In her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union speech Thursday night, Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, told a story about a Mexican woman who was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 12, laying blame at the feet of the current administration.

“President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace,” she said.

The story, while wrenching, was highly misleading.

Although Ms. Britt did not name the victim in her speech, she has previously shared the story of a woman who appears to be the same individual based on congressional testimony, news releases and news reports.

That woman, Karla Jacinto Romero, is a Mexican citizen who does not live in the United States and who has spoken frequently about her experiences of being forced into sexual slavery for four years. In 2023, Ms. Jacinto participated in an event near the Texas border with Mexico that was also attended by three senators, including Ms. Britt. In a video released shortly after that trip, Ms. Britt discussed Ms. Jacinto’s experiences.

In her speech Thursday, Ms. Britt talked about the harrowing story as part of a critique of President Biden’s border policies, saying that “we wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country.” She added that “this is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.”

In fact, as first reported by the independent journalist Jonathan Katz on TikTok on Friday, Ms. Jacinto’s experiences did not happen in the United States. She has testified that she was kidnapped in Mexico City and that her shocking experience of being raped thousands of times took place entirely in Mexico. Moreover, she has said the kidnapping occurred in 2002 and she was rescued in 2006. Ms. Jacinto continues to live in Mexico and does not appear to have ever lived in the United States or to have sought asylum here.

In other words: None of this happened during President Biden’s administration, nor does it appear to have anything to do with his policies regarding the U.S. border with Mexico. But that didn’t stop the first-term senator from strongly implying that the president could have somehow prevented it from happening, using rhetoric that seemed calibrated to inflame public fears about immigration.

“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis,” she said. “He invited it.”

Ms. Jacinto did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Ms. Britt, Sean Ross, stood behind her speech.

“The story Senator Britt told was 100 percent correct,” he said in a statement. “And there are more innocent victims of that kind of disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever before right now. The Biden administration’s policies — the policies in this country that the president falsely claims are humane — have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border.”

He did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about what direct responsibility Mr. Biden had for what Ms. Jacinto experienced or what an anecdote about sex trafficking entirely within another country has to do with U.S. border policies.

President Biden signed a $460 billion spending package on Saturday to avert a shutdown of critical federal departments even as lawmakers continue to wrestle over a financing blueprint for many other agencies more than halfway into the current fiscal year.

The president finalized the legislation before leaving his home in Wilmington, Del., to fly to Atlanta for a campaign rally. It will extend funding through the rest of the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, for about half of the government, including the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Justice, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs.

But the rest of the government, including the Pentagon and the Homeland Security Department, remained on short-term life support, facing the prospect of running out of money by March 22 unless Congress and the president can agree on a plan. In his short tenure, Speaker Mike Johnson has made clear his desire to avoid a shutdown, even to the point of relying on Democratic votes, but the path ahead remains tricky.

In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden made no mention of the outstanding issues but simply expressed his gratitude to eight congressional leaders for defusing the crisis over the first half of government. “Thank you,” he wrote, naming the eight “for their leadership.”

The $460 billion legislation, which packaged six of the 12 annual spending bills, was passed on lopsided bipartisan votes in the House on Wednesday, 339 to 85, and in the Senate on Friday, 75 to 22, just in time to beat a midnight deadline when funding was set to lapse. Mr. Biden ordered preparations for a partial shutdown to halt until he could sign the bill on Saturday.

The measure will largely hold the funding of the affected agencies to the levels in the debt limit and spending deal negotiated last year by Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, keeping domestic spending relatively flat outside of certain veterans’ programs.

While Republicans managed to insert some relatively modest policy provisions into the package, their most polarizing demands were rejected. Among the policies Republicans failed to include in the spending package was a move stripping funding for a new rule by the Food and Drug Administration allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be distributed through the mail and at retail locations.

Congress now has 13 days to figure out the six remaining spending bills unless it votes to give itself more time, a challenge for Mr. Johnson, who is under enormous pressure from hard-liners in his conference to hold out for deeper spending cuts in domestic programs even though he has an extremely narrow majority.

A storm system that battered parts of the South with heavy rain on Saturday was expected to reach the Northeast, bringing with it the potential for coastal flooding and powerful winds, forecasters said.

The city of Charleston, S.C., closed more than 20 roads in the downtown area as a result of heavy rain and high tides.

Some reports indicated that up to 3.5 inches of rain fell in the downtown area, said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the Weather Prediction Center. An area near the waterfront reported getting nearly two inches of rainfall in an hour, he said.

In the Isle of Palms, a South Carolina city of 4,300 people that is about 15 miles east of Charleston, the police posted on social media urging residents to “not be driving right now if you do not absolutely need to be” as water levels continued to rise.

A tornado watch for portions of the Florida Panhandle as well as southeastern Georgia had been posted until 2 p.m., Mr. Chenard said. A few tornado warnings that were issued have since lapsed.

In Coffee County, Ga., high winds on Saturday damaged the roof of a mobile home and uprooted several trees, said Steve Carver, the Coffee County emergency management director and chief of the fire department. No injuries were reported.

The National Weather Service said that a subtropical jet stream, combined with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, among other variables, would result in widespread severe weather across much of the eastern United States into Sunday.

Severe thunderstorms are possible, as well as hail.

As the storm intensifies, it is expected to move up the East Coast and reach southern New England by early Sunday morning, the Weather Service said.

Strong winds and wet snow are predicted for northern New England from Saturday night into Sunday morning, as lake-effect snows sweep across the lower Great Lakes into Monday morning.

Accumulations of six to 12 inches of snow in the Adirondacks in New York were possible starting late on Saturday afternoon, Mr. Chenard said.

“During the day tomorrow, it’s going to get cold behind the system and windy, and some snow showers will linger,” he added.

Forecasters said the New York City area could get up to two inches of rain into Sunday morning, with the highest totals expected in northeastern New Jersey. Peak rainfall is forecast from 8 p.m. Saturday and until early Sunday.

A steady rain will not last very long but will be “briefly heavy,” Mr. Chenard said, and will affect northern New Jersey, New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Minor to moderate flooding could come with high tides on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, along the western Long Island Sound, Jamaica and western Great South Bay, forecasters said.

Mr. Chenard added that it was possible for snow showers to move through New York City on Sunday evening, though any accumulation was unlikely.

“Expect heavy rain, coastal flooding and strong winds this weekend,” the National Weather Service of New York, N.Y., said on social media. “The potential for strong winds will linger behind the storm into Monday as well.”

In her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union speech Thursday night, Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, told a story about a Mexican woman who was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 12, laying blame at the feet of the current administration.

“President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace,” she said.

The story, while wrenching, was highly misleading.

Although Ms. Britt did not name the victim in her speech, she has previously shared the story of a woman who appears to be the same individual based on congressional testimony, news releases and news reports.

That woman, Karla Jacinto Romero, is a Mexican citizen who does not live in the United States and who has spoken frequently about her experiences of being forced into sexual slavery for four years. In 2023, Ms. Jacinto participated in an event near the Texas border with Mexico that was also attended by three senators, including Ms. Britt. In a video released shortly after that trip, Ms. Britt discussed Ms. Jacinto’s experiences.

In her speech Thursday, Ms. Britt talked about the harrowing story as part of a critique of President Biden’s border policies, saying that “we wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country.” She added that “this is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.”

In fact, as first reported by the independent journalist Jonathan Katz on TikTok on Friday, Ms. Jacinto’s experiences did not happen in the United States. She has testified that she was kidnapped in Mexico City and that her shocking experience of being raped thousands of times took place entirely in Mexico. Moreover, she has said the kidnapping occurred in 2002 and she was rescued in 2006. Ms. Jacinto continues to live in Mexico and does not appear to have ever lived in the United States or to have sought asylum here.

In other words: None of this happened during President Biden’s administration, nor does it appear to have anything to do with his policies regarding the U.S. border with Mexico. But that didn’t stop the first-term senator from strongly implying that the president could have somehow prevented it from happening, using rhetoric that seemed calibrated to inflame public fears about immigration.

“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis,” she said. “He invited it.”

Ms. Jacinto did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Ms. Britt, Sean Ross, stood behind her speech.

“The story Senator Britt told was 100 percent correct,” he said in a statement. “And there are more innocent victims of that kind of disgusting, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever before right now. The Biden administration’s policies — the policies in this country that the president falsely claims are humane — have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border.”

He did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about what direct responsibility Mr. Biden had for what Ms. Jacincto experienced or what an anecdote about sex trafficking entirely within another country has to do with U.S. border policies.

The glare of public attention has often left Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, on the receiving end of strong opinions. And Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, pushed back at that directly on Friday, criticizing a culture of bullying on social media.

“We have forgotten about our humanity, and that has got to change,” she said, while appearing on a keynote panel at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, focusing on the representation of women in entertainment and the media.

Meghan and Harry have voiced repeated concerns about how negative media attention has affected them, both while they were active members of Britain’s royal family and since they stepped back from royal duties in 2020 and moved to the United States.

Meghan said on Friday that she had received the bulk of online abuse while she was pregnant with her children, Archie and Lilibet, and in the months after their births.

“I keep my distance from it right now just for my own well-being,” Meghan said of the negative comments directed at her online, some of which she described as “hateful.”

“It’s not catty,” she said in the keynote session, which also included Brooke Shields, Katie Couric and the sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen. “It’s cruel.”

In a 2022 Netflix documentary, in which the couple talked in detail about their split from Britain’s royal family, Meghan said that she had struggled with mental health issues and experienced suicidal thoughts, in part because of the harsh media attention.

On Friday, she said that a cultural change was needed in social media habits. Online platforms, she said, incentivized people to “churn out very, very inciting comments and conspiracy theories that can have a tremendously negative effect on someone’s mental health.

Meghan and Harry have also expressed concerns about their physical safety, notably after their car was pursued by photographers while in New York last May.

And the couple have tangled with British tabloids in court. Last month, a London court awarded Harry damages from The Mirror Group of newspapers after a judge found the group guilty of “widespread and habitual” hacking of his cellphone.

Nor are they the only members of Britain’s royal family to draw intense media and online attention.

Speculation over the family’s well-being has been particularly strong this year, as King Charles III, Harry’s father, revealed in February that he had received a cancer diagnosis, around the same time that Catherine, Princess of Wales, underwent abdominal surgery. Catherine, the wife of Prince William, Harry’s elder brother, has also been the subject of online rumors during her time away from the public eye.

For her part, Meghan said at SXSW that she was especially disturbed by “how much of the hate is women completely spewing that to other women.

“If you’re reading something terrible — terrible — about a woman, why are you sharing it with your friends?” she posited. “Why are you choosing to put that out in the world?”