News Reporter: Fact Checker: Rubio’s false claim that no one died from foreign-aid cuts

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The truth behind the rhetoric.

By Glenn Kessler

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified last week about the State Department budget, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California) confronted him about numerous anecdotal accounts of people around the world dying because the Trump administration, at the direction of billionaire Elon Musk, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and shut down many of its programs.

Rubio: "No one has died because of USAID —"

Sherman: "The people who have died …"

Rubio: "That's a lie."

As Sherman's staff held up photos of people alleged to have died because they stopped receiving services from USAID programs, Rubio denounced the claim as "false." Later in the day, at another hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York) gave Rubio an opportunity to clean up his statement. "Do you stand behind that testimony?" she asked.

Rubio said it was "an unfair question." He tried to reframe the question, arguing that other countries such as Britain and France also have cut back on humanitarian spending, while China has never contributed much.

We dug into the reporting on this issue. There's no question that people have died because of the U.S. aid suspension. One estimate tops 300,000 deaths so far.

To read our full report and find out the Pinocchio rating, click the link below

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Are 4.8 million people on Medicaid 'cheating the system'?

With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill in the House, which included new work requirements for Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor, Republicans led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) made the case that the legislation was necessary because there were nearly 5 million freeloaders in the system — an example of what Johnson called "fraud, waste and abuse" that is draining federal coffers.

We became interested in the origin of the 4.8 million figure. It didn't track with a February study by KFF, a nonprofit health-policy organization, on the 26.1 million people who used Medicaid. Most people who did not work were caregivers, parents, students or had a disability, according to 2024 Current Population Survey data analyzed by KFF. Only 8 percent fell in a category of "not working due to retirement, inability to find work, or other reason" — which adds up to only about 2 million people. So Johnson's figure is more than double.

The speaker's office directed us to the House Energy and Commerce Committee as the source of the figure. The committee provided documentation that the number was generated by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But Republicans are making assumptions, perhaps unwarranted, about what the CBO estimate means.

To read the full fact check, click the link below.

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About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face.

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