things are happening that you do not have the power to stop, you just have to learn to live with it,” he said. “I just learned to live with it. I’m not upset. I’m excited that my brother Obama was able to establish something this big in my neighborhood. At least in my mind, I’m a part of the history.”

President Donald Trump may have united Republicans behind military action against Iran, but his push to formalize peace is proving far more divisive.

As details of a memorandum of understanding emerge, GOP hawks are questioning whether the administration gave up too much, while Trump allies argue the president achieved a historic objective that crippled Iran’s military capabilities without dragging the U.S. into another prolonged war.

The disagreement is about more than Iran. It has exposed a growing divide inside the GOP over what Trump’s “America First” foreign policy should look like in practice — and what victory should mean once a military campaign ends.

At its core, the debate centers on competing visions of American power. One camp views military success as leverage to extract maximum concessions from adversaries and secure lasting strategic gains. The other sees it as a tool to neutralize threats and end conflicts before they become another Iraq or Afghanistan. Trump’s Iran agreement has forced those competing philosophies into a rare public collision.

That divide is already playing out among some of the party’s most prominent national security voices.

TOP SENATE REPUBLICAN RIPS INTO TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL, SAYS $300 BILLION MAKES OBAMA DEAL LOOK LIKE ‘A PITTANCE’

The deal’s fiercest Republican critics argue Trump is giving away leverage at the very moment Iran is most vulnerable. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has blasted the agreement on X as the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” while Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has warned it appears “out of step” with the goals of the military campaign.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has questioned the concessions offered to Tehran and former U.N. Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has criticized proposals that could help rebuild Iran.

Former Vice President Mike Pence has gone even further, calling the agreement a potential “lifeline” for the regime and warning it “smacks of appeasement.”

VANCE SAYS ‘UNITED STATES WINS EITHER WAY’ AS HE DEFENDS TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL AGAINST GOP SKEPTICS

Trump’s allies, however, argue critics are overlooking the sweeping military campaign that preceded the agreement.

Vice President JD Vance and other administration officials contend the president achieved his core objective after U.S. and allied forces struck key Iranian military and nuclear sites, eliminated senior commanders and inflicted significant damage on Tehran’s military infrastructure. Supporters say those operations crippled Iran’s ability to project power, restored deterrence and ultimately brought the regime to the negotiating table without requiring a large-scale deployment of American ground troops.

They argue victory is defined by achieving U.S. objectives and ending the conflict on favorable terms — not by risking another prolonged war in the Middle East.

The clash highlights a foreign policy debate that has been simmering inside the Republican Party for years.

NEW SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW FIRES, NAVAL BASE DAMAGE ACROSS IRAN AFTER US-ISRAELI STRIKES

While Republicans have largely rallied around Trump’s use of military force against Iran, the disagreement over what comes next reflects a deeper tension inside the party.

For traditional hawks, military victories create opportunities to reshape adversaries and secure lasting concessions. For many America First conservatives, the objective is narrower: neutralize threats, avoid nation-building and keep U.S. troops out of prolonged conflicts.

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As lawmakers and conservative leaders continue debating the memorandum of understanding’s merits, the fight may ultimately be less about the details of the Iran deal than about the future direction of Republican foreign policy — and what victory should mean in the Middle East.