The fact-checking industry likes to view itself as the guardian of truth in an age of rampant misinformation, but what is one to do when they can’t all get on the same page? While PolitiFact, the Associated Press, and CNN’s Daniel Dale all rushed on Wednesday to call Republicans liars for saying Democrats want to give illegal immigrants access to federal benefits in exchange for ending the government shutdown, Factcheck.org was more nuanced, claiming that under GOP definitions of “illegal immigrant,” they could plausibly have a point.
PolitiFact’s Maria Ramirez Uribe could have picked any Republican to give a “false” label, but she settled on Vice President JD Vance. According to Uribe, if Democrats are successful in removing parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill, illegal immigrants will still be ineligible for federal benefits, “The vast majority of federal health care dollars cannot be spent on health care for people in the U.S. illegally. They cannot enroll in Medicaid or Medicare, and they are ineligible to purchase health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. A small Medicaid program reimburses hospitals for uninsured emergency care, which can include immigrants in the country illegally but is not exclusive to them.”
Vance and others would say Uribe’s point about hospital reimbursement actually proves their point, but over at the AP, Melissa Goldin also claimed:
This is false. Democrats say they are pushing for the inclusion of key health care provisions in the next congressional spending package. In particular, they are seeking an extension of tax credits that millions of Americans use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange and a reversal of Medicaid cuts made in the bill Trump signed into law in July. However, immigrants in the U.S. illegally are not eligible for any federal health care programs, including insurance provided through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. Hospitals do receive Medicaid reimbursements — which would be reduced under Trump’s bill — for emergency care that they are obligated to provide to people who meet other Medicaid eligibility requirements but do not have an eligible immigration status, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.
Goldin also got the founder and co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, Sabrina Corlette, to call the claims “a flat-out lie.” Goldin did not mention Corlette was a staffer for former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.
Meanwhile, CNN’s resident fact-checker, Daniel Dale, echoed the sentiment, labeling it somewhere “from misleading to flat false.”
Factcheck.org was more nuanced. In addition to the hospital reimbursement point, Alan Jaffe and Lori Robertson concede that immigration-related definitions are not as clear as they may seem:
Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told us the term ‘lawfully present’ is ‘not a category fully defined in immigration law.’
‘Some people who are in the ‘lawfully present’ categories would be considered by most people as legal immigrants — such as refugees and asylees and victims of trafficking.’ But it is “a politically contested categorization,” Gelatt said.
Towards the end, they also write, “So, Republicans are saying that parolees are in the country illegally, even though they were considered ‘lawfully present.’”
To return to PolitiFact and Uribe, she tries to rebut this idea, “It’s important to note that many people granted lawful status through humanitarian parole or Temporary Protected Status programs don’t automatically qualify for Medicaid; TPS recipients aren’t eligible, and many people who entered the U.S. on humanitarian parole are required to wait five years before accessing it.”
However, the link that Uribe herself provides has a table that says that TPS recipients are eligible for subsidies under the Obamacare exchanges and Medicare.
It is bad enough that the fact-checking websites think they should have a say in what other people post online. The fact that Factcheck.org could not unequivocally affirm PolitiFact and AP’s confident anti-Republican claims is just another example why.