Fact-checking the Republican midterm convention night 1

By CNN Staff

(CNN) — Some of the speakers at the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday made false or misleading claims.

Here is a fact check of some of their remarks:

Fact check: Scalise’s false claim that Democrats just voted to allow illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise claimed in his convention speech, “Just last week, Democrats voted to allow illegals to vote in our federal elections.”

That’s not true. There was no congressional vote last week on whether to change the law that makes it illegal for non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, to vote in federal elections.

Scalise was referring to the House vote last week on a non-binding Republican resolution – not a law – that included five separate statements. The first said the House “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms.” The third “reiterates the notion that American elections are for American citizens only.” The fifth calls for the passage of Trump’s favored elections bill, the SAVE America Act, which contains various provisions opposed by many Democrats.

The vast majority of Democrats voted “no,” but they could have done so for numerous reasons other than wanting undocumented immigrants to be able to vote. Again, nothing in the resolution would have changed voting law.

Fact check: Some GOP speakers take Democratic quotes out of context

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Some speakers took quotes from Democratic midterm candidates out of context.

On Troy Jackson: Sen. Tim Scott said Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson “said he would’ve run as a communist.” But Jackson wasn’t expressing any support for communism. Rather, he was making a joke while trying to explain in 2017 why he used to be a Republican politician.

Jackson said he had just wanted to get into the state legislature any way he could in order to fix local problems. In what even the conservative New York Post described as a joke, Jackson added, “I would’ve ran as anything, I would’ve ran as a communist.” The Post reported that the comment was greeted with laughs.

On James Talarico: Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico “says he would lay out a welcome mat at our southern border.” Talarico has frequently spoken of laying out a border “welcome mat,” but Barrasso left out the second, more conservative part of Talarico’s favored two-part immigration metaphor; Talarico keeps saying the border should be like a front porch with “a welcome mat out front and a lock on the door.”

Here’s how Talarico explains the comment on his website: “We can both welcome the stranger – refugees, asylum seekers, and folks who want to contribute to our economy and pursue the American dream – and we can keep people out who mean to do us harm.”

Fact check: Trump didn’t achieve ‘no tax on Social Security’

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Tami Luhby

Several convention speakers, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Reps. Monica De La Cruz and Brandon Gill of Texas, repeated President Donald Trump’s frequent claim that he achieved “no tax on Social Security.” He didn’t.

The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (which phases out for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but as the White House has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits even before the temporary new deduction expires after 2028.

The Social Security Administration said in 2025 that “the bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.”

Fact check: Ossoff voted for the Laken Riley Act

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia is running for Senate against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. In Collins’ speech to the convention, he blasted Ossoff for allegedly declining to help him pass a bill named after Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant in 2024.

“I sat in Jon Ossoff’s office and demanded that he help America remember the name of our shared constituent. But no, he wouldn’t lift a finger to help me. He forgot her name until it was politically convenient,” Collins said.

We can’t be certain what happened between the two behind the scenes. But Collins didn’t make clear in the speech that Ossoff voted for the bill.

In July, Collins falsely claimed Ossoff voted against the bill. Collins didn’t go that far on Wednesday, but he also didn’t explicitly acknowledge Ossoff ended up joining him on the proposal.

This article will be updated with additional items.

CNN’s Deja Oliver and Isa Mudannayake contributed to this report.

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