Fact-checking Jon Ossoff and Mike Collins in Georgia’s first Senate debate

In Georgia’s U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and his Republican opponent U.S. Rep. Mike Collins spent a considerable amount of a one-hour debate engaged in personal attacks. 

Collins said Ossoff is a “radical” and a “trust fund kid who’s never had a job in his life.” 

Ossoff said Collins was a “bigot” and that his son-in-law posted white supremacist content online, “Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home. That’s Mike Collins.” Collins retorted he has condemned racism and anti-semistism.

Beyond the insults, they also challenged each other’s voting records and agreed on one thing: that data centers need oversight. PolitiFact fact-checked some of their claims. 

Ossoff: “This is a man who cheered on a group of young men who were mocking a Black woman on a college campus with monkey sounds. … His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists on the country.”

In May 2024, Collins posted a video on X showing an encounter between a Black woman and a crowd of white men at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Mississippi. He captioned it, “Ole Miss taking care of business.”

One of the men in the video appeared to be making monkey sounds and gestures. 

Meyer Siegfried, a Collins’ campaign spokesperson referred PolitiFact to a statement Collins released at the time after people criticized his post.

“If that person is found to have treated another human being improperly because of their race, they should be punished appropriately…,” the statement said. “Frankly, I did not believe that to be the focal point of the video shared at the time, but I recognized that there certainly seems to be  some potentially inappropriate behavior that none of us should seek to glorify.”

The Washington Post reported in August that a former Collins staffer posted Nazi and Ku Klux Klan images on his own social media. In July, Collins also replaced a chief of staff after Slate reported he was in a group chat that included Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist, and Richard Spencer, a white nationalist. 

Ossoff: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act “gave $70 billion of your money to data center developers.”

This needs context.

Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation enacted in 2025 did not include tax provisions specifically targeted at data centers. But companies involved in data centers were able to take advantage of some of its provisions, such as one that allows companies to write off the costs of equipment from their taxes more quickly than they had before.

Ossoff’s campaign pointed to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal thank tank, that found that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle — all of which use or develop data centers — saved $70 billion from accelerated expensing or other provisions in the bill.

The institute said the bill’s provision “applies to all kinds of investments,” even though “it seems to be especially lucrative for the companies building out AI infrastructure right now.”

Ossoff voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and Collins supported it.

Some polling shows public opposition to new data centers, amid concerns of increased electric bills and strained local resources. 

Collins: “He also said that he was responsible, voted for the infrastructure improvements at Fort Benning and Fort Stewart. He voted against that bill as well.”

This is missing context. 

In 2025, Ossoff’s Senate office said he helped write and pass a bill to fund infrastructure improvements at Georgia’s Fort Benning and Fort Stewart military bases. He supported passing the bill in a Senate subcommittee and when it came up before the full Senate.

But that bill became bundled in a larger funding package, and Ossoff then voted against the broader measure. 

His campaign told Fox News in July that Ossoff voted against it because the bill didn’t extend healthcare subsidies. 

Ossoff’s campaign pointed PolitiFact to Ossoff’s support for previous appropriations for fiscal years 2022 and 2024, when Congress funded projects at Fort Stewart and Fort Benning.

Collins: “That Bidenomics, that Green New Deal that my opponent voted for, that’s where all this inflation came from.”

This is inaccurate.

The Green New Deal was never enacted, so it could not have affected inflation.

The 2019 legislation addressed ways to curb climate change and protect the environment, including achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, building smart power grids and upgrading existing buildings to maximize energy efficiency. But the effort never gained universal support even among Democratic lawmakers. And, as a resolution, the legislation would not have had the force of law even if both chambers had passed it.

Ossoff also never voted for the Green New Deal because he only took his seat in the Senate in 2021. 

Ossoff voted for a different bill in 2022 — the Inflation Reduction Act — that included major incentives for green energy (as well as other issues such as prescription drug price negotiation). The Collins campaign pointed us to this measure when we asked for evidence for Collins’ assertion. 

However, this legislation did not spike inflation; after the act passed, year-over-year inflation fell from its mid-2022 highs of around 9%. 

Economists say the biggest driver of the mid-2022 inflationary peak was supply chain difficulties after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic had passed, followed by fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Economists have told PolitiFact that perhaps 2 percentage points in the rise of inflation in 2022 stemmed from the Biden-era American Rescue Plan, a COVID-19 relief measure. Economists say the bill’s stimulus provisions increased the amount of money in Americans’ hands, worsening the mismatch between supply and demand and pushing prices up. But they said this bill, which Ossoff voted for, exacerbated existing inflationary pressures; it didn’t cause them.

Experts also say today’s inflation — which is higher than it was when Trump began his second term — largely stems from actions Trump has taken, including his decisions to raise tariffs and to launch a war against Iran, which Iran responded to by seeking to control the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit route for petroleum and other important commodities. That raised prices for a whole host of products dependent on those commodities, notably gasoline and diesel fuel.