Haley finally gets a question on foreign policy, a strong suit for the former U.N. Ambassador. She defends American support for Ukraine and ties it to the fight against China. But while the moderators teed her up to attack DeSantis, she instead pivots to Ramaswamy. She's pretty fiery in her back-and-forth with him, saying he has no foreign policy experience "and it shows."
-Analysis from Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

On Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Christie referenced his recent trip to the war-torn country and said that he "wanted to see for myself what [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's army was doing to the free Ukrainian people."

"They have gouged out people's eyes, cut off their ears and shot people in the back of the head," Christie said of the brutality he saw.

"This is the Vladimir Putin who Donald Trump called 'brilliant' and a 'genius,'" he continued. "If we don't stand up against this type of autocratic killing, we will be next."

-ABC News' Meredith Deliso

Born in 1985 and only 38, Ramaswamy may be the only candidate on stage who was too young to remember the Cold War. The USSR dissolved when he was 6.
-Analysis by Monica Potts of FiveThirtyEight

The debate over Ukraine is a window into the intraparty battle between its previously more dominant neoconservative wing that lost credibility during and after the George W. Bush years and the comparably isolationist wing that's gained ground with Trump's time in office. Ramaswamy, as an avatar for the New Right, specifically name-checked the Iraq War, saying the Ukraine conflict could lead to American intervention. By comparison, Pence and Haley, more traditional conservatives who have foreign policy experience from their time as vice president and U.N. ambassador, respectively, were especially vocal in defending U.S. support for Ukraine.-Analysis by Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight

This is … what we call, a zombie stat. It’s Mostly False.

The Biden administration never proposed hiring 87,000 additional or new IRS agents.

This 87,000 figure comes from a May 2021 Treasury Department assessment of how it would use $80 billion to improve IRS operations. The report said the IRS would add 86,852 new full-time positions.

But even in the 2021 plan, not all of the hires would be auditors, or work in enforcement. The report said the money would go toward many things, including "hiring new specialized enforcement staff, modernizing antiquated information technology, and investing in meaningful taxpayer service."

Although the agency’s staff would increase, it’s key to note that over half of the IRS workforce is close to retirement. The plan was created with that exodus in mind and aims to hire thousands of people to simply maintain current levels. Today, the IRS has about 80,000 employees.

"The IRS will lose about 50,000 people over the next five or six years," said Natasha Sarin, Treasury’s counselor for tax policy and implementation. "A lot of this hiring is about replacing those people."
-Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact