Trump airs familiar grievances, charts MAGA plan in address before bitterly divided Congress

FACT CHECK: This is missing context.

Illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border has dropped since Trump entered office Jan. 20, and it’s likely that Trump’s hard-on-immigration approach has played a role. From former President Joe Biden’s last week in office to Trump’s first week in office, border officials’ daily encounters with immigrants illegally entering the U.S. dropped 60%. There’s been a 94% drop in encounters with Border Patrol agents at the U.S. southern border over a seven-day period in February and the same time last year.

But looking at a small period of time ignores longer-term trends, and there are multiple ways to examine the data. Illegal immigration has been dropping since March 2024, during Biden’s administration.

Immigration experts have told PolitiFact that weather patterns, such as extremely cold or hot conditions, changes in administration and policies or political shifts in people’s home countries can affect whether someone migrates. So it’s uncertain what causes a drop or how long it will last.

— Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact

Trump called attention to first lady Melania Trump and praised her work protecting children.

Melania Trump was flanked by Haley Ferguson, a recipient of the first lady's Fostering the Future initiative and Ellison Berry, a victim of AI-generated pornography.

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Trump highlights first lady for her work with foster care, ‘Take It Down’ ActMelania Trump was flanked by Haley Ferguson, a recipient of the first lady's Fostering the Future initiative and Ellison Berry, a victim of AI-generated pornography.

ABCNews.com

Berry was present at Melania Trump's roundtable event Monday advocating for the passage of the "Take It Down" Act, which aims to criminalize deepfake and revenge pornography.

"And I'm going to use that bill for myself, too, if you don't mind. There's nobody gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody," Trump said.

Trump has spent most of the last 20 minutes talking about out-of-control government spending, ranging from cuts of foreign aid to repeating falsehoods about Social Security payments to dead people. He went so far as to promise the government will balance the budget — something it hasn't done since the 90s.

Now he's a few paragraphs in to a preview of tax cut legislation. Trump says he will extend his 2017 tax cuts and further cut the rate for wealthy Americans while eliminating the tax on tips. It's worth noting that these goals are not compatible without cuts to government entitlement programs, since cutting taxes also cuts revenues that pay for spending. A budget bill which recently passed the Republican-controlled House would add nearly $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

In detailing the waste and fraud his administration has discovered, Trump used the example of the country’s Social Security rolls, saying millions of people listed at ages 100 and older are still on active Social Security lists. Why?

Social media commenters came up with one possible explanation for the 150-year age, and experts who have worked closely with the Social Security Administration told PolitiFact it was plausible.

Under an international standard called ISO 8601, a missing value for a date is coded as May 20, 1875, because that was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the "Convention du Mètre."

For that reason, under some coding systems, a missing value for a date will default to 1875 — which in the year 2025 produces a round figure of 150.

Social Security Administration Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek said in a Feb. 19 statement that people older than 100 in the Social Security database "are not necessarily receiving benefits."

That doesn’t mean payments aren’t sent out improperly, however.

Between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, which includes Trump’s first presidency, the Social Security Administration sent almost $71.8 billion in improper payments, according to a July 2024 agency inspector general report. The inspector general’s office called improper payments "a longstanding challenge."

A November 2021 inspector general’s report found $298 million in payments after death to some 24,000 beneficiaries. (About $84 million was returned, the report said.)

— Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact