PolitiFact on the road: The claims Ron DeSantis repeated during his CNN town hall in New Hampshire

HENNIKER, N.H. — Hello from New Hampshire!

PolitiFact is hitting the road this week in the lead up to the New Hampshire primary, which takes place Jan. 23. We’ll team up with our partner, WMUR-TV, to fact-check candidates on the ground and talk with voters about their concerns in 2024. 

I wanted to take a second to introduce myself. I’m Ellen Hine, PolitiFact’s audience engagement producer and Florida-based Hoosier. 

I’ll be taking you behind the scenes with reporters and editors to talk about how we’re fact-checking the 2024 election. Follow our journey across social media, and if you haven't already, sign up for our PolitiFact Daily newsletter for updates in your inbox.

"We’ve had five great debates in this campaign," Haley said in a post on X. "Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it."

Haley placed third in Monday’s Iowa caucuses behind front-runner Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who accused Haley on X of being afraid to debate him "because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions."

Since neither Haley nor Trump agreed to participate, ABC News and our New Hampshire partner WMUR-TV have canceled their Thursday debate. Instead of covering the debate, Senior Correspondent Louis Jacobson and I will be traversing the Granite State to attend even more campaign events. 

To start our chilly fact-checking journey, Lou and I braved some dicey roads to attend DeSantis’ CNN town hall in Henniker, New Hampshire. Most of the local restaurants had closed by the time we rolled into town, so our dinner was a magnificent convenience store feast of cheese sticks, Slim Jims and Chex Mix. (Who said journalism isn’t glamorous?)

We ended up being the only media outlet in CNN’s press filing room, which is a space where media outlets can report from during events like town halls or debates. 

As the town hall started, Lou and I cracked open our laptops and started searching. Lou identified interesting claims DeSantis that we haven’t checked before, while I focused on resharing fact-checks of claims DeSantis has repeated. Here are a couple repeats we identified:

• "I don't want your money going overseas to do things like promote transgenderism in Bangladesh, and yet that has happened with your tax dollars, and it's wrong, and we need to put a stop to it." Since 2018, the U.S. has invested in aid programs in Bangladesh that support gender-diverse people. But DeSantis is omitting some critical cultural and historical context. The money is supporting a community that describes itself as "hijra" or "third-gender," not necessarily "transgender."  The community has existed for hundreds of years, and the Bangladeshi government has worked to recognize third-gender people. We rated his claim Half True.

• "We banned sanctuary cities in Florida." We’ve rated a similar claim Mostly True. DeSantis banned local governments from having sanctuary policies and required local jurisdictions to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Many jurisdictions already cooperated in such a manner before the law.

We’ll be fact-checking the new claims DeSantis made at the town hall, but please tag us on social media @politifact or email me at [email protected] with any fact-check suggestions or questions you have. 

Tuesday was a sometimes chaotic, mostly fun first time experience in New Hampshire for me, and I’m eager to see what the rest of the week brings. 

Finally, if you want to support our independent accountability fact-checking — or help us pay for our rental car or our illustrious Slim Jims as we bop around New Hampshire — please consider donating to PolitiFact. It is donations from readers like you that help us empower people to be informed participants in our democracy.