Nicole Beus Harris, chairwoman of the Maryland Republican Party, sent an email blast on Saturday, January 24, celebrating President Donald J. Trump’s first year in office.
The email was titled “President Trump’s First Year” and promised to deliver “real results,” not talking points.
There’s just one problem: Several of Mrs. Beus Harris’ central claims in the email are demonstrably false.
And her other claims? Misleading to the point of dishonesty.
And at least one of Beus Harris’ claims appears to be a deliberate statistical manipulation designed to deceive readers who may not bother to check the numbers.
This isn’t spin.
This isn’t partisan framing.
The Maryland Republican Party, under Nicole Beus Harris’s leadership, blatantly and objectively lies to Marylanders.
This media outlet is calling it out.
The Inflation Lie
Mrs. Andy Harris’s email claims that “inflation slashed to just 2.4%.”
That’s false.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index release from January 13, 2026, the overall inflation rate for the twelve months ending December 2025 was 2.7 percent, not 2.4 percent.
So where did Harris get 2.4 percent? She lied, of course.
That figure corresponds to a specific sub-category: “Food at home,” which measures grocery prices.
The Maryland GOP chairwoman cited the grocery inflation rate as the overall inflation rate.
That’s not a rounding error, and it’s not a difference of interpretation.
Nicole Beus Harris cherry-picked a favorable sub-metric and presented it as the whole picture; it’s the statistical equivalent of telling someone your GPA is 3.8 when you’re only counting the classes you got A’s in.
And let’s be clear about the broader context: Inflation moved from approximately 2.9 percent in December 2024 to 2.7 percent in December 2025.
Characterizing a two-tenths of a percentage point decline as inflation being “slashed” is rhetorical malpractice.
The 2025-2026 Gas Price Lie
Harris’s Saturday email claims gas prices are “down to around $2.74 nationwide.”
She’s lying.
Ten cents per gallon might seem like a slight discrepancy, but when you’re claiming credit for economic achievements, accuracy matters.
The $2.74 figure doesn’t represent the national average; it more closely matches regional averages in lower-cost states like West Virginia ($2.74) or Mississippi ($2.42).
Did Mrs. Harris accidentally cite a regional number as the national figure?
Or did someone decide that $2.74 sounded better than $2.84 and hope nobody would check?
Either way, she’s lying.
Nicole Beus Harris’ Trade Deficit Lie
The trade deficit lie is one of Mrs. Harris’s most egregious lies.
Her Saturday email claims the “trade deficit cut nearly in half through strong tariffs.”
This claim is spectacularly false.
U.S. trade data shows the annual trade deficit for 2025 remains over $1 trillion – roughly $1.26 trillion in the total goods gap – which is consistent with, or slightly higher than, 2024 levels.
The trade deficit wasn’t cut in half; it wasn’t cut by a quarter; and it wasn’t meaningfully cut at all on an annual basis.
So, where does Mrs. Harris’s “nearly in half” come from?
It appears the Maryland GOP is citing a single anomalous month – October 2025 – when the deficit briefly fell by approximately 39 percent due to tariff implementation timing and seasonal fluctuations.
Taking one outlier month and presenting it as if it represents the annual picture isn’t just misleading; it’s wrong.
Nicole Beus Harris is lying with statistics; it’s the equivalent of checking your bank account on payday and telling people that’s your average balance.
Anyone with access to Google and five minutes could verify that Nicole Beus Harris’ claim is false.
The Maryland Republican Party is betting that you won’t bother to check.
What The MDGOP May Have Gotten Right
In the interest of accuracy – something the Maryland GOP apparently does not share – let’s acknowledge where the email’s claims potentially hold up.
The claim about military recruitment appears to be true.
- The Department of Defense confirmed that Fiscal Year 2025 saw the highest mission-achievement rate in more than fifteen years, with an average completion rate of 103 percent across all branches.
- Data support the border security claims. Customs and Border Protection figures for September 2025 report 8,386 apprehensions between ports of entry, the lowest level since 1970.
- The NATO spending commitment is accurate. At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, allies formally committed to a new defense investment target of 5 percent of GDP annually, up from the previous 2 percent target.
If the real achievements are strong enough to stand on their own, why would Nicole Beus Harris lie about inflation, gas prices, and the trade deficit?
The MDGOP’s Pattern of Lying
Nicole Beus Harris isn’t some random party volunteer who got her numbers mixed up. She’s the chairwoman of the Maryland Republican Party – the state’s top Republican official.
She’s also married to Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican congressman and an unbending Trump ally.
When the state party chair sends an official communication containing multiple false claims to Maryland Republicans, that’s not an accident.
That’s a choice.
And it’s a choice that reflects either her stunning incompetence in basic fact-checking or a deliberate decision to lie to Marylanders as long as it serves the political narrative.
Neither explanation is flattering.
Maryland Republicans deserve better than a state party that treats them like marks.
They deserve leadership that respects them enough to tell them the truth – even when the truth is more complicated than a bullet-point list of superlatives.
The Bottom Line
The Maryland Republican Party, under Nicole Beus Harris’s leadership, sent an email to Maryland Republicans containing at least three demonstrably false claims about the economy.
- The inflation number is staggeringly wrong.
- The gas price number is wrong.
- The trade deficit claim isn’t just wrong; it’s a deliberate misrepresentation of monthly data as annual data.
These aren’t matters of interpretation, nor are these partisan disputes about framing.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes inflation data.
- AAA publishes gas prices.
- The Census Bureau publishes trade figures.
The numbers are what they are.
Nicole Beus Harris looked at those numbers and decided to tell Maryland Republicans something different. She decided that the truth wasn’t good enough – that she needed to improve on reality to make the case for Donald Trump’s first year.
That’s not political messaging; no, we call that lying.
Maryland Republicans – and all Marylanders – deserve to know that the chairwoman of the state Republican Party is willing to put false statistics in an official party communication and bet that nobody will fact-check her work.
We’re not going to beat around the proverbial bush.
Nicole Beus Harris is a liar; we’re calling her out.
