PolitiFact s ruling: Mostly False
Here s why: Former President Donald Trump said that Democrats are racing to pass a bill that would destroy the integrity of elections and automatically register poor people to vote.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Trump reeled off multiple objections to H.R. 1, including that it automatically registers every welfare recipient to vote.
Trump’s statement is misleading. The Democrats’ bill to expand voting rights would require multiple government agencies to help eligible people register to vote when they apply for assistance, but it doesn’t single out applicants for programs associated with welfare. And Trump omits that public assistance agencies already play a role in helping people register to vote. H.R. 1 would expand that effort.
PolitiFact s ruling: False
Here s why: During a devastating winter blackout in Texas, a conservative group linked the outage to President Joe Biden, claiming that one of his executive orders gave the Chinese Communist Party access to the U.S. power grid. Joe Biden is handing our power grid to the Chinese Communist Party, tweeted the conservative activist group Students for Trump on Feb. 16.
The post also includes a quote by the group’s CEO, Charlie Kirk, which reads: While thousands of Americans are without power because of a faulty energy infrastructure, this is your daily reminder that Joe Biden rescinded a Trump executive order banning Chinese involvement in our power grid.
PolitiFact s ruling: False
Here s why: Wind energy is big business in Texas. Over the past five years, wind has grown from supplying 11% of Texas energy demand to 23% and is now the state’s second-largest resource after natural gas.
But that growth has come despite attempts from some conservative groups to slow its progress, and many of those groups seized the opportunity to criticize the renewable resource after initial reports surfaced that turbines were freezing up due to this week’s historic single-digit temperatures across much of Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott became one such critic on Tuesday night as millions of Texans were without power and facing another freezing night. The governor appeared on Sean Hannity s Fox News show and tied the crisis to the state’s renewable energy resources.
Greg Abbott: Our wind and our solar got shut down . and that thrust Texas into this situation where it was lacking power at a statewide basis.
Texas Public Policy Foundation: Blackouts “never would have been an issue had our grid not been so deeply penetrated by renewable energy sources.
Dan Crenshaw: The little energy that power regulators planned on being supplied from wind was now gone.”
Texas’ wind energy has become a popular culprit as politicians and interest groups pointed fingers at who was to blame for widespread blackouts that left millions of Texans without power and heat amid single-digit temperatures.