News Reporter: Fact Checker: No, President Trump, you did not modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in six months.

Friday, 11 August 2017

Fact Checker: No, President Trump, you did not modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in six months.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

No, President Trump, you did not modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in six months.

As part of his saber-rattling with North Korea this week, President Trump said: "My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before." Readers wanted to know: Can the nuclear arsenal be modernized so quickly?

Short answer: No.

Trump is referring to his first national security memorandum, which included a call to “initiate a new Nuclear Posture Review to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies."

But a Nuclear Posture Review is something that is required under a congressional mandate. The last one was completed in 2010, under Barack Obama, so it would make sense for Trump to order a new one.

Moreover, nuclear modernization takes a long time — think: decades. Not months or days. We awarded Four Pinocchios.

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Does low-skilled immigration hurt American workers?

Trump wants to restrict both legal and illegal immigration. He and his aides claim that America has “operated a very low-skill immigration system,” which has “placed substantial pressure on American workers, taxpayers and community resources.” Is that the case?

Not quite. Low-skilled immigration increased sharply after 1970, but leveled off by the mid-2000s. So he is using outdated data.

Overall, there is no evidence that immigration depresses wages or employment of natives, according to a comprehensive study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Low-skilled immigration did have small — not “substantial” — effects on wages of certain subgroups of native workers: high school dropouts, teenagers, low-skilled African American workers, and low-skilled Hispanics (immigrants and native-born), especially those with poor English skills.

The NAS report also found that in the long run, immigration — both high- and low-skilled — is a net positive to the U.S. economy. Over 75 years, each immigrant represents $259,000 in net present value for federal, state and local governments. We awarded Three Pinocchios.

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Help us fact-check your congressional town halls.

When Congress left Washington for the April recess, we asked our readers to help us fact-check their local town halls. We were overwhelmed with submissions from coast to coast. We ended up fact-checking what members of Congress from seven different states said about lawmakers’ health insurance, Medicare, the national debt and the cost of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago travels.

Congress is now in August recess. We want to fact-check what they’re telling you at Senate and House district town halls — and we need your help. Will you be at a town hall? Send us claims to fact check. Here’s how:

Send us the URL, Google Drive link, YouTube or Facebook Live link to the video or audio of the town hall, or email us your video or audio clips.
If you send full audio or video clips of the town hall, tell us the approximate minute marks of the suspect claim.
Write the claim down, and submit it using this form.

We'll take suggestions for any topic that piques your interest, though we're especially interested in health care, immigration, actions taken by President Trump's administration, and the federal budget.

Facts about Guam! You’ve probably heard about the Pacific island of Guam a lot this week, due to North Korea’s nuclear threats against the U.S. territory, home to two military bases. Well, Fact Checker’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee is actually from Guam, and has all the answers to your questions you may suddenly have about the island and its culture. Guam is more than just a U.S. military base, and the Chamorros (natives of Guam) have a rich 4,000-year history of their own. (For more, check out Guampedia, an encyclopedia of the history of Guam and the Mariana Islands, and the Chamorro heritage.)

We’re always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@myhlee, @GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22 or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker or myhlee). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.