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Photos show that the person who shot three people during a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake is a police officer. | Contradiction | Update: After this story published, the Wisconsin Department of Justice provided an update into its investigation. Those details are now included in this report. Authorities have not revealed much since a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., shot a Black resident named Jacob Blake, prompting several days of demonstrations punctuated by a deadly night of unrest. But after two people were shot and killed and a third was injured during protests over Blake's shooting on Aug. 25, one social media post pulled together a couple threads from the rumors spreading on social media. 'Come to find out the shooter last night is a.... COP?' the post says. It shows two photos: one of a police officer wearing a helmet and the other of someone in a green shirt holding what looks like an assault-style weapon. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The first photo shows Rusten Sheskey, a Kenosha police officer who was profiled by Kenosha News in 2019 for his work as a 'bike cop.' Some social media posts have also claimed that Sheskey is the officer who shot Blake. (The Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation said after this story published on Aug. 26 that Sheskey was the shooter.) However, Sheskey is not the person who has been arrested in connection with the shooting that left two people dead and another person injured. That person is Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Antioch, Ill., who police arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the fatal shootings. When the Kenosha News story was published, Sheskey had worked as a police officer in Kenosha for six and a half years, and at a different department for three years before that. Rittenhouse would have been about 8 years old, nine years ago. The second photo that appears in the Facebook post was published by several news outlets including Yahoo News, which describes it as a 'screengrab of video of white shooter during Tuesday night's protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.' A recording caught the shooter opening fire in the middle of the street and the gunman could be heard saying 'I just killed somebody,' the Associated Press reported. We rate this Facebook post False. | We rate this Facebook post False. | []
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Photos show that the person who shot three people during a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake is a police officer. | Contradiction | Update: After this story published, the Wisconsin Department of Justice provided an update into its investigation. Those details are now included in this report. Authorities have not revealed much since a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., shot a Black resident named Jacob Blake, prompting several days of demonstrations punctuated by a deadly night of unrest. But after two people were shot and killed and a third was injured during protests over Blake's shooting on Aug. 25, one social media post pulled together a couple threads from the rumors spreading on social media. 'Come to find out the shooter last night is a.... COP?' the post says. It shows two photos: one of a police officer wearing a helmet and the other of someone in a green shirt holding what looks like an assault-style weapon. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The first photo shows Rusten Sheskey, a Kenosha police officer who was profiled by Kenosha News in 2019 for his work as a 'bike cop.' Some social media posts have also claimed that Sheskey is the officer who shot Blake. (The Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation said after this story published on Aug. 26 that Sheskey was the shooter.) However, Sheskey is not the person who has been arrested in connection with the shooting that left two people dead and another person injured. That person is Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Antioch, Ill., who police arrested on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with the fatal shootings. When the Kenosha News story was published, Sheskey had worked as a police officer in Kenosha for six and a half years, and at a different department for three years before that. Rittenhouse would have been about 8 years old, nine years ago. The second photo that appears in the Facebook post was published by several news outlets including Yahoo News, which describes it as a 'screengrab of video of white shooter during Tuesday night's protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.' A recording caught the shooter opening fire in the middle of the street and the gunman could be heard saying 'I just killed somebody,' the Associated Press reported. We rate this Facebook post False. | We rate this Facebook post False. | []
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'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders. | Contradiction | Call it the domino effect: First, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its mask-wearing recommendations for vaccinated people. Next, a leaked report from the agency suggested that COVID-19 might be transmitted by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated. Then, misinformation began to spread on social media. 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders,' read one viral Instagram post. It was a screenshot of Natural News, an anti-vaccine website that has promoted conspiracy theories. The post continued, 'Via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, vaccines are now failing, and vaccinated people may now carry higher viral loads than unvaccinated people, contributing to the spread of COVID.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We could not find any evidence - published or broadcast interviews, or CDC news releases - to support the claim that Walenksy said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people carry 'higher' viral loads than unvaccinated people. She said vaccinated and unvaccinated people have 'similarly high' viral loads. The CDC released updated guidance on July 27 for vaccinated people, recommending they wear masks indoors in geographic areas that have 'substantial and high transmission' of COVID-19. On that date, 46% of U.S. counties had high transmission and 17% had substantial transmission, CNN reported. Walensky said the changes were needed because the agency had new scientific data showing that the delta variant behaves differently from past strains of the virus. The agency did not immediately release the data being referenced, though. A few days later, news organizations published a leaked internal report from the CDC that suggested that vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections from the delta variant might be able to transmit COVID-19 as easily as the unvaccinated, and also have viral loads similar to the unvaccinated who are infected with the variant. Viral load is 'a measure of the density of viral particles in the body,' according to the journal Nature. Walensky said higher viral loads 'suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with delta can transmit the virus.' The finding was based in part on a cluster infection on Cape Cod in Massachusetts that so far has been associated with 900 COVID-19 cases, most of which are from the delta variant. About three-quarters of those infected had been vaccinated. Though the total number of cases was high, serious cases were rare: there were seven hospitalizations and zero deaths. The internal CDC document noted that breakthrough cases continue to be rare and a small percentage of cases. NBC News collected data from 38 states and found 125,682 breakthrough cases, representing less than .08 percent of those who have been fully vaccinated, or one in 1,300. Kaiser Family Foundation also analyzed breakthrough cases from 25 states that report data on them and found that in more than 9 in 10 COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been among the unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated. | Our ruling An Instagram post said, 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders.' The post said this was 'via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.' We could not identify any instance in published or broadcast accounts, or CDC news releases, where Walensky said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people are superspreaders; she said vaccinated people infected with the delta variant have similarly high viral loads as unvaccinated people. We rate this claim False. | []
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'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders. | Contradiction | Call it the domino effect: First, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its mask-wearing recommendations for vaccinated people. Next, a leaked report from the agency suggested that COVID-19 might be transmitted by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated. Then, misinformation began to spread on social media. 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders,' read one viral Instagram post. It was a screenshot of Natural News, an anti-vaccine website that has promoted conspiracy theories. The post continued, 'Via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, vaccines are now failing, and vaccinated people may now carry higher viral loads than unvaccinated people, contributing to the spread of COVID.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We could not find any evidence - published or broadcast interviews, or CDC news releases - to support the claim that Walenksy said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people carry 'higher' viral loads than unvaccinated people. She said vaccinated and unvaccinated people have 'similarly high' viral loads. The CDC released updated guidance on July 27 for vaccinated people, recommending they wear masks indoors in geographic areas that have 'substantial and high transmission' of COVID-19. On that date, 46% of U.S. counties had high transmission and 17% had substantial transmission, CNN reported. Walensky said the changes were needed because the agency had new scientific data showing that the delta variant behaves differently from past strains of the virus. The agency did not immediately release the data being referenced, though. A few days later, news organizations published a leaked internal report from the CDC that suggested that vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections from the delta variant might be able to transmit COVID-19 as easily as the unvaccinated, and also have viral loads similar to the unvaccinated who are infected with the variant. Viral load is 'a measure of the density of viral particles in the body,' according to the journal Nature. Walensky said higher viral loads 'suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with delta can transmit the virus.' The finding was based in part on a cluster infection on Cape Cod in Massachusetts that so far has been associated with 900 COVID-19 cases, most of which are from the delta variant. About three-quarters of those infected had been vaccinated. Though the total number of cases was high, serious cases were rare: there were seven hospitalizations and zero deaths. The internal CDC document noted that breakthrough cases continue to be rare and a small percentage of cases. NBC News collected data from 38 states and found 125,682 breakthrough cases, representing less than .08 percent of those who have been fully vaccinated, or one in 1,300. Kaiser Family Foundation also analyzed breakthrough cases from 25 states that report data on them and found that in more than 9 in 10 COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been among the unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated. | Our ruling An Instagram post said, 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders.' The post said this was 'via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.' We could not identify any instance in published or broadcast accounts, or CDC news releases, where Walensky said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people are superspreaders; she said vaccinated people infected with the delta variant have similarly high viral loads as unvaccinated people. We rate this claim False. | []
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'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders. | Contradiction | Call it the domino effect: First, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its mask-wearing recommendations for vaccinated people. Next, a leaked report from the agency suggested that COVID-19 might be transmitted by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated. Then, misinformation began to spread on social media. 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders,' read one viral Instagram post. It was a screenshot of Natural News, an anti-vaccine website that has promoted conspiracy theories. The post continued, 'Via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, vaccines are now failing, and vaccinated people may now carry higher viral loads than unvaccinated people, contributing to the spread of COVID.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We could not find any evidence - published or broadcast interviews, or CDC news releases - to support the claim that Walenksy said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people carry 'higher' viral loads than unvaccinated people. She said vaccinated and unvaccinated people have 'similarly high' viral loads. The CDC released updated guidance on July 27 for vaccinated people, recommending they wear masks indoors in geographic areas that have 'substantial and high transmission' of COVID-19. On that date, 46% of U.S. counties had high transmission and 17% had substantial transmission, CNN reported. Walensky said the changes were needed because the agency had new scientific data showing that the delta variant behaves differently from past strains of the virus. The agency did not immediately release the data being referenced, though. A few days later, news organizations published a leaked internal report from the CDC that suggested that vaccinated people who have breakthrough infections from the delta variant might be able to transmit COVID-19 as easily as the unvaccinated, and also have viral loads similar to the unvaccinated who are infected with the variant. Viral load is 'a measure of the density of viral particles in the body,' according to the journal Nature. Walensky said higher viral loads 'suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with delta can transmit the virus.' The finding was based in part on a cluster infection on Cape Cod in Massachusetts that so far has been associated with 900 COVID-19 cases, most of which are from the delta variant. About three-quarters of those infected had been vaccinated. Though the total number of cases was high, serious cases were rare: there were seven hospitalizations and zero deaths. The internal CDC document noted that breakthrough cases continue to be rare and a small percentage of cases. NBC News collected data from 38 states and found 125,682 breakthrough cases, representing less than .08 percent of those who have been fully vaccinated, or one in 1,300. Kaiser Family Foundation also analyzed breakthrough cases from 25 states that report data on them and found that in more than 9 in 10 COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been among the unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated. | Our ruling An Instagram post said, 'CDC confesses: Vaccines are failing, and the vaxxed can be superspreaders.' The post said this was 'via the words of the CDC's own director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.' We could not identify any instance in published or broadcast accounts, or CDC news releases, where Walensky said vaccines are failing. And she did not say vaccinated people are superspreaders; she said vaccinated people infected with the delta variant have similarly high viral loads as unvaccinated people. We rate this claim False. | []
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'Alert: Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus. | Contradiction | Rumors that con artists and robbers have been going door to door pretending to offer COVID-19 tests have been stoking fear on social media since the beginning of the pandemic. 'Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus,' a trending Facebook post from April 2020 reads. 'Do not let them in. Call the police! Please pass this on and alert families!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The American Red Cross as well as law enforcement officials across the country and in the United Kingdom have responded to such social media posts by explaining that no authorized coronavirus testing was being conducted door to door. The American Red Cross noticed widespread reports of this scam across the U.S. and in other countries on social media platforms at the start of the pandemic. In response, it posted advisories on social media throughout the spring to combat misinformation. 'Please know that the Red Cross is not going to people's homes to offer coronavirus tests,' the American Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast region tweeted on March 19, 2020. 'If someone comes to your home claiming they work for the Red Cross and that they are authorized to administer coronavirus testing, do not allow them in your home.' Similar posts were made by several regional chapters of the American Red Cross. However, these warnings are unwittingly fanning an unverified Internet rumor: there's no evidence that this door-to-door scam was happening in the first place. This is similar to other false claims that robbers were going door to door in Colorado Springs, Stockton, Calif., and Las Vegas pretending to be COVID-19 testers. Police in those cities said they received no reports of robbers pretending to offer coronavirus testing. We did not find evidence of law enforcement warning against such COVID-19 tester scams. We reached out to six other police departments in Tacoma, Wash., Tucson, Ariz.,San Diego, Calif., Santa Monica, Calif., Minneapolis, Minn., and Arlington Country, Va. Not one said they were aware of police reports about fraudulent door-to-door COVID-19 testers. | Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that police and the Red Cross have advised that there are scammers going 'door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus.' While the American Red Cross and some police departments in the U.S. have shared warnings against possible con artists pretending to be giving home COVID-19 tests, the post incorrectly portrays the advisory warnings as evidence of these scams. We found no news coverage of robbers or scammers posing as COVID-19 testers, as the post describes, and nine departments have independently confirmed that no such incidents have also been reported to the police. Because the claim contains an element of truth but leaves a misleading impression, we rate it Mostly False. | []
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'Alert: Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus. | Contradiction | Rumors that con artists and robbers have been going door to door pretending to offer COVID-19 tests have been stoking fear on social media since the beginning of the pandemic. 'Law enforcement and the Red Cross have advised that there are people going door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus,' a trending Facebook post from April 2020 reads. 'Do not let them in. Call the police! Please pass this on and alert families!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The American Red Cross as well as law enforcement officials across the country and in the United Kingdom have responded to such social media posts by explaining that no authorized coronavirus testing was being conducted door to door. The American Red Cross noticed widespread reports of this scam across the U.S. and in other countries on social media platforms at the start of the pandemic. In response, it posted advisories on social media throughout the spring to combat misinformation. 'Please know that the Red Cross is not going to people's homes to offer coronavirus tests,' the American Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast region tweeted on March 19, 2020. 'If someone comes to your home claiming they work for the Red Cross and that they are authorized to administer coronavirus testing, do not allow them in your home.' Similar posts were made by several regional chapters of the American Red Cross. However, these warnings are unwittingly fanning an unverified Internet rumor: there's no evidence that this door-to-door scam was happening in the first place. This is similar to other false claims that robbers were going door to door in Colorado Springs, Stockton, Calif., and Las Vegas pretending to be COVID-19 testers. Police in those cities said they received no reports of robbers pretending to offer coronavirus testing. We did not find evidence of law enforcement warning against such COVID-19 tester scams. We reached out to six other police departments in Tacoma, Wash., Tucson, Ariz.,San Diego, Calif., Santa Monica, Calif., Minneapolis, Minn., and Arlington Country, Va. Not one said they were aware of police reports about fraudulent door-to-door COVID-19 testers. | Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that police and the Red Cross have advised that there are scammers going 'door to door indicating that they are authorized to do testing for Coronavirus.' While the American Red Cross and some police departments in the U.S. have shared warnings against possible con artists pretending to be giving home COVID-19 tests, the post incorrectly portrays the advisory warnings as evidence of these scams. We found no news coverage of robbers or scammers posing as COVID-19 testers, as the post describes, and nine departments have independently confirmed that no such incidents have also been reported to the police. Because the claim contains an element of truth but leaves a misleading impression, we rate it Mostly False. | []
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'Obama's daughters caught on camera burning US flag at DC protest. | Contradiction | Former President Barack Obama and his family have left the White House, but not the spotlight. More than three years into the Trump administration, false claims about Obama's daughters continue to percolate. A recent blog post claims that Sasha and Malia Obama were caught burning an American flag on camera at a protest. 'In a show of anti-American sentiment that will surprise precisely no one, Sasha and Malia Obama were allegedly caught on camera burning a United States flag during a protest in Washington, DC,' the post reads. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) There is no evidence of Obama's daughters burning a flag at a recent protest. This blog post was copied word-for-word from a website, BustaTroll.org, that produces what it says is satire. BustaTroll.org includes two small disclaimers at the beginning of its article about Obama's daughters, which are designed to alert readers that the article is satire. Further, BustaTroll.org's 'about us' page clearly categorizes the website's work as satire that is not meant to be taken seriously. 'Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real,' the BustaTroll.org 'about us' page reads. 'Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical.' While BustaTroll.org is clear to indicate the article isn't meant to be taken seriously, the copied blog post has none of the same disclaimers. There is no evidence Sasha and Malia Obama burned an American flag at a recent protest, and it seems the claim originated from a website that purports to publish satire. We rate this post Pants on Fire. | We rate this post Pants on Fire. | []
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'Obama's daughters caught on camera burning US flag at DC protest. | Contradiction | Former President Barack Obama and his family have left the White House, but not the spotlight. More than three years into the Trump administration, false claims about Obama's daughters continue to percolate. A recent blog post claims that Sasha and Malia Obama were caught burning an American flag on camera at a protest. 'In a show of anti-American sentiment that will surprise precisely no one, Sasha and Malia Obama were allegedly caught on camera burning a United States flag during a protest in Washington, DC,' the post reads. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) There is no evidence of Obama's daughters burning a flag at a recent protest. This blog post was copied word-for-word from a website, BustaTroll.org, that produces what it says is satire. BustaTroll.org includes two small disclaimers at the beginning of its article about Obama's daughters, which are designed to alert readers that the article is satire. Further, BustaTroll.org's 'about us' page clearly categorizes the website's work as satire that is not meant to be taken seriously. 'Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real,' the BustaTroll.org 'about us' page reads. 'Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical.' While BustaTroll.org is clear to indicate the article isn't meant to be taken seriously, the copied blog post has none of the same disclaimers. There is no evidence Sasha and Malia Obama burned an American flag at a recent protest, and it seems the claim originated from a website that purports to publish satire. We rate this post Pants on Fire. | We rate this post Pants on Fire. | []
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Says Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat. | Contradiction | President Joe Biden is not restricting access to red meat. But soon after Biden wrapped up his first address to Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., repeated the Pants on Fire false claim that Biden's climate plans would kick burgers and steaks off the menu. 'He wants control of your life. He's going to control how much meat you can eat,' McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. 'Can you imagine that?' Hannity, one of several Fox News and Fox Business Network personalities who had promoted the same false narrative days earlier, did not push back against McCarthy's claim, even though a Fox News anchor recently acknowledged it is wrong. .@GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy said Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' That is not true. https://t.co/YaolSbI2EF pic.twitter.com/Dplsr0qJPC- Bill McCarthy (@billdmccarthy) April 29, 2021 A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in short, the top House Republican was up in arms over a Biden plan that doesn't actually exist. The false claims about Biden coming after America's hamburgers started with a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked his climate goals to an unrelated 2020 study from the University of Michigan, which examined the impact various dietary changes would have on U.S. carbon emissions. After Biden pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, the Daily Mail ran its article, which made projections as to what policies could potentially make Biden's goal a reality. At one point, the article speculated that 'Americans may have to cut their red meat consumption by a whopping 90%,' citing the Michigan study. But the study has no link to Biden's plans. 'The study was published in January 2020, when Trump was still president, so it had nothing to do with Biden or his climate change plan,' said Tulane University professor Diego Rose, one of the study's three co-authors. 'It's all just sensational goo from 'Fox & Friends.'' 'The study shows that if we eat less meat, especially beef, we could substantially reduce our dietary carbon footprint. But that change in behavior is a choice that individuals will make.' In a separate statement, co-authors Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian of the University of Michigan explained that one hypothetical scenario the study considered was a 90% reduction in beef combined with a 50% reduction in other meats. They found that such a change would reduce 'diet-related greenhouse gas emissions associated with agricultural production' by 50%. 'But this is not a specific recommended policy for achieving a 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions,' Heller and Keoleian said. They added: 'President Biden's climate plan does not directly refer to diet shift as a carbon reduction strategy, so the linkage to our study is baseless.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption, a White House official confirmed to PolitiFact. Biden never mentioned red meat when he announced his plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030, a move that would double the U.S.'s commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. He talked mostly about investing in U.S infrastructure by modernizing the grid and shifting toward electric vehicles, among other things. McCarthy's claim that Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat' came days after the notion was widely debunked by fact-checkers and news outlets. It also came after Fox News - which created a graphic about Biden limiting meat - acknowledged in an on-air correction that the 'graphic and the script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden's plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.' | Our ruling McCarthy said Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption. Claims that they do trace back to a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked Biden's new U.S. emissions target to an unrelated 2020 study examining the impact of hypothetical dietary changes on emissions. The claim had been widely debunked by the time McCarthy repeated it. We rate his statement Pants on Fire! | [
"102617-proof-37-717a4f88e10dd5040bc8d3a42f4d1974.jpg"
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Says Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat. | Contradiction | President Joe Biden is not restricting access to red meat. But soon after Biden wrapped up his first address to Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., repeated the Pants on Fire false claim that Biden's climate plans would kick burgers and steaks off the menu. 'He wants control of your life. He's going to control how much meat you can eat,' McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. 'Can you imagine that?' Hannity, one of several Fox News and Fox Business Network personalities who had promoted the same false narrative days earlier, did not push back against McCarthy's claim, even though a Fox News anchor recently acknowledged it is wrong. .@GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy said Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' That is not true. https://t.co/YaolSbI2EF pic.twitter.com/Dplsr0qJPC- Bill McCarthy (@billdmccarthy) April 29, 2021 A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in short, the top House Republican was up in arms over a Biden plan that doesn't actually exist. The false claims about Biden coming after America's hamburgers started with a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked his climate goals to an unrelated 2020 study from the University of Michigan, which examined the impact various dietary changes would have on U.S. carbon emissions. After Biden pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, the Daily Mail ran its article, which made projections as to what policies could potentially make Biden's goal a reality. At one point, the article speculated that 'Americans may have to cut their red meat consumption by a whopping 90%,' citing the Michigan study. But the study has no link to Biden's plans. 'The study was published in January 2020, when Trump was still president, so it had nothing to do with Biden or his climate change plan,' said Tulane University professor Diego Rose, one of the study's three co-authors. 'It's all just sensational goo from 'Fox & Friends.'' 'The study shows that if we eat less meat, especially beef, we could substantially reduce our dietary carbon footprint. But that change in behavior is a choice that individuals will make.' In a separate statement, co-authors Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian of the University of Michigan explained that one hypothetical scenario the study considered was a 90% reduction in beef combined with a 50% reduction in other meats. They found that such a change would reduce 'diet-related greenhouse gas emissions associated with agricultural production' by 50%. 'But this is not a specific recommended policy for achieving a 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions,' Heller and Keoleian said. They added: 'President Biden's climate plan does not directly refer to diet shift as a carbon reduction strategy, so the linkage to our study is baseless.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption, a White House official confirmed to PolitiFact. Biden never mentioned red meat when he announced his plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030, a move that would double the U.S.'s commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. He talked mostly about investing in U.S infrastructure by modernizing the grid and shifting toward electric vehicles, among other things. McCarthy's claim that Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat' came days after the notion was widely debunked by fact-checkers and news outlets. It also came after Fox News - which created a graphic about Biden limiting meat - acknowledged in an on-air correction that the 'graphic and the script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden's plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.' | Our ruling McCarthy said Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption. Claims that they do trace back to a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked Biden's new U.S. emissions target to an unrelated 2020 study examining the impact of hypothetical dietary changes on emissions. The claim had been widely debunked by the time McCarthy repeated it. We rate his statement Pants on Fire! | [
"102617-proof-37-717a4f88e10dd5040bc8d3a42f4d1974.jpg"
]
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Says Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat. | Contradiction | President Joe Biden is not restricting access to red meat. But soon after Biden wrapped up his first address to Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., repeated the Pants on Fire false claim that Biden's climate plans would kick burgers and steaks off the menu. 'He wants control of your life. He's going to control how much meat you can eat,' McCarthy said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. 'Can you imagine that?' Hannity, one of several Fox News and Fox Business Network personalities who had promoted the same false narrative days earlier, did not push back against McCarthy's claim, even though a Fox News anchor recently acknowledged it is wrong. .@GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy said Joe Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' That is not true. https://t.co/YaolSbI2EF pic.twitter.com/Dplsr0qJPC- Bill McCarthy (@billdmccarthy) April 29, 2021 A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in short, the top House Republican was up in arms over a Biden plan that doesn't actually exist. The false claims about Biden coming after America's hamburgers started with a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked his climate goals to an unrelated 2020 study from the University of Michigan, which examined the impact various dietary changes would have on U.S. carbon emissions. After Biden pledged to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, the Daily Mail ran its article, which made projections as to what policies could potentially make Biden's goal a reality. At one point, the article speculated that 'Americans may have to cut their red meat consumption by a whopping 90%,' citing the Michigan study. But the study has no link to Biden's plans. 'The study was published in January 2020, when Trump was still president, so it had nothing to do with Biden or his climate change plan,' said Tulane University professor Diego Rose, one of the study's three co-authors. 'It's all just sensational goo from 'Fox & Friends.'' 'The study shows that if we eat less meat, especially beef, we could substantially reduce our dietary carbon footprint. But that change in behavior is a choice that individuals will make.' In a separate statement, co-authors Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian of the University of Michigan explained that one hypothetical scenario the study considered was a 90% reduction in beef combined with a 50% reduction in other meats. They found that such a change would reduce 'diet-related greenhouse gas emissions associated with agricultural production' by 50%. 'But this is not a specific recommended policy for achieving a 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions,' Heller and Keoleian said. They added: 'President Biden's climate plan does not directly refer to diet shift as a carbon reduction strategy, so the linkage to our study is baseless.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption, a White House official confirmed to PolitiFact. Biden never mentioned red meat when he announced his plan to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030, a move that would double the U.S.'s commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. He talked mostly about investing in U.S infrastructure by modernizing the grid and shifting toward electric vehicles, among other things. McCarthy's claim that Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat' came days after the notion was widely debunked by fact-checkers and news outlets. It also came after Fox News - which created a graphic about Biden limiting meat - acknowledged in an on-air correction that the 'graphic and the script incorrectly implied that it was part of Biden's plan for dealing with climate change. That is not the case.' | Our ruling McCarthy said Biden is 'going to control how much meat you can eat.' Biden's climate plans do not include restrictions on red meat consumption. Claims that they do trace back to a Daily Mail article that wrongly linked Biden's new U.S. emissions target to an unrelated 2020 study examining the impact of hypothetical dietary changes on emissions. The claim had been widely debunked by the time McCarthy repeated it. We rate his statement Pants on Fire! | [
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'Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut. | Contradiction | More than 100 people were killed and thousands injured in a large explosion at the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. Lebanese officials have attributed the tragedy to the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of a chemical commonly used in fertilizer. But some have an alternative explanation for the explosion, which could be felt up to 150 miles away. 'Israel Hits Beirut with Nuclear Missile, Trump and Lebanese Govt. Confirm,' reads the headline on an Aug. 5 article from Veterans Today, a website with a history of publishing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda. The article itself has not been shared much on social media, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool owned by Facebook. But screenshots of the headline, images embedded in the story and similar claims have been shared widely across social media platforms. (Screenshots from Facebook) Some of the posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Lebanese officials are still investigating what sparked the fire that caused the explosion, which severely damaged buildings throughout the capital and covered the city in debris. But is there any evidence that Israel was involved? In a word: no. Initial investigation indicates no evidence the explosion in Beirut was caused by a nuclear weapon. Israeli officials have denied any involvement in the tragedy. The Lebanese government and President Donald Trump have not 'confirmed' that Israel is to blame for the destruction. What we know about the explosion While it's still unclear how exactly the explosion unfolded, available evidence points to a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate. Lebanese authorities have said the blast occurred at a warehouse along the Beirut waterfront. The explosion is thought to have been caused by the ignition of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the site for six years, according to Prime Minister Hassan Diab. Ammonium nitrate is an explosive compound that's commonly used in fertilizer and bombs. It was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which left 168 people dead. Officials are still investigating what started the fire at the warehouse. However, the fire appears to have spread with the help of fireworks also stored at the port. Eyewitness video from Beirut shows what looks like fireworks igniting at the site of the fire at the port. The same footage does not show an incoming missile before the explosion. Stunning video shows explosions just minutes ago at Beirut port pic.twitter.com/ZjltF0VcTr- Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) August 4, 2020 A clearer view of the explosion also does not show any aircraft or missiles above the city. A more clear view of the explosion. #beirut pic.twitter.com/74NgZWvRL0- Zaiنab Hijazi (@zainabhijazi97) August 4, 2020 The explosion in the videos looks like a mushroom cloud. But contrary to the Veterans Today article, there is no evidence that the explosion was caused by a nuclear weapon. Atomic explosions create a blinding light, searing heat and nuclear fallout - none of which have been detected in Beirut. Meanwhile, reddish smoke, a telltale sign of ignited ammonium, can be seen in several bystander videos. The Associated Press reported the blast appeared to create a 'condensation cloud, often common in massive explosions in humid conditions that can follow the shock waves of an explosion.' Other fact-checkers have debunked claims that the blast was caused by a nuclear bomb. Israel denies involvement, Trump contradicts defense officials So the explosion in Beirut was not caused by a nuclear weapon. But what about the alleged involvement of Israel? Israel is still technically at war with Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party that has been designated as a terrorist group by several countries - including the U.S. But Israeli intelligence officials have denied involvement in the Beirut explosion to several news outlets. In fact, Israel has offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon through the United Nations. 'On behalf of the government of Israel, I send my condolences to the people of Lebanon,' tweeted the office of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Aug. 5. 'Yesterday Lebanon suffered a major catastrophe. We are ready to offer humanitarian assistance, as human being to human beings.' The Lebanese government, which has accused Israel of provoking a recent escalation along the border, has not blamed its neighbor for the blast. Meanwhile, Trump said during an Aug. 4 press briefing that the Beirut explosion 'looks like a terrible attack.' When a reporter questioned his use of the word 'attack,' the president doubled down. 'Well, it would seem like it, based on the explosion,' Trump said. 'I've met with some of our great generals, and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion-type of event.' But CNN reported that Trump's comments contradicted the view of several Defense Department officials. In its article, Veterans Today cites 'a general in the Lebanese Army,' someone else who writes for the website (and another site linked to pro-Russian disinformation), and an image of what appears to be a bird near the fire at the port of Beirut. We reached out to the author of the Veterans Today article, but he did not comment. | Our ruling Veterans Today claimed Israel dropped a nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. There is no evidence to support that. Lebanese officials believe a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate caused the explosion in Beirut, a hypothesis that experts and eyewitness videos back up. The characteristics of a nuclear blast have not been detected in the city. And Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion. The article is inaccurate. We rate it False. | [
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"102643-proof-10-d4da453aab0c657b38875376c49b2329.jpg"
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'Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut. | Contradiction | More than 100 people were killed and thousands injured in a large explosion at the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. Lebanese officials have attributed the tragedy to the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of a chemical commonly used in fertilizer. But some have an alternative explanation for the explosion, which could be felt up to 150 miles away. 'Israel Hits Beirut with Nuclear Missile, Trump and Lebanese Govt. Confirm,' reads the headline on an Aug. 5 article from Veterans Today, a website with a history of publishing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda. The article itself has not been shared much on social media, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool owned by Facebook. But screenshots of the headline, images embedded in the story and similar claims have been shared widely across social media platforms. (Screenshots from Facebook) Some of the posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Lebanese officials are still investigating what sparked the fire that caused the explosion, which severely damaged buildings throughout the capital and covered the city in debris. But is there any evidence that Israel was involved? In a word: no. Initial investigation indicates no evidence the explosion in Beirut was caused by a nuclear weapon. Israeli officials have denied any involvement in the tragedy. The Lebanese government and President Donald Trump have not 'confirmed' that Israel is to blame for the destruction. What we know about the explosion While it's still unclear how exactly the explosion unfolded, available evidence points to a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate. Lebanese authorities have said the blast occurred at a warehouse along the Beirut waterfront. The explosion is thought to have been caused by the ignition of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the site for six years, according to Prime Minister Hassan Diab. Ammonium nitrate is an explosive compound that's commonly used in fertilizer and bombs. It was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which left 168 people dead. Officials are still investigating what started the fire at the warehouse. However, the fire appears to have spread with the help of fireworks also stored at the port. Eyewitness video from Beirut shows what looks like fireworks igniting at the site of the fire at the port. The same footage does not show an incoming missile before the explosion. Stunning video shows explosions just minutes ago at Beirut port pic.twitter.com/ZjltF0VcTr- Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) August 4, 2020 A clearer view of the explosion also does not show any aircraft or missiles above the city. A more clear view of the explosion. #beirut pic.twitter.com/74NgZWvRL0- Zaiنab Hijazi (@zainabhijazi97) August 4, 2020 The explosion in the videos looks like a mushroom cloud. But contrary to the Veterans Today article, there is no evidence that the explosion was caused by a nuclear weapon. Atomic explosions create a blinding light, searing heat and nuclear fallout - none of which have been detected in Beirut. Meanwhile, reddish smoke, a telltale sign of ignited ammonium, can be seen in several bystander videos. The Associated Press reported the blast appeared to create a 'condensation cloud, often common in massive explosions in humid conditions that can follow the shock waves of an explosion.' Other fact-checkers have debunked claims that the blast was caused by a nuclear bomb. Israel denies involvement, Trump contradicts defense officials So the explosion in Beirut was not caused by a nuclear weapon. But what about the alleged involvement of Israel? Israel is still technically at war with Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party that has been designated as a terrorist group by several countries - including the U.S. But Israeli intelligence officials have denied involvement in the Beirut explosion to several news outlets. In fact, Israel has offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon through the United Nations. 'On behalf of the government of Israel, I send my condolences to the people of Lebanon,' tweeted the office of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Aug. 5. 'Yesterday Lebanon suffered a major catastrophe. We are ready to offer humanitarian assistance, as human being to human beings.' The Lebanese government, which has accused Israel of provoking a recent escalation along the border, has not blamed its neighbor for the blast. Meanwhile, Trump said during an Aug. 4 press briefing that the Beirut explosion 'looks like a terrible attack.' When a reporter questioned his use of the word 'attack,' the president doubled down. 'Well, it would seem like it, based on the explosion,' Trump said. 'I've met with some of our great generals, and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion-type of event.' But CNN reported that Trump's comments contradicted the view of several Defense Department officials. In its article, Veterans Today cites 'a general in the Lebanese Army,' someone else who writes for the website (and another site linked to pro-Russian disinformation), and an image of what appears to be a bird near the fire at the port of Beirut. We reached out to the author of the Veterans Today article, but he did not comment. | Our ruling Veterans Today claimed Israel dropped a nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. There is no evidence to support that. Lebanese officials believe a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate caused the explosion in Beirut, a hypothesis that experts and eyewitness videos back up. The characteristics of a nuclear blast have not been detected in the city. And Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion. The article is inaccurate. We rate it False. | [
"102643-proof-03-Untitled_design_1.jpg",
"102643-proof-10-d4da453aab0c657b38875376c49b2329.jpg"
]
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'Israel dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut. | Contradiction | More than 100 people were killed and thousands injured in a large explosion at the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. Lebanese officials have attributed the tragedy to the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of a chemical commonly used in fertilizer. But some have an alternative explanation for the explosion, which could be felt up to 150 miles away. 'Israel Hits Beirut with Nuclear Missile, Trump and Lebanese Govt. Confirm,' reads the headline on an Aug. 5 article from Veterans Today, a website with a history of publishing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda. The article itself has not been shared much on social media, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool owned by Facebook. But screenshots of the headline, images embedded in the story and similar claims have been shared widely across social media platforms. (Screenshots from Facebook) Some of the posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Lebanese officials are still investigating what sparked the fire that caused the explosion, which severely damaged buildings throughout the capital and covered the city in debris. But is there any evidence that Israel was involved? In a word: no. Initial investigation indicates no evidence the explosion in Beirut was caused by a nuclear weapon. Israeli officials have denied any involvement in the tragedy. The Lebanese government and President Donald Trump have not 'confirmed' that Israel is to blame for the destruction. What we know about the explosion While it's still unclear how exactly the explosion unfolded, available evidence points to a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate. Lebanese authorities have said the blast occurred at a warehouse along the Beirut waterfront. The explosion is thought to have been caused by the ignition of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the site for six years, according to Prime Minister Hassan Diab. Ammonium nitrate is an explosive compound that's commonly used in fertilizer and bombs. It was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which left 168 people dead. Officials are still investigating what started the fire at the warehouse. However, the fire appears to have spread with the help of fireworks also stored at the port. Eyewitness video from Beirut shows what looks like fireworks igniting at the site of the fire at the port. The same footage does not show an incoming missile before the explosion. Stunning video shows explosions just minutes ago at Beirut port pic.twitter.com/ZjltF0VcTr- Borzou Daragahi 🖊🗒 (@borzou) August 4, 2020 A clearer view of the explosion also does not show any aircraft or missiles above the city. A more clear view of the explosion. #beirut pic.twitter.com/74NgZWvRL0- Zaiنab Hijazi (@zainabhijazi97) August 4, 2020 The explosion in the videos looks like a mushroom cloud. But contrary to the Veterans Today article, there is no evidence that the explosion was caused by a nuclear weapon. Atomic explosions create a blinding light, searing heat and nuclear fallout - none of which have been detected in Beirut. Meanwhile, reddish smoke, a telltale sign of ignited ammonium, can be seen in several bystander videos. The Associated Press reported the blast appeared to create a 'condensation cloud, often common in massive explosions in humid conditions that can follow the shock waves of an explosion.' Other fact-checkers have debunked claims that the blast was caused by a nuclear bomb. Israel denies involvement, Trump contradicts defense officials So the explosion in Beirut was not caused by a nuclear weapon. But what about the alleged involvement of Israel? Israel is still technically at war with Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party that has been designated as a terrorist group by several countries - including the U.S. But Israeli intelligence officials have denied involvement in the Beirut explosion to several news outlets. In fact, Israel has offered humanitarian aid to Lebanon through the United Nations. 'On behalf of the government of Israel, I send my condolences to the people of Lebanon,' tweeted the office of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Aug. 5. 'Yesterday Lebanon suffered a major catastrophe. We are ready to offer humanitarian assistance, as human being to human beings.' The Lebanese government, which has accused Israel of provoking a recent escalation along the border, has not blamed its neighbor for the blast. Meanwhile, Trump said during an Aug. 4 press briefing that the Beirut explosion 'looks like a terrible attack.' When a reporter questioned his use of the word 'attack,' the president doubled down. 'Well, it would seem like it, based on the explosion,' Trump said. 'I've met with some of our great generals, and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion-type of event.' But CNN reported that Trump's comments contradicted the view of several Defense Department officials. In its article, Veterans Today cites 'a general in the Lebanese Army,' someone else who writes for the website (and another site linked to pro-Russian disinformation), and an image of what appears to be a bird near the fire at the port of Beirut. We reached out to the author of the Veterans Today article, but he did not comment. | Our ruling Veterans Today claimed Israel dropped a nuclear weapon on the port of Beirut on Aug. 4. There is no evidence to support that. Lebanese officials believe a combination of fireworks and ammonium nitrate caused the explosion in Beirut, a hypothesis that experts and eyewitness videos back up. The characteristics of a nuclear blast have not been detected in the city. And Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion. The article is inaccurate. We rate it False. | [
"102643-proof-03-Untitled_design_1.jpg",
"102643-proof-10-d4da453aab0c657b38875376c49b2329.jpg"
]
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'A portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P goes directly to the Democratic Party. | Contradiction | You already know the AARP lobbies for the interests of Americans over age 50. But does it also send money to the Democratic Party? That's what a popular (and previously debunked) Facebook post claims: 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party,' a Facebook post asks. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post's claim is untrue. AARP as an organization does not support the Democratic Party, and the claim has been debunked by fact-checkers before. An AARP spokesperson, Jason Young, confirmed that AARP is strictly nonpartisan. Young said AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare organization in good standing with the IRS, and pointed PolitiFact to the IRS' description of social welfare organizations. On its website, the IRS says that a tax-exempt social welfare organization is 'an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.' The website further explains: 'The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.' Chief operating officer Scott Frisch signed AARP's most recent tax filing, confirming that 'AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization empowering people to choose how they live as they age.' AARP has a policy 'against endorsing - or giving the appearance of endorsing - political parties, government officials or candidates for office,' Young said. (The full policy can be found here.) He also said much of AARP's leadership doesn't donate to political candidates or campaigns. 'Most of our board doesn't give to candidates or campaigns,' Young said. 'Our CEO doesn't give to candidates or campaigns. And most of our executive team does not give. Rank-and-file employees have the right to give, of course, but they don't direct the organization or its policies.' PolitiFact used Federal Election Commission data to confirm that the majority of AARP board members and the majority of AARP executive team members haven't made recent political campaign contributions. Individual donors associated with AARP have donated primarily to Democratic candidates in most election cycles including 2016, 2018 and 2020, according to an Open Secrets campaign contribution database. But when surveyed, about a third of AARP members report that their political leanings are conservative, a third report their leanings are liberal and a third consider themselves independent or in between, according to Young. So what does AARP do with the money it receives from donations or from its $16 per year membership fee? The AARP lobbies for policies such as protecting Medicare, fighting high drug prices, protecting Social Security, combating fraud targeted at older people and addressing senior poverty. | Our ruling A Facebook post asks, 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party.' AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare nonprofit that is not permitted to participate in political campaigns. People who work for AARP can make individual political contributions, but those donations do not come from the organization as a whole. We rate this post False. | []
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'A portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P goes directly to the Democratic Party. | Contradiction | You already know the AARP lobbies for the interests of Americans over age 50. But does it also send money to the Democratic Party? That's what a popular (and previously debunked) Facebook post claims: 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party,' a Facebook post asks. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post's claim is untrue. AARP as an organization does not support the Democratic Party, and the claim has been debunked by fact-checkers before. An AARP spokesperson, Jason Young, confirmed that AARP is strictly nonpartisan. Young said AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare organization in good standing with the IRS, and pointed PolitiFact to the IRS' description of social welfare organizations. On its website, the IRS says that a tax-exempt social welfare organization is 'an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.' The website further explains: 'The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.' Chief operating officer Scott Frisch signed AARP's most recent tax filing, confirming that 'AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization empowering people to choose how they live as they age.' AARP has a policy 'against endorsing - or giving the appearance of endorsing - political parties, government officials or candidates for office,' Young said. (The full policy can be found here.) He also said much of AARP's leadership doesn't donate to political candidates or campaigns. 'Most of our board doesn't give to candidates or campaigns,' Young said. 'Our CEO doesn't give to candidates or campaigns. And most of our executive team does not give. Rank-and-file employees have the right to give, of course, but they don't direct the organization or its policies.' PolitiFact used Federal Election Commission data to confirm that the majority of AARP board members and the majority of AARP executive team members haven't made recent political campaign contributions. Individual donors associated with AARP have donated primarily to Democratic candidates in most election cycles including 2016, 2018 and 2020, according to an Open Secrets campaign contribution database. But when surveyed, about a third of AARP members report that their political leanings are conservative, a third report their leanings are liberal and a third consider themselves independent or in between, according to Young. So what does AARP do with the money it receives from donations or from its $16 per year membership fee? The AARP lobbies for policies such as protecting Medicare, fighting high drug prices, protecting Social Security, combating fraud targeted at older people and addressing senior poverty. | Our ruling A Facebook post asks, 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party.' AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare nonprofit that is not permitted to participate in political campaigns. People who work for AARP can make individual political contributions, but those donations do not come from the organization as a whole. We rate this post False. | []
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'A portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P goes directly to the Democratic Party. | Contradiction | You already know the AARP lobbies for the interests of Americans over age 50. But does it also send money to the Democratic Party? That's what a popular (and previously debunked) Facebook post claims: 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party,' a Facebook post asks. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post's claim is untrue. AARP as an organization does not support the Democratic Party, and the claim has been debunked by fact-checkers before. An AARP spokesperson, Jason Young, confirmed that AARP is strictly nonpartisan. Young said AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare organization in good standing with the IRS, and pointed PolitiFact to the IRS' description of social welfare organizations. On its website, the IRS says that a tax-exempt social welfare organization is 'an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.' The website further explains: 'The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.' Chief operating officer Scott Frisch signed AARP's most recent tax filing, confirming that 'AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization empowering people to choose how they live as they age.' AARP has a policy 'against endorsing - or giving the appearance of endorsing - political parties, government officials or candidates for office,' Young said. (The full policy can be found here.) He also said much of AARP's leadership doesn't donate to political candidates or campaigns. 'Most of our board doesn't give to candidates or campaigns,' Young said. 'Our CEO doesn't give to candidates or campaigns. And most of our executive team does not give. Rank-and-file employees have the right to give, of course, but they don't direct the organization or its policies.' PolitiFact used Federal Election Commission data to confirm that the majority of AARP board members and the majority of AARP executive team members haven't made recent political campaign contributions. Individual donors associated with AARP have donated primarily to Democratic candidates in most election cycles including 2016, 2018 and 2020, according to an Open Secrets campaign contribution database. But when surveyed, about a third of AARP members report that their political leanings are conservative, a third report their leanings are liberal and a third consider themselves independent or in between, according to Young. So what does AARP do with the money it receives from donations or from its $16 per year membership fee? The AARP lobbies for policies such as protecting Medicare, fighting high drug prices, protecting Social Security, combating fraud targeted at older people and addressing senior poverty. | Our ruling A Facebook post asks, 'Are you aware that a portion of everything you pay A.A.R.P Goes directly to the Democratic Party.' AARP is a tax-exempt social welfare nonprofit that is not permitted to participate in political campaigns. People who work for AARP can make individual political contributions, but those donations do not come from the organization as a whole. We rate this post False. | []
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Says 'special military helicopters will spray pesticide against the Corona virus in the skies all over the country. | Contradiction | Not even neighborhood social networking apps are safe from misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent post on Neighbors, an app created by Ring - the company that makes video doorbells - claims that the United States military is using helicopters to 'spray pesticide against the Corona virus in the skies all over the country.' A map on the post indicates that the user shared it in San Diego. 'So you must stay indoors after twelve o'clock at night and remove all clothes which are outside,' the post reads. 'When you hear the sounds of airplanes at night, it is for you to know that it is related to this matter (COVID-19).' A reader sent us a screenshot of the post, which was subsequently shared on Snapchat, on March 23. The text of the post has also been shared on Facebook. (Screenshot from Snapchat) We've seen several other chain messages that make false claims about the military's actions against the coronavirus, so we decided to check this one out, too. There is no evidence that the U.S. military is using helicopters to spray coronavirus-killing pesticide on American communities. A similar hoax has been passed around in Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Egypt, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. On March 22, President Donald Trump said during a press briefing that the federal government is deploying additional National Guard assistance to New York, California and Washington to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. During the same briefing, Vice President Mike Pence said the government is also working with the military to charter flights for Americans abroad. Meanwhile, Navy ships have been sent to New York and California to provide additional health care support. The Army Corps of Engineers is building more medical facilities. And, according to the Military Times, more than 8,000 National Guard troops have been mobilized in all 50 states. That's a significant activation of the military within U.S. borders, but it's a far cry from using helicopters to spray pesticides on cities across the country. RELATED: 7 ways to avoid misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic Still, there is a historical precedent for using helicopters to distribute pesticides. In September, Rhode Island officials approved aerial spraying to kill mosquitoes, which had caused an outbreak of the eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus. Other states have taken similar actions, and the U.S. Air Force Reserve has an aerial spray program. But those efforts are aimed at limiting the populations of insects that carry diseases, not the diseases themselves. And while Chinese officials have used drones to disinfect surfaces potentially tainted by the coronavirus, experts told us there is no evidence that spraying pesticide from a helicopter would kill the virus on the ground in the U.S. 'That idea is pretty far-fetched,' said Murray Isman, dean emeritus of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia, in an email. 'There are no pesticides that specifically target viruses, and general antimicrobials that might have any effect (bleach, alcohol) would have to be applied in ridiculously high volumes.' According to the Environmental Protection Agency, disinfectants qualify as 'antimicrobial pesticides' since they are used to kill bacteria and viruses. The agency has listed dozens of products on its website that meet the criteria for use against the coronavirus. The chain message is inaccurate. We rate it False. If you receive a chain message that you want us to fact-check, send a screenshot to [email protected]. | The chain message is inaccurate. We rate it False. If you receive a chain message that you want us to fact-check, send a screenshot to [email protected]. | []
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'Schools banning Dr. Seuss books. | Contradiction | A transphobic post being shared on social media uses an image of Rachel Levine, a transgender woman President Joe Biden tapped to be assistant secretary of health, to spread false information about Dr. Seuss books. 'Schools banning Dr. Seuss books,' the post says, 'but teaching our children that this is normal.' This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Since Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced on March 2 that it would stop publishing and licensing six Dr. Seuss books that have been criticized for how they depict Black and Asian people, misinformation about so-called 'cancel culture' has spread online. President Joe Biden had nothing to do with the decision, as some people have claimed. We also didn't find evidence of schools banning books by the children's author, as this Facebook post claims. Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it made the decision last year to stop publishing and licensing six books - 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,' 'If I Ran the Zoo,' 'McElligot's Pool,' 'On Beyond Zebra!,' 'Scrambled Eggs Super!' and 'The Cat's Quizzer' - after consulting with a panel of experts that included educators. About three dozen other Seuss titles, such as 'The Cat in the Hat,' 'Green Eggs and Ham,' and 'The Lorax,' are not being pulled from the market. The day that Dr. Seuss Enterprises made its announcement was also the author's birthday and National Read Across America Day, which was established by the National Education Association in 1998 to encourage children and teenagers to read. Schools nationwide have held read-aloud events featuring Dr. Seuss books and characters, but in 2017, NEA said it would start refocusing its literacy program on more diverse children's books. 'Kids need books that are as diverse and complex as the society in which we live,' an NEA spokesperson told PolitiFact. The post that's being shared on social media doesn't identify which schools are supposedly banning Dr. Seuss. But one school district dominated search results when we went looking for evidence: Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia, which was the subject of recent headlines about canceling Dr. Seuss. The Loudoun district has followed the NEA's lead and advised schools not to tie Read Across America Day to Dr. Seuss' birthday, according to the school district. However, contrary to social media posts and some reports, 'Dr. Seuss books have not been banned in Loudoun County Schools,' the district said in a statement. 'Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,' the statement said. 'Examples include anti-Japanese American political cartoons and cartoons depicting African Americans for sale captioned with offensive language. Given this research, and LCPS' focus on equity and culturally responsive instruction, LCPS provided this guidance to schools during the past couple of years to not connect Read Across America Day exclusively with Dr. Seuss' birthday.' Still, Dr. Seuss books 'are available to students in our libraries and classrooms,' the statement said. Loudoun County Public Schools hasn't banned Dr. Seuss books, and we didn't find evidence that other schools have either. We rate this Facebook post False. | We rate this Facebook post False. | []
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A photo showing Ellen DeGeneres with a girl is evidence of a child sex-trafficking conspiracy. | Contradiction | Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has become a frequent target of child sex-trafficking conspiracy theories. We've previously debunked claims connecting her to such crimes, including one that she is on house arrest. Now an image of the celebrity comedian is being shared on social media with the suggestion that it supports these unfounded claims. 'Ellen you are going down,' reads the text above a photo of her hugging a child. One post sharing the image says: 'Now I know Ellen don't got kids. The boat looks nice tho. Epstein island I suppose.' It uses the hashtag #PizzaGate, a reference to the false conspiracy theory that a Washington D.C. pizzeria was the front for a child sex-trafficking ring. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) DeGeneres' wife, the actress Portia de Rossi, posted the photo on Instagram on Jan. 3, 2016, when they were on vacation in Saint Barthelemy, celebrating New Year's Eve on DeGeneres' yacht. The caption says: 'Eva does Ed's hair #stbarths.' Ed is de Rossi's nickname for DeGeneres, who is wearing a pink bow in the picture. Eva is the couple's niece. In a 2015 episode of 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show,' DeGeneres played a clip of Eva and their other niece Perry singing while riding in the car. Other photos de Rossi posted from the trip show the couple smiling for a selfie and DeGeneres riding on a watercraft with her mother. What these photos don't prove: that DeGeneres is connected to a baseless conspiracy theory about child sex-trafficking, or that she was on the island of the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. We rate this post Pants on Fire. | We rate this post Pants on Fire. | []
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'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure. | Contradiction | A conservative commentator attacked the mayoral record of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, using data to show how the city of South Bend, Ind., became less safe under his watch. 'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure,' said the headline on Bongino.com, the web home for content shared and created by radio host Dan Bongino. The article was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Bongino uses charts to suggest that violent crime spiked during Buttigieg's two terms, which ran from Jan. 1, 2012, to Jan. 1, 2020. At first glance the claim appears to be backed up with the gold standard of violent crime statistics - the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. But there's more to this story: South Bend changed how it reported the numbers to the FBI, making it appear that violent crime experienced an alarming spike under Buttigieg's leadership. That isn't what happened. Let's take a look. Violent crime defined The FBI says violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. South Bend reported 744 violent crimes to the FBI in 2011 - the year before Buttigieg took office. In 2012, Buttigieg's first year as mayor, the number fell to 622 - a drop of 16%. Then, violent crimes rose in 2013, 2014 and 2015 - but still remained lower than 2011. After that, the numbers get tricky. In 2016, based on advice from the FBI, South Bend police changed how it counted aggravated assaults - and the number of violent crimes reported by South Bend spiked, exceeding 1,000 in 2016, 2017 and 2018, the most recent year for which figures are available. Previously, South Bend had not been counting instances where a weapon was shown or implied as an aggravated assault, said Jeff Asher, data analyst and consultant at AH Datalytics who has written in the New York Times about violent crime in South Bend. 'The evidence is telling us that South Bend didn't become more violent; it simply changed how it counted assaults,' he wrote. The FBI noted the issue in comparing annual totals in South Bend from 2016 forward this way: 'Because of changes in' South Bend's 'reporting practices, figures are not comparable to previous years' data.' Similarly, the FBI changed its definition of rape in 2013, which led to an increase in rape figures nationwide, Asher said. A Wall Street Journal editorial also took Buttigieg to task, saying an increase in violent crime in South Bend outpaced that of Indiana as a whole. But the editorial also noted the change in how South Bend counts violent crimes. | Our ruling An article shared on Facebook claims: 'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure.' The raw numbers suggest such an increase - but not because the number of violent crimes doubled. What happened is that, based on guidance from the FBI, South Bend changed the way it defined a type of assault, and counting of that violent crime increased significantly. The FBI said South Bend's violent crime numbers from 2016 forward can't be compared with those from previous years. We rate the statement Mostly False. | [
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'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure. | Contradiction | A conservative commentator attacked the mayoral record of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, using data to show how the city of South Bend, Ind., became less safe under his watch. 'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure,' said the headline on Bongino.com, the web home for content shared and created by radio host Dan Bongino. The article was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Bongino uses charts to suggest that violent crime spiked during Buttigieg's two terms, which ran from Jan. 1, 2012, to Jan. 1, 2020. At first glance the claim appears to be backed up with the gold standard of violent crime statistics - the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. But there's more to this story: South Bend changed how it reported the numbers to the FBI, making it appear that violent crime experienced an alarming spike under Buttigieg's leadership. That isn't what happened. Let's take a look. Violent crime defined The FBI says violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. South Bend reported 744 violent crimes to the FBI in 2011 - the year before Buttigieg took office. In 2012, Buttigieg's first year as mayor, the number fell to 622 - a drop of 16%. Then, violent crimes rose in 2013, 2014 and 2015 - but still remained lower than 2011. After that, the numbers get tricky. In 2016, based on advice from the FBI, South Bend police changed how it counted aggravated assaults - and the number of violent crimes reported by South Bend spiked, exceeding 1,000 in 2016, 2017 and 2018, the most recent year for which figures are available. Previously, South Bend had not been counting instances where a weapon was shown or implied as an aggravated assault, said Jeff Asher, data analyst and consultant at AH Datalytics who has written in the New York Times about violent crime in South Bend. 'The evidence is telling us that South Bend didn't become more violent; it simply changed how it counted assaults,' he wrote. The FBI noted the issue in comparing annual totals in South Bend from 2016 forward this way: 'Because of changes in' South Bend's 'reporting practices, figures are not comparable to previous years' data.' Similarly, the FBI changed its definition of rape in 2013, which led to an increase in rape figures nationwide, Asher said. A Wall Street Journal editorial also took Buttigieg to task, saying an increase in violent crime in South Bend outpaced that of Indiana as a whole. But the editorial also noted the change in how South Bend counts violent crimes. | Our ruling An article shared on Facebook claims: 'Violent crime in South Bend doubled during Mayor Pete's tenure.' The raw numbers suggest such an increase - but not because the number of violent crimes doubled. What happened is that, based on guidance from the FBI, South Bend changed the way it defined a type of assault, and counting of that violent crime increased significantly. The FBI said South Bend's violent crime numbers from 2016 forward can't be compared with those from previous years. We rate the statement Mostly False. | [
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'After the last administration nearly killed the US auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry ... We brought you a lot of car plants... (and Japan) 'announced five car companies are coming to Michigan. | Contradiction | If you're going to talk about the car industry in Michigan, it helps to get the facts right. President Donald Trump did not. At a rally in Freeland, Mich., Trump described great success in reviving automotive jobs. 'After the last administration nearly killed the U.S. auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry,' he said Sept. 10. 'We brought you a lot of car plants.' And he went on to say that he wrangled a promise in a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japanese companies to expand in the U.S. 'The next day they announced five car companies are coming to Michigan,' Trump told the crowd. There's nothing fully correct in any of that. Japan didn't announce five companies coming to Michigan. Trump didn't save the auto industry. And he didn't bring a lot of car plants to the state - the most he can claim is one. That one is a Fiat Chryler factory that will build Jeep SUVs in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine plant. It's due to open in 2021. That is part of a package of investments in five other Fiat Chrysler plants in the state. 'Trump can count it as a new plant because it closed back in 2013 before he became president,' said automobile industry researcher James Rubenstein at Ohio's Miami University. But when Trump said that he saved the auto industry, he left out that total auto industry employment in Michigan dropped by about 3,000 in 2019. That was after a steady rise since 2010, when the major U.S. automakers began to recover from the recession and their restructurings. The coronavirus-induced economic slump this year brought more job losses, but the declines took place before the virus arrived. As for the previous administration nearly killing the industry, the evidence points to the opposite. In 2008 and 2009, intervention by the Bush and Obama administrations pulled the auto and auto parts makers back from the brink of collapse. Under the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler went through quick, taxpayer-financed bankruptcy reorganizations orchestrated by a federal task force and the U.S. Treasury, and both emerged from the Great Recession to add jobs and production capacity. Trump's comment about cutting a deal with Japan also fell wide of the mark. The Japanese automaker Toyota did announce in March 2019 that it would funnel about $750 million into its American operations. But that money wasn't for new plants, as Trump said, and Michigan wasn't on the list. Other Japanese automakers have added U.S. capacity, but not in Michigan. Japanese automakers and parts companies have had U.S. factories and research operations in the U.S. for decades. The timing of the promise Trump said he wrested from Japan is unclear. The two leaders met in Washington in April 2019, but that took place after the Toyota announcement. There have been some specialized car manufacturing initiatives in Michigan, including one to build self-driving cars that might add 400 jobs, but those would not change the overall picture. We reached out to the Trump campaign and did not hear back. | Our ruling Trump made several claims about the auto industry, saying he saved it from near destruction, and had brought many new plants to Michigan, including the arrival of five new Japanese car companies. He didn't save the auto industry. The major U.S. automakers recovered strongly during the Obama administration. After rising for 10 years, Michigan auto industry employment fell on Trump's watch, even before the coronavirus hit. He didn't bring many new plants. One company, the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler, announced a new assembly plant in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine factory, as part of a package of investments in Michigan. As for the Japanese investments coming to Michigan, one company - Toyota - unveiled plans to expand its American operations. And others have added U.S. capacity, too. But none of that was in Michigan. We rate this claim False. | [
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'After the last administration nearly killed the US auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry ... We brought you a lot of car plants... (and Japan) 'announced five car companies are coming to Michigan. | Contradiction | If you're going to talk about the car industry in Michigan, it helps to get the facts right. President Donald Trump did not. At a rally in Freeland, Mich., Trump described great success in reviving automotive jobs. 'After the last administration nearly killed the U.S. auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry,' he said Sept. 10. 'We brought you a lot of car plants.' And he went on to say that he wrangled a promise in a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japanese companies to expand in the U.S. 'The next day they announced five car companies are coming to Michigan,' Trump told the crowd. There's nothing fully correct in any of that. Japan didn't announce five companies coming to Michigan. Trump didn't save the auto industry. And he didn't bring a lot of car plants to the state - the most he can claim is one. That one is a Fiat Chryler factory that will build Jeep SUVs in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine plant. It's due to open in 2021. That is part of a package of investments in five other Fiat Chrysler plants in the state. 'Trump can count it as a new plant because it closed back in 2013 before he became president,' said automobile industry researcher James Rubenstein at Ohio's Miami University. But when Trump said that he saved the auto industry, he left out that total auto industry employment in Michigan dropped by about 3,000 in 2019. That was after a steady rise since 2010, when the major U.S. automakers began to recover from the recession and their restructurings. The coronavirus-induced economic slump this year brought more job losses, but the declines took place before the virus arrived. As for the previous administration nearly killing the industry, the evidence points to the opposite. In 2008 and 2009, intervention by the Bush and Obama administrations pulled the auto and auto parts makers back from the brink of collapse. Under the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler went through quick, taxpayer-financed bankruptcy reorganizations orchestrated by a federal task force and the U.S. Treasury, and both emerged from the Great Recession to add jobs and production capacity. Trump's comment about cutting a deal with Japan also fell wide of the mark. The Japanese automaker Toyota did announce in March 2019 that it would funnel about $750 million into its American operations. But that money wasn't for new plants, as Trump said, and Michigan wasn't on the list. Other Japanese automakers have added U.S. capacity, but not in Michigan. Japanese automakers and parts companies have had U.S. factories and research operations in the U.S. for decades. The timing of the promise Trump said he wrested from Japan is unclear. The two leaders met in Washington in April 2019, but that took place after the Toyota announcement. There have been some specialized car manufacturing initiatives in Michigan, including one to build self-driving cars that might add 400 jobs, but those would not change the overall picture. We reached out to the Trump campaign and did not hear back. | Our ruling Trump made several claims about the auto industry, saying he saved it from near destruction, and had brought many new plants to Michigan, including the arrival of five new Japanese car companies. He didn't save the auto industry. The major U.S. automakers recovered strongly during the Obama administration. After rising for 10 years, Michigan auto industry employment fell on Trump's watch, even before the coronavirus hit. He didn't bring many new plants. One company, the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler, announced a new assembly plant in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine factory, as part of a package of investments in Michigan. As for the Japanese investments coming to Michigan, one company - Toyota - unveiled plans to expand its American operations. And others have added U.S. capacity, too. But none of that was in Michigan. We rate this claim False. | [
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'After the last administration nearly killed the US auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry ... We brought you a lot of car plants... (and Japan) 'announced five car companies are coming to Michigan. | Contradiction | If you're going to talk about the car industry in Michigan, it helps to get the facts right. President Donald Trump did not. At a rally in Freeland, Mich., Trump described great success in reviving automotive jobs. 'After the last administration nearly killed the U.S. auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry,' he said Sept. 10. 'We brought you a lot of car plants.' And he went on to say that he wrangled a promise in a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japanese companies to expand in the U.S. 'The next day they announced five car companies are coming to Michigan,' Trump told the crowd. There's nothing fully correct in any of that. Japan didn't announce five companies coming to Michigan. Trump didn't save the auto industry. And he didn't bring a lot of car plants to the state - the most he can claim is one. That one is a Fiat Chryler factory that will build Jeep SUVs in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine plant. It's due to open in 2021. That is part of a package of investments in five other Fiat Chrysler plants in the state. 'Trump can count it as a new plant because it closed back in 2013 before he became president,' said automobile industry researcher James Rubenstein at Ohio's Miami University. But when Trump said that he saved the auto industry, he left out that total auto industry employment in Michigan dropped by about 3,000 in 2019. That was after a steady rise since 2010, when the major U.S. automakers began to recover from the recession and their restructurings. The coronavirus-induced economic slump this year brought more job losses, but the declines took place before the virus arrived. As for the previous administration nearly killing the industry, the evidence points to the opposite. In 2008 and 2009, intervention by the Bush and Obama administrations pulled the auto and auto parts makers back from the brink of collapse. Under the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler went through quick, taxpayer-financed bankruptcy reorganizations orchestrated by a federal task force and the U.S. Treasury, and both emerged from the Great Recession to add jobs and production capacity. Trump's comment about cutting a deal with Japan also fell wide of the mark. The Japanese automaker Toyota did announce in March 2019 that it would funnel about $750 million into its American operations. But that money wasn't for new plants, as Trump said, and Michigan wasn't on the list. Other Japanese automakers have added U.S. capacity, but not in Michigan. Japanese automakers and parts companies have had U.S. factories and research operations in the U.S. for decades. The timing of the promise Trump said he wrested from Japan is unclear. The two leaders met in Washington in April 2019, but that took place after the Toyota announcement. There have been some specialized car manufacturing initiatives in Michigan, including one to build self-driving cars that might add 400 jobs, but those would not change the overall picture. We reached out to the Trump campaign and did not hear back. | Our ruling Trump made several claims about the auto industry, saying he saved it from near destruction, and had brought many new plants to Michigan, including the arrival of five new Japanese car companies. He didn't save the auto industry. The major U.S. automakers recovered strongly during the Obama administration. After rising for 10 years, Michigan auto industry employment fell on Trump's watch, even before the coronavirus hit. He didn't bring many new plants. One company, the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler, announced a new assembly plant in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine factory, as part of a package of investments in Michigan. As for the Japanese investments coming to Michigan, one company - Toyota - unveiled plans to expand its American operations. And others have added U.S. capacity, too. But none of that was in Michigan. We rate this claim False. | [
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'After the last administration nearly killed the US auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry ... We brought you a lot of car plants... (and Japan) 'announced five car companies are coming to Michigan. | Contradiction | If you're going to talk about the car industry in Michigan, it helps to get the facts right. President Donald Trump did not. At a rally in Freeland, Mich., Trump described great success in reviving automotive jobs. 'After the last administration nearly killed the U.S. auto industry, I saved the U.S. auto industry,' he said Sept. 10. 'We brought you a lot of car plants.' And he went on to say that he wrangled a promise in a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japanese companies to expand in the U.S. 'The next day they announced five car companies are coming to Michigan,' Trump told the crowd. There's nothing fully correct in any of that. Japan didn't announce five companies coming to Michigan. Trump didn't save the auto industry. And he didn't bring a lot of car plants to the state - the most he can claim is one. That one is a Fiat Chryler factory that will build Jeep SUVs in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine plant. It's due to open in 2021. That is part of a package of investments in five other Fiat Chrysler plants in the state. 'Trump can count it as a new plant because it closed back in 2013 before he became president,' said automobile industry researcher James Rubenstein at Ohio's Miami University. But when Trump said that he saved the auto industry, he left out that total auto industry employment in Michigan dropped by about 3,000 in 2019. That was after a steady rise since 2010, when the major U.S. automakers began to recover from the recession and their restructurings. The coronavirus-induced economic slump this year brought more job losses, but the declines took place before the virus arrived. As for the previous administration nearly killing the industry, the evidence points to the opposite. In 2008 and 2009, intervention by the Bush and Obama administrations pulled the auto and auto parts makers back from the brink of collapse. Under the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler went through quick, taxpayer-financed bankruptcy reorganizations orchestrated by a federal task force and the U.S. Treasury, and both emerged from the Great Recession to add jobs and production capacity. Trump's comment about cutting a deal with Japan also fell wide of the mark. The Japanese automaker Toyota did announce in March 2019 that it would funnel about $750 million into its American operations. But that money wasn't for new plants, as Trump said, and Michigan wasn't on the list. Other Japanese automakers have added U.S. capacity, but not in Michigan. Japanese automakers and parts companies have had U.S. factories and research operations in the U.S. for decades. The timing of the promise Trump said he wrested from Japan is unclear. The two leaders met in Washington in April 2019, but that took place after the Toyota announcement. There have been some specialized car manufacturing initiatives in Michigan, including one to build self-driving cars that might add 400 jobs, but those would not change the overall picture. We reached out to the Trump campaign and did not hear back. | Our ruling Trump made several claims about the auto industry, saying he saved it from near destruction, and had brought many new plants to Michigan, including the arrival of five new Japanese car companies. He didn't save the auto industry. The major U.S. automakers recovered strongly during the Obama administration. After rising for 10 years, Michigan auto industry employment fell on Trump's watch, even before the coronavirus hit. He didn't bring many new plants. One company, the Italian-American Fiat Chrysler, announced a new assembly plant in Detroit, on the site of an idled engine factory, as part of a package of investments in Michigan. As for the Japanese investments coming to Michigan, one company - Toyota - unveiled plans to expand its American operations. And others have added U.S. capacity, too. But none of that was in Michigan. We rate this claim False. | [
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A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campaign says, 'FACT: Refusing to take the vaccine is a form of racism since it harms people of color. | Contradiction | An illustration of a person getting a shot in their arm has been spreading on social media. They're wearing a face mask, and three large beads of sweat drip from their hairline. 'FACT: Refusing to take the vaccine is a form of racism since it harms people of color,' the text reads. A logo for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears in the left corner. The website address for a CDC page about COVID-19 appears in the right. 'The newest CDC campaign,' read one of many posts sharing the image. 'See who's all working together yet?' (Screenshot from Facebook) This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) A reverse image search of the illustration in the Facebook post led us to tweets that shared the image but nothing connecting it to the CDC. However, we found a template for the image - no text, just the illustration, logo and link - that people can use to create their own memes. So we created one. It says: 'I can type anything here.' We re-created the False meme on imgflip.com using our own text. This isn't from the CDC either. The CDC did use this imagery as part of a Twitter thread about the importance of COVID-19 vaccines to help stop the pandemic. But the text in the image says: 'You may have some side effects, which are normal signs that your body is building protection.' The CDC did not respond to PolitiFact's query about the post. A spokesperson for the agency told Check Your Fact that the image in the post was 'not developed or posted by CDC.' CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has spoken about the intersection of race and COVID-19. In an April 8 statement, she noted that the disease's impact is 'felt, most severely, in communities of color - communities that have experienced disproportionate case counts and deaths.' But she didn't mention the vaccine. And the image in the Facebook post is not from a real CDC campaign. We rate this claim post False. | We rate this claim post False. | []
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'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. | Contradiction | President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to stop domestic travel between U.S. hotspots for COVID-19. As he explained his reluctance to harm the transportation industry, Trump inaccurately said airline and train passengers were already being tested for the disease. 'We have to get our country back, we have to start moving again, we have to start working again,' Trump said April 1. 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. But when you start closing up entire transportation systems and then opening them up, that's a very tough thing to do.' We asked the White House for evidence and did not get a response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us it is not testing passengers at airports or train stations, a spokesperson told PolitiFact. It's possible that Trump was referring to screening of passengers, which is happening at 13 airports for international flights. That isn't the same as testing. Screening someone for symptoms can flag someone who could potentially have COVID-19, but it's not as definitive as a test. It is impractical to test passengers at airports and train stations, given the slow delivery of most results and limited availability for people with symptoms. The CDC screening includes a temperature and symptoms check for travelers coming from foreign countries. Airport screenings for some international travel began earlier in the crisis. The CDC announced Jan. 17 it would screen passengers from Wuhan, China, for COVID-19 at the San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles airports. The screenings have expanded to include 13 airports, including Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Boston. They primarily affect American citizens, legal permanent residents and their immediate families who have recently been in China, Iran, or certain European countries. Travelers returning from international travel are advised to stay home for 14 days, monitor their health, and practice social distancing. Some states have implemented their own screening practices, with mixed results. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered screening (not testing) at Florida airports for passengers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Shortly after, some passengers told the Sun Sentinel that their temperatures were not taken and they saw no visible signs of screening. In Broward County, officials are collecting forms from passengers on certain flights from the New York tri-state area, said Greg Meyer, a spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Representatives for airports in Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit said passengers were not taking tests as they board or exit airplanes. 'Screening may occur in airports, but testing does not,' said Florence Brown, a spokeswoman for the airport in Philadelphia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are screening international travelers for visible signs of illness, such as coughing or having difficulty breathing, Brown said. International passengers from countries affected by COVID-19 may also receive a printed guide from the CDC. We contacted spokespersons for multiple airlines and did not get a response. We did not hear back from Amtrak by deadline. | Our ruling Trump said, 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off.' Passengers on planes and trains are not being tested for COVID-19. It's possible that Trump was referring to screenings, which could include a temperature check or a questionnaire. But even screenings are not as widespread as he said; they are happening at 13 airports for certain countries. Trump's statement about 'very strong tests' at transportation hubs rates Pants on Fire. | [
"102715-proof-01-5ccb263a8916169a87e8769273bdc745.jpg"
]
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'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. | Contradiction | President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to stop domestic travel between U.S. hotspots for COVID-19. As he explained his reluctance to harm the transportation industry, Trump inaccurately said airline and train passengers were already being tested for the disease. 'We have to get our country back, we have to start moving again, we have to start working again,' Trump said April 1. 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. But when you start closing up entire transportation systems and then opening them up, that's a very tough thing to do.' We asked the White House for evidence and did not get a response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us it is not testing passengers at airports or train stations, a spokesperson told PolitiFact. It's possible that Trump was referring to screening of passengers, which is happening at 13 airports for international flights. That isn't the same as testing. Screening someone for symptoms can flag someone who could potentially have COVID-19, but it's not as definitive as a test. It is impractical to test passengers at airports and train stations, given the slow delivery of most results and limited availability for people with symptoms. The CDC screening includes a temperature and symptoms check for travelers coming from foreign countries. Airport screenings for some international travel began earlier in the crisis. The CDC announced Jan. 17 it would screen passengers from Wuhan, China, for COVID-19 at the San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles airports. The screenings have expanded to include 13 airports, including Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Boston. They primarily affect American citizens, legal permanent residents and their immediate families who have recently been in China, Iran, or certain European countries. Travelers returning from international travel are advised to stay home for 14 days, monitor their health, and practice social distancing. Some states have implemented their own screening practices, with mixed results. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered screening (not testing) at Florida airports for passengers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Shortly after, some passengers told the Sun Sentinel that their temperatures were not taken and they saw no visible signs of screening. In Broward County, officials are collecting forms from passengers on certain flights from the New York tri-state area, said Greg Meyer, a spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Representatives for airports in Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit said passengers were not taking tests as they board or exit airplanes. 'Screening may occur in airports, but testing does not,' said Florence Brown, a spokeswoman for the airport in Philadelphia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are screening international travelers for visible signs of illness, such as coughing or having difficulty breathing, Brown said. International passengers from countries affected by COVID-19 may also receive a printed guide from the CDC. We contacted spokespersons for multiple airlines and did not get a response. We did not hear back from Amtrak by deadline. | Our ruling Trump said, 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off.' Passengers on planes and trains are not being tested for COVID-19. It's possible that Trump was referring to screenings, which could include a temperature check or a questionnaire. But even screenings are not as widespread as he said; they are happening at 13 airports for certain countries. Trump's statement about 'very strong tests' at transportation hubs rates Pants on Fire. | [
"102715-proof-01-5ccb263a8916169a87e8769273bdc745.jpg"
]
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'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. | Contradiction | President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to stop domestic travel between U.S. hotspots for COVID-19. As he explained his reluctance to harm the transportation industry, Trump inaccurately said airline and train passengers were already being tested for the disease. 'We have to get our country back, we have to start moving again, we have to start working again,' Trump said April 1. 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off. But when you start closing up entire transportation systems and then opening them up, that's a very tough thing to do.' We asked the White House for evidence and did not get a response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us it is not testing passengers at airports or train stations, a spokesperson told PolitiFact. It's possible that Trump was referring to screening of passengers, which is happening at 13 airports for international flights. That isn't the same as testing. Screening someone for symptoms can flag someone who could potentially have COVID-19, but it's not as definitive as a test. It is impractical to test passengers at airports and train stations, given the slow delivery of most results and limited availability for people with symptoms. The CDC screening includes a temperature and symptoms check for travelers coming from foreign countries. Airport screenings for some international travel began earlier in the crisis. The CDC announced Jan. 17 it would screen passengers from Wuhan, China, for COVID-19 at the San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles airports. The screenings have expanded to include 13 airports, including Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Boston. They primarily affect American citizens, legal permanent residents and their immediate families who have recently been in China, Iran, or certain European countries. Travelers returning from international travel are advised to stay home for 14 days, monitor their health, and practice social distancing. Some states have implemented their own screening practices, with mixed results. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered screening (not testing) at Florida airports for passengers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Shortly after, some passengers told the Sun Sentinel that their temperatures were not taken and they saw no visible signs of screening. In Broward County, officials are collecting forms from passengers on certain flights from the New York tri-state area, said Greg Meyer, a spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Representatives for airports in Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit said passengers were not taking tests as they board or exit airplanes. 'Screening may occur in airports, but testing does not,' said Florence Brown, a spokeswoman for the airport in Philadelphia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are screening international travelers for visible signs of illness, such as coughing or having difficulty breathing, Brown said. International passengers from countries affected by COVID-19 may also receive a printed guide from the CDC. We contacted spokespersons for multiple airlines and did not get a response. We did not hear back from Amtrak by deadline. | Our ruling Trump said, 'Now, they're doing tests on airlines - very strong tests - for getting on, getting off. They're doing tests on trains - getting on, getting off.' Passengers on planes and trains are not being tested for COVID-19. It's possible that Trump was referring to screenings, which could include a temperature check or a questionnaire. But even screenings are not as widespread as he said; they are happening at 13 airports for certain countries. Trump's statement about 'very strong tests' at transportation hubs rates Pants on Fire. | [
"102715-proof-01-5ccb263a8916169a87e8769273bdc745.jpg"
]
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Says a New York Post cover used the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' on Nov. 4 with an image of Donald Trump. | Contradiction | As the host of 'The Apprentice,' before he was elected president, Donald Trump would kick contestants off the reality show by saying, 'You're fired.' Trump's detractors have co-opted the catchphrase since Democrat Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential race. The New York Post is not among them, though a fake cover circulating on social media could make you think otherwise. 'My fellow Americans, our long NATIONAL NIGHTMARE is over,' reads a quote on the fabricated page, next to a photo of the president walking with his tie undone after a campaign rally in June. Below the quote - an allusion to Gerald Ford's speech when he acceded to the presidency in 1974 - the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' appears in all caps. 'Even the NY Post has turned on him!' wrote one Facebook account sharing the image. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The date on the image of the tabloid cover says Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, though news organizations didn't call the election for Biden until several days later. The cover also says 'FUTURE EDITION,' whereas the actual Nov. 4 cover just listed the day, date and weather forecast. That cover - the real one - read 'NAILBITER.' 'Trump defies polls, election on razor's edge,' the cover said alongside an image of a woman biting her nails. On Nov. 8, the day after the race was called for Biden, the cover said: 'IT'S JOE TIME.' We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | []
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Says a New York Post cover used the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' on Nov. 4 with an image of Donald Trump. | Contradiction | As the host of 'The Apprentice,' before he was elected president, Donald Trump would kick contestants off the reality show by saying, 'You're fired.' Trump's detractors have co-opted the catchphrase since Democrat Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential race. The New York Post is not among them, though a fake cover circulating on social media could make you think otherwise. 'My fellow Americans, our long NATIONAL NIGHTMARE is over,' reads a quote on the fabricated page, next to a photo of the president walking with his tie undone after a campaign rally in June. Below the quote - an allusion to Gerald Ford's speech when he acceded to the presidency in 1974 - the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' appears in all caps. 'Even the NY Post has turned on him!' wrote one Facebook account sharing the image. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The date on the image of the tabloid cover says Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, though news organizations didn't call the election for Biden until several days later. The cover also says 'FUTURE EDITION,' whereas the actual Nov. 4 cover just listed the day, date and weather forecast. That cover - the real one - read 'NAILBITER.' 'Trump defies polls, election on razor's edge,' the cover said alongside an image of a woman biting her nails. On Nov. 8, the day after the race was called for Biden, the cover said: 'IT'S JOE TIME.' We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | []
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Says a New York Post cover used the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' on Nov. 4 with an image of Donald Trump. | Contradiction | As the host of 'The Apprentice,' before he was elected president, Donald Trump would kick contestants off the reality show by saying, 'You're fired.' Trump's detractors have co-opted the catchphrase since Democrat Joe Biden was projected as the winner of the 2020 presidential race. The New York Post is not among them, though a fake cover circulating on social media could make you think otherwise. 'My fellow Americans, our long NATIONAL NIGHTMARE is over,' reads a quote on the fabricated page, next to a photo of the president walking with his tie undone after a campaign rally in June. Below the quote - an allusion to Gerald Ford's speech when he acceded to the presidency in 1974 - the headline 'YOU'RE FIRED' appears in all caps. 'Even the NY Post has turned on him!' wrote one Facebook account sharing the image. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The date on the image of the tabloid cover says Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, though news organizations didn't call the election for Biden until several days later. The cover also says 'FUTURE EDITION,' whereas the actual Nov. 4 cover just listed the day, date and weather forecast. That cover - the real one - read 'NAILBITER.' 'Trump defies polls, election on razor's edge,' the cover said alongside an image of a woman biting her nails. On Nov. 8, the day after the race was called for Biden, the cover said: 'IT'S JOE TIME.' We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | We rate this Facebook post False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | []
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Says a CNN headline said, 'In And Out is the fast food of white supremacists. | Contradiction | The byline visible in what looks like a screenshot of a news article that people have been sharing online suggests that what you are about to read is a joke. Supposedly an opinion piece by Charlie DeClown published on CNN's website, the headline says: 'In And Out is the fast food of white supremacists.' But people commenting on one post weren't so sure. 'CNN trying to get slapped with another lawsuit,' someone wrote. 'Stop is this real!' someone else said. It's not. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The In-N-Out Burger misspelling aside, this headline doesn't appear on CNN's website, nor the name 'Charlie DeClown.' Searching the Internet more broadly, we only found it on meme websites. The burger chain has been in the news lately for refusing to comply with a local vaccine mandate in Contra Costa County, Calif. 'We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,' In-N-Out's chief legal and business officer said in a statement quoted in the Los Angeles Times. We rate claims that this is a real CNN headline Pants on Fire. | We rate claims that this is a real CNN headline Pants on Fire. | []
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'Due to the Colonial Pipeline issue causing a fuel shortage on the east coast, NASCAR has decided to postpone this weekend's Dover race. | Contradiction | The grandstands are sold out for a NASCAR race scheduled for the afternoon of May 16 at Dover International Speedway in Delaware, but a rumor spreading on social media suggests it doesn't matter, because the event has been canceled due to the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. 'Due to the Colonial Pipeline issue causing a fuel shortage on the east coast, Nascar has decided to postpone this weekend's Dover race to a later date,' reads what looks like a tweet from Fox Sports' NASCAR reporter, Bob Pockrass. But it's not really his account, and this rumor isn't accurate. A Facebook post sharing an image of the tweet was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The supposed tweet sharing the misinformation looks like it comes from Pockrass' verified Twitter account. But the fake has an extra S: @bobpockrasss. We couldn't find that account on Twitter. So what does the real Pockrass have to say? 'The Dover race is on this weekend,' he tweeted after seeing an image of the fake tweet. We rate this post False. | We rate this post False. | []
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'Due to the Colonial Pipeline issue causing a fuel shortage on the east coast, NASCAR has decided to postpone this weekend's Dover race. | Contradiction | The grandstands are sold out for a NASCAR race scheduled for the afternoon of May 16 at Dover International Speedway in Delaware, but a rumor spreading on social media suggests it doesn't matter, because the event has been canceled due to the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. 'Due to the Colonial Pipeline issue causing a fuel shortage on the east coast, Nascar has decided to postpone this weekend's Dover race to a later date,' reads what looks like a tweet from Fox Sports' NASCAR reporter, Bob Pockrass. But it's not really his account, and this rumor isn't accurate. A Facebook post sharing an image of the tweet was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The supposed tweet sharing the misinformation looks like it comes from Pockrass' verified Twitter account. But the fake has an extra S: @bobpockrasss. We couldn't find that account on Twitter. So what does the real Pockrass have to say? 'The Dover race is on this weekend,' he tweeted after seeing an image of the fake tweet. We rate this post False. | We rate this post False. | []
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'Piles of bricks are being staged in cities around the country, indicating riots are planned. | Contradiction | Some of the latest theories about the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests have been built with bricks. After the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody after a white officer kneeled on his neck, demonstrations erupted in more than 350 cities across the country. As some turned violent, protesters started hurling bricks at buildings and police officers. Some say that tactic was planned. Dozens of social media posts published over the past few days show images and videos of brick piles in several American cities. A May 31 article from Law Enforcement Today, a website that has published misleading information in the past, says the mysterious footage suggests left-wing activists planned for violence at Black Lives Matter demonstrations. 'There are many who were thinking that these riots have antifa written all over them and that appears to be getting confirmed that these riots were planned, orchestrated events,' the website wrote. The article was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has been shared more than 27,000 times in conservative and law enforcement Facebook groups. (Screenshot from Law Enforcement Today) The story mainly pulls from a May 31 Breitbart article, which strings together photos and videos of bricks from protests around the country. But Law Enforcement Today goes a step further, saying the footage suggests that 'riots were planned, orchestrated events.' Is there evidence to support that claim? The short answer: Not really. The longer answer: It depends on the city. Kyle Reyes, the national spokesman for Law Enforcement Today, said the story was based on two anonymous sources within the Dallas Police Department. Those officers sent the website footage of brick pallets in Dallas. 'They told us that protesters didn't put them there, but someone did and they don't belong there,' Reyes said. However, Reyes said Law Enforcement Today was unable to verify photos and videos of bricks in other American cities. In Kansas City, Mo., police spokesman Capt. David Jackson said there was reason to believe that protesters were stashing bricks 'for nefarious use.' 'We have located some bricks that have been left in a couple of areas,' he told reporters May 31. 'We're going to do our best to get those picked up and moved so they're not used. I don't know who would have put them there - I don't think they're doing any type of construction or anything like that.' However, in a story about Jackson's comments, the Daily Caller wrote that 'so far, only the Kansas City Police Department has linked the discovery of pallets of bricks to pre-planned rioting.' That jibes with what other police departments told PolitiFact. For example, in San Francisco - one of the cities mentioned in Law Enforcement Today's article - police don't believe that Black Lives Matter protesters are creating piles of bricks to throw at people. 'We have no information to support that,' Michael Andraychak, a public information officer for the San Francisco Police Department, said in an email. 'Bricks for a construction project were delivered in one San Francisco neighborhood. The contractor was contacted and the bricks were moved.' Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, is another city where social media users have posted photos of brick piles. One Facebook post in a conspiratorial group called 'Expose the Truth' claims a pallet of bricks showed up 'on the path of the protest.' 'You wanna tell me this is not planned and organized now?' reads the post, which is a screenshot of a tweet. (Screenshot from Facebook) Police in Frisco say that's not what happened. 'The pallets of bricks, while they were near the area, it wasn't along the route or anything like that,' said James Willis, a public information officer for the Frisco Police Department. 'Those pallets had been there for over a week.' The bricks belong to the homeowner's association of a neighborhood in town, which was planning to use them to repair a retaining wall, Willis said. Once the police told the neighborhood that people were concerned that protesters could use the bricks, the HOA moved them. Elsewhere, social media rumors have falsely implicated the police in staging bricks at Black Lives Matter protests. A YouTube video published by rapper King Tussin on June 1 purports to show police officers in Boston unloading bricks from a pickup truck 'in riot zones.' We reached out to the Boston Police Department for more context. We haven't heard back, but a June 2 statement from the Northeastern University Police Department in Boston said officers were cleaning up a 'damaged brick sidewalk.' On Monday, June 1, while on a routine patrol of campus, two of our officers came across a damaged brick sidewalk at the corner of Tremont and Coventry streets that posed a safety hazard for pedestrians due to loose, upturned and broken bricks.- NU Police Department (@northeasternpd) June 2, 2020 We also reached out to the police departments in Dallas and Fayetteville, N.C., both of which are mentioned in the Law Enforcement Today article. We haven't heard back. An investigation from NBC News found that some of the bricks shown in Dallas were close to a construction site and had been there for months. Another investigation from BBC News found that bricks show in Fayetteville had also been there since before the Floyd protests began. Photos and videos of bricks have also been used to spin other baseless theories on social media. Some Facebook posts have used photos of bricks to make unproven claims about the connection between violence at Black Lives Matter protests and antifa, a broad coalition of anti-fascist, left-wing groups. Others alleged the bricks prove that the violence has been pre-planned. And some asserted that billionaire philanthropist George Soros is behind the supply of bricks. There is no evidence to support any of those claims. | Our ruling A Law Enforcement Today article claims that 'piles of bricks are being staged in cities around the country, indicating riots are planned.' While police in Kansas City have said they suspect bricks are being stashed for nefarious purposes, there is no evidence that such a tactic is being widely used. Officials in several other cities have said there is no connection between footage of bricks and Black Lives Matter protests. The article contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. | [
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'Piles of bricks are being staged in cities around the country, indicating riots are planned. | Contradiction | Some of the latest theories about the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests have been built with bricks. After the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody after a white officer kneeled on his neck, demonstrations erupted in more than 350 cities across the country. As some turned violent, protesters started hurling bricks at buildings and police officers. Some say that tactic was planned. Dozens of social media posts published over the past few days show images and videos of brick piles in several American cities. A May 31 article from Law Enforcement Today, a website that has published misleading information in the past, says the mysterious footage suggests left-wing activists planned for violence at Black Lives Matter demonstrations. 'There are many who were thinking that these riots have antifa written all over them and that appears to be getting confirmed that these riots were planned, orchestrated events,' the website wrote. The article was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has been shared more than 27,000 times in conservative and law enforcement Facebook groups. (Screenshot from Law Enforcement Today) The story mainly pulls from a May 31 Breitbart article, which strings together photos and videos of bricks from protests around the country. But Law Enforcement Today goes a step further, saying the footage suggests that 'riots were planned, orchestrated events.' Is there evidence to support that claim? The short answer: Not really. The longer answer: It depends on the city. Kyle Reyes, the national spokesman for Law Enforcement Today, said the story was based on two anonymous sources within the Dallas Police Department. Those officers sent the website footage of brick pallets in Dallas. 'They told us that protesters didn't put them there, but someone did and they don't belong there,' Reyes said. However, Reyes said Law Enforcement Today was unable to verify photos and videos of bricks in other American cities. In Kansas City, Mo., police spokesman Capt. David Jackson said there was reason to believe that protesters were stashing bricks 'for nefarious use.' 'We have located some bricks that have been left in a couple of areas,' he told reporters May 31. 'We're going to do our best to get those picked up and moved so they're not used. I don't know who would have put them there - I don't think they're doing any type of construction or anything like that.' However, in a story about Jackson's comments, the Daily Caller wrote that 'so far, only the Kansas City Police Department has linked the discovery of pallets of bricks to pre-planned rioting.' That jibes with what other police departments told PolitiFact. For example, in San Francisco - one of the cities mentioned in Law Enforcement Today's article - police don't believe that Black Lives Matter protesters are creating piles of bricks to throw at people. 'We have no information to support that,' Michael Andraychak, a public information officer for the San Francisco Police Department, said in an email. 'Bricks for a construction project were delivered in one San Francisco neighborhood. The contractor was contacted and the bricks were moved.' Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, is another city where social media users have posted photos of brick piles. One Facebook post in a conspiratorial group called 'Expose the Truth' claims a pallet of bricks showed up 'on the path of the protest.' 'You wanna tell me this is not planned and organized now?' reads the post, which is a screenshot of a tweet. (Screenshot from Facebook) Police in Frisco say that's not what happened. 'The pallets of bricks, while they were near the area, it wasn't along the route or anything like that,' said James Willis, a public information officer for the Frisco Police Department. 'Those pallets had been there for over a week.' The bricks belong to the homeowner's association of a neighborhood in town, which was planning to use them to repair a retaining wall, Willis said. Once the police told the neighborhood that people were concerned that protesters could use the bricks, the HOA moved them. Elsewhere, social media rumors have falsely implicated the police in staging bricks at Black Lives Matter protests. A YouTube video published by rapper King Tussin on June 1 purports to show police officers in Boston unloading bricks from a pickup truck 'in riot zones.' We reached out to the Boston Police Department for more context. We haven't heard back, but a June 2 statement from the Northeastern University Police Department in Boston said officers were cleaning up a 'damaged brick sidewalk.' On Monday, June 1, while on a routine patrol of campus, two of our officers came across a damaged brick sidewalk at the corner of Tremont and Coventry streets that posed a safety hazard for pedestrians due to loose, upturned and broken bricks.- NU Police Department (@northeasternpd) June 2, 2020 We also reached out to the police departments in Dallas and Fayetteville, N.C., both of which are mentioned in the Law Enforcement Today article. We haven't heard back. An investigation from NBC News found that some of the bricks shown in Dallas were close to a construction site and had been there for months. Another investigation from BBC News found that bricks show in Fayetteville had also been there since before the Floyd protests began. Photos and videos of bricks have also been used to spin other baseless theories on social media. Some Facebook posts have used photos of bricks to make unproven claims about the connection between violence at Black Lives Matter protests and antifa, a broad coalition of anti-fascist, left-wing groups. Others alleged the bricks prove that the violence has been pre-planned. And some asserted that billionaire philanthropist George Soros is behind the supply of bricks. There is no evidence to support any of those claims. | Our ruling A Law Enforcement Today article claims that 'piles of bricks are being staged in cities around the country, indicating riots are planned.' While police in Kansas City have said they suspect bricks are being stashed for nefarious purposes, there is no evidence that such a tactic is being widely used. Officials in several other cities have said there is no connection between footage of bricks and Black Lives Matter protests. The article contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. | [
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]
|
'People are going door to door in Colorado Springs stating they are COVID testing so they can rob people!!!!' | Contradiction | Slowly, testing for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is becoming more widely available in the United States. But that doesn't mean medical professionals are offering curbside service, nor should you believe this rumor about robbers pretending to in Colorado Springs. 'WARNING,' reads a March 17 Facebook post. 'People are going door to door in Colorado Springs stating they are COVID testing so they can rob people!!!!' This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We called Lt. Jim Sokolik, a public information officer for the Colorado Springs Police Department, who told us they're not aware of any such scam. As of about 6 p.m. on March 18, he said, neither the robbery nor property crime units had investigated any such incident or received any reports about people pretending to offer COVID-19 tests. The department's dispatch had not fielded any calls along those lines. Often, residents will call police if people come to their doors selling, say, magazines, Sokolik said - they want to make sure they're legitimate. But the department hasn't received even those kinds of reports lately. While online coronavirus scams abound, we found no news coverage of robbers like the Facebook post describes in Colorado. We rate this post False. | We rate this post False. | []
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Says a video shows Joe Biden lolling his tongue. | Contradiction | Facebook users are sharing a manipulated video of Joe and Jill Biden that makes it look like the Democratic presidential frontrunner is lolling his tongue while his wife is talking. The video, which was published April 28 on a popular conservative Facebook page, takes footage from a legitimate video the Bidens released April 26 that shows Jill Biden talking about her husband's candidacy. But in the altered video, Joe Biden is rolling his tongue in circles while his wife speaks instead of staring silently at the camera as he does in the original. 'I guess the first question would be why is she giving his campaign speech?' reads the caption on the altered video shared by a Facebook page called Red White Blue News. 'Second question is what the hell is wrong with him?' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) (Screenshot from Facebook) We've fact-checked several manipulated or deceptively edited videos about the 2020 presidential candidates, so we wanted to check this one out, too. The footage of Biden rolling his tongue is not real - a meme-maker manipulated the video by superimposing a digitally altered GIF on top of the original clip of the Bidens. A parody Twitter account published the GIF on April 26. It shows Biden in a blue blazer against a bookshelf backdrop. While the outfit is different, the head and tongue motion are identical to those in the Facebook video. 'Sloppy Joe is trending. I wonder if it's because of this,' reads the tweet. President Donald Trump retweeted the GIF on April 26, prompting some Twitter users to say the president had shared a 'deepfake' video, which uses artificial intelligence to make it look like someone is doing or saying something that never happened. But the GIF is not a deepfake - it was created using an app called MugLife, which lets users animate images Then one meme led to another. We traced the altered clip of the Bidens to a YouTube video uploaded April 27 by an account called 'Solentgreenis people.' The video shows the same watermark as the Facebook clip and has more than 9,700 views. Solentgreenis people, also known as 'Solmemes,' is a conservative meme-maker with nearly 20,000 subscribers. Solmemes regularly creates digitally altered videos of politicians like Trump and Biden. Solmemes' video is labeled as comedy on YouTube, but it's an example of what the Washington Post Fact Checker calls 'doctoring.' That entails 'cropping, changing speed, using Photoshop, dubbing audio, or adding or deleting visual information' to deceive the viewer. The clip of the Bidens is the latest example of manipulated videos on the 2020 campaign trail. Both Biden and Trump have published deceptively edited campaign videos attacking one another. In those cases, the ads used clips that omitted context. They did not transform footage altogether as this widely shared altered video does. The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | [
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"102792-proof-24-b5b8fe58035ea4dac906b87bba2a27a8.jpg"
]
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Says a video shows Joe Biden lolling his tongue. | Contradiction | Facebook users are sharing a manipulated video of Joe and Jill Biden that makes it look like the Democratic presidential frontrunner is lolling his tongue while his wife is talking. The video, which was published April 28 on a popular conservative Facebook page, takes footage from a legitimate video the Bidens released April 26 that shows Jill Biden talking about her husband's candidacy. But in the altered video, Joe Biden is rolling his tongue in circles while his wife speaks instead of staring silently at the camera as he does in the original. 'I guess the first question would be why is she giving his campaign speech?' reads the caption on the altered video shared by a Facebook page called Red White Blue News. 'Second question is what the hell is wrong with him?' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) (Screenshot from Facebook) We've fact-checked several manipulated or deceptively edited videos about the 2020 presidential candidates, so we wanted to check this one out, too. The footage of Biden rolling his tongue is not real - a meme-maker manipulated the video by superimposing a digitally altered GIF on top of the original clip of the Bidens. A parody Twitter account published the GIF on April 26. It shows Biden in a blue blazer against a bookshelf backdrop. While the outfit is different, the head and tongue motion are identical to those in the Facebook video. 'Sloppy Joe is trending. I wonder if it's because of this,' reads the tweet. President Donald Trump retweeted the GIF on April 26, prompting some Twitter users to say the president had shared a 'deepfake' video, which uses artificial intelligence to make it look like someone is doing or saying something that never happened. But the GIF is not a deepfake - it was created using an app called MugLife, which lets users animate images Then one meme led to another. We traced the altered clip of the Bidens to a YouTube video uploaded April 27 by an account called 'Solentgreenis people.' The video shows the same watermark as the Facebook clip and has more than 9,700 views. Solentgreenis people, also known as 'Solmemes,' is a conservative meme-maker with nearly 20,000 subscribers. Solmemes regularly creates digitally altered videos of politicians like Trump and Biden. Solmemes' video is labeled as comedy on YouTube, but it's an example of what the Washington Post Fact Checker calls 'doctoring.' That entails 'cropping, changing speed, using Photoshop, dubbing audio, or adding or deleting visual information' to deceive the viewer. The clip of the Bidens is the latest example of manipulated videos on the 2020 campaign trail. Both Biden and Trump have published deceptively edited campaign videos attacking one another. In those cases, the ads used clips that omitted context. They did not transform footage altogether as this widely shared altered video does. The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | [
"102792-proof-10-Screen_Shot_2020-04-30_at_2.40.18_PM.jpg",
"102792-proof-24-b5b8fe58035ea4dac906b87bba2a27a8.jpg"
]
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Says a video shows Joe Biden lolling his tongue. | Contradiction | Facebook users are sharing a manipulated video of Joe and Jill Biden that makes it look like the Democratic presidential frontrunner is lolling his tongue while his wife is talking. The video, which was published April 28 on a popular conservative Facebook page, takes footage from a legitimate video the Bidens released April 26 that shows Jill Biden talking about her husband's candidacy. But in the altered video, Joe Biden is rolling his tongue in circles while his wife speaks instead of staring silently at the camera as he does in the original. 'I guess the first question would be why is she giving his campaign speech?' reads the caption on the altered video shared by a Facebook page called Red White Blue News. 'Second question is what the hell is wrong with him?' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) (Screenshot from Facebook) We've fact-checked several manipulated or deceptively edited videos about the 2020 presidential candidates, so we wanted to check this one out, too. The footage of Biden rolling his tongue is not real - a meme-maker manipulated the video by superimposing a digitally altered GIF on top of the original clip of the Bidens. A parody Twitter account published the GIF on April 26. It shows Biden in a blue blazer against a bookshelf backdrop. While the outfit is different, the head and tongue motion are identical to those in the Facebook video. 'Sloppy Joe is trending. I wonder if it's because of this,' reads the tweet. President Donald Trump retweeted the GIF on April 26, prompting some Twitter users to say the president had shared a 'deepfake' video, which uses artificial intelligence to make it look like someone is doing or saying something that never happened. But the GIF is not a deepfake - it was created using an app called MugLife, which lets users animate images Then one meme led to another. We traced the altered clip of the Bidens to a YouTube video uploaded April 27 by an account called 'Solentgreenis people.' The video shows the same watermark as the Facebook clip and has more than 9,700 views. Solentgreenis people, also known as 'Solmemes,' is a conservative meme-maker with nearly 20,000 subscribers. Solmemes regularly creates digitally altered videos of politicians like Trump and Biden. Solmemes' video is labeled as comedy on YouTube, but it's an example of what the Washington Post Fact Checker calls 'doctoring.' That entails 'cropping, changing speed, using Photoshop, dubbing audio, or adding or deleting visual information' to deceive the viewer. The clip of the Bidens is the latest example of manipulated videos on the 2020 campaign trail. Both Biden and Trump have published deceptively edited campaign videos attacking one another. In those cases, the ads used clips that omitted context. They did not transform footage altogether as this widely shared altered video does. The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | The Facebook video is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire! | [
"102792-proof-10-Screen_Shot_2020-04-30_at_2.40.18_PM.jpg",
"102792-proof-24-b5b8fe58035ea4dac906b87bba2a27a8.jpg"
]
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'New study: The flu vaccine is 'significantly associated' with an increased risk of coronavirus' | Contradiction | We have debunked plenty of misinformation about vaccines for COVID-19 that are in development. Next up: more false information tying COVID-19 to the seasonal flu vaccine. An April 16 article shared on social media carries the headline 'New study: The flu vaccine Is 'significantly associated' with an increased risk of coronavirus.' Facebook flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The article, from a self-described 'conscious media' website, mainly cites a 2019 study from the U.S. Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch that was published in the journal Vaccine in 2020. The study focused on Department of Defense personnel, who have high rates of flu vaccination, and examined whether being vaccinated for a seasonal flu could make someone more or less likely to catch other respiratory viruses. But the study found no connection between the flu shot and an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. That's because the U.S. Armed Forces study's data was referring to seasonal common coronaviruses in 2017-18, not the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (There are seven types of coronaviruses that can infect humans, of which the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 is one.) This was clarified in the full article, but is ambiguous in the headline. What's more, Richard Watanabe, a preventative medicine professor at USC, told PolitiFact that the article doesn't really provide 'strong support for anything they are claiming' since the study found little correlation between the flu vaccine and such viruses. Even with regard to coronaviruses that predated SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. Armed Forces study concluded that further research is needed, as 'the overall results of the study showed little to no evidence supporting the association of virus interference and influenza vaccination.' The study's data had mixed results for individual respiratory viruses and found that vaccinated individuals were 'more likely to have no pathogen detected and reduced risk of influenza when compared to unvaccinated individuals.' The article also leaves out parts of the study that question the data linking coronavirus cases to the influenza vaccine. For instance, the U.S. Armed Forces study referenced a study from 2013 that had similar results except there was 'no association between influenza vaccination and RSV, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, rhinovirus or coronavirus.' Edward Belongia, an infectious disease epidemiologist who worked on the 2013 study, explained to FactCheck.org that there is little scientific data to support the speculative theory of the flu vaccine increasing the risk of other respiratory viruses. While this article did specify that the U.S. Armed Forces study was testing common coronaviruses and not COVID-19, the headline was ambiguous and misleading. We rate this headline False. | While this article did specify that the U.S. Armed Forces study was testing common coronaviruses and not COVID-19, the headline was ambiguous and misleading. We rate this headline False. | [
"102799-proof-10-6959673e2c29ada5bbeb9ce2e1680ff7.jpg"
]
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'New study: The flu vaccine is 'significantly associated' with an increased risk of coronavirus' | Contradiction | We have debunked plenty of misinformation about vaccines for COVID-19 that are in development. Next up: more false information tying COVID-19 to the seasonal flu vaccine. An April 16 article shared on social media carries the headline 'New study: The flu vaccine Is 'significantly associated' with an increased risk of coronavirus.' Facebook flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The article, from a self-described 'conscious media' website, mainly cites a 2019 study from the U.S. Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch that was published in the journal Vaccine in 2020. The study focused on Department of Defense personnel, who have high rates of flu vaccination, and examined whether being vaccinated for a seasonal flu could make someone more or less likely to catch other respiratory viruses. But the study found no connection between the flu shot and an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. That's because the U.S. Armed Forces study's data was referring to seasonal common coronaviruses in 2017-18, not the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. (There are seven types of coronaviruses that can infect humans, of which the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 is one.) This was clarified in the full article, but is ambiguous in the headline. What's more, Richard Watanabe, a preventative medicine professor at USC, told PolitiFact that the article doesn't really provide 'strong support for anything they are claiming' since the study found little correlation between the flu vaccine and such viruses. Even with regard to coronaviruses that predated SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. Armed Forces study concluded that further research is needed, as 'the overall results of the study showed little to no evidence supporting the association of virus interference and influenza vaccination.' The study's data had mixed results for individual respiratory viruses and found that vaccinated individuals were 'more likely to have no pathogen detected and reduced risk of influenza when compared to unvaccinated individuals.' The article also leaves out parts of the study that question the data linking coronavirus cases to the influenza vaccine. For instance, the U.S. Armed Forces study referenced a study from 2013 that had similar results except there was 'no association between influenza vaccination and RSV, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, rhinovirus or coronavirus.' Edward Belongia, an infectious disease epidemiologist who worked on the 2013 study, explained to FactCheck.org that there is little scientific data to support the speculative theory of the flu vaccine increasing the risk of other respiratory viruses. While this article did specify that the U.S. Armed Forces study was testing common coronaviruses and not COVID-19, the headline was ambiguous and misleading. We rate this headline False. | While this article did specify that the U.S. Armed Forces study was testing common coronaviruses and not COVID-19, the headline was ambiguous and misleading. We rate this headline False. | [
"102799-proof-10-6959673e2c29ada5bbeb9ce2e1680ff7.jpg"
]
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'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site. | Contradiction | Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely claimed on Fox News that President Donald Trump did not threaten to target Iranian cultural sites. Pompeo's claim came when host Maria Bartiromo asked about a tweet in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Trump was advocating for a war crime. 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site,' Pompeo said. 'Read what he said very closely.' We read what Trump said closely. In a series of tweets, the president issued a warning to Iran, saying the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites' it could strike if Iran were to attack. Trump's twitter thread came after the United States killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike aimed at an airport in Baghdad, Iraq. 'Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader,' Trump said. 'Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,' he continued. Iran has 22 cultural sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Some pundits and politicians, such as Ocasio-Cortez, argued that strikes against them could be considered war crimes under international law. The Geneva Conventions prohibit 'acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.' And in March 2017, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning 'the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage.' Hours after Pompeo made his claim on Bartiromo's show, Trump restated his willingness to go after Iran's cultural sites while speaking to reporters. 'They're allowed to kill our people,' he said, according to the Associated Press. 'They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way.' The State Department did not respond to our requests for comment by deadline. | Our ruling Pompeo said, 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site.' On Twitter, Trump said the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites,' including 'some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,' that he would consider blasting if Iran were to retaliate for the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He later repeated the threat while speaking to reporters. We rate Pompeo's statement False. | [
"102806-proof-20-c78ffbed78a46fbdc86b320805c942ee.jpg"
]
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'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site. | Contradiction | Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely claimed on Fox News that President Donald Trump did not threaten to target Iranian cultural sites. Pompeo's claim came when host Maria Bartiromo asked about a tweet in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Trump was advocating for a war crime. 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site,' Pompeo said. 'Read what he said very closely.' We read what Trump said closely. In a series of tweets, the president issued a warning to Iran, saying the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites' it could strike if Iran were to attack. Trump's twitter thread came after the United States killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike aimed at an airport in Baghdad, Iraq. 'Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader,' Trump said. 'Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,' he continued. Iran has 22 cultural sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Some pundits and politicians, such as Ocasio-Cortez, argued that strikes against them could be considered war crimes under international law. The Geneva Conventions prohibit 'acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.' And in March 2017, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning 'the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage.' Hours after Pompeo made his claim on Bartiromo's show, Trump restated his willingness to go after Iran's cultural sites while speaking to reporters. 'They're allowed to kill our people,' he said, according to the Associated Press. 'They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way.' The State Department did not respond to our requests for comment by deadline. | Our ruling Pompeo said, 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site.' On Twitter, Trump said the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites,' including 'some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,' that he would consider blasting if Iran were to retaliate for the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He later repeated the threat while speaking to reporters. We rate Pompeo's statement False. | [
"102806-proof-20-c78ffbed78a46fbdc86b320805c942ee.jpg"
]
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'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site. | Contradiction | Secretary of State Mike Pompeo falsely claimed on Fox News that President Donald Trump did not threaten to target Iranian cultural sites. Pompeo's claim came when host Maria Bartiromo asked about a tweet in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Trump was advocating for a war crime. 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site,' Pompeo said. 'Read what he said very closely.' We read what Trump said closely. In a series of tweets, the president issued a warning to Iran, saying the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites' it could strike if Iran were to attack. Trump's twitter thread came after the United States killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike aimed at an airport in Baghdad, Iraq. 'Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader,' Trump said. 'Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,' he continued. Iran has 22 cultural sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Some pundits and politicians, such as Ocasio-Cortez, argued that strikes against them could be considered war crimes under international law. The Geneva Conventions prohibit 'acts of hostility directed against the historic monuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples.' And in March 2017, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning 'the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage.' Hours after Pompeo made his claim on Bartiromo's show, Trump restated his willingness to go after Iran's cultural sites while speaking to reporters. 'They're allowed to kill our people,' he said, according to the Associated Press. 'They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we're not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way.' The State Department did not respond to our requests for comment by deadline. | Our ruling Pompeo said, 'President Trump didn't say he'd go after a cultural site.' On Twitter, Trump said the United States has 'targeted 52 Iranian sites,' including 'some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,' that he would consider blasting if Iran were to retaliate for the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He later repeated the threat while speaking to reporters. We rate Pompeo's statement False. | [
"102806-proof-20-c78ffbed78a46fbdc86b320805c942ee.jpg"
]
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'NASA discovers THC on meteorite fragment. | Contradiction | A few days after NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars, some more space news started to spread on social media. According to what looks like a news headline being shared online, NASA discovered tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC - the stuff that gets marijuana users high - on a meteorite fragment. 'A team of astrophysicists at the University of Hawaii have created somewhat of a stir within the scientific community after the discovery of trace amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol,' reads the text below the headline. The post also cites a website: thehealthdisorder.com. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We reached out to NASA about the post but didn't hear back. The University of Hawaii system has three universities, and we contacted the two where we found physics departments. University of Hawaii at Mānoa didn't respond to our questions about the post, but apparently this news that caused 'a stir within the scientific community' didn't reach the chair of the physics and astronomy department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. 'I can't help you on this one,' Dr. Kathy Cooksey said. We found a Google listing for the story on thehealthdisorder.com, though when we clicked on the link the website was dead. And we didn't find any credible news stories corroborating the headline in the post. But it appears it's been online for several years now. In 2016, High Times Magazine reported that it seemed to originate on a website that publishes fake news stories. In the end, we found no evidence that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment. We rate this post Pants on Fire! | In the end, we found no evidence that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment. We rate this post Pants on Fire! | []
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'NASA discovers THC on meteorite fragment. | Contradiction | A few days after NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars, some more space news started to spread on social media. According to what looks like a news headline being shared online, NASA discovered tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC - the stuff that gets marijuana users high - on a meteorite fragment. 'A team of astrophysicists at the University of Hawaii have created somewhat of a stir within the scientific community after the discovery of trace amounts of Tetrahydrocannabinol,' reads the text below the headline. The post also cites a website: thehealthdisorder.com. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We reached out to NASA about the post but didn't hear back. The University of Hawaii system has three universities, and we contacted the two where we found physics departments. University of Hawaii at Mānoa didn't respond to our questions about the post, but apparently this news that caused 'a stir within the scientific community' didn't reach the chair of the physics and astronomy department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. 'I can't help you on this one,' Dr. Kathy Cooksey said. We found a Google listing for the story on thehealthdisorder.com, though when we clicked on the link the website was dead. And we didn't find any credible news stories corroborating the headline in the post. But it appears it's been online for several years now. In 2016, High Times Magazine reported that it seemed to originate on a website that publishes fake news stories. In the end, we found no evidence that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment. We rate this post Pants on Fire! | In the end, we found no evidence that NASA discovered THC on a meteorite fragment. We rate this post Pants on Fire! | []
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Says 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns' Dominion Voting Systems. | Contradiction | A viral Facebook video rehashes conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems to make unproven allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. In the video, a man speaks to the camera, claiming to be a Biden voter who initially doubted the Trump campaign's allegations of voter fraud. He says that an Arizona press conference held Nov. 30 by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis caused him to reevaluate his belief in the legitimacy of the election results. Citing statements from the meeting, the man claims that Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software and hardware for election officials to use around the country, is owned by Hugo Chavez, the deceased former president of Venezuela. 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns the company,' reads the headline of the video. The post, which has been viewed more than 74,000 times, was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It's wrong. There is no evidence to support the claim that the Chavez family owns Dominion. Dominion's real ownership Dominion was founded in 2003 in Toronto, Canada, not Venezuela. In 2018, the company was acquired by Staple Street Capital, a private equity firm based in New York. In an April letter to the House Committee on Administration, Dominion CEO John Poulos said that Staple Street Capital owns a 75.2% stake in the company. Poulos, a Canadian citizen, wrote that he holds a 12% stake and that no other investor owns more than a 5% stake, according to the Associated Press. 'Dominion is not and has never been a front for communists. It has no ties to Hugo Chávez, the late dictator of Venezuela,' Poulos wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. 'It has never been involved in Venezuelan elections.' Claim appears tied to another conspiracy theory The speaker's claim about Dominion echoes a baseless conspiracy theory that we have debunked in the past. The thrust of the theory is that Smartmatic, a separate firm that builds electronic voting systems, is a Venezuelan company with close ties to Hugo Chavez. The founders of Smartmatic were born in Venezuela, but the company itself was founded in Boca Raton, Fla. Smartmatic says it has no affiliation with Chavez, who died in 2013, or with the current Venezuelan government. According to the company's website, Smartmatic is run by its two founders, Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate; 83% of its shares are held by SGO, a London-based company owned by the Mugica and Piñate families. An additional 10% of its shares are held by employees, and 7% by outside investors. Smartmatic voting systems have been used in elections around the world, including Venezuela. In 2017, the company said that its technology was manipulated to report a skewed vote total during a Venezuelan election. The company accused the Venezuelan government of election fraud, and it stopped its work there the following year. Smartmatic has claimed that the incident was an anomaly likely due to the lack of election monitors. Smartmatic technology was not used in any of the battleground states won by Biden where Trump allies are disputing the results. In order to draw a link between Smartmatic and the 2020 U.S. election, Trump supporters have baselessly alleged that the company owns its competitor Dominion, which was used to tabulate votes in key battleground states. But both Dominion and Smartmatic have issued statements denying that they are affiliated with each other. The companies have also denied that they use each other's software. Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert, told the Associated Press that there was no reason to believe that Dominion and Smartmatic have ties to each other or to Venezuela. | Our ruling A Facebook video claims that 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns' Dominion Voting Systems. According to Dominion, 75.2% of its shares are owned by Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and 12% of its shares are owned by John Poulos, its CEO. No other investor holds more than a 5% stake in the company. The claim - which is tied to other baseless conspiracy theories that we have debunked - is not accurate. We rate it False. | [
"102885-proof-20-da7efb7b1b670734a3ff6111c2a14e86.jpg"
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Says 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns' Dominion Voting Systems. | Contradiction | A viral Facebook video rehashes conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems to make unproven allegations of voter fraud in Arizona. In the video, a man speaks to the camera, claiming to be a Biden voter who initially doubted the Trump campaign's allegations of voter fraud. He says that an Arizona press conference held Nov. 30 by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis caused him to reevaluate his belief in the legitimacy of the election results. Citing statements from the meeting, the man claims that Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software and hardware for election officials to use around the country, is owned by Hugo Chavez, the deceased former president of Venezuela. 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns the company,' reads the headline of the video. The post, which has been viewed more than 74,000 times, was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It's wrong. There is no evidence to support the claim that the Chavez family owns Dominion. Dominion's real ownership Dominion was founded in 2003 in Toronto, Canada, not Venezuela. In 2018, the company was acquired by Staple Street Capital, a private equity firm based in New York. In an April letter to the House Committee on Administration, Dominion CEO John Poulos said that Staple Street Capital owns a 75.2% stake in the company. Poulos, a Canadian citizen, wrote that he holds a 12% stake and that no other investor owns more than a 5% stake, according to the Associated Press. 'Dominion is not and has never been a front for communists. It has no ties to Hugo Chávez, the late dictator of Venezuela,' Poulos wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. 'It has never been involved in Venezuelan elections.' Claim appears tied to another conspiracy theory The speaker's claim about Dominion echoes a baseless conspiracy theory that we have debunked in the past. The thrust of the theory is that Smartmatic, a separate firm that builds electronic voting systems, is a Venezuelan company with close ties to Hugo Chavez. The founders of Smartmatic were born in Venezuela, but the company itself was founded in Boca Raton, Fla. Smartmatic says it has no affiliation with Chavez, who died in 2013, or with the current Venezuelan government. According to the company's website, Smartmatic is run by its two founders, Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate; 83% of its shares are held by SGO, a London-based company owned by the Mugica and Piñate families. An additional 10% of its shares are held by employees, and 7% by outside investors. Smartmatic voting systems have been used in elections around the world, including Venezuela. In 2017, the company said that its technology was manipulated to report a skewed vote total during a Venezuelan election. The company accused the Venezuelan government of election fraud, and it stopped its work there the following year. Smartmatic has claimed that the incident was an anomaly likely due to the lack of election monitors. Smartmatic technology was not used in any of the battleground states won by Biden where Trump allies are disputing the results. In order to draw a link between Smartmatic and the 2020 U.S. election, Trump supporters have baselessly alleged that the company owns its competitor Dominion, which was used to tabulate votes in key battleground states. But both Dominion and Smartmatic have issued statements denying that they are affiliated with each other. The companies have also denied that they use each other's software. Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert, told the Associated Press that there was no reason to believe that Dominion and Smartmatic have ties to each other or to Venezuela. | Our ruling A Facebook video claims that 'Hugo Chavez's family still owns' Dominion Voting Systems. According to Dominion, 75.2% of its shares are owned by Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, and 12% of its shares are owned by John Poulos, its CEO. No other investor holds more than a 5% stake in the company. The claim - which is tied to other baseless conspiracy theories that we have debunked - is not accurate. We rate it False. | [
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Photo shows '7 Marines killed in training exercise yesterday. | Contradiction | On July 30, eight Marines and one Navy sailor were killed during a routine training exercise off the coast of Southern California when a Marine landing craft sank. Only one of the service members' bodies was recovered from the tragic scene: That of Lance Cpl. Guillermo Perez of New Braunfels, Tex. Presumed dead are Pfc. Bryan Baltierra, Lance Cpl. Marco Barranco, Pfc. Evan Bath, Navy Hospitalman Christopher Gnem, Pfc. Jack Ryan Ostrovsky, Cpl. Wesley Rodd, Lance Cpl. Chase Sweetwood and Cpl. Cesar Villanueva. On Aug. 1, however, a Facebook post featuring the photos of seven different Marines started circulating online. '7 Marines killed in training exercise yesterday,' the post says. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The Marines in the photos were killed in a helicopter crash, but not on July 31. They died in 2015 during a training mission in Florida when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in dense fog. Four National Guard soldiers were also killed. Though there was a more recent fatal training exercise involving Marines, this Facebook post misuses the images of and deaths of seven men who perished five years ago. We rate this post Mostly False. | We rate this post Mostly False. | []
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Photo shows '7 Marines killed in training exercise yesterday. | Contradiction | On July 30, eight Marines and one Navy sailor were killed during a routine training exercise off the coast of Southern California when a Marine landing craft sank. Only one of the service members' bodies was recovered from the tragic scene: That of Lance Cpl. Guillermo Perez of New Braunfels, Tex. Presumed dead are Pfc. Bryan Baltierra, Lance Cpl. Marco Barranco, Pfc. Evan Bath, Navy Hospitalman Christopher Gnem, Pfc. Jack Ryan Ostrovsky, Cpl. Wesley Rodd, Lance Cpl. Chase Sweetwood and Cpl. Cesar Villanueva. On Aug. 1, however, a Facebook post featuring the photos of seven different Marines started circulating online. '7 Marines killed in training exercise yesterday,' the post says. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The Marines in the photos were killed in a helicopter crash, but not on July 31. They died in 2015 during a training mission in Florida when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed in dense fog. Four National Guard soldiers were also killed. Though there was a more recent fatal training exercise involving Marines, this Facebook post misuses the images of and deaths of seven men who perished five years ago. We rate this post Mostly False. | We rate this post Mostly False. | []
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Thousands of military ballots were found in the trash in Wisconsin. | Contradiction | Baseless claims of surprise ballots, burned ballots and fraudulent ballots have been flooding the internet as election workers continue to count votes in several swing states. We came across another ballot-related fraud claim, this time shared in a newly-created group called 'Stop the Steal,' whose members claim that Democrats are scheming to disenfranchise and nullify Republican votes. The post reads: 'I just heard there were thousands of military ballots found in the trash in WI. Most pro Trump. True?' Not true. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) As we were fact-checking the claim, Facebook removed the group on the grounds that it was delegitimizing the election process and in some cases calling for violence. Outside of this Facebook post, we have seen no reports of 'thousands' of military ballots being found dumped in the trash in Wisconsin. Julietta Henry, director for elections for Milwaukee County, the largest in the state, refuted the claim. 'This is just not true,' Henry said. 'The municipalities have not sent this to us. There's no evidence of this whatsoever.' In late September, an investigation was opened in Pennsylvania regarding nine military ballots, seven of which were cast for Trump, that had been improperly opened and discarded. We fact-checked another false claim related to Wisconsin ballots, which said the state 'found 112,000 votes' overnight. State election officials previously told us that the City of Milwaukee was still counting absentee ballots around 3 a.m. after Election Day, but that didn't mean those ballots were found or appeared at that time. There's no evidence that thousands of military ballots were found in the trash in Wisconsin and election officials refuted the claim. We rate it False. | We rate it False. | []
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Thousands of military ballots were found in the trash in Wisconsin. | Contradiction | Baseless claims of surprise ballots, burned ballots and fraudulent ballots have been flooding the internet as election workers continue to count votes in several swing states. We came across another ballot-related fraud claim, this time shared in a newly-created group called 'Stop the Steal,' whose members claim that Democrats are scheming to disenfranchise and nullify Republican votes. The post reads: 'I just heard there were thousands of military ballots found in the trash in WI. Most pro Trump. True?' Not true. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) As we were fact-checking the claim, Facebook removed the group on the grounds that it was delegitimizing the election process and in some cases calling for violence. Outside of this Facebook post, we have seen no reports of 'thousands' of military ballots being found dumped in the trash in Wisconsin. Julietta Henry, director for elections for Milwaukee County, the largest in the state, refuted the claim. 'This is just not true,' Henry said. 'The municipalities have not sent this to us. There's no evidence of this whatsoever.' In late September, an investigation was opened in Pennsylvania regarding nine military ballots, seven of which were cast for Trump, that had been improperly opened and discarded. We fact-checked another false claim related to Wisconsin ballots, which said the state 'found 112,000 votes' overnight. State election officials previously told us that the City of Milwaukee was still counting absentee ballots around 3 a.m. after Election Day, but that didn't mean those ballots were found or appeared at that time. There's no evidence that thousands of military ballots were found in the trash in Wisconsin and election officials refuted the claim. We rate it False. | We rate it False. | []
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'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation. | Contradiction | As Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden compete for African American voters in the Democratic primaries, a Facebook post portrays the two politicians as being on opposite sides of the segregation issue decades ago. 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation,' stated a March 2 Facebook post. The accompanying side-by-side photos show Sanders being arrested and Biden from decades ago. The post has been circulating at least since June 2019, around the time that Biden's past statements on busing became a hot topic in the Democratic primary. We found that the post is accurate about Sanders' arrest, but it doesn't tell the full story about Biden's record on segregation. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Sanders' 1963 arrest protesting segregation We previously fact-checked a separate Facebook post that stemmed from Sanders' 1963 arrest in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune wrote a story in February 2016 about the photo and confirmed with Sanders' campaign that it was him. Sanders, who at the time was a 21-year-old student at the University of Chicago, was arrested in August 1963 at a South Side protest over school segregation. Sanders was charged with resisting arrest, found guilty and fined $25, according to the Tribune's reporting. The protests that led to the arrest were over mobile classrooms dubbed 'Willis Wagons,' named for then-Chicago Schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis. Black children were kept in the trailers rather than being allowed in white schools. A January 1964 Tribune story on the court cases of those who had been arrested mentioned a Bernard Sanders. Biden's statements on segregation and busing RELATED: Joe Biden oversimplifies his school busing record in Miami debate The Facebook post doesn't cite a particular speech by Biden, then a Delaware U.S. senator, in 1975, but it likely refers to his statements opposing busing. Biden won his Senate seat in 1972 on a platform of integration, but once in office, he faced white constituents who overwhelmingly opposed busing to achieve integration. A Gallup poll in 1973 found that while a majority of Americans supported school integration, only 5% supported busing. A federal court order in 1974 to integrate Wilmington, Del., schools brought the issue home for Biden. In the Senate, he began supporting much of the anti-busing legislation. In 1975, Biden supported an amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina conservative who opposed civil rights, while stating he didn't share all the views of those who opposed busing. The amendment, which Helms called an 'anti-busing amendment' was intended to ban schools from using federal funds to classify teachers or students based on race.. 'I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept that, in fact, does not bear any of the fruit for which it was designed,' Biden said on the Senate floor Sept. 17, 1975. 'If anything, it obfuscates the real issue today, which is whether or not there is equal opportunity within the educational field for all people within the United States.' Biden said that rather than busing, the Senate should focus on all areas of opportunity in housing, education, equal credit and voting rights to provide minorities with equal access. When the Helms amendment was defeated, Biden himself proposed measures to oppose busing as a segregation remedy. But that same year, Biden co-sponsored a 10-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, sponsored legislation to prohibit creditors from discriminating on the basis of race and opposed the nomination of Ben Blackburn, who had voted against civil rights bills in Congress, to the federal bench. | Our ruling A Facebook post said 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation.' The post is correct about Sanders - he was arrested in Chicago in 1963 for protesting school segregation. But the text attacks Biden too broadly when it states that he was 'defending segregation.' Biden did oppose court-ordered busing in 1975, a program intended to achieve school integration. But he supported other legislation that aimed to fight segregation in housing and expand voting rights. We rate this statement Mostly False. | [
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'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation. | Contradiction | As Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden compete for African American voters in the Democratic primaries, a Facebook post portrays the two politicians as being on opposite sides of the segregation issue decades ago. 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation,' stated a March 2 Facebook post. The accompanying side-by-side photos show Sanders being arrested and Biden from decades ago. The post has been circulating at least since June 2019, around the time that Biden's past statements on busing became a hot topic in the Democratic primary. We found that the post is accurate about Sanders' arrest, but it doesn't tell the full story about Biden's record on segregation. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Sanders' 1963 arrest protesting segregation We previously fact-checked a separate Facebook post that stemmed from Sanders' 1963 arrest in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune wrote a story in February 2016 about the photo and confirmed with Sanders' campaign that it was him. Sanders, who at the time was a 21-year-old student at the University of Chicago, was arrested in August 1963 at a South Side protest over school segregation. Sanders was charged with resisting arrest, found guilty and fined $25, according to the Tribune's reporting. The protests that led to the arrest were over mobile classrooms dubbed 'Willis Wagons,' named for then-Chicago Schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis. Black children were kept in the trailers rather than being allowed in white schools. A January 1964 Tribune story on the court cases of those who had been arrested mentioned a Bernard Sanders. Biden's statements on segregation and busing RELATED: Joe Biden oversimplifies his school busing record in Miami debate The Facebook post doesn't cite a particular speech by Biden, then a Delaware U.S. senator, in 1975, but it likely refers to his statements opposing busing. Biden won his Senate seat in 1972 on a platform of integration, but once in office, he faced white constituents who overwhelmingly opposed busing to achieve integration. A Gallup poll in 1973 found that while a majority of Americans supported school integration, only 5% supported busing. A federal court order in 1974 to integrate Wilmington, Del., schools brought the issue home for Biden. In the Senate, he began supporting much of the anti-busing legislation. In 1975, Biden supported an amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina conservative who opposed civil rights, while stating he didn't share all the views of those who opposed busing. The amendment, which Helms called an 'anti-busing amendment' was intended to ban schools from using federal funds to classify teachers or students based on race.. 'I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept that, in fact, does not bear any of the fruit for which it was designed,' Biden said on the Senate floor Sept. 17, 1975. 'If anything, it obfuscates the real issue today, which is whether or not there is equal opportunity within the educational field for all people within the United States.' Biden said that rather than busing, the Senate should focus on all areas of opportunity in housing, education, equal credit and voting rights to provide minorities with equal access. When the Helms amendment was defeated, Biden himself proposed measures to oppose busing as a segregation remedy. But that same year, Biden co-sponsored a 10-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, sponsored legislation to prohibit creditors from discriminating on the basis of race and opposed the nomination of Ben Blackburn, who had voted against civil rights bills in Congress, to the federal bench. | Our ruling A Facebook post said 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation.' The post is correct about Sanders - he was arrested in Chicago in 1963 for protesting school segregation. But the text attacks Biden too broadly when it states that he was 'defending segregation.' Biden did oppose court-ordered busing in 1975, a program intended to achieve school integration. But he supported other legislation that aimed to fight segregation in housing and expand voting rights. We rate this statement Mostly False. | [
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'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation. | Contradiction | As Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden compete for African American voters in the Democratic primaries, a Facebook post portrays the two politicians as being on opposite sides of the segregation issue decades ago. 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation,' stated a March 2 Facebook post. The accompanying side-by-side photos show Sanders being arrested and Biden from decades ago. The post has been circulating at least since June 2019, around the time that Biden's past statements on busing became a hot topic in the Democratic primary. We found that the post is accurate about Sanders' arrest, but it doesn't tell the full story about Biden's record on segregation. The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Sanders' 1963 arrest protesting segregation We previously fact-checked a separate Facebook post that stemmed from Sanders' 1963 arrest in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune wrote a story in February 2016 about the photo and confirmed with Sanders' campaign that it was him. Sanders, who at the time was a 21-year-old student at the University of Chicago, was arrested in August 1963 at a South Side protest over school segregation. Sanders was charged with resisting arrest, found guilty and fined $25, according to the Tribune's reporting. The protests that led to the arrest were over mobile classrooms dubbed 'Willis Wagons,' named for then-Chicago Schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis. Black children were kept in the trailers rather than being allowed in white schools. A January 1964 Tribune story on the court cases of those who had been arrested mentioned a Bernard Sanders. Biden's statements on segregation and busing RELATED: Joe Biden oversimplifies his school busing record in Miami debate The Facebook post doesn't cite a particular speech by Biden, then a Delaware U.S. senator, in 1975, but it likely refers to his statements opposing busing. Biden won his Senate seat in 1972 on a platform of integration, but once in office, he faced white constituents who overwhelmingly opposed busing to achieve integration. A Gallup poll in 1973 found that while a majority of Americans supported school integration, only 5% supported busing. A federal court order in 1974 to integrate Wilmington, Del., schools brought the issue home for Biden. In the Senate, he began supporting much of the anti-busing legislation. In 1975, Biden supported an amendment by Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina conservative who opposed civil rights, while stating he didn't share all the views of those who opposed busing. The amendment, which Helms called an 'anti-busing amendment' was intended to ban schools from using federal funds to classify teachers or students based on race.. 'I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept that, in fact, does not bear any of the fruit for which it was designed,' Biden said on the Senate floor Sept. 17, 1975. 'If anything, it obfuscates the real issue today, which is whether or not there is equal opportunity within the educational field for all people within the United States.' Biden said that rather than busing, the Senate should focus on all areas of opportunity in housing, education, equal credit and voting rights to provide minorities with equal access. When the Helms amendment was defeated, Biden himself proposed measures to oppose busing as a segregation remedy. But that same year, Biden co-sponsored a 10-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, sponsored legislation to prohibit creditors from discriminating on the basis of race and opposed the nomination of Ben Blackburn, who had voted against civil rights bills in Congress, to the federal bench. | Our ruling A Facebook post said 'Bernie Sanders in 1963 - arrested protesting segregation. Joe Biden in 1975 - passionate speech defending segregation.' The post is correct about Sanders - he was arrested in Chicago in 1963 for protesting school segregation. But the text attacks Biden too broadly when it states that he was 'defending segregation.' Biden did oppose court-ordered busing in 1975, a program intended to achieve school integration. But he supported other legislation that aimed to fight segregation in housing and expand voting rights. We rate this statement Mostly False. | [
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'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history. | Contradiction | Attorney General William Barr made the case that while the COVID-19 pandemic is grave, the response should be measured. Governors who issued sweeping rules to keep the spread of the virus in check, he said, were treating 'free citizens as babies that can't take responsibility for themselves.' 'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest,' Barr said Sept. 16 at an event sponsored by Michigan's Hillsdale College. 'Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.' Putting social distancing rules second only to slavery as a violation of civil liberties drew criticism. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., called it 'the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I've ever heard.' As fact-checkers, we looked at whether recent public health-driven restrictions on businesses and public gatherings exceeded the harm of other episodes in America's past. Compared, for example, to the denial of voting rights to millions of Black Americans, we found Barr's claim fell short. His depiction of the COVID-19 restrictions also seemed exaggerated. Stay-at-home orders According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 states plus Washington, D.C. issued some form of stay-at-home order as the pandemic hit the nation. Generally, those orders shut offices, restaurants, bars and any other business judged to be nonessential. States enjoy broad legal authority to protect the general welfare. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court laid down a standard that still applies today. So long as the state's restrictions have a substantive connection to public health, they tend to pass legal muster. That said, opponents of Pennsylvania's stay-at-home orders won at least a temporary victory when a federal judge ruled major portions of that state's order unconstitutional. The ruling is under appeal. Challenges in other states have been common, with judges often backing the governors. The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal from a Nevada church to hold in-person services. Broadly, state orders directed people to stay home, but they offered many exceptions. West Virginia's was typical. Residents could leave to 'engage in outdoor activity,' buy groceries, attend religious services, and visit other family members, to name a few permitted reasons. While Barr painted these orders as similar to house arrest, the comparison is dicey. The terms of house arrest can range from an evening curfew to an absolute requirement to stay in the home. But regardless of how strict or loose they are, house arrest orders are closely enforced, often through the use of tracking devices. The COVID-19 orders did not reach that level of enforcement, although states often had the option to charge violators with misdemeanors, and in some instances, people were charged. The economic impact has been severe. Well over 11 million Americans lost their jobs due to the virus and remain unemployed. Tens of millions faced a temporary loss of income, and thousands of businesses suffered. Infringements of civil liberties since 1900 The shutdown orders had an immediate effect on the lives of millions of Americans. We asked over a dozen historians if they could think of instances in post-slavery America that might be worse than shutting down restaurants, offices and many other enterprises for several months. Without any suggestion that this list is fully inclusive, here are a few examples they offered as 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties' other than slavery. Anti-Black violence, Jim Crow and discrimination Between 1900 and 1940, there were nearly 2,000 lynchings. Black people accounted for over 90% of the victims. White mobs attacked entire communities. In 1919, government soldiers, armed with rifles and seven machine guns, and aided by white vigilantes, attacked the Black residents of Elaine, Ark. Over a span of five days, they killed many and burned farms and buildings throughout the region. In 1921, a mob of white people turned the Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Okla., to rubble. Estimates of the death toll range from 75 to 300. In 1923, Rosewood, Fla., suffered the same fate. There are many other examples. Turning to voting rights, states, mainly but not exclusively in the South, systematically denied the franchise to millions of citizens. 'Black voter participation, which in some places had been 90% of eligible male voters in the late 1860s and early 1870s, was cut to essentially zero by the early decades of the 20th century,' Harvard Law School professor Michael J. Klarman told us when we looked at the history of this in 2011. 'Jim Crow regimes involved relentless efforts to stop all African Americans from voting and included brutal intimidation tactics, like lynching,' said Heather Gerken, a Yale Law School professor. Home mortgages were beyond the reach of Black families due to Federal Housing Administration rules. Between 1930 and 1950, 98% of private mortgages were insured by the FHA. Only 2% of borrowers were non-white. The presence of Black people in a neighborhood was deemed a risk factor that discouraged lending. The policy denied Blacks people the same chance to accumulate wealth that white people enjoyed. The Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I During World War I, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to bolster the country in its battle against Germany. The Sedition Act outlawed any criticism of the war. Columbia University historian Eric Foner called the period 'the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known.' 'Two thousand people were prosecuted for speech or press violations,' said Oakland University professor emeritus Robert Justin Goldstein. 'One thousand were jailed. Eugene Debs (a trade union activist and Socialist Party candidate) was jailed for opposing the draft.' Goldstein, author of 'Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to 1975,' tells the story of a filmmaker who received a 10-year sentence for a movie about the American Revolution. 'It was called 'The Spirit of 1776,'' and it included a scene with British soldiers committing atrocities against Americans,' Goldstein said. 'That got him in trouble. At the time, we were fighting (along) with the British, and the movie was seen as undercutting that.' Expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s As the Great Depression hit the U.S., people of Mexican descent were blamed for draining public resources. Secretary of Labor William Doak said deportation was essential for reducing unemployment. Immigration agents conducted raids across the country, but the largest number of removals took place in Southern California. By one estimate, local, state and federal officials deported nearly 2 million people, many of them minors born in the United States. 'More than half of those - about 1.2 million - were U.S. citizens, returned to a country where they had never been before and where they had few if any, rights, because they were not Mexican citizens,' said Yale historian Laura Barraclough. The program also undercut the freedom of American firms to conduct business. Farms struggled to find field workers, and in 1931, at a time when banks were in crisis, California reported a loss of $7 million in bank deposits as departing customers took their money with them to Mexico. Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in February 1942 to remove anyone on the West Coast judged to be a threat to national security. The move was aimed at Japanese Americans. In congressional hearings, Justice Department officials objected on constitutional grounds, and the work of forced relocation was put in the hands of the U.S. Army. Within six months in 1942, 122,000 people were sent to inland internment centers. About 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens. 'Japanese Americans who evacuated often left without anything but a suitcase or two, and most never recovered their losses of homes, businesses, and possessions,' said Northwestern University's Shana Bernstein. 'The violation of civil liberties was so egregious that President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for it.' A 1983 commission put their property losses at $1.3 billion. Other intrusions No list could be fully inclusive. For scale and brutality, the forced relocation and killings of Native Americans in the 19th century loomed large for several historians. In the 20th century, both the federal government and the states curtailed liberties in Americans' private lives. Under the Comstock Act of 1873, it was a federal crime to distribute birth control materials through the mail or across state lines, even for married couples. Many states also banned interracial marriage. That stood until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court took the case of Loving v the State of Virginia. Two Virginia residents were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for violating the state's miscegenation law. The judge offered to suspend the sentence if they left the state and didn't return for 25 years. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that miscegenation laws violated the 14th Amendment and were 'odious to a free people.' Other historians also listed the government study in collaboration with Tuskegee University that denied treatment for syphilis to over 600 Black men between 1932 and 1972. The government's goal was to track the long-term effects of untreated disease. By the late 1940s, penicillin was the standard treatment but was never provided. | Our ruling Barr said that COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were like house arrest and represented 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history' since slavery. While efforts to contain the coronavirus have brought hardship to millions of people, public health restrictions, while challenged, have largely passed legal muster. On the flipside, denying the right to vote to millions of Black people, terrorizing Black communities, jailing people for voicing an opinion, and forcibly relocating or deporting over a million citizens go against core principles of the Constitution. Suffering is not easily quantified, and we recognize that actions taken in the past that were not ruled at the time as having violated civil rights are viewed differently through history's lens. But the scale and force of assaults on civil liberties in the past outweigh the infringements due to COVID-19. We rate this claim False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | [
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'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history. | Contradiction | Attorney General William Barr made the case that while the COVID-19 pandemic is grave, the response should be measured. Governors who issued sweeping rules to keep the spread of the virus in check, he said, were treating 'free citizens as babies that can't take responsibility for themselves.' 'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest,' Barr said Sept. 16 at an event sponsored by Michigan's Hillsdale College. 'Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.' Putting social distancing rules second only to slavery as a violation of civil liberties drew criticism. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., called it 'the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I've ever heard.' As fact-checkers, we looked at whether recent public health-driven restrictions on businesses and public gatherings exceeded the harm of other episodes in America's past. Compared, for example, to the denial of voting rights to millions of Black Americans, we found Barr's claim fell short. His depiction of the COVID-19 restrictions also seemed exaggerated. Stay-at-home orders According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 states plus Washington, D.C. issued some form of stay-at-home order as the pandemic hit the nation. Generally, those orders shut offices, restaurants, bars and any other business judged to be nonessential. States enjoy broad legal authority to protect the general welfare. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court laid down a standard that still applies today. So long as the state's restrictions have a substantive connection to public health, they tend to pass legal muster. That said, opponents of Pennsylvania's stay-at-home orders won at least a temporary victory when a federal judge ruled major portions of that state's order unconstitutional. The ruling is under appeal. Challenges in other states have been common, with judges often backing the governors. The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal from a Nevada church to hold in-person services. Broadly, state orders directed people to stay home, but they offered many exceptions. West Virginia's was typical. Residents could leave to 'engage in outdoor activity,' buy groceries, attend religious services, and visit other family members, to name a few permitted reasons. While Barr painted these orders as similar to house arrest, the comparison is dicey. The terms of house arrest can range from an evening curfew to an absolute requirement to stay in the home. But regardless of how strict or loose they are, house arrest orders are closely enforced, often through the use of tracking devices. The COVID-19 orders did not reach that level of enforcement, although states often had the option to charge violators with misdemeanors, and in some instances, people were charged. The economic impact has been severe. Well over 11 million Americans lost their jobs due to the virus and remain unemployed. Tens of millions faced a temporary loss of income, and thousands of businesses suffered. Infringements of civil liberties since 1900 The shutdown orders had an immediate effect on the lives of millions of Americans. We asked over a dozen historians if they could think of instances in post-slavery America that might be worse than shutting down restaurants, offices and many other enterprises for several months. Without any suggestion that this list is fully inclusive, here are a few examples they offered as 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties' other than slavery. Anti-Black violence, Jim Crow and discrimination Between 1900 and 1940, there were nearly 2,000 lynchings. Black people accounted for over 90% of the victims. White mobs attacked entire communities. In 1919, government soldiers, armed with rifles and seven machine guns, and aided by white vigilantes, attacked the Black residents of Elaine, Ark. Over a span of five days, they killed many and burned farms and buildings throughout the region. In 1921, a mob of white people turned the Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Okla., to rubble. Estimates of the death toll range from 75 to 300. In 1923, Rosewood, Fla., suffered the same fate. There are many other examples. Turning to voting rights, states, mainly but not exclusively in the South, systematically denied the franchise to millions of citizens. 'Black voter participation, which in some places had been 90% of eligible male voters in the late 1860s and early 1870s, was cut to essentially zero by the early decades of the 20th century,' Harvard Law School professor Michael J. Klarman told us when we looked at the history of this in 2011. 'Jim Crow regimes involved relentless efforts to stop all African Americans from voting and included brutal intimidation tactics, like lynching,' said Heather Gerken, a Yale Law School professor. Home mortgages were beyond the reach of Black families due to Federal Housing Administration rules. Between 1930 and 1950, 98% of private mortgages were insured by the FHA. Only 2% of borrowers were non-white. The presence of Black people in a neighborhood was deemed a risk factor that discouraged lending. The policy denied Blacks people the same chance to accumulate wealth that white people enjoyed. The Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I During World War I, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to bolster the country in its battle against Germany. The Sedition Act outlawed any criticism of the war. Columbia University historian Eric Foner called the period 'the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known.' 'Two thousand people were prosecuted for speech or press violations,' said Oakland University professor emeritus Robert Justin Goldstein. 'One thousand were jailed. Eugene Debs (a trade union activist and Socialist Party candidate) was jailed for opposing the draft.' Goldstein, author of 'Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to 1975,' tells the story of a filmmaker who received a 10-year sentence for a movie about the American Revolution. 'It was called 'The Spirit of 1776,'' and it included a scene with British soldiers committing atrocities against Americans,' Goldstein said. 'That got him in trouble. At the time, we were fighting (along) with the British, and the movie was seen as undercutting that.' Expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s As the Great Depression hit the U.S., people of Mexican descent were blamed for draining public resources. Secretary of Labor William Doak said deportation was essential for reducing unemployment. Immigration agents conducted raids across the country, but the largest number of removals took place in Southern California. By one estimate, local, state and federal officials deported nearly 2 million people, many of them minors born in the United States. 'More than half of those - about 1.2 million - were U.S. citizens, returned to a country where they had never been before and where they had few if any, rights, because they were not Mexican citizens,' said Yale historian Laura Barraclough. The program also undercut the freedom of American firms to conduct business. Farms struggled to find field workers, and in 1931, at a time when banks were in crisis, California reported a loss of $7 million in bank deposits as departing customers took their money with them to Mexico. Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in February 1942 to remove anyone on the West Coast judged to be a threat to national security. The move was aimed at Japanese Americans. In congressional hearings, Justice Department officials objected on constitutional grounds, and the work of forced relocation was put in the hands of the U.S. Army. Within six months in 1942, 122,000 people were sent to inland internment centers. About 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens. 'Japanese Americans who evacuated often left without anything but a suitcase or two, and most never recovered their losses of homes, businesses, and possessions,' said Northwestern University's Shana Bernstein. 'The violation of civil liberties was so egregious that President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for it.' A 1983 commission put their property losses at $1.3 billion. Other intrusions No list could be fully inclusive. For scale and brutality, the forced relocation and killings of Native Americans in the 19th century loomed large for several historians. In the 20th century, both the federal government and the states curtailed liberties in Americans' private lives. Under the Comstock Act of 1873, it was a federal crime to distribute birth control materials through the mail or across state lines, even for married couples. Many states also banned interracial marriage. That stood until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court took the case of Loving v the State of Virginia. Two Virginia residents were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for violating the state's miscegenation law. The judge offered to suspend the sentence if they left the state and didn't return for 25 years. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that miscegenation laws violated the 14th Amendment and were 'odious to a free people.' Other historians also listed the government study in collaboration with Tuskegee University that denied treatment for syphilis to over 600 Black men between 1932 and 1972. The government's goal was to track the long-term effects of untreated disease. By the late 1940s, penicillin was the standard treatment but was never provided. | Our ruling Barr said that COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were like house arrest and represented 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history' since slavery. While efforts to contain the coronavirus have brought hardship to millions of people, public health restrictions, while challenged, have largely passed legal muster. On the flipside, denying the right to vote to millions of Black people, terrorizing Black communities, jailing people for voicing an opinion, and forcibly relocating or deporting over a million citizens go against core principles of the Constitution. Suffering is not easily quantified, and we recognize that actions taken in the past that were not ruled at the time as having violated civil rights are viewed differently through history's lens. But the scale and force of assaults on civil liberties in the past outweigh the infringements due to COVID-19. We rate this claim False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | [
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'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history. | Contradiction | Attorney General William Barr made the case that while the COVID-19 pandemic is grave, the response should be measured. Governors who issued sweeping rules to keep the spread of the virus in check, he said, were treating 'free citizens as babies that can't take responsibility for themselves.' 'Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest,' Barr said Sept. 16 at an event sponsored by Michigan's Hillsdale College. 'Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.' Putting social distancing rules second only to slavery as a violation of civil liberties drew criticism. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., called it 'the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful thing I've ever heard.' As fact-checkers, we looked at whether recent public health-driven restrictions on businesses and public gatherings exceeded the harm of other episodes in America's past. Compared, for example, to the denial of voting rights to millions of Black Americans, we found Barr's claim fell short. His depiction of the COVID-19 restrictions also seemed exaggerated. Stay-at-home orders According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 states plus Washington, D.C. issued some form of stay-at-home order as the pandemic hit the nation. Generally, those orders shut offices, restaurants, bars and any other business judged to be nonessential. States enjoy broad legal authority to protect the general welfare. In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court laid down a standard that still applies today. So long as the state's restrictions have a substantive connection to public health, they tend to pass legal muster. That said, opponents of Pennsylvania's stay-at-home orders won at least a temporary victory when a federal judge ruled major portions of that state's order unconstitutional. The ruling is under appeal. Challenges in other states have been common, with judges often backing the governors. The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal from a Nevada church to hold in-person services. Broadly, state orders directed people to stay home, but they offered many exceptions. West Virginia's was typical. Residents could leave to 'engage in outdoor activity,' buy groceries, attend religious services, and visit other family members, to name a few permitted reasons. While Barr painted these orders as similar to house arrest, the comparison is dicey. The terms of house arrest can range from an evening curfew to an absolute requirement to stay in the home. But regardless of how strict or loose they are, house arrest orders are closely enforced, often through the use of tracking devices. The COVID-19 orders did not reach that level of enforcement, although states often had the option to charge violators with misdemeanors, and in some instances, people were charged. The economic impact has been severe. Well over 11 million Americans lost their jobs due to the virus and remain unemployed. Tens of millions faced a temporary loss of income, and thousands of businesses suffered. Infringements of civil liberties since 1900 The shutdown orders had an immediate effect on the lives of millions of Americans. We asked over a dozen historians if they could think of instances in post-slavery America that might be worse than shutting down restaurants, offices and many other enterprises for several months. Without any suggestion that this list is fully inclusive, here are a few examples they offered as 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties' other than slavery. Anti-Black violence, Jim Crow and discrimination Between 1900 and 1940, there were nearly 2,000 lynchings. Black people accounted for over 90% of the victims. White mobs attacked entire communities. In 1919, government soldiers, armed with rifles and seven machine guns, and aided by white vigilantes, attacked the Black residents of Elaine, Ark. Over a span of five days, they killed many and burned farms and buildings throughout the region. In 1921, a mob of white people turned the Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Okla., to rubble. Estimates of the death toll range from 75 to 300. In 1923, Rosewood, Fla., suffered the same fate. There are many other examples. Turning to voting rights, states, mainly but not exclusively in the South, systematically denied the franchise to millions of citizens. 'Black voter participation, which in some places had been 90% of eligible male voters in the late 1860s and early 1870s, was cut to essentially zero by the early decades of the 20th century,' Harvard Law School professor Michael J. Klarman told us when we looked at the history of this in 2011. 'Jim Crow regimes involved relentless efforts to stop all African Americans from voting and included brutal intimidation tactics, like lynching,' said Heather Gerken, a Yale Law School professor. Home mortgages were beyond the reach of Black families due to Federal Housing Administration rules. Between 1930 and 1950, 98% of private mortgages were insured by the FHA. Only 2% of borrowers were non-white. The presence of Black people in a neighborhood was deemed a risk factor that discouraged lending. The policy denied Blacks people the same chance to accumulate wealth that white people enjoyed. The Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I During World War I, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to bolster the country in its battle against Germany. The Sedition Act outlawed any criticism of the war. Columbia University historian Eric Foner called the period 'the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known.' 'Two thousand people were prosecuted for speech or press violations,' said Oakland University professor emeritus Robert Justin Goldstein. 'One thousand were jailed. Eugene Debs (a trade union activist and Socialist Party candidate) was jailed for opposing the draft.' Goldstein, author of 'Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to 1975,' tells the story of a filmmaker who received a 10-year sentence for a movie about the American Revolution. 'It was called 'The Spirit of 1776,'' and it included a scene with British soldiers committing atrocities against Americans,' Goldstein said. 'That got him in trouble. At the time, we were fighting (along) with the British, and the movie was seen as undercutting that.' Expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s As the Great Depression hit the U.S., people of Mexican descent were blamed for draining public resources. Secretary of Labor William Doak said deportation was essential for reducing unemployment. Immigration agents conducted raids across the country, but the largest number of removals took place in Southern California. By one estimate, local, state and federal officials deported nearly 2 million people, many of them minors born in the United States. 'More than half of those - about 1.2 million - were U.S. citizens, returned to a country where they had never been before and where they had few if any, rights, because they were not Mexican citizens,' said Yale historian Laura Barraclough. The program also undercut the freedom of American firms to conduct business. Farms struggled to find field workers, and in 1931, at a time when banks were in crisis, California reported a loss of $7 million in bank deposits as departing customers took their money with them to Mexico. Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in February 1942 to remove anyone on the West Coast judged to be a threat to national security. The move was aimed at Japanese Americans. In congressional hearings, Justice Department officials objected on constitutional grounds, and the work of forced relocation was put in the hands of the U.S. Army. Within six months in 1942, 122,000 people were sent to inland internment centers. About 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens. 'Japanese Americans who evacuated often left without anything but a suitcase or two, and most never recovered their losses of homes, businesses, and possessions,' said Northwestern University's Shana Bernstein. 'The violation of civil liberties was so egregious that President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for it.' A 1983 commission put their property losses at $1.3 billion. Other intrusions No list could be fully inclusive. For scale and brutality, the forced relocation and killings of Native Americans in the 19th century loomed large for several historians. In the 20th century, both the federal government and the states curtailed liberties in Americans' private lives. Under the Comstock Act of 1873, it was a federal crime to distribute birth control materials through the mail or across state lines, even for married couples. Many states also banned interracial marriage. That stood until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court took the case of Loving v the State of Virginia. Two Virginia residents were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for violating the state's miscegenation law. The judge offered to suspend the sentence if they left the state and didn't return for 25 years. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that miscegenation laws violated the 14th Amendment and were 'odious to a free people.' Other historians also listed the government study in collaboration with Tuskegee University that denied treatment for syphilis to over 600 Black men between 1932 and 1972. The government's goal was to track the long-term effects of untreated disease. By the late 1940s, penicillin was the standard treatment but was never provided. | Our ruling Barr said that COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were like house arrest and represented 'the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history' since slavery. While efforts to contain the coronavirus have brought hardship to millions of people, public health restrictions, while challenged, have largely passed legal muster. On the flipside, denying the right to vote to millions of Black people, terrorizing Black communities, jailing people for voicing an opinion, and forcibly relocating or deporting over a million citizens go against core principles of the Constitution. Suffering is not easily quantified, and we recognize that actions taken in the past that were not ruled at the time as having violated civil rights are viewed differently through history's lens. But the scale and force of assaults on civil liberties in the past outweigh the infringements due to COVID-19. We rate this claim False. This fact check is available at IFCN's 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more. | [
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The chaos at the Kabul airport as the Taliban took over Afghanistan's capital was a 'false flag event to provoke WW3. | Contradiction | A disturbing video recording of people in Afghanistan crowding and clinging to a U.S. military aircraft as it took off from Kabul's airport spurred both criticism of President Joe Biden and calls to help Afghans desperate to leave the country after the Taliban recently took over. Some social media posts are claiming that this was staged by secret hands. 'I find it an odd 'coincidence' that the US plane that was in the Afghanistan Taliban video was 1109, which seems to be hinting at 9/11 and thus another false flag event to provoke WW3 and order out of chaos and the crowning of the antichrist false savior and one world leader,' one post said, referring to the tail number on the plane. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Multiple news outlets have been reporting on chaos at and around the airport in the days since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan. On Aug. 17, the New York Times reported that body parts had been discovered in the wheel well of the plane that took off from the airport as Afghans climbed onto its wings. On Aug. 18, Reuters published diagrams, maps and photos documenting the 'chaos in Kabul.' The caption of one Aug. 16 photo, that shows people standing around and on a wall topped with barbed wire, says: 'A man pulls a girl to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.' Clarissa Ward, a CNN journalist reporting from Kabul, has shared harrowing details from the ground there. On Aug. 19, she tweeted footage of Taliban fighters accosting her and a CNN producer, writing: 'Our story from the madness outside Kabul airport where we witnessed Taliban fighters whipping people, shooting into the crowd.' To claim that these events aren't actually happening ignores the turmoil, violence and trauma people in Afghanistan are experiencing. They aren't actors. This is real. We rate this post Pants on Fire. | They aren't actors. This is real. We rate this post Pants on Fire. | []
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Says 99% of COVID-19 cases 'are totally harmless. | Contradiction | In a Fourth of July celebration with jets flying overhead and soldiers parachuting through the air, President Donald Trump minimized the threat of the coronavirus. With cases surging across many states, Trump said the latest numbers were promising. 'We have tested over 40 million people,' Trump said July 4. 'By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have - not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.' 'Totally harmless' is a strong term, and while people can debate the finer points of what represents harm, no definition backs up Trump's 99% figure. We reached out to the White House and the Trump campaign for the underlying data and did not hear back. A case death rate over 4% Death is the least likely outcome of catching this disease. If Trump's figure was going to be right, it would show up in how many people the virus has killed. Counting deaths from COVID-19 is an inexact science, but no data source shows a rate lower than 4.2%, based on the numbers of identified cases According to the government's tally at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the virus hit, there have been about 2.8 million cases. The death toll has reached nearly 130,000. That would produce a case death rate of 4.5%. Remember, researchers don't know the number of people infected - only the confirmed cases. The infection tally would be larger than the number of identified cases. Some researchers expect the global fatality rate to come down, with the caveat that it will be higher for more vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and people with underlying health problems. Other examples of harm Epidemiologists say we continue to learn more about COVID-19 and the damage it causes short of death. 'To cavalierly say that only 1% of infections result in problems is wildly inaccurate,' said Donald Thea, Boston University professor of global health. 'We are seeing reports of young people who have recovered from mild cases developing diabetes or blood clots and suffering from chronic fatigue, respiratory compromise, persistent fever or coming back with bacterial sepsis weeks later. There's too many reports of other organ damage that hints that there are possible long term serious implications.' And that doesn't speak to hospitalizations. By most standards, anything that sends someone to the hospital has done significant damage. Numbers from the COVID Tracking Project give some idea of the hospitalization trends. Unlike the cumulative death rate, this data gives a window into the number of hospitalizations that emerged out of each day's newly identified cases. The rate has been falling since early June, when it was 8%. But it still sits at 4%, or four times higher than Trump's 1% figure. Total infections - the great unknown Researchers agree that while counting the number of cases is important, one of the most important aspects of the coronavirus remains murky - how many people have been infected by the virus. This is very different from looking at the known cases, because it includes the people who never show symptoms. By one CDC estimate, the total could be 10 to 12 times higher than the number of identified cases. If deaths and hospitalizations remained the same, the threat of death and harm would fall dramatically. The problem is, Thea said, we lack reliable numbers to fill in any of those boxes. He expects the estimated number of infections to grow, but so will the estimated number of deaths. 'We're undercounting those deaths by 20% to 40%, conservatively,' Thea said. 'There is a year-to-year-stability in death rates. We've seen an enormous amount of excess deaths, and the large majority of the excess mortality is due to the infection itself.' | Our ruling Trump said that 99% of all COVID-19 cases are totally harmless. The White House provided no supporting data. Looking at the worst possible outcome, the government's numbers show a cumulative death rate of 4.5%, although the actual fatality rate could end up lower once we learn more about the disease The rate at which new cases lead to hospitalizations has fallen, but it still remains at 4%. And public health researchers note that more and more, there are reports that even people with mild cases are hit with medical problems after they've recovered. There's a lot more to be learned about this disease, but nothing says that it's harmless for 99% of the people it touches. We rate this claim False. | [
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Says 99% of COVID-19 cases 'are totally harmless. | Contradiction | In a Fourth of July celebration with jets flying overhead and soldiers parachuting through the air, President Donald Trump minimized the threat of the coronavirus. With cases surging across many states, Trump said the latest numbers were promising. 'We have tested over 40 million people,' Trump said July 4. 'By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have - not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.' 'Totally harmless' is a strong term, and while people can debate the finer points of what represents harm, no definition backs up Trump's 99% figure. We reached out to the White House and the Trump campaign for the underlying data and did not hear back. A case death rate over 4% Death is the least likely outcome of catching this disease. If Trump's figure was going to be right, it would show up in how many people the virus has killed. Counting deaths from COVID-19 is an inexact science, but no data source shows a rate lower than 4.2%, based on the numbers of identified cases According to the government's tally at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the virus hit, there have been about 2.8 million cases. The death toll has reached nearly 130,000. That would produce a case death rate of 4.5%. Remember, researchers don't know the number of people infected - only the confirmed cases. The infection tally would be larger than the number of identified cases. Some researchers expect the global fatality rate to come down, with the caveat that it will be higher for more vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and people with underlying health problems. Other examples of harm Epidemiologists say we continue to learn more about COVID-19 and the damage it causes short of death. 'To cavalierly say that only 1% of infections result in problems is wildly inaccurate,' said Donald Thea, Boston University professor of global health. 'We are seeing reports of young people who have recovered from mild cases developing diabetes or blood clots and suffering from chronic fatigue, respiratory compromise, persistent fever or coming back with bacterial sepsis weeks later. There's too many reports of other organ damage that hints that there are possible long term serious implications.' And that doesn't speak to hospitalizations. By most standards, anything that sends someone to the hospital has done significant damage. Numbers from the COVID Tracking Project give some idea of the hospitalization trends. Unlike the cumulative death rate, this data gives a window into the number of hospitalizations that emerged out of each day's newly identified cases. The rate has been falling since early June, when it was 8%. But it still sits at 4%, or four times higher than Trump's 1% figure. Total infections - the great unknown Researchers agree that while counting the number of cases is important, one of the most important aspects of the coronavirus remains murky - how many people have been infected by the virus. This is very different from looking at the known cases, because it includes the people who never show symptoms. By one CDC estimate, the total could be 10 to 12 times higher than the number of identified cases. If deaths and hospitalizations remained the same, the threat of death and harm would fall dramatically. The problem is, Thea said, we lack reliable numbers to fill in any of those boxes. He expects the estimated number of infections to grow, but so will the estimated number of deaths. 'We're undercounting those deaths by 20% to 40%, conservatively,' Thea said. 'There is a year-to-year-stability in death rates. We've seen an enormous amount of excess deaths, and the large majority of the excess mortality is due to the infection itself.' | Our ruling Trump said that 99% of all COVID-19 cases are totally harmless. The White House provided no supporting data. Looking at the worst possible outcome, the government's numbers show a cumulative death rate of 4.5%, although the actual fatality rate could end up lower once we learn more about the disease The rate at which new cases lead to hospitalizations has fallen, but it still remains at 4%. And public health researchers note that more and more, there are reports that even people with mild cases are hit with medical problems after they've recovered. There's a lot more to be learned about this disease, but nothing says that it's harmless for 99% of the people it touches. We rate this claim False. | [
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Says 99% of COVID-19 cases 'are totally harmless. | Contradiction | In a Fourth of July celebration with jets flying overhead and soldiers parachuting through the air, President Donald Trump minimized the threat of the coronavirus. With cases surging across many states, Trump said the latest numbers were promising. 'We have tested over 40 million people,' Trump said July 4. 'By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless. Results that no other country will show, because no other country has testing that we have - not in terms of the numbers or in terms of the quality.' 'Totally harmless' is a strong term, and while people can debate the finer points of what represents harm, no definition backs up Trump's 99% figure. We reached out to the White House and the Trump campaign for the underlying data and did not hear back. A case death rate over 4% Death is the least likely outcome of catching this disease. If Trump's figure was going to be right, it would show up in how many people the virus has killed. Counting deaths from COVID-19 is an inexact science, but no data source shows a rate lower than 4.2%, based on the numbers of identified cases According to the government's tally at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the virus hit, there have been about 2.8 million cases. The death toll has reached nearly 130,000. That would produce a case death rate of 4.5%. Remember, researchers don't know the number of people infected - only the confirmed cases. The infection tally would be larger than the number of identified cases. Some researchers expect the global fatality rate to come down, with the caveat that it will be higher for more vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and people with underlying health problems. Other examples of harm Epidemiologists say we continue to learn more about COVID-19 and the damage it causes short of death. 'To cavalierly say that only 1% of infections result in problems is wildly inaccurate,' said Donald Thea, Boston University professor of global health. 'We are seeing reports of young people who have recovered from mild cases developing diabetes or blood clots and suffering from chronic fatigue, respiratory compromise, persistent fever or coming back with bacterial sepsis weeks later. There's too many reports of other organ damage that hints that there are possible long term serious implications.' And that doesn't speak to hospitalizations. By most standards, anything that sends someone to the hospital has done significant damage. Numbers from the COVID Tracking Project give some idea of the hospitalization trends. Unlike the cumulative death rate, this data gives a window into the number of hospitalizations that emerged out of each day's newly identified cases. The rate has been falling since early June, when it was 8%. But it still sits at 4%, or four times higher than Trump's 1% figure. Total infections - the great unknown Researchers agree that while counting the number of cases is important, one of the most important aspects of the coronavirus remains murky - how many people have been infected by the virus. This is very different from looking at the known cases, because it includes the people who never show symptoms. By one CDC estimate, the total could be 10 to 12 times higher than the number of identified cases. If deaths and hospitalizations remained the same, the threat of death and harm would fall dramatically. The problem is, Thea said, we lack reliable numbers to fill in any of those boxes. He expects the estimated number of infections to grow, but so will the estimated number of deaths. 'We're undercounting those deaths by 20% to 40%, conservatively,' Thea said. 'There is a year-to-year-stability in death rates. We've seen an enormous amount of excess deaths, and the large majority of the excess mortality is due to the infection itself.' | Our ruling Trump said that 99% of all COVID-19 cases are totally harmless. The White House provided no supporting data. Looking at the worst possible outcome, the government's numbers show a cumulative death rate of 4.5%, although the actual fatality rate could end up lower once we learn more about the disease The rate at which new cases lead to hospitalizations has fallen, but it still remains at 4%. And public health researchers note that more and more, there are reports that even people with mild cases are hit with medical problems after they've recovered. There's a lot more to be learned about this disease, but nothing says that it's harmless for 99% of the people it touches. We rate this claim False. | [
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Photo shows Raz Simone, 'the alleged leader of CHAZ crying after Seattle police arrested him. | Contradiction | An image of a man who appears to be crying as a masked medic looms over him is not Raz Simone, a rapper and political activist who has rallied demonstrators at Seattle's Capitol Hill Occupied Protest - also known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. But a Facebook post sharing the photo wrongly claims otherwise. 'This is the alleged leader of chaz crying after Seattle Police arrested him,' the post says. 'His name is Raz Simone. Do your thing Facebook!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The image being shared on Facebook is of another protest leader known as River, according to news reports. According to KIRO 7 News, he was arrested after a brief chase from Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood to Interstate 5. Police said he was suspected of possessing a stolen vehicle. For weeks, protesters calling for racial justice occupied several blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood after Seattle police abandoned the precinct there. The result was an 'experiment in police-free governance,' in The New Yorker's words, that drew criticism from conservatives and President Donald Trump. It was ultimately cleared by police. Simone was a regular figure at CHOP, leading protesters in marches and speaking to the media. But we found no news reports that he has been arrested. We rate this Facebook post Mostly False. | We rate this Facebook post Mostly False. | []
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Says Jacob Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife | Contradiction | Editor's Note: Prosecutors revealed Jan. 5, 2021, that Jacob Blake was armed with a 'razor blade-type knife' when he was shot by police. Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said as a result the officer who shot Blake could successfully argue self-defense, and therefore wouldn't face criminal charges. That does not affect the rating for this item because ratings are based on what is known at the time. When this statement was made in August 2020, it was not clear what Blake was holding or when, given the grainy cell phone video and lack of detail released by police. As we wait for a full Wisconsin Department of Justice report on the Jacob Blake shooting, speculation has run rampant online about whether the 29-year-old Kenosha man was armed - and with what - in the moments before a Kenosha police officer shot him seven times in the back. The lack of detailed information from law enforcement has only added to the speculation. That includes a widely shared Aug. 26, 2020, Facebook post that starts out blaring 'FACTS MATTER!!' before asserting this: 'Jacob Blake declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it. He continued to brandish the knife while disregarding officer commands. When he reached into the car, officers fired. This is why they are burning down Kenosha, Wisconsin right now.' It was accompanied by a screen grab from an onlooker's video of Blake, where an object in his hand is circled. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook). Here's what we know. There was no gun The Facebook post avoids directly claiming a gun, instead attributing statements to Blake about having and getting a gun. We don't know what was said, and we may never know since the responding officers weren't wearing body cameras. The Kenosha Police Department doesn't use them. Audio in the cell-phone video shot by a witness is hard to discern due to bystanders' shouts. So there's no way to prove this part of the claim directly - though no witness reports have emerged since the incident that offer this account. The man who made the Facebook post did not respond to a request for the evidence behind the claim. But we know there was no gun. An Aug. 26, 2020, news release from the Department of Justice said officers found a knife on the driver's side floorboard, but 'a search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.' Knife involvement still ambiguous The role of the knife is much less clear. The DOJ has not clarified whether the knife was on the floorboard throughout the confrontation, or if Blake may have held it at some point. Spokeswoman Gillian Drummond declined to answer that question when asked by PolitiFact Wisconsin on Aug. 27, 2020. Video taken by onlookers shows something in Blake's hand, but the resolution is low, so it could be a knife, sunglasses or something else. The man who said he made the widely shared cellphone video of the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, told the Associated Press he heard officers yell, 'Drop the knife! Drop the knife!' as they scuffled with Blake before the shooting. White said he didn't see a knife in Blake's hands. The audio captured by White is inconclusive, though there is a phrase or two that could be interpreted as, 'Drop the knife.' Blake's representatives have said he was unarmed. His father told the Chicago Sun-Times for an Aug. 25, 2020, story, 'My son didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a gun.' Blake's attorney, Ben Crump, said in a statement released Aug. 27, 2020, 'Jacob did nothing to provoke police. ... Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn't threaten officers in any way.' But another attorney representing the Blake family, Patrick Salvi Jr., had told CNN the day before that Blake didn't have a weapon in the vehicle, which turned out to not be true. What we do know is that referring to Blake as 'brandishing' appears to be an exaggeration. Video of the shooting shows Blake walking around the front of the car with his back to officers and his left arm swinging at his side, grasping some object. Brandishing is defined by Merriam-Webster as 'to shake or wave (something, such as a weapon) menacingly.' That's not what the video shows. | Our ruling A viral Facebook post says Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife. We have no way of knowing for sure what Blake said, but we know there was no gun. And we don't yet know if the knife police later found in the SUV was there throughout the confrontation or held by Blake at some point. But Blake was not 'brandishing' anything in the video taken by bystanders. For our fact checks, the burden of proof is on the speaker. Due to the lack of evidence establishing these claims at this point, we rate this claim False. | []
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Says Jacob Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife | Contradiction | Editor's Note: Prosecutors revealed Jan. 5, 2021, that Jacob Blake was armed with a 'razor blade-type knife' when he was shot by police. Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said as a result the officer who shot Blake could successfully argue self-defense, and therefore wouldn't face criminal charges. That does not affect the rating for this item because ratings are based on what is known at the time. When this statement was made in August 2020, it was not clear what Blake was holding or when, given the grainy cell phone video and lack of detail released by police. As we wait for a full Wisconsin Department of Justice report on the Jacob Blake shooting, speculation has run rampant online about whether the 29-year-old Kenosha man was armed - and with what - in the moments before a Kenosha police officer shot him seven times in the back. The lack of detailed information from law enforcement has only added to the speculation. That includes a widely shared Aug. 26, 2020, Facebook post that starts out blaring 'FACTS MATTER!!' before asserting this: 'Jacob Blake declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it. He continued to brandish the knife while disregarding officer commands. When he reached into the car, officers fired. This is why they are burning down Kenosha, Wisconsin right now.' It was accompanied by a screen grab from an onlooker's video of Blake, where an object in his hand is circled. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook). Here's what we know. There was no gun The Facebook post avoids directly claiming a gun, instead attributing statements to Blake about having and getting a gun. We don't know what was said, and we may never know since the responding officers weren't wearing body cameras. The Kenosha Police Department doesn't use them. Audio in the cell-phone video shot by a witness is hard to discern due to bystanders' shouts. So there's no way to prove this part of the claim directly - though no witness reports have emerged since the incident that offer this account. The man who made the Facebook post did not respond to a request for the evidence behind the claim. But we know there was no gun. An Aug. 26, 2020, news release from the Department of Justice said officers found a knife on the driver's side floorboard, but 'a search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.' Knife involvement still ambiguous The role of the knife is much less clear. The DOJ has not clarified whether the knife was on the floorboard throughout the confrontation, or if Blake may have held it at some point. Spokeswoman Gillian Drummond declined to answer that question when asked by PolitiFact Wisconsin on Aug. 27, 2020. Video taken by onlookers shows something in Blake's hand, but the resolution is low, so it could be a knife, sunglasses or something else. The man who said he made the widely shared cellphone video of the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, told the Associated Press he heard officers yell, 'Drop the knife! Drop the knife!' as they scuffled with Blake before the shooting. White said he didn't see a knife in Blake's hands. The audio captured by White is inconclusive, though there is a phrase or two that could be interpreted as, 'Drop the knife.' Blake's representatives have said he was unarmed. His father told the Chicago Sun-Times for an Aug. 25, 2020, story, 'My son didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a gun.' Blake's attorney, Ben Crump, said in a statement released Aug. 27, 2020, 'Jacob did nothing to provoke police. ... Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn't threaten officers in any way.' But another attorney representing the Blake family, Patrick Salvi Jr., had told CNN the day before that Blake didn't have a weapon in the vehicle, which turned out to not be true. What we do know is that referring to Blake as 'brandishing' appears to be an exaggeration. Video of the shooting shows Blake walking around the front of the car with his back to officers and his left arm swinging at his side, grasping some object. Brandishing is defined by Merriam-Webster as 'to shake or wave (something, such as a weapon) menacingly.' That's not what the video shows. | Our ruling A viral Facebook post says Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife. We have no way of knowing for sure what Blake said, but we know there was no gun. And we don't yet know if the knife police later found in the SUV was there throughout the confrontation or held by Blake at some point. But Blake was not 'brandishing' anything in the video taken by bystanders. For our fact checks, the burden of proof is on the speaker. Due to the lack of evidence establishing these claims at this point, we rate this claim False. | []
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Says Jacob Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife | Contradiction | Editor's Note: Prosecutors revealed Jan. 5, 2021, that Jacob Blake was armed with a 'razor blade-type knife' when he was shot by police. Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley said as a result the officer who shot Blake could successfully argue self-defense, and therefore wouldn't face criminal charges. That does not affect the rating for this item because ratings are based on what is known at the time. When this statement was made in August 2020, it was not clear what Blake was holding or when, given the grainy cell phone video and lack of detail released by police. As we wait for a full Wisconsin Department of Justice report on the Jacob Blake shooting, speculation has run rampant online about whether the 29-year-old Kenosha man was armed - and with what - in the moments before a Kenosha police officer shot him seven times in the back. The lack of detailed information from law enforcement has only added to the speculation. That includes a widely shared Aug. 26, 2020, Facebook post that starts out blaring 'FACTS MATTER!!' before asserting this: 'Jacob Blake declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it. He continued to brandish the knife while disregarding officer commands. When he reached into the car, officers fired. This is why they are burning down Kenosha, Wisconsin right now.' It was accompanied by a screen grab from an onlooker's video of Blake, where an object in his hand is circled. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook). Here's what we know. There was no gun The Facebook post avoids directly claiming a gun, instead attributing statements to Blake about having and getting a gun. We don't know what was said, and we may never know since the responding officers weren't wearing body cameras. The Kenosha Police Department doesn't use them. Audio in the cell-phone video shot by a witness is hard to discern due to bystanders' shouts. So there's no way to prove this part of the claim directly - though no witness reports have emerged since the incident that offer this account. The man who made the Facebook post did not respond to a request for the evidence behind the claim. But we know there was no gun. An Aug. 26, 2020, news release from the Department of Justice said officers found a knife on the driver's side floorboard, but 'a search of the vehicle located no additional weapons.' Knife involvement still ambiguous The role of the knife is much less clear. The DOJ has not clarified whether the knife was on the floorboard throughout the confrontation, or if Blake may have held it at some point. Spokeswoman Gillian Drummond declined to answer that question when asked by PolitiFact Wisconsin on Aug. 27, 2020. Video taken by onlookers shows something in Blake's hand, but the resolution is low, so it could be a knife, sunglasses or something else. The man who said he made the widely shared cellphone video of the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, told the Associated Press he heard officers yell, 'Drop the knife! Drop the knife!' as they scuffled with Blake before the shooting. White said he didn't see a knife in Blake's hands. The audio captured by White is inconclusive, though there is a phrase or two that could be interpreted as, 'Drop the knife.' Blake's representatives have said he was unarmed. His father told the Chicago Sun-Times for an Aug. 25, 2020, story, 'My son didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a gun.' Blake's attorney, Ben Crump, said in a statement released Aug. 27, 2020, 'Jacob did nothing to provoke police. ... Witnesses confirm that he was not in possession of a knife and didn't threaten officers in any way.' But another attorney representing the Blake family, Patrick Salvi Jr., had told CNN the day before that Blake didn't have a weapon in the vehicle, which turned out to not be true. What we do know is that referring to Blake as 'brandishing' appears to be an exaggeration. Video of the shooting shows Blake walking around the front of the car with his back to officers and his left arm swinging at his side, grasping some object. Brandishing is defined by Merriam-Webster as 'to shake or wave (something, such as a weapon) menacingly.' That's not what the video shows. | Our ruling A viral Facebook post says Blake 'declared he had a gun in the car and was going to go get it' and was 'brandishing' a knife. We have no way of knowing for sure what Blake said, but we know there was no gun. And we don't yet know if the knife police later found in the SUV was there throughout the confrontation or held by Blake at some point. But Blake was not 'brandishing' anything in the video taken by bystanders. For our fact checks, the burden of proof is on the speaker. Due to the lack of evidence establishing these claims at this point, we rate this claim False. | []
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Photo shows Dianne Feinstein 'bullying' Lisa Murkowski over 'the now empty seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. | Contradiction | In September 2018, as senators considered the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a CBS News journalist captured Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in the Capitol. Murkowski appears to be standing in a doorway while Feinstein leans toward her with a hand pressed against the wall by the Alaska senator's head. Their exchange was inaudible, the Hill reported, but they appeared to be on good terms, hugging when they met and then stepping aside to whisper to each other. Nearly three years later, the image is being recast as a recent interaction as senators now grapple with the Supreme Court vacancy left since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18. 'Feinstein caught on camera bullying Murkowski,' reads the headline of a Sept. 21 blog post that's being shared on social media. It was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The blog post mentions Kavanaugh but goes on to frame the photo as showing Feinstein and Murkowski huddling more recently. 'Feinstein was in staunch opposition to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and is equally opposed to President Donald Trump even making a nomination to fill the now-empty seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,' the post says. 'While Murkowski wants the nomination postponed until after the election, since the Trump announcement of a nominee will not be made until the weekend - after Ginsburg has been buried - there is no indication of how she would vote on a nominee. And, oh yes, the President himself has said his list is made up of five women. With this in mind, Feinstein cornered Murkowski - literally physically.' Back in 2018, Murkowski voted against Kavanaugh. And on Sept. 20 of this year, the day before this blog post was published, Murkowski announced that she would not support filling Ginsburg's seat before the presidential election. 'For weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up a potential Supreme Court vacancy this close to the election,' she said in a statement. 'Sadly, what was then a hypothetical is now a reality, but my position has not changed.' The photo in this blog post is authentic, though we don't know what, exactly, was happening as Feinstein and Murkowski huddled together in 2018. But the post wrongly gives the impression that this is a recent interaction connected to the political fight over whether to fill Ginsburg's seat on the court before the election. It's not. We rate this post False. | The photo in this blog post is authentic, though we don't know what, exactly, was happening as Feinstein and Murkowski huddled together in 2018. But the post wrongly gives the impression that this is a recent interaction connected to the political fight over whether to fill Ginsburg's seat on the court before the election. It's not. We rate this post False. | []
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'They didn't allow' Simone Biles 'to take her ADHD medication. | Contradiction | The day before it was announced that gymnast Simone Biles would return to the Olympics competition in Tokyo, a social media post suggested that she had earlier withdrawn because she was prevented from taking medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The image of a tweet shared on Facebook says of the six-time Olympic medalist: 'So they didn't allow Simone to take her ADHD medication because it was considered a substance then become surprised when she's unable to focus and is fearful of making a bad move on the floor.' The post, from an account with more than 500,000 Facebook followers, seemed to indicate that the medication is a banned substance. It was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Biles has acknowledged taking medication for ADHD in the past. But we could find no statements from Biles or made on her behalf regarding whether she was taking ADHD medication leading up to the Tokyo Games. And we found no evidence that she was prohibited from taking any medication in Tokyo. Medical records hacked ADHD is a disorder commonly diagnosed in childhood that often lasts into adulthood. People who have it might have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors, or being overly active. In 2016, hackers leaked medical records showing that Biles tested positive for methylphenidate, a prescription drug commonly used to treat ADHD; its brand names include Ritalin. Biles responded to the leak by saying that she has ADHD and takes medicine for it. Biles received a 'therapeutic use exemption' through the World Anti-Doping Agency to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Biles cites 'twisties' in Tokyo The 24-year-old Texan, whose motto on her personal website is 'Don't Flip Out,' withdrew from the finals of the team competition during the competition in Tokyo on July 27. USA Gymnastics said it was due to a medical issue; Team USA said she had 'mental struggles.' Biles initially said she withdrew to work on her 'mindfulness,' alluding to stress and saying she puts 'mental health first.' Later, she said she withdrew because of the 'twisties,' which she described as a dangerous condition that prevents her from doing certain maneuvers in mid-air. She said that her 'mind and body are simply not in sync' and that 'physical health is mental health.' Biles withdrew from more events before the announcement that she would return for the balance beam final on Aug. 3. Representatives from Team USA and for Biles did not respond to our requests for comment. It's worth noting that Japan bans many stimulants but makes some exceptions for athletes, and allows certain non-stimulant ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin, according to Team USA. With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | [
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'They didn't allow' Simone Biles 'to take her ADHD medication. | Contradiction | The day before it was announced that gymnast Simone Biles would return to the Olympics competition in Tokyo, a social media post suggested that she had earlier withdrawn because she was prevented from taking medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The image of a tweet shared on Facebook says of the six-time Olympic medalist: 'So they didn't allow Simone to take her ADHD medication because it was considered a substance then become surprised when she's unable to focus and is fearful of making a bad move on the floor.' The post, from an account with more than 500,000 Facebook followers, seemed to indicate that the medication is a banned substance. It was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Biles has acknowledged taking medication for ADHD in the past. But we could find no statements from Biles or made on her behalf regarding whether she was taking ADHD medication leading up to the Tokyo Games. And we found no evidence that she was prohibited from taking any medication in Tokyo. Medical records hacked ADHD is a disorder commonly diagnosed in childhood that often lasts into adulthood. People who have it might have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors, or being overly active. In 2016, hackers leaked medical records showing that Biles tested positive for methylphenidate, a prescription drug commonly used to treat ADHD; its brand names include Ritalin. Biles responded to the leak by saying that she has ADHD and takes medicine for it. Biles received a 'therapeutic use exemption' through the World Anti-Doping Agency to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Biles cites 'twisties' in Tokyo The 24-year-old Texan, whose motto on her personal website is 'Don't Flip Out,' withdrew from the finals of the team competition during the competition in Tokyo on July 27. USA Gymnastics said it was due to a medical issue; Team USA said she had 'mental struggles.' Biles initially said she withdrew to work on her 'mindfulness,' alluding to stress and saying she puts 'mental health first.' Later, she said she withdrew because of the 'twisties,' which she described as a dangerous condition that prevents her from doing certain maneuvers in mid-air. She said that her 'mind and body are simply not in sync' and that 'physical health is mental health.' Biles withdrew from more events before the announcement that she would return for the balance beam final on Aug. 3. Representatives from Team USA and for Biles did not respond to our requests for comment. It's worth noting that Japan bans many stimulants but makes some exceptions for athletes, and allows certain non-stimulant ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin, according to Team USA. With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | [
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'They didn't allow' Simone Biles 'to take her ADHD medication. | Contradiction | The day before it was announced that gymnast Simone Biles would return to the Olympics competition in Tokyo, a social media post suggested that she had earlier withdrawn because she was prevented from taking medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The image of a tweet shared on Facebook says of the six-time Olympic medalist: 'So they didn't allow Simone to take her ADHD medication because it was considered a substance then become surprised when she's unable to focus and is fearful of making a bad move on the floor.' The post, from an account with more than 500,000 Facebook followers, seemed to indicate that the medication is a banned substance. It was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Biles has acknowledged taking medication for ADHD in the past. But we could find no statements from Biles or made on her behalf regarding whether she was taking ADHD medication leading up to the Tokyo Games. And we found no evidence that she was prohibited from taking any medication in Tokyo. Medical records hacked ADHD is a disorder commonly diagnosed in childhood that often lasts into adulthood. People who have it might have trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors, or being overly active. In 2016, hackers leaked medical records showing that Biles tested positive for methylphenidate, a prescription drug commonly used to treat ADHD; its brand names include Ritalin. Biles responded to the leak by saying that she has ADHD and takes medicine for it. Biles received a 'therapeutic use exemption' through the World Anti-Doping Agency to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Biles cites 'twisties' in Tokyo The 24-year-old Texan, whose motto on her personal website is 'Don't Flip Out,' withdrew from the finals of the team competition during the competition in Tokyo on July 27. USA Gymnastics said it was due to a medical issue; Team USA said she had 'mental struggles.' Biles initially said she withdrew to work on her 'mindfulness,' alluding to stress and saying she puts 'mental health first.' Later, she said she withdrew because of the 'twisties,' which she described as a dangerous condition that prevents her from doing certain maneuvers in mid-air. She said that her 'mind and body are simply not in sync' and that 'physical health is mental health.' Biles withdrew from more events before the announcement that she would return for the balance beam final on Aug. 3. Representatives from Team USA and for Biles did not respond to our requests for comment. It's worth noting that Japan bans many stimulants but makes some exceptions for athletes, and allows certain non-stimulant ADHD drugs, such as Ritalin, according to Team USA. With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | With no evidence that Biles was prevented from taking medication during the Tokyo Olympics, we rate the post False. | [
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'Elon Musk to donate $250 billion for reparations to African Americans in U.S. | Contradiction | Elon Musk's wealth is epic, and this week Forbes identified him as the first person worth more than $300 billion. But he isn't giving most of it away to a single cause, contrary to recent social media posts. A viral Instagram post says, 'Elon Musk to donate $250 billion for reparations to African Americans in U.S.' The post, which appears as a video scrolling through what looks like the top of an internet news story, was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) But this claim originated on a site called Viral Cocaine, where the 'about us' section says that it is 'a satirical news blog about everything hip hop, celebrities and urban folklore, because who wants to hear the truth when a lie is more entertaining.' On the website, the original story about Musk is marked as satire, though that label is not visible on the Instagram post. We could not locate any information that indicates Musk has made or will make a donation for reparations, or any single donation larger than $100 million. In response to a challenge from a United Nations official, Musk hinted that he would be willing to donate $6 billion to combat world hunger but has not committed to it. The Viral Cocaine story includes fabricated quotes that are attributed to people including 'Dragon Master Adolph White of the North Carolina Chapter of the Klu Klux Klan,' and 'Antwan Morehouse of the Atlanta Division of the newly reformed Black Panther Party.' We could not locate any record of real people with those names or titles. The story also falsely states that Musk is worth nearly $1 trillion. He is worth $306.4 billion as of Nov. 2, according to Forbes. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | []
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Says the CDC now says that the coronavirus can survive on surfaces for up to 17 days. | Contradiction | A CNBC story circulating on Facebook displayed a misleading headline that claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the coronavirus 'survived' in cruise ship cabins for up to 17 days. The headline, which has since been changed, led some Facebook users who shared the story to believe that the CDC now says the virus can survive on surfaces that long. The organization has made no such statement. The story was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Knowing the facts has never been more important. Please consider donating to PolitiFact today. The World Health Organization says it's not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses: 'Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).' New CDC research conducted on the Diamond Princess cruise ship found traces of the coronavirus on some of the ship's surfaces up to 17 days after passengers disembarked. But traces are not the same thing as live viruses. The report doesn't conclude that the virus 'survived' on any of the surfaces that long and the CDC hasn't issued an official statement that gives that assessment, either. Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, also told us it was the presence of the virus that was found, not a live sample. 'The CDC report examined the presence of viral RNA on various surfaces of the cruise ship. They found viral RNA up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess,' Iwasaki wrote in an email. 'A piece of viral RNA is not the same thing as a live infectious virus. In order for a virus to be infectious, it has to have intact membrane, spike protein and the whole intact genome (there are close to 30,000 bases of genetic code in the viral genome).' We previously looked at how long the virus can survive on certain surfaces in a recent fact-check and found research suggesting it can live for up to three hours in the air, four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard and three days on plastic and stainless steel. It's important to note that the study hasn't been peer-reviewed and more research is needed. The WHO and other health experts recommend that people disinfect surfaces often and wash their hands to avoid contracting or spreading the virus. More research needs to be done, but there is no evidence that the coronavirus can surive for up to 17 days on various surfaces. We rate this False. | More research needs to be done, but there is no evidence that the coronavirus can surive for up to 17 days on various surfaces. We rate this False. | []
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Says the CDC now says that the coronavirus can survive on surfaces for up to 17 days. | Contradiction | A CNBC story circulating on Facebook displayed a misleading headline that claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the coronavirus 'survived' in cruise ship cabins for up to 17 days. The headline, which has since been changed, led some Facebook users who shared the story to believe that the CDC now says the virus can survive on surfaces that long. The organization has made no such statement. The story was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Knowing the facts has never been more important. Please consider donating to PolitiFact today. The World Health Organization says it's not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses: 'Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).' New CDC research conducted on the Diamond Princess cruise ship found traces of the coronavirus on some of the ship's surfaces up to 17 days after passengers disembarked. But traces are not the same thing as live viruses. The report doesn't conclude that the virus 'survived' on any of the surfaces that long and the CDC hasn't issued an official statement that gives that assessment, either. Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, also told us it was the presence of the virus that was found, not a live sample. 'The CDC report examined the presence of viral RNA on various surfaces of the cruise ship. They found viral RNA up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess,' Iwasaki wrote in an email. 'A piece of viral RNA is not the same thing as a live infectious virus. In order for a virus to be infectious, it has to have intact membrane, spike protein and the whole intact genome (there are close to 30,000 bases of genetic code in the viral genome).' We previously looked at how long the virus can survive on certain surfaces in a recent fact-check and found research suggesting it can live for up to three hours in the air, four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard and three days on plastic and stainless steel. It's important to note that the study hasn't been peer-reviewed and more research is needed. The WHO and other health experts recommend that people disinfect surfaces often and wash their hands to avoid contracting or spreading the virus. More research needs to be done, but there is no evidence that the coronavirus can surive for up to 17 days on various surfaces. We rate this False. | More research needs to be done, but there is no evidence that the coronavirus can surive for up to 17 days on various surfaces. We rate this False. | []
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'The State of Florida has announced measures that all workplaces with 10 employees or more are to have paid mandatory leave to avoid the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus starting on March 6, 2020. All schools are to close for 2 weeks also from March 6th. | Contradiction | In Florida, as of March 5, two residents and one non-resident have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Five more people infected abroad were brought back to the state. Nearly 250 others are being monitored, according to the Florida Department of Health. However, that doesn't mean that all schools and offices with at least 10 workers are being forced to close for two weeks, as a recent Facebook post claims. 'The State of Florida has announced measures that all workplaces with 10 employees or more are to have paid mandatory leave to avoid the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus starting on March 6, 2020,' the post says. 'All schools are to close for 2 weeks also from March 6th.' This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) RELATED: All fact-checks for coronavirus The health department did not immediately respond to PolitiFact's call and email about the Facebook post. However, on its website, there is no such directive. Rather, it says anyone who has been to China, Iran, Italy or South Korea in the past 14 days needs to 'self-isolate for 14 days.' It also advises people to 'stay home when you are sick.' Gov. Ron DeSantis did hold a statewide call with school officials on March 4, during which they discussed coronavirus concerns at Florida schools. One recommendation: faculty, staff, students and their family should be encouraged to stay home if they're feeling sick and self-isolate if they've visited any of the aforementioned countries. If the government of a state with more than 20 million people decided to shutter schools and many, many businesses for two weeks - forcing business owners to give their employees paid leave during that time - it would draw wide media attention. There is none. And Florida isn't the only state allegedly forcing schools and businesses to close down. Facebook users are sharing reoprts that Alabama, Alaska and others are taking the same action, but that's not true, either. We rate this Facebook post False. | We rate this Facebook post False. | []
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'The State of Florida has announced measures that all workplaces with 10 employees or more are to have paid mandatory leave to avoid the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus starting on March 6, 2020. All schools are to close for 2 weeks also from March 6th. | Contradiction | In Florida, as of March 5, two residents and one non-resident have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Five more people infected abroad were brought back to the state. Nearly 250 others are being monitored, according to the Florida Department of Health. However, that doesn't mean that all schools and offices with at least 10 workers are being forced to close for two weeks, as a recent Facebook post claims. 'The State of Florida has announced measures that all workplaces with 10 employees or more are to have paid mandatory leave to avoid the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus starting on March 6, 2020,' the post says. 'All schools are to close for 2 weeks also from March 6th.' This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) RELATED: All fact-checks for coronavirus The health department did not immediately respond to PolitiFact's call and email about the Facebook post. However, on its website, there is no such directive. Rather, it says anyone who has been to China, Iran, Italy or South Korea in the past 14 days needs to 'self-isolate for 14 days.' It also advises people to 'stay home when you are sick.' Gov. Ron DeSantis did hold a statewide call with school officials on March 4, during which they discussed coronavirus concerns at Florida schools. One recommendation: faculty, staff, students and their family should be encouraged to stay home if they're feeling sick and self-isolate if they've visited any of the aforementioned countries. If the government of a state with more than 20 million people decided to shutter schools and many, many businesses for two weeks - forcing business owners to give their employees paid leave during that time - it would draw wide media attention. There is none. And Florida isn't the only state allegedly forcing schools and businesses to close down. Facebook users are sharing reoprts that Alabama, Alaska and others are taking the same action, but that's not true, either. We rate this Facebook post False. | We rate this Facebook post False. | []
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Photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. | Contradiction | As the jurors in Kyle Rittenhouse's closely watched trial deliberated over a verdict, social media users circulated a compilation of old, out-of-context photos that they claimed showed piles and pallets of bricks placed near the courthouse in Kenosha, Wis. Similar rumors featuring some of the same photos appeared online following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, as social media users alleged that left-wing groups had strategically stashed stacks of bricks in cities like Dallas, San Francisco, Kansas City, Denver and Detroit in preparation for violent protests. 'Bricks in Kenosha? Again?' said the headline on one Nov. 17 blog post on Substack, which spread widely on Facebook and featured the misleading compilation of brick photos. 'A Kenosha officer checked a local alleyway and verified there are 'bricks everywhere,'' said another Facebook post shared the same day. The posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Rittenhouse, 18, faced five criminal charges related to his fatal shooting of two unarmed men and shooting of a third, armed man, during an August 2020 protest in Kenosha. He was found not guilty on all charges on the jury's fourth day of deliberations. But the viral image compilation shared across Facebook, Twitter and other platforms showed only photos and video screen grabs from cities other than Kenosha. The photos and videos were not snapped during the Rittenhouse trial, but were instead taken in 2020, as racial justice protests flared across the nation following Floyd's murder. And they showed brick piles that were linked to nearby construction, rather than planned violence. 'The report of bricks being dropped off in our community is fake news,' said Sgt. David Wright, public information officer for the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department, in an email to PolitiFact on Nov. 19. 'We have not found anything of the sort here in Kenosha.' The Kenosha Police Department did not respond to a phone call, but the department tweeted that it 'is aware of numerous attempts by malicious actors to spread disinformation on various social media platforms. To date, there is no credible threat to public safety.' From left to right and top to bottom, here's what the images in the compilation really show: The first and fourth images originally circulated in June 2020, reverse image searches show. NBC News traced the photos to a location near a construction site in Dallas, based in part on the Tom Thumb supermarket seen in the background of the photo. The second and sixth images came from a May 2020 video, BBC News reported at the time. The photos show bricks beside a cobblestone street that pavers were restoring in Fayetteville, N.C. BBC News found video showing the bricks there before Floyd's death. The third image was circulating as early as May 2020, BuzzFeed News reported at the time. The photo shows bricks in Fort Myers, Fla., that were set up before any protests and were there temporarily to install a fiber optic cable, NBC2 News reported. The fifth image came from a May 2020 video uploaded to Instagram, BuzzFeed News reported. The photo shows bricks in Dallas. BuzzFeed News reported that government records and other evidence showed road work happening at the location. A screenshot of the video was included in a May 2020 blog post that PolitiFact rated Mostly False. The seventh image came from a May 2020 video showing protesters in New York City, BuzzFeed News reported. Citing Google Maps, Snopes reported that the area captured in the video was under construction as early as June 2019. This illustration shows the image compilation circulating on social media, marked with the photos' proper context. The 'bricks everywhere' quote cited in some social media posts comes from an alleged recording of a Nov. 16 police communication about a specific location in Kenosha, according to the Associated Press,Newsweek and other outlets. The quote was featured in the viral Substack blog post, and also in a story from the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. But the audio is unrelated to the photos shown in the image compilation spread widely online. | Our ruling Facebook posts sharing an image compilation claimed that photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The photos and video screen grabs shown in the compilation are all more than a year old, and none were taken in Kenosha, let alone near the courthouse where Rittenhouse was tried. We rate these posts False. | [
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Photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. | Contradiction | As the jurors in Kyle Rittenhouse's closely watched trial deliberated over a verdict, social media users circulated a compilation of old, out-of-context photos that they claimed showed piles and pallets of bricks placed near the courthouse in Kenosha, Wis. Similar rumors featuring some of the same photos appeared online following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, as social media users alleged that left-wing groups had strategically stashed stacks of bricks in cities like Dallas, San Francisco, Kansas City, Denver and Detroit in preparation for violent protests. 'Bricks in Kenosha? Again?' said the headline on one Nov. 17 blog post on Substack, which spread widely on Facebook and featured the misleading compilation of brick photos. 'A Kenosha officer checked a local alleyway and verified there are 'bricks everywhere,'' said another Facebook post shared the same day. The posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Rittenhouse, 18, faced five criminal charges related to his fatal shooting of two unarmed men and shooting of a third, armed man, during an August 2020 protest in Kenosha. He was found not guilty on all charges on the jury's fourth day of deliberations. But the viral image compilation shared across Facebook, Twitter and other platforms showed only photos and video screen grabs from cities other than Kenosha. The photos and videos were not snapped during the Rittenhouse trial, but were instead taken in 2020, as racial justice protests flared across the nation following Floyd's murder. And they showed brick piles that were linked to nearby construction, rather than planned violence. 'The report of bricks being dropped off in our community is fake news,' said Sgt. David Wright, public information officer for the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department, in an email to PolitiFact on Nov. 19. 'We have not found anything of the sort here in Kenosha.' The Kenosha Police Department did not respond to a phone call, but the department tweeted that it 'is aware of numerous attempts by malicious actors to spread disinformation on various social media platforms. To date, there is no credible threat to public safety.' From left to right and top to bottom, here's what the images in the compilation really show: The first and fourth images originally circulated in June 2020, reverse image searches show. NBC News traced the photos to a location near a construction site in Dallas, based in part on the Tom Thumb supermarket seen in the background of the photo. The second and sixth images came from a May 2020 video, BBC News reported at the time. The photos show bricks beside a cobblestone street that pavers were restoring in Fayetteville, N.C. BBC News found video showing the bricks there before Floyd's death. The third image was circulating as early as May 2020, BuzzFeed News reported at the time. The photo shows bricks in Fort Myers, Fla., that were set up before any protests and were there temporarily to install a fiber optic cable, NBC2 News reported. The fifth image came from a May 2020 video uploaded to Instagram, BuzzFeed News reported. The photo shows bricks in Dallas. BuzzFeed News reported that government records and other evidence showed road work happening at the location. A screenshot of the video was included in a May 2020 blog post that PolitiFact rated Mostly False. The seventh image came from a May 2020 video showing protesters in New York City, BuzzFeed News reported. Citing Google Maps, Snopes reported that the area captured in the video was under construction as early as June 2019. This illustration shows the image compilation circulating on social media, marked with the photos' proper context. The 'bricks everywhere' quote cited in some social media posts comes from an alleged recording of a Nov. 16 police communication about a specific location in Kenosha, according to the Associated Press,Newsweek and other outlets. The quote was featured in the viral Substack blog post, and also in a story from the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. But the audio is unrelated to the photos shown in the image compilation spread widely online. | Our ruling Facebook posts sharing an image compilation claimed that photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The photos and video screen grabs shown in the compilation are all more than a year old, and none were taken in Kenosha, let alone near the courthouse where Rittenhouse was tried. We rate these posts False. | [
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Photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. | Contradiction | As the jurors in Kyle Rittenhouse's closely watched trial deliberated over a verdict, social media users circulated a compilation of old, out-of-context photos that they claimed showed piles and pallets of bricks placed near the courthouse in Kenosha, Wis. Similar rumors featuring some of the same photos appeared online following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, as social media users alleged that left-wing groups had strategically stashed stacks of bricks in cities like Dallas, San Francisco, Kansas City, Denver and Detroit in preparation for violent protests. 'Bricks in Kenosha? Again?' said the headline on one Nov. 17 blog post on Substack, which spread widely on Facebook and featured the misleading compilation of brick photos. 'A Kenosha officer checked a local alleyway and verified there are 'bricks everywhere,'' said another Facebook post shared the same day. The posts were flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Rittenhouse, 18, faced five criminal charges related to his fatal shooting of two unarmed men and shooting of a third, armed man, during an August 2020 protest in Kenosha. He was found not guilty on all charges on the jury's fourth day of deliberations. But the viral image compilation shared across Facebook, Twitter and other platforms showed only photos and video screen grabs from cities other than Kenosha. The photos and videos were not snapped during the Rittenhouse trial, but were instead taken in 2020, as racial justice protests flared across the nation following Floyd's murder. And they showed brick piles that were linked to nearby construction, rather than planned violence. 'The report of bricks being dropped off in our community is fake news,' said Sgt. David Wright, public information officer for the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department, in an email to PolitiFact on Nov. 19. 'We have not found anything of the sort here in Kenosha.' The Kenosha Police Department did not respond to a phone call, but the department tweeted that it 'is aware of numerous attempts by malicious actors to spread disinformation on various social media platforms. To date, there is no credible threat to public safety.' From left to right and top to bottom, here's what the images in the compilation really show: The first and fourth images originally circulated in June 2020, reverse image searches show. NBC News traced the photos to a location near a construction site in Dallas, based in part on the Tom Thumb supermarket seen in the background of the photo. The second and sixth images came from a May 2020 video, BBC News reported at the time. The photos show bricks beside a cobblestone street that pavers were restoring in Fayetteville, N.C. BBC News found video showing the bricks there before Floyd's death. The third image was circulating as early as May 2020, BuzzFeed News reported at the time. The photo shows bricks in Fort Myers, Fla., that were set up before any protests and were there temporarily to install a fiber optic cable, NBC2 News reported. The fifth image came from a May 2020 video uploaded to Instagram, BuzzFeed News reported. The photo shows bricks in Dallas. BuzzFeed News reported that government records and other evidence showed road work happening at the location. A screenshot of the video was included in a May 2020 blog post that PolitiFact rated Mostly False. The seventh image came from a May 2020 video showing protesters in New York City, BuzzFeed News reported. Citing Google Maps, Snopes reported that the area captured in the video was under construction as early as June 2019. This illustration shows the image compilation circulating on social media, marked with the photos' proper context. The 'bricks everywhere' quote cited in some social media posts comes from an alleged recording of a Nov. 16 police communication about a specific location in Kenosha, according to the Associated Press,Newsweek and other outlets. The quote was featured in the viral Substack blog post, and also in a story from the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. But the audio is unrelated to the photos shown in the image compilation spread widely online. | Our ruling Facebook posts sharing an image compilation claimed that photos showed 'bricks everywhere' in Kenosha during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The photos and video screen grabs shown in the compilation are all more than a year old, and none were taken in Kenosha, let alone near the courthouse where Rittenhouse was tried. We rate these posts False. | [
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Says President Donald Trump tweeted that South Dakota needs to keep its border with California closed. | Contradiction | An image of a tweet that appears to be from President Donald Trump would have you believe that he encouraged South Dakota to keep its border with California closed. But the two states don't share a border. And the tweet isn't real. A screenshot of the fake tweet shows a July 4 time stamp. It appeared on Facebook a couple of days later. The full tweet reads: 'Thank you to the Great people of South Dakota. The state is doing a tremendous job with the coronavirus. I told the governor that everyone is fine without a mask. They just need to keep there border with California closed! That state is full of LOSERS!' One Facebook user who shared the tweet wrote, 'A president who can't bother to look at a map, has no clue where states are in relation to each other and is the most ignorant person to EVER be in the WH.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The tweet is fabricated. There is no record of it on Trump's Twitter timeline on July 4 or any other day, and it doesn't appear in Twitter searches for posts with that wording or in databases that track deleted tweets. RELATED: No, Trump didn't tweet this about the Confederate flag The fictitious post appeared shortly after Trump's visit to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for a July 4 holiday event. The landlocked state borders six other states, but California isn't one of them. The alleged post is not captured in the database of deleted tweets maintained by ProPublica. We also found no evidence that shows the tweet ever existed on the platform, and no news outlets have reported that Trump tweeted this. We rate it Pants on Fire! | We rate it Pants on Fire! | []
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Says President Donald Trump tweeted that South Dakota needs to keep its border with California closed. | Contradiction | An image of a tweet that appears to be from President Donald Trump would have you believe that he encouraged South Dakota to keep its border with California closed. But the two states don't share a border. And the tweet isn't real. A screenshot of the fake tweet shows a July 4 time stamp. It appeared on Facebook a couple of days later. The full tweet reads: 'Thank you to the Great people of South Dakota. The state is doing a tremendous job with the coronavirus. I told the governor that everyone is fine without a mask. They just need to keep there border with California closed! That state is full of LOSERS!' One Facebook user who shared the tweet wrote, 'A president who can't bother to look at a map, has no clue where states are in relation to each other and is the most ignorant person to EVER be in the WH.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The tweet is fabricated. There is no record of it on Trump's Twitter timeline on July 4 or any other day, and it doesn't appear in Twitter searches for posts with that wording or in databases that track deleted tweets. RELATED: No, Trump didn't tweet this about the Confederate flag The fictitious post appeared shortly after Trump's visit to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for a July 4 holiday event. The landlocked state borders six other states, but California isn't one of them. The alleged post is not captured in the database of deleted tweets maintained by ProPublica. We also found no evidence that shows the tweet ever existed on the platform, and no news outlets have reported that Trump tweeted this. We rate it Pants on Fire! | We rate it Pants on Fire! | []
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Says Ben Shapiro tweeted, 'The USPS is not only a bloated and outdate government agency, it is also ineffective and incompetent. It's been 2 months since my wife went on a Hawaii vacation with her personal trainer; she said she would send me postcards every day and so far none of them have arrived. | Contradiction | Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro has recently opined about the U.S. Postal Service on Twitter, but a screenshot of a supposed recent tweet that's being shared on social media appears to be doctored: 'The USPS is not only a bloated and outdate government agency, it is also ineffective and incompetent,' it looks like Shapiro tweeted at 7:45 p.m. on Aug. 14. 'It's been 2 months since my wife went on a Hawaii vacation with her personal trainer; she said she would send me postcards every day and so far none of them have arrived.' For some people commenting on a Facebook post that shared the image, this is clearly a joke. But others weren't so sure. 'He made a tweet to attack how inefficient the United States Postal Service is and ended up outing something at minimum very concerning and at worst incriminating about his current marriage,' read one description of the image. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Searching Shapiro's account, we couldn't find the tweet that appears in the Facebook post. On Aug. 14, he retweeted several accounts and he shared his own endorsement of a documentary about World War II. As we've documented before, people can use websites to create images that look like real tweets that very much are not. It's happened with President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And in this case, apparently, Shapiro. Searching for the statement online, we found nothing to support that Shapiro said this. We rate it False. | We rate it False. | []
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Says Amber Alerts are issued for white kids 'but not Black kids in Milwaukee. | Contradiction | Cell phones across Wisconsin received the all-too-familiar pop-up on July 6, 2020 - an Amber Alert had been issued for a missing child. Kodie Dutcher, 10, went missing from her home in Baraboo about 4 p.m., and the search for her went on through the night. The story ended sadly the next morning when searchers found her body. The death was later ruled to be suicide. In a nation rife with racial tension in the wake of George Floyd's death and the ensuing police brutality protests, even this story drew questions. Several widely shared Facebook posts raised the role of race in the widespread alert system. 'So Amber Alert works for kids in Baraboo but not Black kids in Milwaukee,' one Facebook post stated July 6. The text was accompanied by a 'thinking' emoji. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook). The writer's use of the word 'works' muddles the issue a bit, since the item was posted before the girl's body was found, showing the alert unfortunately had not worked. So we'll interpret that to be a general reference to which children are the subjects of Amber Alerts. Is the poster right to allege racial bias? We'll check it out, but first, there's some important background to note. The context The first slew of comments on the Facebook post supported the statement, with posters saying they thought the same thing. Later comments were more critical of the post as news of the tragic outcome spread. The post likely spread in part because in Milwaukee, particularly in the Black community, there are concerns police do not respond quickly enough in missing child cases. This issue came sharply into focus in a bizarre incident June 23, 2020, in which a civilian-led search for two teenage girls spiralled over the course of several hours to involve three people shot, 10 officers and a firefighter injured, police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd and protesters setting fire to a house they believed to be connected to the girls and sex trafficking. Police later said there was no evidence of sex trafficking and that the girls hadn't met the criteria for an Amber Alert since authorities had no reason to believe their lives were in danger. The girls, ages 13 and 15, were later found several miles away. An hourslong livestream of the situation included one community activist talking about the difficulty of 'getting a missing person's report going,' and how community members had set up their own system for missing people on social media. Some comments on the Facebook post about Amber Alerts referenced this incident. Strict requirements for alerts Wisconsin has been issuing Amber Alerts since 2003, but only 41 alerts have been sent out in that span, according to state Department of Justice records. That's a rate of just over two per year. The Amber Alert tally is low because incidents must meet strict criteria for an alert to be issued: The child (or children) must be 17 years of age or younger. The child must be in danger of serious bodily harm or death. The initiating agency must have enough descriptive information about the child, the suspect and/or the suspect's vehicle to believe an immediate broadcast alert will help locate the child. Any law enforcement agency in the state can request an Amber Alert, and DOJ personnel then decide whether an alert is justified. If approved, the information is sent to TV and radio stations, cell phones, highway message boards, lottery terminals and other locations. A similar Amber Alert system is used in all 50 states. Breaking down the Wisconsin alerts With that background, let's dig into the alerts issued in Wisconsin. Among the 41 alerts issued since the program began here, 18 were for Black children, 15 were for white children and eight were for children listed as Hispanic, Native American or unknown, according to DOJ records. Put another way, Black residents account for 6.7% of the population in Wisconsin but have been the subject of 44% of the Amber Alerts. The breakdown by agency shows Milwaukee uses this system far more than any other municipality - hardly a surprise given its size. The Milwaukee Police Department was the initiating agency for 11 of the 41 alerts. That's more than 25% of the alerts, even though Milwaukee has about 10% of the state's population. Every one of the Milwaukee alerts was for a Black child. Green Bay had the second-highest tally with three. The Barron County Sheriff's Office and police in Eau Claire, Racine and Baraboo also issued two. The last two alerts were from Baraboo, the other sent in February 2020 for a missing 15-year-old girl who was later found. To be sure, the frustration that underlies the post may be more about whether the system is used often enough - particularly when it comes to Black children. To make that determination, however, one would need to understand the circumstances of each case, and whether ones that met the criteria were not issued. In the post at hand, though, the claim - strictly speaking - is about whether it is used at all in cases of missing Black children, or whether it is disproportionately used for non-Black children. By those measures, the claim is off. | Our ruling A widely shared Facebook post said Amber Alerts are issued for white kids, 'but not Black kids in Milwaukee.' It grew out of concerns in the Black community that missing children are not taken serious enough in Milwaukee. But the data actually shows a disproportionate high number of alerts - based on population - have been issued precisely for Black children in Milwaukee. Nearly half of all alerts involved Black children, even though only about 1 in 15 state residents is Black. And more than one-fourth of all alerts were initiated by Milwaukee police - all for Black children. We rate this claim False. | []
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Says Amber Alerts are issued for white kids 'but not Black kids in Milwaukee. | Contradiction | Cell phones across Wisconsin received the all-too-familiar pop-up on July 6, 2020 - an Amber Alert had been issued for a missing child. Kodie Dutcher, 10, went missing from her home in Baraboo about 4 p.m., and the search for her went on through the night. The story ended sadly the next morning when searchers found her body. The death was later ruled to be suicide. In a nation rife with racial tension in the wake of George Floyd's death and the ensuing police brutality protests, even this story drew questions. Several widely shared Facebook posts raised the role of race in the widespread alert system. 'So Amber Alert works for kids in Baraboo but not Black kids in Milwaukee,' one Facebook post stated July 6. The text was accompanied by a 'thinking' emoji. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook). The writer's use of the word 'works' muddles the issue a bit, since the item was posted before the girl's body was found, showing the alert unfortunately had not worked. So we'll interpret that to be a general reference to which children are the subjects of Amber Alerts. Is the poster right to allege racial bias? We'll check it out, but first, there's some important background to note. The context The first slew of comments on the Facebook post supported the statement, with posters saying they thought the same thing. Later comments were more critical of the post as news of the tragic outcome spread. The post likely spread in part because in Milwaukee, particularly in the Black community, there are concerns police do not respond quickly enough in missing child cases. This issue came sharply into focus in a bizarre incident June 23, 2020, in which a civilian-led search for two teenage girls spiralled over the course of several hours to involve three people shot, 10 officers and a firefighter injured, police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd and protesters setting fire to a house they believed to be connected to the girls and sex trafficking. Police later said there was no evidence of sex trafficking and that the girls hadn't met the criteria for an Amber Alert since authorities had no reason to believe their lives were in danger. The girls, ages 13 and 15, were later found several miles away. An hourslong livestream of the situation included one community activist talking about the difficulty of 'getting a missing person's report going,' and how community members had set up their own system for missing people on social media. Some comments on the Facebook post about Amber Alerts referenced this incident. Strict requirements for alerts Wisconsin has been issuing Amber Alerts since 2003, but only 41 alerts have been sent out in that span, according to state Department of Justice records. That's a rate of just over two per year. The Amber Alert tally is low because incidents must meet strict criteria for an alert to be issued: The child (or children) must be 17 years of age or younger. The child must be in danger of serious bodily harm or death. The initiating agency must have enough descriptive information about the child, the suspect and/or the suspect's vehicle to believe an immediate broadcast alert will help locate the child. Any law enforcement agency in the state can request an Amber Alert, and DOJ personnel then decide whether an alert is justified. If approved, the information is sent to TV and radio stations, cell phones, highway message boards, lottery terminals and other locations. A similar Amber Alert system is used in all 50 states. Breaking down the Wisconsin alerts With that background, let's dig into the alerts issued in Wisconsin. Among the 41 alerts issued since the program began here, 18 were for Black children, 15 were for white children and eight were for children listed as Hispanic, Native American or unknown, according to DOJ records. Put another way, Black residents account for 6.7% of the population in Wisconsin but have been the subject of 44% of the Amber Alerts. The breakdown by agency shows Milwaukee uses this system far more than any other municipality - hardly a surprise given its size. The Milwaukee Police Department was the initiating agency for 11 of the 41 alerts. That's more than 25% of the alerts, even though Milwaukee has about 10% of the state's population. Every one of the Milwaukee alerts was for a Black child. Green Bay had the second-highest tally with three. The Barron County Sheriff's Office and police in Eau Claire, Racine and Baraboo also issued two. The last two alerts were from Baraboo, the other sent in February 2020 for a missing 15-year-old girl who was later found. To be sure, the frustration that underlies the post may be more about whether the system is used often enough - particularly when it comes to Black children. To make that determination, however, one would need to understand the circumstances of each case, and whether ones that met the criteria were not issued. In the post at hand, though, the claim - strictly speaking - is about whether it is used at all in cases of missing Black children, or whether it is disproportionately used for non-Black children. By those measures, the claim is off. | Our ruling A widely shared Facebook post said Amber Alerts are issued for white kids, 'but not Black kids in Milwaukee.' It grew out of concerns in the Black community that missing children are not taken serious enough in Milwaukee. But the data actually shows a disproportionate high number of alerts - based on population - have been issued precisely for Black children in Milwaukee. Nearly half of all alerts involved Black children, even though only about 1 in 15 state residents is Black. And more than one-fourth of all alerts were initiated by Milwaukee police - all for Black children. We rate this claim False. | []
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'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. | Contradiction | After meeting with President Joe Biden about infrastructure, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walked out of the White House and immediately faced questions about his ability to work with Biden. A reporter asked McCarthy whether finding common ground with Biden would be complicated, since 'you're about to elevate someone to a leadership position who is still questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.' The reference was to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., whom McCarthy had endorsed to be the next Republican conference chair, after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who rejects former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud, was forced out of the position by her fellow House Republicans. McCarthy said it would be up to the Republican conference to decide on Cheney's replacement. He added: 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the president today. So from that point of view, I don't think that's a problem.' (Republicans voted Stefanik to the leadership role on May 14.) Election officials at county, state and federal levels have said that the 2020 election was secure and that there was no widespread fraud. States certified that Biden properly won the election and Congress, following a constitutional process, also certified their validity. Yet McCarthy's May 12 claim that the legitimacy of Biden's victory hasn't been questioned is wrong - many Republican lawmakers have done so. Some have cited 'irregularities' and claimed that electoral processes in some states were unconstitutional. One of them, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, notably has walked around Congress with a face mask that says 'Trump won.' Trump, still embraced by many Republicans as the party leader, also continues to falsely claim that the election was stolen from him. Trump urged Republicans to push Cheney out of House leadership because she continues to contradict him on the point. McCarthy's office did not reply to PolitiFact's request for comment. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wears a 'Trump Won' face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office on opening day of the 117th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2021. (AP) Republicans objected to the certification of Electoral College votes McCarthy himself and more than 100 House Republicans voted in January against certifying election results from two states that Biden won, Arizona and Pennsylvania. McCarthy at the time justified his objections by saying that millions of Americans were concerned about the integrity of the electoral process and that Congress had a responsibility to listen, investigate and work with states to make changes. 'Constitutional questions have been raised about changes to election processes,' McCarthy said. He said that his position was 'not about overturning an election' but about ensuring an 'accurate and accountable process that complies with the Constitution so that millions of Americans who voted on Election Day can have confidence in our system.' Stefanik, a Trump ally, similarly argued that there were electoral issues in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan - four states carried by Biden. For example, she claimed that in Michigan, 'signed affidavits document numerous unconstitutional irregularities - officials physically blocking the legal right of poll watchers to observe vote counts, the illegal counting of late ballots, and hand stamping ballots with the previous day's date.' (PolitiFact debunked many false claims about Michigan's electoral process, including claims that falsely challenged the legitimacy of ballots counted after midnight on Election Day.) Republicans evade a straight answer when asked about Biden's legitimate victory When asked by reporters whether they believe that Biden's election is legitimate or that the election was stolen, several Republican lawmakers dance around the question. They say Biden is the president, but raise doubts as to how he became president. The Washington Examiner interviewed Stefanik days before her election to the third-ranking Republican post in the House and asked, 'Do you agree with Trump that Biden was illegitimately elected and the election was stolen?' She did not acknowledge a fair election. She answered: 'President Biden is president, and the focus is on defeating his radical agenda, which I believe we will do in 2024. And we're going to win the midterms in 2022. I have said that there are election irregularities and an unconstitutional overreach, which is why I objected to certain states. You can refer to my statement on the House floor. I fully stand by that, and voters support the focus on those issues. But the irregularity, the unconstitutional overreach, the lack of ballot security, those are important issues that the American people want to hear solutions from the Republicans on.' Stefanik supports an ongoing Republican-commissioned review of election results in Arizona's Maricopa County - an effort that election experts and some election officials in other states have criticized for being partisan and lacking in transparency. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican, initially dodged the question in February when asked by ABC's Jonathan Karl about the election's outcome. 'Joe Biden's the president. There were a few states that did not follow their state laws. That's really the dispute that you've seen continue on,' Scalise said, before pivoting to talk about manufacturing jobs and 'problems that happened with the election.' Karl then said: 'But congressman, I know Joe Biden's the president. He lives at the White House. I asked you, is he the legitimate president of the United States, and do you concede that this election was not stolen?' 'Once the electors are counted, yes, he's the legitimate president,' Scalise said, with a caveat. 'But if you're going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own state legislatively set laws, that's the issue at heart, that millions of people still are not happy with and don't want to see happen again.' Cheney's removal from leadership House Republicans voted Cheney out as their conference chair on May 12, the same day as McCarthy's comments, after she rejected Trump's false claims of a fraudulent election. Cheney blamed Trump for inciting the violent mob that stormed the Capitol in January as Congress certified the results of the presidential election. And in the face of her impending ouster, Cheney remained defiant. Cheney wrote a May 5 op-ed for the Washington Post - in which she pleaded with Republicans to abandon the falsehood that Trump was cheated out of reelection. 'The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,' Cheney had tweeted days earlier. 'Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.' McCarthy said during a May 4 interview on Fox News that he had heard from members concerned about Cheney's ability 'to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message.' | Our ruling McCarthy said, 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.' This runs contrary to the actions and statements of numerous members and leaders of his own party, including himself. McCarthy objected to certifying election results from two states that Biden won, claiming electoral process concerns. Those concerns haven't been proven. McCarthy and other Republicans also supported a lawsuit that challenged the validity of Biden's victory in some states. Some Republican lawmakers who have been questioned about Biden's legitimate victory state the obvious - that Biden is president - while still suggesting that it happened unlawfully. McCarthy's claim is clearly wrong. We rate it Pants on Fire. RELATED: Removal of Liz Cheney from House leadership is only one piece of GOP coalescing around the 'Big Lie' | [
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|
'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. | Contradiction | After meeting with President Joe Biden about infrastructure, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walked out of the White House and immediately faced questions about his ability to work with Biden. A reporter asked McCarthy whether finding common ground with Biden would be complicated, since 'you're about to elevate someone to a leadership position who is still questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.' The reference was to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., whom McCarthy had endorsed to be the next Republican conference chair, after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who rejects former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud, was forced out of the position by her fellow House Republicans. McCarthy said it would be up to the Republican conference to decide on Cheney's replacement. He added: 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the president today. So from that point of view, I don't think that's a problem.' (Republicans voted Stefanik to the leadership role on May 14.) Election officials at county, state and federal levels have said that the 2020 election was secure and that there was no widespread fraud. States certified that Biden properly won the election and Congress, following a constitutional process, also certified their validity. Yet McCarthy's May 12 claim that the legitimacy of Biden's victory hasn't been questioned is wrong - many Republican lawmakers have done so. Some have cited 'irregularities' and claimed that electoral processes in some states were unconstitutional. One of them, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, notably has walked around Congress with a face mask that says 'Trump won.' Trump, still embraced by many Republicans as the party leader, also continues to falsely claim that the election was stolen from him. Trump urged Republicans to push Cheney out of House leadership because she continues to contradict him on the point. McCarthy's office did not reply to PolitiFact's request for comment. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wears a 'Trump Won' face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office on opening day of the 117th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2021. (AP) Republicans objected to the certification of Electoral College votes McCarthy himself and more than 100 House Republicans voted in January against certifying election results from two states that Biden won, Arizona and Pennsylvania. McCarthy at the time justified his objections by saying that millions of Americans were concerned about the integrity of the electoral process and that Congress had a responsibility to listen, investigate and work with states to make changes. 'Constitutional questions have been raised about changes to election processes,' McCarthy said. He said that his position was 'not about overturning an election' but about ensuring an 'accurate and accountable process that complies with the Constitution so that millions of Americans who voted on Election Day can have confidence in our system.' Stefanik, a Trump ally, similarly argued that there were electoral issues in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan - four states carried by Biden. For example, she claimed that in Michigan, 'signed affidavits document numerous unconstitutional irregularities - officials physically blocking the legal right of poll watchers to observe vote counts, the illegal counting of late ballots, and hand stamping ballots with the previous day's date.' (PolitiFact debunked many false claims about Michigan's electoral process, including claims that falsely challenged the legitimacy of ballots counted after midnight on Election Day.) Republicans evade a straight answer when asked about Biden's legitimate victory When asked by reporters whether they believe that Biden's election is legitimate or that the election was stolen, several Republican lawmakers dance around the question. They say Biden is the president, but raise doubts as to how he became president. The Washington Examiner interviewed Stefanik days before her election to the third-ranking Republican post in the House and asked, 'Do you agree with Trump that Biden was illegitimately elected and the election was stolen?' She did not acknowledge a fair election. She answered: 'President Biden is president, and the focus is on defeating his radical agenda, which I believe we will do in 2024. And we're going to win the midterms in 2022. I have said that there are election irregularities and an unconstitutional overreach, which is why I objected to certain states. You can refer to my statement on the House floor. I fully stand by that, and voters support the focus on those issues. But the irregularity, the unconstitutional overreach, the lack of ballot security, those are important issues that the American people want to hear solutions from the Republicans on.' Stefanik supports an ongoing Republican-commissioned review of election results in Arizona's Maricopa County - an effort that election experts and some election officials in other states have criticized for being partisan and lacking in transparency. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican, initially dodged the question in February when asked by ABC's Jonathan Karl about the election's outcome. 'Joe Biden's the president. There were a few states that did not follow their state laws. That's really the dispute that you've seen continue on,' Scalise said, before pivoting to talk about manufacturing jobs and 'problems that happened with the election.' Karl then said: 'But congressman, I know Joe Biden's the president. He lives at the White House. I asked you, is he the legitimate president of the United States, and do you concede that this election was not stolen?' 'Once the electors are counted, yes, he's the legitimate president,' Scalise said, with a caveat. 'But if you're going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own state legislatively set laws, that's the issue at heart, that millions of people still are not happy with and don't want to see happen again.' Cheney's removal from leadership House Republicans voted Cheney out as their conference chair on May 12, the same day as McCarthy's comments, after she rejected Trump's false claims of a fraudulent election. Cheney blamed Trump for inciting the violent mob that stormed the Capitol in January as Congress certified the results of the presidential election. And in the face of her impending ouster, Cheney remained defiant. Cheney wrote a May 5 op-ed for the Washington Post - in which she pleaded with Republicans to abandon the falsehood that Trump was cheated out of reelection. 'The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,' Cheney had tweeted days earlier. 'Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.' McCarthy said during a May 4 interview on Fox News that he had heard from members concerned about Cheney's ability 'to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message.' | Our ruling McCarthy said, 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.' This runs contrary to the actions and statements of numerous members and leaders of his own party, including himself. McCarthy objected to certifying election results from two states that Biden won, claiming electoral process concerns. Those concerns haven't been proven. McCarthy and other Republicans also supported a lawsuit that challenged the validity of Biden's victory in some states. Some Republican lawmakers who have been questioned about Biden's legitimate victory state the obvious - that Biden is president - while still suggesting that it happened unlawfully. McCarthy's claim is clearly wrong. We rate it Pants on Fire. RELATED: Removal of Liz Cheney from House leadership is only one piece of GOP coalescing around the 'Big Lie' | [
"103098-proof-31-b637790550c1588f78ca55c9ca6af57a.jpg",
"103098-proof-36-AP_21021004862365.jpg"
]
|
'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. | Contradiction | After meeting with President Joe Biden about infrastructure, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walked out of the White House and immediately faced questions about his ability to work with Biden. A reporter asked McCarthy whether finding common ground with Biden would be complicated, since 'you're about to elevate someone to a leadership position who is still questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.' The reference was to Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., whom McCarthy had endorsed to be the next Republican conference chair, after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who rejects former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud, was forced out of the position by her fellow House Republicans. McCarthy said it would be up to the Republican conference to decide on Cheney's replacement. He added: 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with. We're sitting here with the president today. So from that point of view, I don't think that's a problem.' (Republicans voted Stefanik to the leadership role on May 14.) Election officials at county, state and federal levels have said that the 2020 election was secure and that there was no widespread fraud. States certified that Biden properly won the election and Congress, following a constitutional process, also certified their validity. Yet McCarthy's May 12 claim that the legitimacy of Biden's victory hasn't been questioned is wrong - many Republican lawmakers have done so. Some have cited 'irregularities' and claimed that electoral processes in some states were unconstitutional. One of them, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, notably has walked around Congress with a face mask that says 'Trump won.' Trump, still embraced by many Republicans as the party leader, also continues to falsely claim that the election was stolen from him. Trump urged Republicans to push Cheney out of House leadership because she continues to contradict him on the point. McCarthy's office did not reply to PolitiFact's request for comment. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wears a 'Trump Won' face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office on opening day of the 117th Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2021. (AP) Republicans objected to the certification of Electoral College votes McCarthy himself and more than 100 House Republicans voted in January against certifying election results from two states that Biden won, Arizona and Pennsylvania. McCarthy at the time justified his objections by saying that millions of Americans were concerned about the integrity of the electoral process and that Congress had a responsibility to listen, investigate and work with states to make changes. 'Constitutional questions have been raised about changes to election processes,' McCarthy said. He said that his position was 'not about overturning an election' but about ensuring an 'accurate and accountable process that complies with the Constitution so that millions of Americans who voted on Election Day can have confidence in our system.' Stefanik, a Trump ally, similarly argued that there were electoral issues in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan - four states carried by Biden. For example, she claimed that in Michigan, 'signed affidavits document numerous unconstitutional irregularities - officials physically blocking the legal right of poll watchers to observe vote counts, the illegal counting of late ballots, and hand stamping ballots with the previous day's date.' (PolitiFact debunked many false claims about Michigan's electoral process, including claims that falsely challenged the legitimacy of ballots counted after midnight on Election Day.) Republicans evade a straight answer when asked about Biden's legitimate victory When asked by reporters whether they believe that Biden's election is legitimate or that the election was stolen, several Republican lawmakers dance around the question. They say Biden is the president, but raise doubts as to how he became president. The Washington Examiner interviewed Stefanik days before her election to the third-ranking Republican post in the House and asked, 'Do you agree with Trump that Biden was illegitimately elected and the election was stolen?' She did not acknowledge a fair election. She answered: 'President Biden is president, and the focus is on defeating his radical agenda, which I believe we will do in 2024. And we're going to win the midterms in 2022. I have said that there are election irregularities and an unconstitutional overreach, which is why I objected to certain states. You can refer to my statement on the House floor. I fully stand by that, and voters support the focus on those issues. But the irregularity, the unconstitutional overreach, the lack of ballot security, those are important issues that the American people want to hear solutions from the Republicans on.' Stefanik supports an ongoing Republican-commissioned review of election results in Arizona's Maricopa County - an effort that election experts and some election officials in other states have criticized for being partisan and lacking in transparency. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican, initially dodged the question in February when asked by ABC's Jonathan Karl about the election's outcome. 'Joe Biden's the president. There were a few states that did not follow their state laws. That's really the dispute that you've seen continue on,' Scalise said, before pivoting to talk about manufacturing jobs and 'problems that happened with the election.' Karl then said: 'But congressman, I know Joe Biden's the president. He lives at the White House. I asked you, is he the legitimate president of the United States, and do you concede that this election was not stolen?' 'Once the electors are counted, yes, he's the legitimate president,' Scalise said, with a caveat. 'But if you're going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own state legislatively set laws, that's the issue at heart, that millions of people still are not happy with and don't want to see happen again.' Cheney's removal from leadership House Republicans voted Cheney out as their conference chair on May 12, the same day as McCarthy's comments, after she rejected Trump's false claims of a fraudulent election. Cheney blamed Trump for inciting the violent mob that stormed the Capitol in January as Congress certified the results of the presidential election. And in the face of her impending ouster, Cheney remained defiant. Cheney wrote a May 5 op-ed for the Washington Post - in which she pleaded with Republicans to abandon the falsehood that Trump was cheated out of reelection. 'The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,' Cheney had tweeted days earlier. 'Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.' McCarthy said during a May 4 interview on Fox News that he had heard from members concerned about Cheney's ability 'to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message.' | Our ruling McCarthy said, 'I don't think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.' This runs contrary to the actions and statements of numerous members and leaders of his own party, including himself. McCarthy objected to certifying election results from two states that Biden won, claiming electoral process concerns. Those concerns haven't been proven. McCarthy and other Republicans also supported a lawsuit that challenged the validity of Biden's victory in some states. Some Republican lawmakers who have been questioned about Biden's legitimate victory state the obvious - that Biden is president - while still suggesting that it happened unlawfully. McCarthy's claim is clearly wrong. We rate it Pants on Fire. RELATED: Removal of Liz Cheney from House leadership is only one piece of GOP coalescing around the 'Big Lie' | [
"103098-proof-31-b637790550c1588f78ca55c9ca6af57a.jpg",
"103098-proof-36-AP_21021004862365.jpg"
]
|
'Birmingham is officially out of gas and fuel and can't get anymore. | Contradiction | A cyberattack has shut down a major pipeline that carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas to New York and prompted fears of shortages among people who rely on the Colonial Pipeline to fill their tanks. But don't believe every rumor you read. 'Fill your tanks and jugs folks,' read one message that's spreading on social media. 'Birmingham is officially out of gas and fuel and can't get anymore.' But that's not true. This post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We reached out to Clay Ingram, a spokesperson for AAA in Alabama who is based in Birmingham. He said he hasn't heard one report about a station running out of gas anywhere in the state. Bart Fletcher, president of the Petroleum & Convenience Marketers of Alabama, a trade association for more than 350 petroleum marketers and convenience store operators across the state, also told us he's received no reports of gasoline outages in Birmingham. Drivers can still get gas and fuel at the stations there, he said. 'I know for a fact that 100% of stations in Birmingham are not out of gasoline,' he said, and he doesn't expect they'll run out because of the cyberattack unless the problem lingers. Several years ago an accident caused the pipeline to shut down in Birmingham for about a week and stations didn't run out of gas, he said. AL.com reported on May 10 that the cyberattack may cause prices to rise, but there was no mention of entire cities running out of fuel. We rate this post False. | We rate this post False. | []
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'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies. | Contradiction | A social media post that has been shared thousands of times claims to have a revealing handle on how the government spends American tax dollars. 'So, you say you hate socialism?' the post begins. 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies. If the $36 upsets you more than the $4,000, then you just hate poor people - not socialism.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Is this breakdown of how taxpayer money is spent accurate? PolitiFact consulted experts, and it's not that simple. Origin of the claim The food stamp portion of the claim appears to date back to a July 2012 article that broke down how much a married person who made $50,000 a year and who had one child would pay in federal taxes. After taking into account tax dollars allocated to Medicare and Social Security, the individual's remaining tax dollars were split among 'programs administrated by the federal government,' according to the article, which provided a White House website as its evidence. The author of the article concluded that $36.82 of the hypothetical individual's tax bill went toward funding 'food and nutrition assistance.' That category presumably refers to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan, which replaced the Food Stamp Act of 1997 back in 2008. The calculations were based on numbers from years ago. Since then, federal spending on programs has changed and so have federal income tax brackets, meaning these numbers are outdated. The article doesn't touch on 'corporate subsidies' at all, nor is there a line for them on the 2013 White House Federal Taxpayer Receipt, which sought to break down how individuals' taxes are spent by the government. PolitiFact was unable to find a source for the claim that $4,000 worth of taxes paid by a person earning $50,000 would fund 'corporate subsidies.' Experts weigh in Experts say analyzing this claim isn't easy because the post lacks necessary details. Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the post is missing critical information needed to make an accurate comparison - including whether federal and state taxes are being considered. Beyond that, he pointed out the post also doesn't specify 'what kind of family you're talking about, whether 'food stamps' includes both the direct cost and the administrative cost, and above all what 'corporate subsidies' means.' For example, he said, a married couple with two children 'could very easily owe zero federal income taxes' at a yearly income of $50,000. 'It's virtually impossible to fact-check,' Gardner said. 'It's just too vague.' Richard Winchester, tax policy expert and law professor at Seton Hall Law School, said the claim made an 'unusual comparison' and noted that the post 'oversimplifies and misleads.' First, Winchester said it was unclear what would be considered a 'corporate subsidy,' per the post's claim. He said it was possible the post was referring to tax expenditures - also known as revenue 'the government is passing up by not taxing' certain things. But Winchester pointed out that it's not as if a person's tax money would 'go to' corporate tax expenditures the way the post claims. 'It's one thing to say, 'alright, the federal government actually writes a check [...] to fund SNAP,'' Winchester said. 'But corporate tax expenditures - it's not writing a check. It's really forgoing revenue. Winchester said it was also possible that the 'corporate subsidies' in the post referred to money the government gives directly to some businesses, but it's simply not clear. Neil Buchanan is a law professor at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and an expert on tax policy. He echoed the concern that there's no single definition of corporate subsidy. 'Is the entire Pentagon budget a corporate subsidy?' he said. 'Is the CDC's budget a corporate subsidy, because businesses benefit from the research that CDC produces? Again, that term means nothing.' Further, Buchanan said 'there are so many moving parts to the budget picture that it's possible to cherry-pick numbers to present almost any picture you want,' with these types of claims. Even taking into account the lack of information, Buchanan concluded there was no possible way that the post could be making an accurate claim: 'The highest amount in federal income taxes that a person with $50,000 in gross income in 2020 would pay is $4,314, and he would pay $3,825 in payroll taxes, for a total of $8,139. Social Security, Medicare, interest on the national debt, and military spending combine for 72% of spending, so if we (meaninglessly) multiply that by our $50,000 earner's federal tax total, that is $5,860, leaving only $2,279 for everything else. How would we get $4,000 for corporate subsidies out of $2,279?' Gardner said there might be a 'kernel of truth' to the post in that the U.S. spends more on corporate subsidies than on SNAP benefits. But, he also used a hypothetical situation with the 'most aggressive scenario possible in terms of federal income tax - a single person, all wages, no itemized deductions, no kids' and estimated the person's total tax bill would be about $4,100. This would mean that after SNAP benefits and 'corporate subsidies' were taken out of that tax bill, there would be just $64 left for other federal programs. 'Since we obviously fund a lot of things other than food stamps and corporate subsidies, the dollar value of those numbers seems clearly wrong,' Gardner concluded. Our rating A post claims, 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies.' Experts say the post does not provide enough information to break down if a person's tax dollars are being spent in this way. However, even when experts considered the most extreme hypothetical tax situations, they concluded these numbers were not possible. We rate this claim False. | Our rating A post claims, 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies.' Experts say the post does not provide enough information to break down if a person's tax dollars are being spent in this way. However, even when experts considered the most extreme hypothetical tax situations, they concluded these numbers were not possible. We rate this claim False. | []
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'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies. | Contradiction | A social media post that has been shared thousands of times claims to have a revealing handle on how the government spends American tax dollars. 'So, you say you hate socialism?' the post begins. 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies. If the $36 upsets you more than the $4,000, then you just hate poor people - not socialism.' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Is this breakdown of how taxpayer money is spent accurate? PolitiFact consulted experts, and it's not that simple. Origin of the claim The food stamp portion of the claim appears to date back to a July 2012 article that broke down how much a married person who made $50,000 a year and who had one child would pay in federal taxes. After taking into account tax dollars allocated to Medicare and Social Security, the individual's remaining tax dollars were split among 'programs administrated by the federal government,' according to the article, which provided a White House website as its evidence. The author of the article concluded that $36.82 of the hypothetical individual's tax bill went toward funding 'food and nutrition assistance.' That category presumably refers to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan, which replaced the Food Stamp Act of 1997 back in 2008. The calculations were based on numbers from years ago. Since then, federal spending on programs has changed and so have federal income tax brackets, meaning these numbers are outdated. The article doesn't touch on 'corporate subsidies' at all, nor is there a line for them on the 2013 White House Federal Taxpayer Receipt, which sought to break down how individuals' taxes are spent by the government. PolitiFact was unable to find a source for the claim that $4,000 worth of taxes paid by a person earning $50,000 would fund 'corporate subsidies.' Experts weigh in Experts say analyzing this claim isn't easy because the post lacks necessary details. Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the post is missing critical information needed to make an accurate comparison - including whether federal and state taxes are being considered. Beyond that, he pointed out the post also doesn't specify 'what kind of family you're talking about, whether 'food stamps' includes both the direct cost and the administrative cost, and above all what 'corporate subsidies' means.' For example, he said, a married couple with two children 'could very easily owe zero federal income taxes' at a yearly income of $50,000. 'It's virtually impossible to fact-check,' Gardner said. 'It's just too vague.' Richard Winchester, tax policy expert and law professor at Seton Hall Law School, said the claim made an 'unusual comparison' and noted that the post 'oversimplifies and misleads.' First, Winchester said it was unclear what would be considered a 'corporate subsidy,' per the post's claim. He said it was possible the post was referring to tax expenditures - also known as revenue 'the government is passing up by not taxing' certain things. But Winchester pointed out that it's not as if a person's tax money would 'go to' corporate tax expenditures the way the post claims. 'It's one thing to say, 'alright, the federal government actually writes a check [...] to fund SNAP,'' Winchester said. 'But corporate tax expenditures - it's not writing a check. It's really forgoing revenue. Winchester said it was also possible that the 'corporate subsidies' in the post referred to money the government gives directly to some businesses, but it's simply not clear. Neil Buchanan is a law professor at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law and an expert on tax policy. He echoed the concern that there's no single definition of corporate subsidy. 'Is the entire Pentagon budget a corporate subsidy?' he said. 'Is the CDC's budget a corporate subsidy, because businesses benefit from the research that CDC produces? Again, that term means nothing.' Further, Buchanan said 'there are so many moving parts to the budget picture that it's possible to cherry-pick numbers to present almost any picture you want,' with these types of claims. Even taking into account the lack of information, Buchanan concluded there was no possible way that the post could be making an accurate claim: 'The highest amount in federal income taxes that a person with $50,000 in gross income in 2020 would pay is $4,314, and he would pay $3,825 in payroll taxes, for a total of $8,139. Social Security, Medicare, interest on the national debt, and military spending combine for 72% of spending, so if we (meaninglessly) multiply that by our $50,000 earner's federal tax total, that is $5,860, leaving only $2,279 for everything else. How would we get $4,000 for corporate subsidies out of $2,279?' Gardner said there might be a 'kernel of truth' to the post in that the U.S. spends more on corporate subsidies than on SNAP benefits. But, he also used a hypothetical situation with the 'most aggressive scenario possible in terms of federal income tax - a single person, all wages, no itemized deductions, no kids' and estimated the person's total tax bill would be about $4,100. This would mean that after SNAP benefits and 'corporate subsidies' were taken out of that tax bill, there would be just $64 left for other federal programs. 'Since we obviously fund a lot of things other than food stamps and corporate subsidies, the dollar value of those numbers seems clearly wrong,' Gardner concluded. Our rating A post claims, 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies.' Experts say the post does not provide enough information to break down if a person's tax dollars are being spent in this way. However, even when experts considered the most extreme hypothetical tax situations, they concluded these numbers were not possible. We rate this claim False. | Our rating A post claims, 'If you make $50,000/year, $36 of your taxes goes to food stamps. $4,000 goes to corporate subsidies.' Experts say the post does not provide enough information to break down if a person's tax dollars are being spent in this way. However, even when experts considered the most extreme hypothetical tax situations, they concluded these numbers were not possible. We rate this claim False. | []
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Unvaccinated people 'are making the vaccinated people sick and die, but the unvaccinated people are not dead or sick. | Contradiction | Breakthrough cases of COVID-19, in which the virus infects people who have been vaccinated, have led to confusion and even despair. But a viral image takes that relatively rare occurrence and wrongly claims that somehow unvaccinated people are escaping COVID-19 unscathed. It says: 'Make it make sense! Unvaccinated are making the vaccinated people sick and die. But the unvaccinated people are not dead or sick. Make it make sense!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) A tiny fraction of vaccinated people have been hospitalized or died as a result of a breakthrough infection: It's not known how many breakthrough infections were caused by contact with an infected person who was unvaccinated. But it's clear that unvaccinated people are being hit much harder by the virus than those who have been inoculated. Seven states with some of the lowest vaccination rates - Florida, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi - accounted for about half of new cases and hospitalizations in the previous week, the White House said at a briefing Aug. 5. Based on preliminary data, hospitalizations and deaths 'are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people,' CDC director Rochelle Walensky said at the briefing. The CDC estimated July 29 that the unvaccinated are 25 times more likely than the vaccinated to be hospitalized or to die from the virus. We rate the post False. | We rate the post False. | [
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Unvaccinated people 'are making the vaccinated people sick and die, but the unvaccinated people are not dead or sick. | Contradiction | Breakthrough cases of COVID-19, in which the virus infects people who have been vaccinated, have led to confusion and even despair. But a viral image takes that relatively rare occurrence and wrongly claims that somehow unvaccinated people are escaping COVID-19 unscathed. It says: 'Make it make sense! Unvaccinated are making the vaccinated people sick and die. But the unvaccinated people are not dead or sick. Make it make sense!' The post was flagged as part of Facebook's efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) A tiny fraction of vaccinated people have been hospitalized or died as a result of a breakthrough infection: It's not known how many breakthrough infections were caused by contact with an infected person who was unvaccinated. But it's clear that unvaccinated people are being hit much harder by the virus than those who have been inoculated. Seven states with some of the lowest vaccination rates - Florida, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi - accounted for about half of new cases and hospitalizations in the previous week, the White House said at a briefing Aug. 5. Based on preliminary data, hospitalizations and deaths 'are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people,' CDC director Rochelle Walensky said at the briefing. The CDC estimated July 29 that the unvaccinated are 25 times more likely than the vaccinated to be hospitalized or to die from the virus. We rate the post False. | We rate the post False. | [
"103149-proof-12-0322090ad0e0c74fb8620cb9180a9a8e.jpg"
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Multiple studies 'all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses. | Contradiction | At a campaign event in western North Carolina on July 4, the state's Republican candidate for governor dismissed the need for face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who's running for governor against incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper, said scientific evidence doesn't support mask mandates. 'There have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses,' he told a reporter for The Hendersonville Times-News. Is it true that studies 'all said' that masks 'do not work on viruses?' Forest's statement that they 'do not work' ignores recent studies -- and federal healthcare guidance -- showing that mask-wearing does reduce the spread of coronavirus. What Forest said While virologist and Trump advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other experts have said masks alone don't guarantee protection from the virus, they do believe masks can help slow down the spread of COVID-19. But, by saying 'all' studies show no use for masks, Forest left himself no margin for error. So we asked the Forest campaign to cite Forest's sources. Campaign spokesman Andrew Dunn noted an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 1 titled, 'Universal masking in hospitals in the Covid-19 era.' Dunn quoted a line from the authors' opening statement, which reads: 'We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.' Authors go on to say the purpose of their article is to examine 'whether a mask offers any further protection in health care settings in which the wearer has no direct interactions with symptomatic patients.' Authors later noticed that people were quoting their article to discourage mask-wearing, so they released a follow-up letter to clarify their position. 'We understand that some people are citing our Perspective article (published on April 1 at NEJM.org) as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less,' researchers wrote in a June 1 letter. They acknowledged writing the sentence that Dunn cited, then said: 'but as the rest of the paragraph makes clear, we intended this statement to apply to passing encounters in public spaces, not sustained interactions within closed environments. A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact.' Dunn also cited a study, published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine in 2015, that examined the use of 'non-pharmaceutical interventions' to reduce the spread of the flu. Non-pharmaceutical interventions are public health strategies used to reduce virus transmissions. These interventions include home quarantine for infected persons, social distancing, reduction in public gatherings, and masks. Dunn pointed out that researchers wrote that there are 'widely disparate findings on masks' effectiveness in combating viruses.' The study examined existing reports on NPIs, but found that many of the reports were flawed. Researchers reviewed 100 studies on intervention strategies and found inconclusive results for most of them, including masks. Of those 100 studies, researchers wrote that 'only seven met all selection criteria and pooled analysis was not feasible' because they had 'significant design flaws.' Researchers wrote: 'Reduction of viral transmission by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) has a significant appeal and is often recommended. However, the efficacy of such interventions is unclear ... Despite the potential for NPI in preventing influenza transmission, there is very limited data available. ... Properly designed studies evaluating large populations including 'at risk' patients and in a variety of communities are needed.' That was 2015. Now fast forward to the emergence of COVID-19. Other studies Researchers have launched multiple studies on potential methods for stifling the outbreak, finding that masks could help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Back in April, researchers wrote in the U.S. National Library of Medicine that 'to date, no study has been done to examine the effectiveness of masks against the SARS‐CoV‐2 causing COVID‐19. However, a recent study in patients with seasonal coronaviruses has demonstrated that surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of viral RNA in aerosols and shows a trend in reducing viral RNA in droplets.' A study published in The Royal Society on June 10 found 'the results of two mathematical models and show that facemask use by the public could make a major contribution to reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.' Another study, published in The Lancet medical journal on June 1, found that 'face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection.' Another study, coming out in the August edition of the International Journal of Nursing Studies, concluded that 'community mask use by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic.' Rachel Graham, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UNG Gillings School of Global Public Health, noted that a study out of Germany found that a mask mandate decreased the COVID-19 growth rate by about 40%. When it comes to mask-wearing, Graham said: 'It's not that there's no transmission, it's that there's less.' The CDC, which earlier this year said masks weren't necessary in public places, changed its guidance on April 3 after studies found that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic individuals. Now, the CDC recommends nearly everyone wear a face covering saying they 'help protect people around you' and are 'most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.' PolitiFact has reported on the effectiveness of masks on several occasions, quoting experts who say coverings, when worn properly, can effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19 when combined with other prevention methods such as frequent hand washing and social distancing. | Our ruling Forest said 'there have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses.' His statement overlooks recent data, news stories, CDC guidance and the advice of one of President Trump's top pandemic advisors. While face coverings alone can't guarantee protection from a virus, recent studies show they do reduce the risk of spreading the virus. And that's the goal in this pandemic: to stop the spread. So Forest's claim that masks 'do not work' is inaccurate. We rate his claim False. | [
"103158-proof-27-3de174c115556240dda2a01b5fc068df.jpg"
]
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Multiple studies 'all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses. | Contradiction | At a campaign event in western North Carolina on July 4, the state's Republican candidate for governor dismissed the need for face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who's running for governor against incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper, said scientific evidence doesn't support mask mandates. 'There have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses,' he told a reporter for The Hendersonville Times-News. Is it true that studies 'all said' that masks 'do not work on viruses?' Forest's statement that they 'do not work' ignores recent studies -- and federal healthcare guidance -- showing that mask-wearing does reduce the spread of coronavirus. What Forest said While virologist and Trump advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other experts have said masks alone don't guarantee protection from the virus, they do believe masks can help slow down the spread of COVID-19. But, by saying 'all' studies show no use for masks, Forest left himself no margin for error. So we asked the Forest campaign to cite Forest's sources. Campaign spokesman Andrew Dunn noted an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 1 titled, 'Universal masking in hospitals in the Covid-19 era.' Dunn quoted a line from the authors' opening statement, which reads: 'We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.' Authors go on to say the purpose of their article is to examine 'whether a mask offers any further protection in health care settings in which the wearer has no direct interactions with symptomatic patients.' Authors later noticed that people were quoting their article to discourage mask-wearing, so they released a follow-up letter to clarify their position. 'We understand that some people are citing our Perspective article (published on April 1 at NEJM.org) as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less,' researchers wrote in a June 1 letter. They acknowledged writing the sentence that Dunn cited, then said: 'but as the rest of the paragraph makes clear, we intended this statement to apply to passing encounters in public spaces, not sustained interactions within closed environments. A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact.' Dunn also cited a study, published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine in 2015, that examined the use of 'non-pharmaceutical interventions' to reduce the spread of the flu. Non-pharmaceutical interventions are public health strategies used to reduce virus transmissions. These interventions include home quarantine for infected persons, social distancing, reduction in public gatherings, and masks. Dunn pointed out that researchers wrote that there are 'widely disparate findings on masks' effectiveness in combating viruses.' The study examined existing reports on NPIs, but found that many of the reports were flawed. Researchers reviewed 100 studies on intervention strategies and found inconclusive results for most of them, including masks. Of those 100 studies, researchers wrote that 'only seven met all selection criteria and pooled analysis was not feasible' because they had 'significant design flaws.' Researchers wrote: 'Reduction of viral transmission by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) has a significant appeal and is often recommended. However, the efficacy of such interventions is unclear ... Despite the potential for NPI in preventing influenza transmission, there is very limited data available. ... Properly designed studies evaluating large populations including 'at risk' patients and in a variety of communities are needed.' That was 2015. Now fast forward to the emergence of COVID-19. Other studies Researchers have launched multiple studies on potential methods for stifling the outbreak, finding that masks could help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Back in April, researchers wrote in the U.S. National Library of Medicine that 'to date, no study has been done to examine the effectiveness of masks against the SARS‐CoV‐2 causing COVID‐19. However, a recent study in patients with seasonal coronaviruses has demonstrated that surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of viral RNA in aerosols and shows a trend in reducing viral RNA in droplets.' A study published in The Royal Society on June 10 found 'the results of two mathematical models and show that facemask use by the public could make a major contribution to reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.' Another study, published in The Lancet medical journal on June 1, found that 'face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection.' Another study, coming out in the August edition of the International Journal of Nursing Studies, concluded that 'community mask use by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic.' Rachel Graham, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UNG Gillings School of Global Public Health, noted that a study out of Germany found that a mask mandate decreased the COVID-19 growth rate by about 40%. When it comes to mask-wearing, Graham said: 'It's not that there's no transmission, it's that there's less.' The CDC, which earlier this year said masks weren't necessary in public places, changed its guidance on April 3 after studies found that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic individuals. Now, the CDC recommends nearly everyone wear a face covering saying they 'help protect people around you' and are 'most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.' PolitiFact has reported on the effectiveness of masks on several occasions, quoting experts who say coverings, when worn properly, can effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19 when combined with other prevention methods such as frequent hand washing and social distancing. | Our ruling Forest said 'there have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses.' His statement overlooks recent data, news stories, CDC guidance and the advice of one of President Trump's top pandemic advisors. While face coverings alone can't guarantee protection from a virus, recent studies show they do reduce the risk of spreading the virus. And that's the goal in this pandemic: to stop the spread. So Forest's claim that masks 'do not work' is inaccurate. We rate his claim False. | [
"103158-proof-27-3de174c115556240dda2a01b5fc068df.jpg"
]
|
Multiple studies 'all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses. | Contradiction | At a campaign event in western North Carolina on July 4, the state's Republican candidate for governor dismissed the need for face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who's running for governor against incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper, said scientific evidence doesn't support mask mandates. 'There have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses,' he told a reporter for The Hendersonville Times-News. Is it true that studies 'all said' that masks 'do not work on viruses?' Forest's statement that they 'do not work' ignores recent studies -- and federal healthcare guidance -- showing that mask-wearing does reduce the spread of coronavirus. What Forest said While virologist and Trump advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other experts have said masks alone don't guarantee protection from the virus, they do believe masks can help slow down the spread of COVID-19. But, by saying 'all' studies show no use for masks, Forest left himself no margin for error. So we asked the Forest campaign to cite Forest's sources. Campaign spokesman Andrew Dunn noted an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 1 titled, 'Universal masking in hospitals in the Covid-19 era.' Dunn quoted a line from the authors' opening statement, which reads: 'We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.' Authors go on to say the purpose of their article is to examine 'whether a mask offers any further protection in health care settings in which the wearer has no direct interactions with symptomatic patients.' Authors later noticed that people were quoting their article to discourage mask-wearing, so they released a follow-up letter to clarify their position. 'We understand that some people are citing our Perspective article (published on April 1 at NEJM.org) as support for discrediting widespread masking. In truth, the intent of our article was to push for more masking, not less,' researchers wrote in a June 1 letter. They acknowledged writing the sentence that Dunn cited, then said: 'but as the rest of the paragraph makes clear, we intended this statement to apply to passing encounters in public spaces, not sustained interactions within closed environments. A growing body of research shows that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is strongly correlated with the duration and intensity of contact.' Dunn also cited a study, published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine in 2015, that examined the use of 'non-pharmaceutical interventions' to reduce the spread of the flu. Non-pharmaceutical interventions are public health strategies used to reduce virus transmissions. These interventions include home quarantine for infected persons, social distancing, reduction in public gatherings, and masks. Dunn pointed out that researchers wrote that there are 'widely disparate findings on masks' effectiveness in combating viruses.' The study examined existing reports on NPIs, but found that many of the reports were flawed. Researchers reviewed 100 studies on intervention strategies and found inconclusive results for most of them, including masks. Of those 100 studies, researchers wrote that 'only seven met all selection criteria and pooled analysis was not feasible' because they had 'significant design flaws.' Researchers wrote: 'Reduction of viral transmission by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) has a significant appeal and is often recommended. However, the efficacy of such interventions is unclear ... Despite the potential for NPI in preventing influenza transmission, there is very limited data available. ... Properly designed studies evaluating large populations including 'at risk' patients and in a variety of communities are needed.' That was 2015. Now fast forward to the emergence of COVID-19. Other studies Researchers have launched multiple studies on potential methods for stifling the outbreak, finding that masks could help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Back in April, researchers wrote in the U.S. National Library of Medicine that 'to date, no study has been done to examine the effectiveness of masks against the SARS‐CoV‐2 causing COVID‐19. However, a recent study in patients with seasonal coronaviruses has demonstrated that surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of viral RNA in aerosols and shows a trend in reducing viral RNA in droplets.' A study published in The Royal Society on June 10 found 'the results of two mathematical models and show that facemask use by the public could make a major contribution to reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.' Another study, published in The Lancet medical journal on June 1, found that 'face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection.' Another study, coming out in the August edition of the International Journal of Nursing Studies, concluded that 'community mask use by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic.' Rachel Graham, assistant professor of epidemiology at the UNG Gillings School of Global Public Health, noted that a study out of Germany found that a mask mandate decreased the COVID-19 growth rate by about 40%. When it comes to mask-wearing, Graham said: 'It's not that there's no transmission, it's that there's less.' The CDC, which earlier this year said masks weren't necessary in public places, changed its guidance on April 3 after studies found that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic individuals. Now, the CDC recommends nearly everyone wear a face covering saying they 'help protect people around you' and are 'most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.' PolitiFact has reported on the effectiveness of masks on several occasions, quoting experts who say coverings, when worn properly, can effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19 when combined with other prevention methods such as frequent hand washing and social distancing. | Our ruling Forest said 'there have been multiple comprehensive studies at the deepest level held to scientific standards in controlled environments that have all said for decades, masks do not work with viruses.' His statement overlooks recent data, news stories, CDC guidance and the advice of one of President Trump's top pandemic advisors. While face coverings alone can't guarantee protection from a virus, recent studies show they do reduce the risk of spreading the virus. And that's the goal in this pandemic: to stop the spread. So Forest's claim that masks 'do not work' is inaccurate. We rate his claim False. | [
"103158-proof-27-3de174c115556240dda2a01b5fc068df.jpg"
]
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Photo of vaccine package with 2018 date stamp shows COVID-19 outbreak was planned. | Contradiction | An article shared on Facebook by 'The Hal Turner Radio Show' claims that a photo of a vaccine package from drug maker AstraZeneca proves that the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 was planned and intentional. The Oct. 12 article claimed the photo showed the vaccine was manufactured on July 15, 2018, even though COVID-19 'wasn't discovered until 2019.' 'If COVID-19 didn't become an outbreak until late in 2019, and the outbreak wasn't even named 'COVID-19' until February 11, 2020, then how could AstraZeneca have been manufacturing 'COVID-19 VACCINE' in July of 2018?' the article questioned. The answer, it claimed, is that the pandemic must have been planned, and 'the disease itself would have to have been INTENTIONALLY RELEASED.' The article was shared in several Facebook posts, and Facebook flagged it as a part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The real explanation for the discrepancy is not an insidious plot, but a photo-editing job. The image of the package was doctored to include the fake 2018 manufacturing date. Reuters, Africa Check and Agence France-Presse have fact checked other posts that shared this photo, which was altered to add a darkly printed date on one of the box's flaps. The original photo appeared in a Nov. 12, 2020, Facebook post that shared another false claim about the company's vaccine. That photo shows the same package, but without the added date. In a statement to AFP, an AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed that the 2018 date stamp was fake and had been digitally added to the photo of the package. AstraZeneca announced its partnership with Oxford University to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine on April 30, 2020, and signed an agreement in June 2020 to create the packaging. The vaccine was first approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom on Dec. 30, 2020, and approved for use in Europe on Jan. 29, 2021. PolitiFact reached out to the 'Hal Turner Radio Show' for comment, but did not get a response. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | [
"103179-proof-28-5d87dcc080af6296e59942eb06f4105a.jpg"
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Photo of vaccine package with 2018 date stamp shows COVID-19 outbreak was planned. | Contradiction | An article shared on Facebook by 'The Hal Turner Radio Show' claims that a photo of a vaccine package from drug maker AstraZeneca proves that the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 was planned and intentional. The Oct. 12 article claimed the photo showed the vaccine was manufactured on July 15, 2018, even though COVID-19 'wasn't discovered until 2019.' 'If COVID-19 didn't become an outbreak until late in 2019, and the outbreak wasn't even named 'COVID-19' until February 11, 2020, then how could AstraZeneca have been manufacturing 'COVID-19 VACCINE' in July of 2018?' the article questioned. The answer, it claimed, is that the pandemic must have been planned, and 'the disease itself would have to have been INTENTIONALLY RELEASED.' The article was shared in several Facebook posts, and Facebook flagged it as a part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The real explanation for the discrepancy is not an insidious plot, but a photo-editing job. The image of the package was doctored to include the fake 2018 manufacturing date. Reuters, Africa Check and Agence France-Presse have fact checked other posts that shared this photo, which was altered to add a darkly printed date on one of the box's flaps. The original photo appeared in a Nov. 12, 2020, Facebook post that shared another false claim about the company's vaccine. That photo shows the same package, but without the added date. In a statement to AFP, an AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed that the 2018 date stamp was fake and had been digitally added to the photo of the package. AstraZeneca announced its partnership with Oxford University to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine on April 30, 2020, and signed an agreement in June 2020 to create the packaging. The vaccine was first approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom on Dec. 30, 2020, and approved for use in Europe on Jan. 29, 2021. PolitiFact reached out to the 'Hal Turner Radio Show' for comment, but did not get a response. We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | We rate this claim Pants on Fire! | [
"103179-proof-28-5d87dcc080af6296e59942eb06f4105a.jpg"
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