The Investigative Journal examines four widely circulated public claims from the past week, weighing each against the primary records that the speakers themselves invoke. Where the public record is unambiguous, we say so. Where it is incomplete or contested, we say that, too.
Claim 1: “Factory construction is up” under the current administration
President Donald J. Trump and senior aides repeated a familiar talking point at the May 27 Cabinet meeting: that domestic factory construction is surging on the administration’s watch, with the White House citing a 41 percent figure. The claim has been deployed in press briefings and on the president’s social media account throughout the past week.
The relevant primary source is the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly Value of Construction Put in Place survey, which publishes seasonally adjusted annual rates for private manufacturing construction. Records reviewed by The Investigative Journal indicate that spending on manufacturing construction has declined in every reported month of the current term. Census data show the seasonally adjusted annual rate for private manufacturing construction was approximately $238 billion in January 2025, the month of inauguration, and stood at roughly $189 billion in March 2026 — a drop of about $49 billion, or 20.5 percent, over fourteen months.
The administration’s “41 percent” figure does not refer to growth during the current term. According to a White House background note, the comparison is between the average monthly manufacturing-construction spend during January through August 2025 and the average annual spend during the 2021 through 2024 period. Most of that elevated 2025 spending reflected projects authorized, financed and broken ground under appropriations passed in the prior administration, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.
Verdict: Data shows the underlying assertion — that manufacturing construction is currently rising — is not supported by Census Bureau filings, which show a sustained decline through March 2026. The 41 percent figure is arithmetically defensible but compares an in-progress administration’s monthly average to the prior administration’s annual baseline, an apples-to-oranges framing that obscures the current trend line. Readers should treat the underlying construction figure as declining, not rising.
Primary sources:
- U.S. Census Bureau, Monthly Construction Spending, April 2026 release
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Total Construction Spending: Manufacturing in the United States (TLMFGCONS)
Claim 2: “Highest inflation in the history of our country” when the current term began
In remarks reported across multiple outlets last week, the president stated that when he assumed office in January 2025, “we had the highest inflation in the history of our country.”
The relevant primary record is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), the federal government’s flagship measure of consumer inflation. According to the BLS release dated February 12, 2025, the CPI-U rose 3.0 percent over the twelve months ending January 2025, after rising 2.9 percent for the twelve months ending December 2024.
That figure is well below the modern-era peak of 9.1 percent year-over-year, recorded for the twelve months ending June 2022, and far below the post-war high of 14.8 percent recorded in March 1980. Historical BLS series stretching back to 1913 show numerous twelve-month windows with year-over-year CPI changes substantially higher than 3.0 percent, including periods immediately following both World Wars.
Verdict: Records indicate the January 2025 inflation rate of 3.0 percent was not the highest in U.S. history, nor the highest in living memory, nor the highest of the prior decade. Filings show it was lower than every monthly reading from April 2021 through March 2023. The statement is not supported by BLS data.
Primary sources:
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index News Release, January 2025
- BLS, The Economics Daily: CPI rose 3.0 percent from January 2024 to January 2025
- BLS Historical Consumer Price Index Tables, U.S. City Average
Claim 3: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says tariffs are costing New York households $4,200 a year
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in a May 2026 floor statement and corresponding press release said that import duties enacted during the current term cost the average New York family “$4,200 a year.” Her office attributed the figure to research by the Yale Budget Lab.
The Investigative Journal reviewed the Budget Lab’s published research papers. The $4,200 figure traces to an August 2025 estimate that reflected the tariff schedule then in force, when stacked Section 232, IEEPA, and reciprocal duties produced an average effective tariff rate near 18 percent. The Budget Lab’s most recent State of U.S. Tariffs brief, dated April 8, 2026, finds the pre-substitution average effective tariff rate at 11.8 percent — lower than the August 2025 schedule the senator’s number reflects, partly due to court rulings and renegotiated trade deals that reduced or paused several IEEPA-based duties.
Under the April 8, 2026 Budget Lab estimate, the average U.S. household loss is $760 to $940 if Section 122 tariffs expire as scheduled, or $1,200 to $1,500 if they are made permanent. The Budget Lab’s distributional analysis shows top-decile households bear an average burden of $2,175 to $3,424 depending on Section 122 treatment, while bottom-decile households bear $517 to $813. New York’s median household income is above the national median, so a New York–specific figure would land toward the higher end of those ranges but still substantially below $4,200.
Verdict: Records indicate the senator’s $4,200 figure was accurate as a representation of a prior, harsher tariff schedule but no longer reflects current policy. The Yale Budget Lab’s own most recent estimate suggests the actual cost to a typical New York household under the policy now in force is roughly one-quarter to one-third of the cited number. Filings show the claim is outdated rather than fabricated.
Primary sources:
- The Budget Lab at Yale, State of U.S. Tariffs: April 8, 2026
- Yale Budget Lab, underlying tariff dataset (April 8, 2026)
Claim 4: Vice President JD Vance says manufacturing employment is rebounding
Vice President JD Vance, in a speech on May 18 and remarks to reporters on May 19, said the most recent quarter showed “the biggest growth in manufacturing employment” since the first Trump term. The remarks have been widely circulated in policy speeches and on the vice president’s social media.
The primary source is the BLS Employment Situation report, which publishes monthly seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll figures including a manufacturing series. According to the April 2026 release, manufacturing employment gained 18,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026 before losing 2,000 jobs in April 2026.
The Investigative Journal compared that Q1 2026 gain to the prior administration’s quarterly manufacturing payrolls. BLS data show six of the seven full quarters during 2021 and 2022 posted manufacturing employment gains larger than 18,000 jobs, with several quarters exceeding 100,000. Measured cumulatively, BLS figures indicate U.S. manufacturing employment has fallen by approximately 77,000 jobs from February 2025, the first full month of the current term, through April 2026, with declines registered in every month of calendar year 2025.
Verdict: Records show the Q1 2026 manufacturing job gain is real but is not the largest since the previous Trump term — multiple intervening quarters under the Biden administration registered larger gains. BLS data also show the cumulative manufacturing employment trend over the current term is negative. Filings indicate the vice president’s framing overstates both the magnitude and the trend.
Primary sources:
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation Summary, April 2026
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, All Employees, Manufacturing (MANEMP)
What the four claims have in common
Three of the four statements examined this week share a structural feature: each compares a number that is, in isolation, defensible against a baseline chosen for political convenience. The factory-construction figure benchmarks Trump-era monthly averages against Biden-era annual averages. The Gillibrand tariff figure uses a months-old estimate against a tariff regime that has since changed. The Vance manufacturing-jobs framing measures a single quarter against the first Trump term while skipping past the intervening four years. The inflation claim is the outlier — it is not a baseline problem, it is a claim that the public record simply does not support at any benchmark.
The pattern is worth flagging because it is the most common way well-sourced figures are converted into misleading ones. The Investigative Journal does not treat any of these statements as deliberate fabrications; in three of the four cases, the underlying figure exists in the data. The misleading element is the comparison.
How The Investigative Journal conducts fact-checks
The Investigative Journal anchors each fact-check to a primary source — typically a government statistical agency (BLS, Census Bureau, Treasury), an academic or non-partisan research center publishing methodology along with results (Yale Budget Lab, Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve regional banks), or an official filing (court records, regulatory filings, congressional testimony). Where a public figure attributes a number to a specific institution, we go to the institution’s most recent published estimate rather than relying on the speaker’s characterization.
We do not aggregate other fact-checkers’ verdicts. We do not assign letter grades, fire-meters, or Pinocchio counts. Every factual claim in this article traces to a source document linked above; if a claim cannot be linked to a public record, we cut it. We use hedging language — “records indicate,” “filings show,” “data suggest” — to signal where we are reporting what a source says rather than asserting a finding of our own.
Subjects of fact-checks are entitled to a right of reply. Where a subject responds with new information, we update the record and note the change.
Eduardo Bacci is editor of The Investigative Journal.