Editor’s note: We are publishing a series of fact-checks of advertisements in the Pennsylvania 8th Congressional District race between incumbent Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan of Dallas Twp. and Democratic challenger, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti. The election is key for both major parties’ hopes of holding a House majority the next two years.

This 30-second ad was paid for by The Safety & Affordability PAC, a super PAC formed in September that is affiliated with President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. PAC. It receives its funding largely through multimillion-dollar transfers from MAGA Inc. The ad was not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

The ad begins with a video of the Scranton mayor conducting an interview with reporters, as a narrator claims “Paige Cognetti lied to us.”

“She said ‘No new taxes,’” the narrator complains. “But she raised our taxes. A lot.”

The narrator says tax hikes in the city during Cognetti’s run as mayor hit senior citizens especially hard, as a video shows Cognetti sitting alongside a Biden-Harris campaign sign from the 2020 election.

The claims continue, with the narrator insisting Cognetti would provide free health care to undocumented immigrants living in the United States, taking money from working families who contribute to Medicare to pay for it.

“Screwing seniors. More for illegals. Less for real Americans,” the narrator exclaims, as a photo of shirtless, tattooed men appear on screen. “Paige Cognetti is raising our taxes to give free (expletive) to them.”

Key claim

“Paige Cognetti would make Northeast Pennsylvania families pay to give free health care to illegals.”

Is it factual?

The ad is loaded with assumptions, misleading associations and statements taken out of context.

The claim that Cognetti promised “no new taxes” during any campaign is patently false.

In campaign ads from her first reelection bid for Mayor in 2021, Cognetti touted, accurately, that she balanced the city budget without raising taxes. She did not promise there would be no new taxes moving forward.

While two Scranton budgets — in 2023 and 2024 — included 2% property tax increases since, the other four passed during her tenure included no new taxes.

The claim that Cognetti “is raising taxes” to give free stuff to undocumented immigrants is also false.

Cognetti has stated no plan that would provide free health care to anyone in the country illegally. The ad cited a July 26, 2021 article published by The Center Square. In it, Cognetti and nearly 80 other mayors from across the country called for Congress to use the budget reconciliation process to establish pathways to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, citing their contributions as essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic as a motivating factor. Republican legislators favored more narrow proposals that would provide pathways for about 700,000 DACA recipients instead of a broader push for naturalization.

In any regard, the plea was for pathways to citizenship for those undocumented immigrants, not a plan to provide any free services to anyone who would be a noncitizen.

The use of the photo of the shirtless and tattooed men when discussing “illegals” is also misleading. The photo is a famous image captured by British documentary photographer Adam Hinton of MS-13 gang members inside a maximum security prison in El Salvador. They are not undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

Cognetti said in a recent forum with the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce that more lax Biden-era border practices were “not the right policy” and expressed satisfaction that the federal government “shored that up.” She reiterated hopes to pursue immigration reforms that would “make sure that the people who are working hard, paying into the system, doing their jobs, (are) part of our community and sending their kids to our schools, have a pathway to becoming citizens.”

“What we can’t have is violent criminals — at all — full stop,” Cognetti said.