President Donald Trump held his first cabinet meeting of 2026 on Friday, focusing on the economy, housing, energy, health initiatives and drug prices. But while he painted a rosy picture of his administration’s accomplishments, some of his boasts —- and that of other officials —- were off the mark.

Here’s a look at the facts.

Investments

TRUMP: “$18 trillion is being invested now.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum.

The White House website offers a far lower number, $9.6 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published Tuesday raises doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

Housing

SCOTT TURNER, secretary of housing and urban development: “Because of your policy sir, home sales in December, they rose sharply to their strongest pace in three years.”

THE FACTS: That overstates what’s happening in the housing market, a persistent source of frustration for U.S. consumers.

The National Association of Realtors did report that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of home sales in December rose to 4.35 million units, “nearly” the highest in three years, as the trade association noted. But the sum was just a 1.4% year-over-year increase.

More importantly, it could have been a monthly blip as the association separately said that pending home sales in December had fallen 3% from a year ago.

Trump has said he wants to keep home prices high to increase people’s net worth, but doing so will likely keep construction levels low and price out possible first-time buyers.

California wildfires

TRUMP, discussing state and local permitting for rebuilding homes destroyed in the 2025 wildfires around Los Angeles: “They have been unable to give permits. There are like three houses being built out of thousands and thousands. They have no permits.”

THE FACTS: On Friday, Trump signed an executive order directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration to find a way to issue regulations that would preempt state and local rules for obtaining permits and allow builders to “self-certify” that they have complied with “substantive health, safety, and building standards.”

According to Los Angeles county and city data, about 3,100 permits have been issued within the Palisades and Eaton fire zones as of Thursday. Fewer than a dozen residences have been rebuilt, but about 900 homes are under construction.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Trump on social media, saying local officials are moving at a fast pace. Newsom called on the Trump administration to approve the state’s $33.9 billion disaster aid request.

Survivor advocates also told The Associated Press that permits are not necessarily the primary obstacle for impacted households right now, as many still struggle to secure full insurance payouts, or face gaps of hundreds of thousands of dollars between what they’ve received and actual rebuilding costs.

Typically it takes about 18 months after a major wildfire for the permitting process to gain steam, according to Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at the Urban Institute.

He pointed to the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colorado, destroying more than 1,000 homes. After a year, the cleanup was mostly done and most permit applications were in. Then it took about six more months for the permits to be issued, he told the AP this month.

The two California fires killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 residential properties.

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TRUMP, discussing the effects of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: “They should have allowed the water to come down from the Pacific Northwest, which was very plentiful. But they didn’t do that.”

THE FACTS: Contrary to Trump’s claim, no water supply from the Pacific Northwest connects to California’s system.

Most of California’s water comes from the northern part of the state, where it melts from mountain snow and runs into rivers that connect to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. From there, much of it is sent farther south to farmers and cities like Los Angeles through two large pumping and canal systems. One is run by the federal government and the other by the state.

Some Los Angeles fire hydrants ran dry during last year’s wildfires, but local officials said the outages occurred because the municipal system was not designed to deal with such a massive disaster.

Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the Small Business Administration, also brought up Trump’s claim about releasing water to fight the fires, claiming an executive order got “water to the scene in your earliest days of your presidency.”

But the Jan. 24, 2025, executive order resulted in water going to a dry lake basin more than 100 miles from Los Angeles.

Trump repeats other false claims

TRUMP: “There’s never been a first year like this, including the fact that we put out — extinguished — eight wars.”

THE FACTS: This statistic is highly exaggerated. Although Trump has helped mediate relations among many nations, his impact isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it seem.

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TRUMP: “You’re not allowed to say the word coal without preceding by saying clean, beautiful coal. Clean, beautiful coal.”

THE FACTS: The production of coal is cleaner now than it has been historically, but that doesn’t mean it’s clean.

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TRUMP, on China: “They make the windmills, but they don’t have a lot of wind farms. That’s — somebody’s oughta look at that. How many wind farms do they have? Very, very few. They make them. They sell them. They make a fortune, but they don’t use them.”

THE FACTS: China is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, producing more than half of the supply. It is also installing them at a record pace.

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Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin in New York, Josh Boak in Washington, Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Gabriela Aoun in San Diego contributed to this report.

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Iran will conduct live-fire military drills next week in the Strait of Hormuz after President Donald Trump announced a U.S. armada was on its way to the region amid escalating tensions with Tehran.

The exercises will be carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ naval forces, Iranian state media reported Thursday. 

The announcement came one day after Trump said a large naval force, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, was heading toward Iran.

In a statement posted to Truth Social, the president warned Tehran to quickly return to negotiations over its nuclear program, saying the fleet was prepared to act with “speed and violence” if necessary.

US OPENS NEW AIR DEFENSE OPERATIONS CELL AT QATAR BASE THAT IRAN TARGETED IN RETALIATORY ATTACK

“Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’ a major destruction of Iran,” he wrote. “The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.”

The U.S. struck Iran’s Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites in June using B-2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles.

The bombers flew for 37 hours non-stop from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to drop 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Fordow and two on Natanz.

TOP IRANIAN GENERAL THREATENS TO ‘CUT OFF’ TRUMP’S HAND OVER POTENTIAL MILITARY STRIKES

More than two dozen cruise missiles were also launched at Isfahan from a U.S. submarine.

Trump is weighing military action against Tehran, as U.S. assets move into the region amid international scrutiny over a crackdown by the Islamic regime that has killed thousands of anti-government protesters.

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Iran warned last week that it would respond “with everything we have” to any new U.S. military attack, accusing Washington and its allies of exploiting recent unrest to push the region toward a wider war.

“As Iranians grieve their loved ones and rebuild what has been destroyed, another threat looms: the final failure of diplomacy. Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said,.

Russian President Vladimir Putin should make tangible concessions before the European Union picks up the phone to re-establish direct communications, High Representative Kaja Kallas said on Thursday as more European leaders call for direct engagement with the Kremlin as part of the Russia-Ukraine peace process currently being brokered by the White House.

“We can’t be the demandeurs here that, you know, we go to Russia (and say) talk to us,” Kallas said on Thursday after a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Brussels.

“The concessions that the Americans are putting on Ukraine are quite strong,” she added, referring to reports that Washington is asking Kyiv to give up the areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control in exchange for security guarantees.

“I don’t think there is anything that we can offer to Russia on top of what they already get in their understanding with the Americans, which means that why should they talk to us? Because they get what they want in this relationship.”

Kallas pointed to the fact that in the recent round of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between Ukrainian, Russian, and American officials, Moscow was represented by a military officer, General Igor Kostyukov, rather than a political envoy “with the right to make decisions”.

Both Kyiv and Moscow described the talks as constructive, though their stances differ.

Instead of focusing on who should talk to Putin, Kallas added, European countries should devote their energy to further crippling his war machine, which has plunged Ukrainians into blackouts at sub-zero temperatures. Brussels aims to approve a new package of sanctions on Russia around the war’s fourth anniversary on 24 February.

“What we are working on is putting more pressure on Russia so that they would go from pretending to negotiate to actually negotiate, and also to take into account the worries that we have with Russia that this war will not continue and this war will not expand to other territories,” Kallas said in reply to a Euronews question.

“I think this is important to understand.”

To talk or not to talk

The contentious issue of re-engagement with Russia is high on the agenda after public backing from French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who argued the EU needed to speak with a unified voice vis-à-vis Putin.

“I believe the time has come for Europe to also speak with Russia,” Meloni said. “If Europe decides to take part in this phase of negotiations by talking only to one of the two sides, I fear that in the end the positive contribution it can make will be limited.”

The Italian leader suggested the EU appoint a special envoy to lead the conversation on behalf of all 27 member states, though she did not put forward a specific name.

The European Commission, a long-standing advocate of the strategy of diplomatic isolation, later admitted that direct talks will happen “at some point” but not yet.

On Thursday, before heading into the ministerial meeting that Kallas chaired, Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel told Euronews that discussions with the Kremlin should not be off the table.

“We need to talk with them if we want a solution,” Bettel told Euronews’ flagship morning programme Europe Today. “And if I am too small to do it, then President Macron or someone else (should be) able to represent Europe, because they don’t want to talk to Kaja Kallas,” he added.

Bettel, who met Putin in Moscow in 2015 while serving as Luxembourg’s Prime Minister, said he did not have the “ego” to say he is the “right person” to act as an EU envoy.

“But if people are convinced that I could be helpful I will do it in any position,” he explained. “And I don’t need to be on the front of the scene. I can do it also in the back.”

Still, the idea of re-engaging with Putin remains unpalatable for some capitals, who fear the EU would fall into a trap and legitimise a president accused of war crimes.