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'Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?'	Contradiction	Editor's note, Feb. 16, 2021: In recent weeks, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced increasing scrutiny regarding his handling of information related to covid-related deaths among nursing home residents. A recent report by N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James noted that the death count may be 50% higher than what Cuomo's administration provided. The attorney general's estimate includes deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, for example, a potential for undercounting that was mentioned in this fact check. The fact check itself focused on a policy issued by Cuomo in March directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having covid-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Our ruling of Mostly False is unchanged by this new information. That rating was based on evidence that while the introduction of covid-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on the spread of the coronavirus, Caputo's statement suggested it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence showed, then or now.	Editor's note, Feb. 16, 2021: In recent weeks, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced increasing scrutiny regarding his handling of information related to covid-related deaths among nursing home residents. A recent report by N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James noted that the death count may be 50% higher than what Cuomo's administration provided. The attorney general's estimate includes deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, for example, a potential for undercounting that was mentioned in this fact check. The fact check itself focused on a policy issued by Cuomo in March directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having covid-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Our ruling of Mostly False is unchanged by this new information. That rating was based on evidence that while the introduction of covid-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on the spread of the coronavirus, Caputo's statement suggested it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence showed, then or now. On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the first in a weeklong parade of speakers to issue scathing critiques of the Trump administration's coronavirus response. Cuomo's criticisms drew a quick reply in a tweet from Michael R. Caputo, an assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. 'Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?' he wrote. It was an easy jab: Cuomo has been dogged by criticism for months over his March advisory directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having COVID-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Further, nursing homes were prohibited from requiring that medically stable prospective residents be tested for the virus before they arrived. Between March 25 and May 8, approximately 6,326 COVID-positive patients were admitted to nursing homes, according to a state health department report. While experts say this policy was flawed, is it fair to say that the governor's directive 'forced' nursing homes to take patients who were sick with COVID-19? And to what extent did that strategy sow the seeds of disease and death? When we examined the evidence, we found it was less clear cut than the statement makes it seem. The policy likely had an effect, but epidemiologists identified additional factors that fed the problem. What's more the policy did not 'force' nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. Nursing homes interpreted it this way. We checked with HHS to find the basis for Caputo's comment but got no response. The back story As the virus tore through nursing homes, killing dozens at some of them, Cuomo came under withering censure. His administration's policy, implemented with an eye toward freeing up hospital beds for an onslaught of COVID patients, seemed to disregard the risks to frail and elderly nursing home residents who were especially vulnerable to the disease. According to the COVID Tracking Project, 6,624 people have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in New York, accounting for 26% of the state's 25,275 COVID deaths. Some say the true number of deaths is much higher because, unlike many states, New York does not count the deaths of former nursing home residents who are transferred to hospitals and die there as nursing home deaths. Cuomo's explanation for the policy - that he was simply following guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - didn't cut it. A recent PolitiFact piece examining his claim rated it 'Mostly False.' In May, the governor amended the March order, prohibiting hospitals from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they tested negative for COVID-19. A misguided approach In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when New York was the epicenter and more than a thousand people were being hospitalized daily, there was genuine fear that hospitals would not be able to accommodate the influx of desperately ill patients. Moving people out of the hospitals and into nursing homes was one strategy to help hospitals meet these needs. According to the CDC guidance cited in the earlier PolitiFact story, there were two factors to consider when deciding whether to discharge a patient with COVID-19 to a long-term care facility: whether the patient was medically ready, and whether the facility could implement the recommended infection control procedures to safely care for a patient recovering from the virus. A document from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said nursing homes should accept only patients they were able to care for. Long-standing state guidance is based on the same condition. Still, nursing homes didn't believe turning away patients with COVID-19 was an option. 'On its face it looked like a requirement,' said Christopher Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents medical professionals in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. 'The nursing homes we spoke to felt it was a mandate, and a number of them felt they had no choice but to take COVID patients.' Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on November 10, 2021 in a Facebook post 'Italy drastically reduced the country's official COV1D-19 death count by over 97%. This means Covid killed fewer people than an average seasonal flu.' By Samantha Putterman • November 10, 2021 While the overarching guidance not to take patients in unless they could be safely cared for may have been clear, nursing homes' experience was often different, said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long-Term Care Community Coalition, an advocacy group for elderly and disabled people. 'There was little reason for nursing homes to think they should only take in patients if they have the ability to do so safely because those rules are not generally enforced on a regular basis.' Bottom line: State and federal rules didn't force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, but many of them believed they had no other choice. A lethal result? How much of the blame for the deaths of thousands of people in nursing homes from COVID-19 can be attributed to Cuomo's March advisory? That is the 6,000-person question. In a July analysis of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, the state concluded that the deadly virus was introduced by nursing home staff members rather than sick patients. It noted that peak nursing home resident mortality from COVID-19 on April 8 preceded the peak influx of COVID patients on April 14. In addition, it found that nearly 1 in 4 nursing home workers - 37,500 people - were infected with the virus between March and early June. Based on these and other factors, the report concluded that the state admissions policy could not have been a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities. Epidemiologists and nursing home advocates beg to differ. 'To say that introducing patients [to nursing homes] who had COVID did not cause problems is ridiculous,' said Laxton. Calling the study's approach 'pretty flawed,' Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at City University of New York School of Public Health, said he didn't agree with the report's conclusion that the policy had nothing to do with deaths. Others had the same view. 'I didn't think they showed data to say [the policy] is not a 'driver,'' said Rupak Shivakoti, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. But Gary Holmes, assistant commissioner at the New York State Department of Health, had a different take. Critics of the report, he said, must be deliberately ignoring the rising death tolls in nursing homes in hot spots across the country. 'Public health officials in those states are experiencing (and acknowledging) what NY's report indicated weeks ago: these facilities are microcosms of the community and transmission is occurring unknowingly by asymptomatic spread among staff members,' Holmes said, in an email. While public health experts quibbled with the report's self-serving claim that the governor's policy wasn't a factor in COVID-19 nursing home deaths, they nevertheless agreed with the report's broader conclusion that nursing home staffers as well as visitors, before they were banned, were likely the main drivers of COVID-19 infection and death in nursing homes. 'Based on the timeline of the policy and deaths in the city, it is very unlikely that policy contributed to thousands of deaths,' said Shivakoti. Infection control is a long-standing problem at nursing homes, Nash said, and the COVID deaths were a basic failure of infection control. That said, 'it's unclear how many of the deaths the policy might have caused.' Also unclear: how many of the dead were grandmothers and grandfathers. Our ruling In a tweet, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs said that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo 'forced' nursing homes across the state to admit COVID-positive patients and that this policy fueled the spread of COVID-19 that led to thousands of deaths in the nursing home population. Although nursing homes felt pressure to accept COVID-positive patients, they were not actually forced to do so. State regulations require nursing homes to accept patients only if they can care for them, and they could have refused them on those grounds. In addition, it's unclear the extent to which the governor's policy was responsible for nursing home COVID-19 deaths. Infection control is a longstanding problem in nursing homes that predates the pandemic and a report showed peak numbers of nursing home deaths came prior to the peak influx of patients as a result of Cuomo's advisory. While the introduction of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on infection spread, Caputo's statement suggests it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence shows. We rate this Mostly False.	[ "105044-proof-18-f4ee2e0c52bff08cd0efdfd9ef98d6a8.jpg" ]
'Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?'	Contradiction	Editor's note, Feb. 16, 2021: In recent weeks, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced increasing scrutiny regarding his handling of information related to covid-related deaths among nursing home residents. A recent report by N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James noted that the death count may be 50% higher than what Cuomo's administration provided. The attorney general's estimate includes deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, for example, a potential for undercounting that was mentioned in this fact check. The fact check itself focused on a policy issued by Cuomo in March directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having covid-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Our ruling of Mostly False is unchanged by this new information. That rating was based on evidence that while the introduction of covid-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on the spread of the coronavirus, Caputo's statement suggested it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence showed, then or now.	Editor's note, Feb. 16, 2021: In recent weeks, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced increasing scrutiny regarding his handling of information related to covid-related deaths among nursing home residents. A recent report by N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James noted that the death count may be 50% higher than what Cuomo's administration provided. The attorney general's estimate includes deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, for example, a potential for undercounting that was mentioned in this fact check. The fact check itself focused on a policy issued by Cuomo in March directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having covid-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Our ruling of Mostly False is unchanged by this new information. That rating was based on evidence that while the introduction of covid-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on the spread of the coronavirus, Caputo's statement suggested it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence showed, then or now. On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the first in a weeklong parade of speakers to issue scathing critiques of the Trump administration's coronavirus response. Cuomo's criticisms drew a quick reply in a tweet from Michael R. Caputo, an assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. 'Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?' he wrote. It was an easy jab: Cuomo has been dogged by criticism for months over his March advisory directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having COVID-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Further, nursing homes were prohibited from requiring that medically stable prospective residents be tested for the virus before they arrived. Between March 25 and May 8, approximately 6,326 COVID-positive patients were admitted to nursing homes, according to a state health department report. While experts say this policy was flawed, is it fair to say that the governor's directive 'forced' nursing homes to take patients who were sick with COVID-19? And to what extent did that strategy sow the seeds of disease and death? When we examined the evidence, we found it was less clear cut than the statement makes it seem. The policy likely had an effect, but epidemiologists identified additional factors that fed the problem. What's more the policy did not 'force' nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. Nursing homes interpreted it this way. We checked with HHS to find the basis for Caputo's comment but got no response. The back story As the virus tore through nursing homes, killing dozens at some of them, Cuomo came under withering censure. His administration's policy, implemented with an eye toward freeing up hospital beds for an onslaught of COVID patients, seemed to disregard the risks to frail and elderly nursing home residents who were especially vulnerable to the disease. According to the COVID Tracking Project, 6,624 people have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in New York, accounting for 26% of the state's 25,275 COVID deaths. Some say the true number of deaths is much higher because, unlike many states, New York does not count the deaths of former nursing home residents who are transferred to hospitals and die there as nursing home deaths. Cuomo's explanation for the policy - that he was simply following guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - didn't cut it. A recent PolitiFact piece examining his claim rated it 'Mostly False.' In May, the governor amended the March order, prohibiting hospitals from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they tested negative for COVID-19. A misguided approach In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when New York was the epicenter and more than a thousand people were being hospitalized daily, there was genuine fear that hospitals would not be able to accommodate the influx of desperately ill patients. Moving people out of the hospitals and into nursing homes was one strategy to help hospitals meet these needs. According to the CDC guidance cited in the earlier PolitiFact story, there were two factors to consider when deciding whether to discharge a patient with COVID-19 to a long-term care facility: whether the patient was medically ready, and whether the facility could implement the recommended infection control procedures to safely care for a patient recovering from the virus. A document from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said nursing homes should accept only patients they were able to care for. Long-standing state guidance is based on the same condition. Still, nursing homes didn't believe turning away patients with COVID-19 was an option. 'On its face it looked like a requirement,' said Christopher Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents medical professionals in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. 'The nursing homes we spoke to felt it was a mandate, and a number of them felt they had no choice but to take COVID patients.' Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on November 10, 2021 in a Facebook post 'Italy drastically reduced the country's official COV1D-19 death count by over 97%. This means Covid killed fewer people than an average seasonal flu.' By Samantha Putterman • November 10, 2021 While the overarching guidance not to take patients in unless they could be safely cared for may have been clear, nursing homes' experience was often different, said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long-Term Care Community Coalition, an advocacy group for elderly and disabled people. 'There was little reason for nursing homes to think they should only take in patients if they have the ability to do so safely because those rules are not generally enforced on a regular basis.' Bottom line: State and federal rules didn't force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, but many of them believed they had no other choice. A lethal result? How much of the blame for the deaths of thousands of people in nursing homes from COVID-19 can be attributed to Cuomo's March advisory? That is the 6,000-person question. In a July analysis of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, the state concluded that the deadly virus was introduced by nursing home staff members rather than sick patients. It noted that peak nursing home resident mortality from COVID-19 on April 8 preceded the peak influx of COVID patients on April 14. In addition, it found that nearly 1 in 4 nursing home workers - 37,500 people - were infected with the virus between March and early June. Based on these and other factors, the report concluded that the state admissions policy could not have been a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities. Epidemiologists and nursing home advocates beg to differ. 'To say that introducing patients [to nursing homes] who had COVID did not cause problems is ridiculous,' said Laxton. Calling the study's approach 'pretty flawed,' Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at City University of New York School of Public Health, said he didn't agree with the report's conclusion that the policy had nothing to do with deaths. Others had the same view. 'I didn't think they showed data to say [the policy] is not a 'driver,'' said Rupak Shivakoti, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. But Gary Holmes, assistant commissioner at the New York State Department of Health, had a different take. Critics of the report, he said, must be deliberately ignoring the rising death tolls in nursing homes in hot spots across the country. 'Public health officials in those states are experiencing (and acknowledging) what NY's report indicated weeks ago: these facilities are microcosms of the community and transmission is occurring unknowingly by asymptomatic spread among staff members,' Holmes said, in an email. While public health experts quibbled with the report's self-serving claim that the governor's policy wasn't a factor in COVID-19 nursing home deaths, they nevertheless agreed with the report's broader conclusion that nursing home staffers as well as visitors, before they were banned, were likely the main drivers of COVID-19 infection and death in nursing homes. 'Based on the timeline of the policy and deaths in the city, it is very unlikely that policy contributed to thousands of deaths,' said Shivakoti. Infection control is a long-standing problem at nursing homes, Nash said, and the COVID deaths were a basic failure of infection control. That said, 'it's unclear how many of the deaths the policy might have caused.' Also unclear: how many of the dead were grandmothers and grandfathers. Our ruling In a tweet, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs said that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo 'forced' nursing homes across the state to admit COVID-positive patients and that this policy fueled the spread of COVID-19 that led to thousands of deaths in the nursing home population. Although nursing homes felt pressure to accept COVID-positive patients, they were not actually forced to do so. State regulations require nursing homes to accept patients only if they can care for them, and they could have refused them on those grounds. In addition, it's unclear the extent to which the governor's policy was responsible for nursing home COVID-19 deaths. Infection control is a longstanding problem in nursing homes that predates the pandemic and a report showed peak numbers of nursing home deaths came prior to the peak influx of patients as a result of Cuomo's advisory. While the introduction of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on infection spread, Caputo's statement suggests it was solely responsible. That's not what the evidence shows. We rate this Mostly False.	[ "105044-proof-18-f4ee2e0c52bff08cd0efdfd9ef98d6a8.jpg" ]
Says 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab.	Contradiction	Editor's note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in February 2020, PolitiFact's sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. Read our May 2021 report for more on the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19. That dispute notwithstanding, the assertion that 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab' is unsubstantiated and lacks evidence. We continue to rate the claim False. As the 2019 coronavirus continues to spread around the world, an anti-vaccine website has concocted a conspiracy theory about its source. In a blog post published Feb. 3, Natural News, a website known to promote health misinformation, lays out an 'irrefutable' conspiracy that the coronavirus is man-made. 'The tools for genetic insertion are still present as remnants in the genetic code. Since these unique gene sequences don't occur by random chance, they're proof that this virus was engineered by scientists in a lab,' the story reads. The article goes on to say that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 'covering up this inconvenient fact in order to protect communist China.' Natural News does not provide evidence for the claim. 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.) It has been shared more than 2,700 times. (Screenshot from Natural News) PolitiFact has fact-checked several hoaxes and conspiracies about the 2019 coronavirus, which has infected more than 37,000 people globally and killed 812 in China. The outbreak started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December and has since spread to 24 countries. One of the most popular conspiracies about the coronavirus is that it was created in a lab, possibly as a bioweapon. We've previously said those claims are unproven - and the Natural News story has similar shortcomings. The website says that 'every virology lab in the world that has run a genomic analysis of the coronavirus now knows that the coronavirus was engineered by human scientists.' But none of the researchers that has analyzed the virus has come to that conclusion. According to the CDC, both the agency and Chinese authorities have isolated the genome of the 2019 coronavirus. Their findings suggest 'a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir.' We analyzed the eight publications the CDC lists on its landing page about coronavirus. None asserts that the virus was engineered by humans. RELATED: PolitiFact's coronavirus coverage in one place One study, which analyzed the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, was published Jan. 30 in the journal The Lancet. It says the 2019 coronavirus is a human betacoronavirus similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and likely comes from bats. 'Although our phylogenetic analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of this virus, an animal sold at the seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host facilitating the emergence of the virus in humans,' the study reads. Early reports on the virus focused on the fact that many patients were linked to the Wuhan market. That suggested animal-to-person spread, according to the CDC, but later, a growing number of patients reported not having any connection to the market. That suggested the coronavirus was spreading person-to-person. Other blogs and social media users have speculated that a lab near Wuhan could be the source of the virus. The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is a maximum-security biolab that deals with some of the world's most dangerous pathogens, including Ebola and SARS. As of now, however, there is no evidence that the lab is the source of the outbreak. The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	[ "105048-proof-00-158f892bd384051d87624e7c1d729c4c.jpg", "105048-proof-26-Screen_Shot_2020-02-10_at_3.49.30_PM.jpg" ]
Says 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab.	Contradiction	Editor's note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in February 2020, PolitiFact's sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. Read our May 2021 report for more on the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19. That dispute notwithstanding, the assertion that 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab' is unsubstantiated and lacks evidence. We continue to rate the claim False. As the 2019 coronavirus continues to spread around the world, an anti-vaccine website has concocted a conspiracy theory about its source. In a blog post published Feb. 3, Natural News, a website known to promote health misinformation, lays out an 'irrefutable' conspiracy that the coronavirus is man-made. 'The tools for genetic insertion are still present as remnants in the genetic code. Since these unique gene sequences don't occur by random chance, they're proof that this virus was engineered by scientists in a lab,' the story reads. The article goes on to say that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 'covering up this inconvenient fact in order to protect communist China.' Natural News does not provide evidence for the claim. 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.) It has been shared more than 2,700 times. (Screenshot from Natural News) PolitiFact has fact-checked several hoaxes and conspiracies about the 2019 coronavirus, which has infected more than 37,000 people globally and killed 812 in China. The outbreak started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December and has since spread to 24 countries. One of the most popular conspiracies about the coronavirus is that it was created in a lab, possibly as a bioweapon. We've previously said those claims are unproven - and the Natural News story has similar shortcomings. The website says that 'every virology lab in the world that has run a genomic analysis of the coronavirus now knows that the coronavirus was engineered by human scientists.' But none of the researchers that has analyzed the virus has come to that conclusion. According to the CDC, both the agency and Chinese authorities have isolated the genome of the 2019 coronavirus. Their findings suggest 'a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir.' We analyzed the eight publications the CDC lists on its landing page about coronavirus. None asserts that the virus was engineered by humans. RELATED: PolitiFact's coronavirus coverage in one place One study, which analyzed the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, was published Jan. 30 in the journal The Lancet. It says the 2019 coronavirus is a human betacoronavirus similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and likely comes from bats. 'Although our phylogenetic analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of this virus, an animal sold at the seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host facilitating the emergence of the virus in humans,' the study reads. Early reports on the virus focused on the fact that many patients were linked to the Wuhan market. That suggested animal-to-person spread, according to the CDC, but later, a growing number of patients reported not having any connection to the market. That suggested the coronavirus was spreading person-to-person. Other blogs and social media users have speculated that a lab near Wuhan could be the source of the virus. The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is a maximum-security biolab that deals with some of the world's most dangerous pathogens, including Ebola and SARS. As of now, however, there is no evidence that the lab is the source of the outbreak. The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	[ "105048-proof-00-158f892bd384051d87624e7c1d729c4c.jpg", "105048-proof-26-Screen_Shot_2020-02-10_at_3.49.30_PM.jpg" ]
Says 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab.	Contradiction	Editor's note, May 17, 2021: When this fact-check was first published in February 2020, PolitiFact's sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. Read our May 2021 report for more on the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19. That dispute notwithstanding, the assertion that 'the coronavirus was engineered by scientists in a lab' is unsubstantiated and lacks evidence. We continue to rate the claim False. As the 2019 coronavirus continues to spread around the world, an anti-vaccine website has concocted a conspiracy theory about its source. In a blog post published Feb. 3, Natural News, a website known to promote health misinformation, lays out an 'irrefutable' conspiracy that the coronavirus is man-made. 'The tools for genetic insertion are still present as remnants in the genetic code. Since these unique gene sequences don't occur by random chance, they're proof that this virus was engineered by scientists in a lab,' the story reads. The article goes on to say that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 'covering up this inconvenient fact in order to protect communist China.' Natural News does not provide evidence for the claim. 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.) It has been shared more than 2,700 times. (Screenshot from Natural News) PolitiFact has fact-checked several hoaxes and conspiracies about the 2019 coronavirus, which has infected more than 37,000 people globally and killed 812 in China. The outbreak started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December and has since spread to 24 countries. One of the most popular conspiracies about the coronavirus is that it was created in a lab, possibly as a bioweapon. We've previously said those claims are unproven - and the Natural News story has similar shortcomings. The website says that 'every virology lab in the world that has run a genomic analysis of the coronavirus now knows that the coronavirus was engineered by human scientists.' But none of the researchers that has analyzed the virus has come to that conclusion. According to the CDC, both the agency and Chinese authorities have isolated the genome of the 2019 coronavirus. Their findings suggest 'a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir.' We analyzed the eight publications the CDC lists on its landing page about coronavirus. None asserts that the virus was engineered by humans. RELATED: PolitiFact's coronavirus coverage in one place One study, which analyzed the genetic sequence of the coronavirus, was published Jan. 30 in the journal The Lancet. It says the 2019 coronavirus is a human betacoronavirus similar to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and likely comes from bats. 'Although our phylogenetic analysis suggests that bats might be the original host of this virus, an animal sold at the seafood market in Wuhan might represent an intermediate host facilitating the emergence of the virus in humans,' the study reads. Early reports on the virus focused on the fact that many patients were linked to the Wuhan market. That suggested animal-to-person spread, according to the CDC, but later, a growing number of patients reported not having any connection to the market. That suggested the coronavirus was spreading person-to-person. Other blogs and social media users have speculated that a lab near Wuhan could be the source of the virus. The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is a maximum-security biolab that deals with some of the world's most dangerous pathogens, including Ebola and SARS. As of now, however, there is no evidence that the lab is the source of the outbreak. The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	The Natural News article is unsupported by evidence. We rate it False.	[ "105048-proof-00-158f892bd384051d87624e7c1d729c4c.jpg", "105048-proof-26-Screen_Shot_2020-02-10_at_3.49.30_PM.jpg" ]
Quotes Joe Biden as saying 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!'	Contradiction	As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke in support of increasing Muslim American voter turnout at a recent summit, he said he wished American schoolchildren were taught more about Islam. Biden thanked advocacy group Emgage Action for endorsing his campaign and having him at their 'Million Muslim Votes' event July 20. Then he said: 'I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.' Biden said more than that, but the backlash on social media didn't catch it. Conservative activists, including Charlie Kirk, tweeted out the comment and went on to say Biden didn't support prayer or studying the Bible in schools. One former Republican candidate called him anti-Christian. Biden is a lifelong Roman Catholic. On Facebook, a text post quoted Biden incorrectly as saying: 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' The misquote left out important context from the rest of Biden's speech and his campaign as a whole. Biden said he wished schools taught not only the Islamic faith but 'all the great confessional faiths.' He also said that he is interested in theology and 'we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental, basic beliefs,' referencing his own Catholic background. His reference to 'confessional religions' includes different denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which are religions that each have their own statements of faith, sometimes called a confession. Biden has talked extensively about his Catholic faith during his campaign. He discussed how faith influences his policy and how it helped him through the death of his son Beau at a CNN town hall in February 2020. Biden wrote an op-ed for the Religion News Service where he referenced how he went to a Catholic elementary school where nuns taught him scripture. He said the lessons he learned from a Catholic community led him to public service. Biden said in 2005 that he supports rigidly upholding a separation of church and state.	Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that Biden said, 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' He didn't say the quote. At the summit, Biden said that Islam should be studied from a theology perspective, not that students should be taught Islamic faith. He also went on to include that all 'great confessional religions'' should be talked about more in schools. We rate this False.	[ "105050-proof-20-4add447a7a4411b3a4903dd9cd93abd5.jpg" ]
Quotes Joe Biden as saying 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!'	Contradiction	As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke in support of increasing Muslim American voter turnout at a recent summit, he said he wished American schoolchildren were taught more about Islam. Biden thanked advocacy group Emgage Action for endorsing his campaign and having him at their 'Million Muslim Votes' event July 20. Then he said: 'I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.' Biden said more than that, but the backlash on social media didn't catch it. Conservative activists, including Charlie Kirk, tweeted out the comment and went on to say Biden didn't support prayer or studying the Bible in schools. One former Republican candidate called him anti-Christian. Biden is a lifelong Roman Catholic. On Facebook, a text post quoted Biden incorrectly as saying: 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' The misquote left out important context from the rest of Biden's speech and his campaign as a whole. Biden said he wished schools taught not only the Islamic faith but 'all the great confessional faiths.' He also said that he is interested in theology and 'we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental, basic beliefs,' referencing his own Catholic background. His reference to 'confessional religions' includes different denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which are religions that each have their own statements of faith, sometimes called a confession. Biden has talked extensively about his Catholic faith during his campaign. He discussed how faith influences his policy and how it helped him through the death of his son Beau at a CNN town hall in February 2020. Biden wrote an op-ed for the Religion News Service where he referenced how he went to a Catholic elementary school where nuns taught him scripture. He said the lessons he learned from a Catholic community led him to public service. Biden said in 2005 that he supports rigidly upholding a separation of church and state.	Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that Biden said, 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' He didn't say the quote. At the summit, Biden said that Islam should be studied from a theology perspective, not that students should be taught Islamic faith. He also went on to include that all 'great confessional religions'' should be talked about more in schools. We rate this False.	[ "105050-proof-20-4add447a7a4411b3a4903dd9cd93abd5.jpg" ]
Quotes Joe Biden as saying 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!'	Contradiction	As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke in support of increasing Muslim American voter turnout at a recent summit, he said he wished American schoolchildren were taught more about Islam. Biden thanked advocacy group Emgage Action for endorsing his campaign and having him at their 'Million Muslim Votes' event July 20. Then he said: 'I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.' Biden said more than that, but the backlash on social media didn't catch it. Conservative activists, including Charlie Kirk, tweeted out the comment and went on to say Biden didn't support prayer or studying the Bible in schools. One former Republican candidate called him anti-Christian. Biden is a lifelong Roman Catholic. On Facebook, a text post quoted Biden incorrectly as saying: 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' The misquote left out important context from the rest of Biden's speech and his campaign as a whole. Biden said he wished schools taught not only the Islamic faith but 'all the great confessional faiths.' He also said that he is interested in theology and 'we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental, basic beliefs,' referencing his own Catholic background. His reference to 'confessional religions' includes different denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which are religions that each have their own statements of faith, sometimes called a confession. Biden has talked extensively about his Catholic faith during his campaign. He discussed how faith influences his policy and how it helped him through the death of his son Beau at a CNN town hall in February 2020. Biden wrote an op-ed for the Religion News Service where he referenced how he went to a Catholic elementary school where nuns taught him scripture. He said the lessons he learned from a Catholic community led him to public service. Biden said in 2005 that he supports rigidly upholding a separation of church and state.	Our ruling The Facebook post claimed that Biden said, 'We need to teach our children the ISLAMIC FAITH in our schools!' He didn't say the quote. At the summit, Biden said that Islam should be studied from a theology perspective, not that students should be taught Islamic faith. He also went on to include that all 'great confessional religions'' should be talked about more in schools. We rate this False.	[ "105050-proof-20-4add447a7a4411b3a4903dd9cd93abd5.jpg" ]
Says President Donald Trump 'never downplayed the virus.	Contradiction	Confronted with a recording of President Donald Trump from mid March saying that he minimized the coronavirus in public, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the opposite was true. 'The president never downplayed the virus,' she said in a White House press briefing Sept. 9. McEnany was responding to the release of recorded interviews from investigative reporter Bob Woodward's new book about Trump entitled 'Rage.' The audio posted by the Washington Post shows Trump explaining to Woodward why his message about the virus shifted between January and March. 'To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down,' Trump said March 19. 'I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic.' McEnany said Trump never lied to the American people. 'He was expressing calm, and he was taking early action, and his actions are reflective of how seriously he took it,' she said. We tracked Trump's responses as the pandemic unfolded. Between January and mid March, Trump consistently minimized the threat posed by the virus. He would talk about the handful of cases in the country and compare them with the more than 25,000 deaths caused by seasonal flu. He said the country had gotten 'lucky.' Here are some key moments in the early months of the pandemic that show him downplaying the threat. On Jan. 24, Trump tweeted his thanks to China for working to contain the virus. 'It will all work out well,' he wrote. China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020 On Jan. 30, Trump announced restrictions on travel from China. That night, he told supporters at a campaign rally in Iowa, 'We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment - five. ... We think it's going to have a very good ending for it.' On Feb. 2, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity, 'We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.' On Feb. 14, in a meeting with members of the Border Patrol Council, he remained reassuring. 'We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It's like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we're in very good shape.' On Feb. 24, Trump asked Congress for $1.25 billion in emergency aid. The same day he tweeted that the virus 'is very much under control' and the stock market was 'starting to look very good to me!' The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020 As late as March 9, Trump tweeted out blame to the media and the Democrats for trying to 'inflame' the situation 'far beyond what the facts would warrant.' He cited the U.S. surgeon general as saying, 'The risk is low to the average American.' The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, 'The risk is low to the average American.'- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020 Over the next few days, the situation changed rapidly. The World Health Organization officially designated the virus as a pandemic. Trump banned most non-Americans arriving from Europe. He declared a state of emergency. On March 17, Trump said in a news conference that for the next 14 days, 'we're asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.' At the news conference, Trump said there was no shift in tone from the White House: 'I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.' We rated that claim Pants on Fire because whatever he may have known at the time, his words up to that point did not reflect the threat of a pandemic. Two days after that, he spoke to Woodward about why he downplayed the virus earlier and why he wanted to continue to downplay it.	Our ruling McEnany said Trump never downplayed the virus. The record shows she's wrong. During the early months of the coronavirus outbreak, Trump said the country was in very good shape and blamed Democrats and the media for trying to inflame the situation beyond what the facts would warrant. In the very tape that McEnany was asked about, Trump said he downplayed the virus to avoid creating panic. McEnany spun that as him showing leadership to calm a worried nation. The reasons Trump said what he said aren't part of this fact-check. Trump's words are. And they give zero support to McEnany's statement. We rate this claim Pants on Fire.	[ "105082-proof-37-56bedb0f64a622050895c4863b779cd9.jpg" ]
Says President Donald Trump 'never downplayed the virus.	Contradiction	Confronted with a recording of President Donald Trump from mid March saying that he minimized the coronavirus in public, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the opposite was true. 'The president never downplayed the virus,' she said in a White House press briefing Sept. 9. McEnany was responding to the release of recorded interviews from investigative reporter Bob Woodward's new book about Trump entitled 'Rage.' The audio posted by the Washington Post shows Trump explaining to Woodward why his message about the virus shifted between January and March. 'To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down,' Trump said March 19. 'I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic.' McEnany said Trump never lied to the American people. 'He was expressing calm, and he was taking early action, and his actions are reflective of how seriously he took it,' she said. We tracked Trump's responses as the pandemic unfolded. Between January and mid March, Trump consistently minimized the threat posed by the virus. He would talk about the handful of cases in the country and compare them with the more than 25,000 deaths caused by seasonal flu. He said the country had gotten 'lucky.' Here are some key moments in the early months of the pandemic that show him downplaying the threat. On Jan. 24, Trump tweeted his thanks to China for working to contain the virus. 'It will all work out well,' he wrote. China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2020 On Jan. 30, Trump announced restrictions on travel from China. That night, he told supporters at a campaign rally in Iowa, 'We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment - five. ... We think it's going to have a very good ending for it.' On Feb. 2, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity, 'We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.' On Feb. 14, in a meeting with members of the Border Patrol Council, he remained reassuring. 'We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It's like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we're in very good shape.' On Feb. 24, Trump asked Congress for $1.25 billion in emergency aid. The same day he tweeted that the virus 'is very much under control' and the stock market was 'starting to look very good to me!' The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2020 As late as March 9, Trump tweeted out blame to the media and the Democrats for trying to 'inflame' the situation 'far beyond what the facts would warrant.' He cited the U.S. surgeon general as saying, 'The risk is low to the average American.' The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, 'The risk is low to the average American.'- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020 Over the next few days, the situation changed rapidly. The World Health Organization officially designated the virus as a pandemic. Trump banned most non-Americans arriving from Europe. He declared a state of emergency. On March 17, Trump said in a news conference that for the next 14 days, 'we're asking everyone to work at home, if possible, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.' At the news conference, Trump said there was no shift in tone from the White House: 'I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.' We rated that claim Pants on Fire because whatever he may have known at the time, his words up to that point did not reflect the threat of a pandemic. Two days after that, he spoke to Woodward about why he downplayed the virus earlier and why he wanted to continue to downplay it.	Our ruling McEnany said Trump never downplayed the virus. The record shows she's wrong. During the early months of the coronavirus outbreak, Trump said the country was in very good shape and blamed Democrats and the media for trying to inflame the situation beyond what the facts would warrant. In the very tape that McEnany was asked about, Trump said he downplayed the virus to avoid creating panic. McEnany spun that as him showing leadership to calm a worried nation. The reasons Trump said what he said aren't part of this fact-check. Trump's words are. And they give zero support to McEnany's statement. We rate this claim Pants on Fire.	[ "105082-proof-37-56bedb0f64a622050895c4863b779cd9.jpg" ]
'Type-2 diabetes gummies nets the biggest deal in 'Shark Tank' history!'	Contradiction	'Powerful Type-2 diabetes Gummies Nets The Biggest Deal in Shark Tank History!' reads a recent blog post headline that appears to have no basis in reality. The headline is on a website that resembles a news site with the url 'amazingfuz.cc.' The words 'Entertainment Today' and 'Insider News' appear at the top of the page, but clicking on any of the links only lead to another website called tryeaglehemp.com that purports to sell CBD gummies. The blog post claims that sisters named Donna and Rosy Khalife scored $2.5 million, the biggest deal in the history of 'Shark Tank,' an ABC show that gives entrepreneurs the chance to secure business deals. 'In just a short 6 months, their product has completely disrupted the Medicine industry in the United States, and with the help of the Sharks, they are now ready to take over the world market,' the post says. 'After a complete re-brand and re-packaging, the sisters are now ready to launch their new brand, Eagle Hemp CBD Gummies.' 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.) It resembles other posts we've seen that falsely claimed celebrities are selling CBD products. In 2014, sisters Donna and Rosy Khalife pitched 'Surprise Ride,' a box subscription service for children. But we found no evidence that they reprised their role as contestants on the show to pitch a CBD gummy venture. We reached out to Fat Brain Toys, which acquired Surprise Ride in 2018, but didn't hear back. However, Rosy Khalife told USA Today that neither she nor Donna Khalife have any connection to the product and have never pitched CBD gummies on 'Shark Tank.' We rate this post False.	We rate this post False.	[]
Schools stopped teaching children cursive so they wouldn't be able to read the U.S. Constitution and other historical documents.	Contradiction	Many schools don't teach students cursive writing anymore, for the same reason they don't teach them how to use a manual typewriter or a slide rule. It's just not a very relevant skill. But some on social media point to a more sinister reason for the disappearance of cursive instruction: a plot to ensure children won't be able to read the U.S. Constitution and thus won't understand their rights as citizens. 'Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, is written in cursive and they no longer want generations from here on out to know how to read it,' says one woman in a viral Facebook video, as ominous music plays in the background. The problem with that theory: You don't need to know cursive to read the text of the U.S. Constitution. 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.) While the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and many other historical documents were first handwritten in cursive on parchment with quills and ink - the originals are in the National Archives - copies in typeset, printed form have been available almost ever since, and they have all been archived and digitized for ready access. The Declaration of Independence was set in movable type immediately after its adoption - by order of the Continental Congress - and was distributed through the colonies. The text of the Constitution, too, was typeset and printed in the Pennsylvania Packet on Sept. 19, 1787, two day after it was signed. Meanwhile, students who attended school when cursive instruction was in the regular rotation didn't learn about the Constitution and other founding documents by looking at the original manuscript. They learned it from textbooks. Even for students who learn cursive, the penmanship of the founding documents can be difficult to understand. Page 1, reproduction scan of the U.S. Constitution. Library of Congress The U.S. Constitution in typeset format. Printed in the Pennsylvania Packet on Sept. 19, 1787. Library of Congress Cursive instruction had a good run, but began fading quickly after 2010, when the Common Core standards, which most states use, dropped the requirement in public schools on the grounds that it wasn't a relevant skill. As of 2019, however, nearly two dozen states have reintroduced it. Proponents of teaching cursive argue that it has positive effects on children's brains, as it teaches them language and sequencing and improves their motor skills. Our rating A video on Facebook claims that schools stopped teaching cursive to make sure children couldn't read the U.S. Constitution, and other important historical documents. This is bogus. Even if that were the intention, it would not be a very good plan. The founding documents have been available in typeset, printed form almost since they were first written, and have been archived and digitized many times over. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!	Proponents of teaching cursive argue that it has positive effects on children's brains, as it teaches them language and sequencing and improves their motor skills. Our rating A video on Facebook claims that schools stopped teaching cursive to make sure children couldn't read the U.S. Constitution, and other important historical documents. This is bogus. Even if that were the intention, it would not be a very good plan. The founding documents have been available in typeset, printed form almost since they were first written, and have been archived and digitized many times over. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!	[]
Schools stopped teaching children cursive so they wouldn't be able to read the U.S. Constitution and other historical documents.	Contradiction	Many schools don't teach students cursive writing anymore, for the same reason they don't teach them how to use a manual typewriter or a slide rule. It's just not a very relevant skill. But some on social media point to a more sinister reason for the disappearance of cursive instruction: a plot to ensure children won't be able to read the U.S. Constitution and thus won't understand their rights as citizens. 'Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, is written in cursive and they no longer want generations from here on out to know how to read it,' says one woman in a viral Facebook video, as ominous music plays in the background. The problem with that theory: You don't need to know cursive to read the text of the U.S. Constitution. 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.) While the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and many other historical documents were first handwritten in cursive on parchment with quills and ink - the originals are in the National Archives - copies in typeset, printed form have been available almost ever since, and they have all been archived and digitized for ready access. The Declaration of Independence was set in movable type immediately after its adoption - by order of the Continental Congress - and was distributed through the colonies. The text of the Constitution, too, was typeset and printed in the Pennsylvania Packet on Sept. 19, 1787, two day after it was signed. Meanwhile, students who attended school when cursive instruction was in the regular rotation didn't learn about the Constitution and other founding documents by looking at the original manuscript. They learned it from textbooks. Even for students who learn cursive, the penmanship of the founding documents can be difficult to understand. Page 1, reproduction scan of the U.S. Constitution. Library of Congress The U.S. Constitution in typeset format. Printed in the Pennsylvania Packet on Sept. 19, 1787. Library of Congress Cursive instruction had a good run, but began fading quickly after 2010, when the Common Core standards, which most states use, dropped the requirement in public schools on the grounds that it wasn't a relevant skill. As of 2019, however, nearly two dozen states have reintroduced it. Proponents of teaching cursive argue that it has positive effects on children's brains, as it teaches them language and sequencing and improves their motor skills. Our rating A video on Facebook claims that schools stopped teaching cursive to make sure children couldn't read the U.S. Constitution, and other important historical documents. This is bogus. Even if that were the intention, it would not be a very good plan. The founding documents have been available in typeset, printed form almost since they were first written, and have been archived and digitized many times over. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!	Proponents of teaching cursive argue that it has positive effects on children's brains, as it teaches them language and sequencing and improves their motor skills. Our rating A video on Facebook claims that schools stopped teaching cursive to make sure children couldn't read the U.S. Constitution, and other important historical documents. This is bogus. Even if that were the intention, it would not be a very good plan. The founding documents have been available in typeset, printed form almost since they were first written, and have been archived and digitized many times over. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!	[]
'Private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion.	Contradiction	A Medicaid expansion - cut two years ago from Gov. Tony Evers' first budget by the Republicans - is back on the table in his 2021-23 spending plan. The recycled proposal from Evers, a Democrat, has garnered a predictably unenthusiastic reception from Republicans who control the state Legislature. The expansion would lean on federal funds to expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, instead of the current 100%. Wisconsin is one of 12 states that have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. State Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, a co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, made his case against Medicaid in a March 21, 2021, appearance on WKOW's 'Capital City Sunday.' He called the access to one-time funding a 'federal bribe ... to expand that welfare program,' then talked about the financial impact on the parties involved. 'We've got people right now covered on private insurance through the exchange here in Wisconsin, and we know that that private insurance gives them better coverage and better payments to our health systems,' Born said. The lower payments to health systems for Medicaid-covered patients have been well-documented. The reimbursements Medicaid pays to health care providers are about half what private insurers pay nationwide - though we'll note the state has the ability to set higher reimbursement rates, if Born and other leaders felt that was a problem that should be addressed. But the other portion of his claim is more unique. Does private insurance really provide 'better coverage' to the individual than Medicaid? Born turned to some convoluted logic to defend this claim, which experts say doesn't hold water. Let's take a look. Key group overlooked Born's first mistake is ignoring the uninsured. Increasing the allowable income for Medicaid would move the cutoff for a single adult from $12,880 to $17,774. That would make about 90,000 additional Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid. Between one-third and one-half of that group is currently uninsured, depending on whether you go by estimates from the state Department of Health Services or the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. So it's wrong to dismiss Medicaid as not offering 'better coverage' when there's a large group of people who could use the program and currently have no coverage at all. Cost is part of gauging coverage quality But Born is also wrong about the coverage being better. Asked for proof of that claim, Born spokesman Tyler Clark said cost shouldn't be considered as part of the discussion over which plans offer 'better coverage' - only the number of health care providers that accept Medicaid vs. private insurance. 'Rep. Born didn't make a statement relating to cost,' Clark said in an email. 'Value the Representative is talking about is what you get for a plan, and it is also undeniable that access to primary and dental care under Medicaid is less than commercial private plans. ... Anything else is not relevant to fact-checking his words.' But that flies in the face of how the health insurance industry references quality of coverage. The Affordable Care Act marketplace, for example, places the various options into four tiers - bronze, silver, gold, platinum - based on the out-of-pocket costs involved. In other words, which one is better is defined by how much each costs the user. More importantly, the logic Clark puts forth ignores that - just like the number of available providers - cost is a critical part of access to care. A plethora of available doctors on a private insurance plan does no good if the cost of care is so high the person can't afford to see them. 'You cannot separate those two (cost and access),' said Donna Friedsam, a distinguished researcher and health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. 'If you can't pay for your care, that's a huge access barrier.' The impact of that barrier is clear when comparing the states that so far have accepted and refused the Medicaid expansion. In states that expanded Medicaid, 9% of eligible low-income adults reported not getting needed medical care due to cost, while in states without the expansion 20% of that income group passed on care, according to a 2018 study from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Another 2018 study comparing those groups found states that expanded Medicaid had fewer uninsured among the people eligible, and that group also saw a drop in out-of-pocket spending. It concluded states that substitute marketplace plans for Medicaid expansion - as Wisconsin has done so far - 'could lower coverage rates and increase out-of-pocket expenses for enrollees.' So, yes, cost matters. And Medicaid is undeniably cheaper. Medicaid requires no premiums for those who would be eligible under the proposed expansion, and most people also pay little or nothing for services. 'At most you might pay a couple of bucks for a copayment, but it's generally zero,' said Joe Antos, a health care scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 'In terms of just money out of pocket, it's a better deal than any private coverage. Because all private coverage even with (Affordable Care Act) coverage and the big subsidies that have been expanded, there's going to be a premium of some sort, there's going to be a deductible, there's going to be copays or coinsurance.' Fewer care options under Medicaid? The point Born asserted he was trying to make is that private insurance gives a person access to more doctors than Medicaid. Kaiser - a nonpartisan organization considered the gold standard for health care analysis - said in a 2019 explainer on Medicaid: 'Rates of access to care and satisfaction with care among Medicaid enrollees are comparable to rates for people with private insurance.' The report noted there are access gaps for psychiatrists, some specialists and dentists, but those are the same fields where access is limited throughout the system due to a shortage of providers. Friedsam said Wisconsin is in better shape than many states in terms of Medicaid care access. 'In Wisconsin we actually have very robust participation by most physicians in the Medicaid programs,' she said. 'We do have a number of studies showing that Medicaid members overall do fairly comparably to other low-income, privately insured members.' A 2016 Medicaid access study from the state Department of Health Services found 87% of primary care physicians in the state participated in Medicaid, with 72% of that group seeing enough patients to be considered active. But only 37% of dentists were in Medicaid, and less than half were considered active. It's important to note that most private health insurance plans don't include any dental coverage, however - those have to be purchased separately. So any dental coverage from Medicaid is an improvement over private health insurance.	Our ruling Born said in an interview that 'private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion. This is wrong on multiple levels. Expanding Medicaid to people making 138% of the federal poverty level gives insurance coverage to tens of thousands of people that are currently uninsured - clearly 'better coverage.' Born also asserts cost is not part of which coverage is 'better,' but that is not how things work. The cost of premiums, deductibles and copays are a fundamental part of everyone's health insurance and health care decision-making, and studies show a clear connection between cost and an ability to access care. Some specialties do have fewer options under Medicaid than private insurance, but generally speaking studies and experts say the care access is comparable between the two. And Born didn't make a claim specific to health care access, he claimed overall coverage was better on private insurance. We rate that claim False.	[ "105134-proof-05-0ec8870f71a0a4c335f8986725507335.jpg" ]
'Private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion.	Contradiction	A Medicaid expansion - cut two years ago from Gov. Tony Evers' first budget by the Republicans - is back on the table in his 2021-23 spending plan. The recycled proposal from Evers, a Democrat, has garnered a predictably unenthusiastic reception from Republicans who control the state Legislature. The expansion would lean on federal funds to expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, instead of the current 100%. Wisconsin is one of 12 states that have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. State Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, a co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, made his case against Medicaid in a March 21, 2021, appearance on WKOW's 'Capital City Sunday.' He called the access to one-time funding a 'federal bribe ... to expand that welfare program,' then talked about the financial impact on the parties involved. 'We've got people right now covered on private insurance through the exchange here in Wisconsin, and we know that that private insurance gives them better coverage and better payments to our health systems,' Born said. The lower payments to health systems for Medicaid-covered patients have been well-documented. The reimbursements Medicaid pays to health care providers are about half what private insurers pay nationwide - though we'll note the state has the ability to set higher reimbursement rates, if Born and other leaders felt that was a problem that should be addressed. But the other portion of his claim is more unique. Does private insurance really provide 'better coverage' to the individual than Medicaid? Born turned to some convoluted logic to defend this claim, which experts say doesn't hold water. Let's take a look. Key group overlooked Born's first mistake is ignoring the uninsured. Increasing the allowable income for Medicaid would move the cutoff for a single adult from $12,880 to $17,774. That would make about 90,000 additional Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid. Between one-third and one-half of that group is currently uninsured, depending on whether you go by estimates from the state Department of Health Services or the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. So it's wrong to dismiss Medicaid as not offering 'better coverage' when there's a large group of people who could use the program and currently have no coverage at all. Cost is part of gauging coverage quality But Born is also wrong about the coverage being better. Asked for proof of that claim, Born spokesman Tyler Clark said cost shouldn't be considered as part of the discussion over which plans offer 'better coverage' - only the number of health care providers that accept Medicaid vs. private insurance. 'Rep. Born didn't make a statement relating to cost,' Clark said in an email. 'Value the Representative is talking about is what you get for a plan, and it is also undeniable that access to primary and dental care under Medicaid is less than commercial private plans. ... Anything else is not relevant to fact-checking his words.' But that flies in the face of how the health insurance industry references quality of coverage. The Affordable Care Act marketplace, for example, places the various options into four tiers - bronze, silver, gold, platinum - based on the out-of-pocket costs involved. In other words, which one is better is defined by how much each costs the user. More importantly, the logic Clark puts forth ignores that - just like the number of available providers - cost is a critical part of access to care. A plethora of available doctors on a private insurance plan does no good if the cost of care is so high the person can't afford to see them. 'You cannot separate those two (cost and access),' said Donna Friedsam, a distinguished researcher and health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. 'If you can't pay for your care, that's a huge access barrier.' The impact of that barrier is clear when comparing the states that so far have accepted and refused the Medicaid expansion. In states that expanded Medicaid, 9% of eligible low-income adults reported not getting needed medical care due to cost, while in states without the expansion 20% of that income group passed on care, according to a 2018 study from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Another 2018 study comparing those groups found states that expanded Medicaid had fewer uninsured among the people eligible, and that group also saw a drop in out-of-pocket spending. It concluded states that substitute marketplace plans for Medicaid expansion - as Wisconsin has done so far - 'could lower coverage rates and increase out-of-pocket expenses for enrollees.' So, yes, cost matters. And Medicaid is undeniably cheaper. Medicaid requires no premiums for those who would be eligible under the proposed expansion, and most people also pay little or nothing for services. 'At most you might pay a couple of bucks for a copayment, but it's generally zero,' said Joe Antos, a health care scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 'In terms of just money out of pocket, it's a better deal than any private coverage. Because all private coverage even with (Affordable Care Act) coverage and the big subsidies that have been expanded, there's going to be a premium of some sort, there's going to be a deductible, there's going to be copays or coinsurance.' Fewer care options under Medicaid? The point Born asserted he was trying to make is that private insurance gives a person access to more doctors than Medicaid. Kaiser - a nonpartisan organization considered the gold standard for health care analysis - said in a 2019 explainer on Medicaid: 'Rates of access to care and satisfaction with care among Medicaid enrollees are comparable to rates for people with private insurance.' The report noted there are access gaps for psychiatrists, some specialists and dentists, but those are the same fields where access is limited throughout the system due to a shortage of providers. Friedsam said Wisconsin is in better shape than many states in terms of Medicaid care access. 'In Wisconsin we actually have very robust participation by most physicians in the Medicaid programs,' she said. 'We do have a number of studies showing that Medicaid members overall do fairly comparably to other low-income, privately insured members.' A 2016 Medicaid access study from the state Department of Health Services found 87% of primary care physicians in the state participated in Medicaid, with 72% of that group seeing enough patients to be considered active. But only 37% of dentists were in Medicaid, and less than half were considered active. It's important to note that most private health insurance plans don't include any dental coverage, however - those have to be purchased separately. So any dental coverage from Medicaid is an improvement over private health insurance.	Our ruling Born said in an interview that 'private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion. This is wrong on multiple levels. Expanding Medicaid to people making 138% of the federal poverty level gives insurance coverage to tens of thousands of people that are currently uninsured - clearly 'better coverage.' Born also asserts cost is not part of which coverage is 'better,' but that is not how things work. The cost of premiums, deductibles and copays are a fundamental part of everyone's health insurance and health care decision-making, and studies show a clear connection between cost and an ability to access care. Some specialties do have fewer options under Medicaid than private insurance, but generally speaking studies and experts say the care access is comparable between the two. And Born didn't make a claim specific to health care access, he claimed overall coverage was better on private insurance. We rate that claim False.	[ "105134-proof-05-0ec8870f71a0a4c335f8986725507335.jpg" ]
'Private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion.	Contradiction	A Medicaid expansion - cut two years ago from Gov. Tony Evers' first budget by the Republicans - is back on the table in his 2021-23 spending plan. The recycled proposal from Evers, a Democrat, has garnered a predictably unenthusiastic reception from Republicans who control the state Legislature. The expansion would lean on federal funds to expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, instead of the current 100%. Wisconsin is one of 12 states that have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. State Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, a co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, made his case against Medicaid in a March 21, 2021, appearance on WKOW's 'Capital City Sunday.' He called the access to one-time funding a 'federal bribe ... to expand that welfare program,' then talked about the financial impact on the parties involved. 'We've got people right now covered on private insurance through the exchange here in Wisconsin, and we know that that private insurance gives them better coverage and better payments to our health systems,' Born said. The lower payments to health systems for Medicaid-covered patients have been well-documented. The reimbursements Medicaid pays to health care providers are about half what private insurers pay nationwide - though we'll note the state has the ability to set higher reimbursement rates, if Born and other leaders felt that was a problem that should be addressed. But the other portion of his claim is more unique. Does private insurance really provide 'better coverage' to the individual than Medicaid? Born turned to some convoluted logic to defend this claim, which experts say doesn't hold water. Let's take a look. Key group overlooked Born's first mistake is ignoring the uninsured. Increasing the allowable income for Medicaid would move the cutoff for a single adult from $12,880 to $17,774. That would make about 90,000 additional Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid. Between one-third and one-half of that group is currently uninsured, depending on whether you go by estimates from the state Department of Health Services or the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. So it's wrong to dismiss Medicaid as not offering 'better coverage' when there's a large group of people who could use the program and currently have no coverage at all. Cost is part of gauging coverage quality But Born is also wrong about the coverage being better. Asked for proof of that claim, Born spokesman Tyler Clark said cost shouldn't be considered as part of the discussion over which plans offer 'better coverage' - only the number of health care providers that accept Medicaid vs. private insurance. 'Rep. Born didn't make a statement relating to cost,' Clark said in an email. 'Value the Representative is talking about is what you get for a plan, and it is also undeniable that access to primary and dental care under Medicaid is less than commercial private plans. ... Anything else is not relevant to fact-checking his words.' But that flies in the face of how the health insurance industry references quality of coverage. The Affordable Care Act marketplace, for example, places the various options into four tiers - bronze, silver, gold, platinum - based on the out-of-pocket costs involved. In other words, which one is better is defined by how much each costs the user. More importantly, the logic Clark puts forth ignores that - just like the number of available providers - cost is a critical part of access to care. A plethora of available doctors on a private insurance plan does no good if the cost of care is so high the person can't afford to see them. 'You cannot separate those two (cost and access),' said Donna Friedsam, a distinguished researcher and health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. 'If you can't pay for your care, that's a huge access barrier.' The impact of that barrier is clear when comparing the states that so far have accepted and refused the Medicaid expansion. In states that expanded Medicaid, 9% of eligible low-income adults reported not getting needed medical care due to cost, while in states without the expansion 20% of that income group passed on care, according to a 2018 study from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Another 2018 study comparing those groups found states that expanded Medicaid had fewer uninsured among the people eligible, and that group also saw a drop in out-of-pocket spending. It concluded states that substitute marketplace plans for Medicaid expansion - as Wisconsin has done so far - 'could lower coverage rates and increase out-of-pocket expenses for enrollees.' So, yes, cost matters. And Medicaid is undeniably cheaper. Medicaid requires no premiums for those who would be eligible under the proposed expansion, and most people also pay little or nothing for services. 'At most you might pay a couple of bucks for a copayment, but it's generally zero,' said Joe Antos, a health care scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 'In terms of just money out of pocket, it's a better deal than any private coverage. Because all private coverage even with (Affordable Care Act) coverage and the big subsidies that have been expanded, there's going to be a premium of some sort, there's going to be a deductible, there's going to be copays or coinsurance.' Fewer care options under Medicaid? The point Born asserted he was trying to make is that private insurance gives a person access to more doctors than Medicaid. Kaiser - a nonpartisan organization considered the gold standard for health care analysis - said in a 2019 explainer on Medicaid: 'Rates of access to care and satisfaction with care among Medicaid enrollees are comparable to rates for people with private insurance.' The report noted there are access gaps for psychiatrists, some specialists and dentists, but those are the same fields where access is limited throughout the system due to a shortage of providers. Friedsam said Wisconsin is in better shape than many states in terms of Medicaid care access. 'In Wisconsin we actually have very robust participation by most physicians in the Medicaid programs,' she said. 'We do have a number of studies showing that Medicaid members overall do fairly comparably to other low-income, privately insured members.' A 2016 Medicaid access study from the state Department of Health Services found 87% of primary care physicians in the state participated in Medicaid, with 72% of that group seeing enough patients to be considered active. But only 37% of dentists were in Medicaid, and less than half were considered active. It's important to note that most private health insurance plans don't include any dental coverage, however - those have to be purchased separately. So any dental coverage from Medicaid is an improvement over private health insurance.	Our ruling Born said in an interview that 'private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion. This is wrong on multiple levels. Expanding Medicaid to people making 138% of the federal poverty level gives insurance coverage to tens of thousands of people that are currently uninsured - clearly 'better coverage.' Born also asserts cost is not part of which coverage is 'better,' but that is not how things work. The cost of premiums, deductibles and copays are a fundamental part of everyone's health insurance and health care decision-making, and studies show a clear connection between cost and an ability to access care. Some specialties do have fewer options under Medicaid than private insurance, but generally speaking studies and experts say the care access is comparable between the two. And Born didn't make a claim specific to health care access, he claimed overall coverage was better on private insurance. We rate that claim False.	[ "105134-proof-05-0ec8870f71a0a4c335f8986725507335.jpg" ]
'Private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion.	Contradiction	A Medicaid expansion - cut two years ago from Gov. Tony Evers' first budget by the Republicans - is back on the table in his 2021-23 spending plan. The recycled proposal from Evers, a Democrat, has garnered a predictably unenthusiastic reception from Republicans who control the state Legislature. The expansion would lean on federal funds to expand Medicaid eligibility to people with incomes up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level, instead of the current 100%. Wisconsin is one of 12 states that have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. State Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, a co-chair of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, made his case against Medicaid in a March 21, 2021, appearance on WKOW's 'Capital City Sunday.' He called the access to one-time funding a 'federal bribe ... to expand that welfare program,' then talked about the financial impact on the parties involved. 'We've got people right now covered on private insurance through the exchange here in Wisconsin, and we know that that private insurance gives them better coverage and better payments to our health systems,' Born said. The lower payments to health systems for Medicaid-covered patients have been well-documented. The reimbursements Medicaid pays to health care providers are about half what private insurers pay nationwide - though we'll note the state has the ability to set higher reimbursement rates, if Born and other leaders felt that was a problem that should be addressed. But the other portion of his claim is more unique. Does private insurance really provide 'better coverage' to the individual than Medicaid? Born turned to some convoluted logic to defend this claim, which experts say doesn't hold water. Let's take a look. Key group overlooked Born's first mistake is ignoring the uninsured. Increasing the allowable income for Medicaid would move the cutoff for a single adult from $12,880 to $17,774. That would make about 90,000 additional Wisconsinites eligible for Medicaid. Between one-third and one-half of that group is currently uninsured, depending on whether you go by estimates from the state Department of Health Services or the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. So it's wrong to dismiss Medicaid as not offering 'better coverage' when there's a large group of people who could use the program and currently have no coverage at all. Cost is part of gauging coverage quality But Born is also wrong about the coverage being better. Asked for proof of that claim, Born spokesman Tyler Clark said cost shouldn't be considered as part of the discussion over which plans offer 'better coverage' - only the number of health care providers that accept Medicaid vs. private insurance. 'Rep. Born didn't make a statement relating to cost,' Clark said in an email. 'Value the Representative is talking about is what you get for a plan, and it is also undeniable that access to primary and dental care under Medicaid is less than commercial private plans. ... Anything else is not relevant to fact-checking his words.' But that flies in the face of how the health insurance industry references quality of coverage. The Affordable Care Act marketplace, for example, places the various options into four tiers - bronze, silver, gold, platinum - based on the out-of-pocket costs involved. In other words, which one is better is defined by how much each costs the user. More importantly, the logic Clark puts forth ignores that - just like the number of available providers - cost is a critical part of access to care. A plethora of available doctors on a private insurance plan does no good if the cost of care is so high the person can't afford to see them. 'You cannot separate those two (cost and access),' said Donna Friedsam, a distinguished researcher and health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. 'If you can't pay for your care, that's a huge access barrier.' The impact of that barrier is clear when comparing the states that so far have accepted and refused the Medicaid expansion. In states that expanded Medicaid, 9% of eligible low-income adults reported not getting needed medical care due to cost, while in states without the expansion 20% of that income group passed on care, according to a 2018 study from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Another 2018 study comparing those groups found states that expanded Medicaid had fewer uninsured among the people eligible, and that group also saw a drop in out-of-pocket spending. It concluded states that substitute marketplace plans for Medicaid expansion - as Wisconsin has done so far - 'could lower coverage rates and increase out-of-pocket expenses for enrollees.' So, yes, cost matters. And Medicaid is undeniably cheaper. Medicaid requires no premiums for those who would be eligible under the proposed expansion, and most people also pay little or nothing for services. 'At most you might pay a couple of bucks for a copayment, but it's generally zero,' said Joe Antos, a health care scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. 'In terms of just money out of pocket, it's a better deal than any private coverage. Because all private coverage even with (Affordable Care Act) coverage and the big subsidies that have been expanded, there's going to be a premium of some sort, there's going to be a deductible, there's going to be copays or coinsurance.' Fewer care options under Medicaid? The point Born asserted he was trying to make is that private insurance gives a person access to more doctors than Medicaid. Kaiser - a nonpartisan organization considered the gold standard for health care analysis - said in a 2019 explainer on Medicaid: 'Rates of access to care and satisfaction with care among Medicaid enrollees are comparable to rates for people with private insurance.' The report noted there are access gaps for psychiatrists, some specialists and dentists, but those are the same fields where access is limited throughout the system due to a shortage of providers. Friedsam said Wisconsin is in better shape than many states in terms of Medicaid care access. 'In Wisconsin we actually have very robust participation by most physicians in the Medicaid programs,' she said. 'We do have a number of studies showing that Medicaid members overall do fairly comparably to other low-income, privately insured members.' A 2016 Medicaid access study from the state Department of Health Services found 87% of primary care physicians in the state participated in Medicaid, with 72% of that group seeing enough patients to be considered active. But only 37% of dentists were in Medicaid, and less than half were considered active. It's important to note that most private health insurance plans don't include any dental coverage, however - those have to be purchased separately. So any dental coverage from Medicaid is an improvement over private health insurance.	Our ruling Born said in an interview that 'private insurance gives ... better coverage' than people would get under a Medicaid expansion. This is wrong on multiple levels. Expanding Medicaid to people making 138% of the federal poverty level gives insurance coverage to tens of thousands of people that are currently uninsured - clearly 'better coverage.' Born also asserts cost is not part of which coverage is 'better,' but that is not how things work. The cost of premiums, deductibles and copays are a fundamental part of everyone's health insurance and health care decision-making, and studies show a clear connection between cost and an ability to access care. Some specialties do have fewer options under Medicaid than private insurance, but generally speaking studies and experts say the care access is comparable between the two. And Born didn't make a claim specific to health care access, he claimed overall coverage was better on private insurance. We rate that claim False.	[ "105134-proof-05-0ec8870f71a0a4c335f8986725507335.jpg" ]
Says spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer	Contradiction	Since the introduction of the coronavirus vaccine, people have been spending more time outside their homes. With that has come more travel. And if you're a traveler, you've surely noticed an increase in price for things such as gas, rental cars and hotels. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, certainly has. In a July 20, 2021 tweet, Tiffany attributed big jumps in the price for car rentals, gas and hotels to 'reckless spending' by Democrats. The tweet noted that 'car rentals' are up 87%, gas prices are up 45.1% and hotel prices are up 16.9%. Before we begin, an important note: Tiffany does not offer a timeframe for the period he is citing and, to be sure, 'car rentals' is different than 'car rental costs.' We'll assume that he means the cost of rentals and that he is citing increases since the start of Biden's term -- but, in the end, the specific increases are not the most important part of this fact-check. The real question is one of blame. So, are Democratic bills and proposals -- many of which have not been passed or implemented yet -- fueling the rise in costs of travel? Let's unpack this one. Tiffany points to inflation When we asked Tiffany's staff for backup, staffers pointed to several articles about the American Rescue Plan Act-- advanced by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress -- and the risk that the plan would boost inflation to rates the country hasn't seen in decades. Of course, not every economist shares that view. Inflation, of course, occurs when prices rise, decreasing your purchasing power. For example, in 1980, a movie ticket cost on average $2.89, but by 2019 an average ticket cost $9.16. So if you had saved a $10 bill from 1980, it would buy fewer movie tickets now than it did then. According to economists, inflation is generally a product of several factors, including higher government spending, higher deficits and borrowing costs. (In this case, interest rates have remained steady, according to a June 10, 2021 report from the Washington Post, meaning it's cheap for the U.S. government to borrow money right now.) Day-to-day price changes, though, are driven by other factors, chiefly the laws of supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, costs go up. The same Post article notes that inflation rose by 5% between May 2020 and May 2021. That, of course, comes a year after most of the country was locked down and people were purchasing less -- and, notably, traveling much less. So, if inflation went up 5%, why have travel costs grown so much more? That's where supply and demand come in. Rental cars The rental car industry was hit especially hard by the pandemic. With almost no people traveling or renting cars, the top rental companies were forced to sell off about a third of their total fleet, according to a July 26, 2021 report in New York Magazine. Hertz, one of the largest, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once the pandemic ebbed and people began to travel again, a shortage of microchips caused car manufacturing to stall, limiting the ability of rental companies to restock their fleets. The rising demand for rentals has forced prices higher and higher, reaching upwards of $1,000 per trip for some travelers, depending on location and duration. Gas prices The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $3.18 on Aug. 3, 2021, according to the AAA Gas Price map. One year earlier, it was $2.18. Before that, prices had dipped as low as $.99 in some places. According to a June 10, 2021 fact check from USA TODAY, gas prices have been increasing since April 2020, after the pandemic forced prices down as people stayed home amid widespread closure orders aimed at controlling the coronavirus. The data also shows prices have been rising -- for the most part -- since before Joe Biden was elected and Democrats took control of the House and Senate. That is, when Republican Donald Trump was in office. So, clearly, action by Democrats is not solely responsible for the increase, as Tiffany claims. 'Gas prices fluctuate regardless of who is in office,' said Molly Hart, a public and government relations spokesperson for AAA, in an email. 'During the past year and a half, pump prices have primarily been driven by the pandemic's influence on supply and demand.' Some critics have tried to link the higher prices to cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other green energy policies proposed by the Biden Administration. But experts say they have not had any major impact on prices yet, though they may have an impact in the future. Hotel prices According to a June 20, 2021 report from USA TODAY, the COVID pandemic itself -- not Democratic-backed relief packages -- are behind these increases, too. Now that restrictions have been lifted, people are leaving their communities more often to travel. They're heading to Disney World, the beach or mountains more often, meaning there's more demand for hotel rooms or other short-term rentals. 'The price increase has been driven by a surge in demand,' the USA TODAY report said. For instance, a quarterly AAA survey of Wisconsin residents conducted in June 2021 found that 80% of respondents said they felt more comfortable traveling than they did three months earlier. Simply put, said Kevin Pahr, a professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, inflation did occur for many travel-related expenses, but it wasn't because of spending this year by the government. 'The recent spike in inflation can be primarily attributable to three main factors (rather than any stimulus plan),' Pahr said. 'The realization of pent-up demand, particularly in the travel, leisure, and hospitality industries, as the U.S. economy reopened and concerns over COVID-19 were mitigated, energy prices and supply chain disruptions.'	Our ruling Tiffany claimed that spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer. While inflation has gone up about 5% between May 2020 and May 2021, that doesn't account for the much larger spikes in the price of rental cars, gas and hotels, which are driven more by supply and demand issues, rather than a general growth in costs. During the pandemic, rental car companies sold off some of their cars to help make ends meet. Oil production dropped. And hotels stood mostly empty. But now demand is soaring, driving prices up. For a claim that is partially accurate but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False.	[ "105153-proof-38-fd1adb9c23caf3eb73196435a34a5fcb.jpeg" ]
Says spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer	Contradiction	Since the introduction of the coronavirus vaccine, people have been spending more time outside their homes. With that has come more travel. And if you're a traveler, you've surely noticed an increase in price for things such as gas, rental cars and hotels. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, certainly has. In a July 20, 2021 tweet, Tiffany attributed big jumps in the price for car rentals, gas and hotels to 'reckless spending' by Democrats. The tweet noted that 'car rentals' are up 87%, gas prices are up 45.1% and hotel prices are up 16.9%. Before we begin, an important note: Tiffany does not offer a timeframe for the period he is citing and, to be sure, 'car rentals' is different than 'car rental costs.' We'll assume that he means the cost of rentals and that he is citing increases since the start of Biden's term -- but, in the end, the specific increases are not the most important part of this fact-check. The real question is one of blame. So, are Democratic bills and proposals -- many of which have not been passed or implemented yet -- fueling the rise in costs of travel? Let's unpack this one. Tiffany points to inflation When we asked Tiffany's staff for backup, staffers pointed to several articles about the American Rescue Plan Act-- advanced by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress -- and the risk that the plan would boost inflation to rates the country hasn't seen in decades. Of course, not every economist shares that view. Inflation, of course, occurs when prices rise, decreasing your purchasing power. For example, in 1980, a movie ticket cost on average $2.89, but by 2019 an average ticket cost $9.16. So if you had saved a $10 bill from 1980, it would buy fewer movie tickets now than it did then. According to economists, inflation is generally a product of several factors, including higher government spending, higher deficits and borrowing costs. (In this case, interest rates have remained steady, according to a June 10, 2021 report from the Washington Post, meaning it's cheap for the U.S. government to borrow money right now.) Day-to-day price changes, though, are driven by other factors, chiefly the laws of supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, costs go up. The same Post article notes that inflation rose by 5% between May 2020 and May 2021. That, of course, comes a year after most of the country was locked down and people were purchasing less -- and, notably, traveling much less. So, if inflation went up 5%, why have travel costs grown so much more? That's where supply and demand come in. Rental cars The rental car industry was hit especially hard by the pandemic. With almost no people traveling or renting cars, the top rental companies were forced to sell off about a third of their total fleet, according to a July 26, 2021 report in New York Magazine. Hertz, one of the largest, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once the pandemic ebbed and people began to travel again, a shortage of microchips caused car manufacturing to stall, limiting the ability of rental companies to restock their fleets. The rising demand for rentals has forced prices higher and higher, reaching upwards of $1,000 per trip for some travelers, depending on location and duration. Gas prices The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $3.18 on Aug. 3, 2021, according to the AAA Gas Price map. One year earlier, it was $2.18. Before that, prices had dipped as low as $.99 in some places. According to a June 10, 2021 fact check from USA TODAY, gas prices have been increasing since April 2020, after the pandemic forced prices down as people stayed home amid widespread closure orders aimed at controlling the coronavirus. The data also shows prices have been rising -- for the most part -- since before Joe Biden was elected and Democrats took control of the House and Senate. That is, when Republican Donald Trump was in office. So, clearly, action by Democrats is not solely responsible for the increase, as Tiffany claims. 'Gas prices fluctuate regardless of who is in office,' said Molly Hart, a public and government relations spokesperson for AAA, in an email. 'During the past year and a half, pump prices have primarily been driven by the pandemic's influence on supply and demand.' Some critics have tried to link the higher prices to cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other green energy policies proposed by the Biden Administration. But experts say they have not had any major impact on prices yet, though they may have an impact in the future. Hotel prices According to a June 20, 2021 report from USA TODAY, the COVID pandemic itself -- not Democratic-backed relief packages -- are behind these increases, too. Now that restrictions have been lifted, people are leaving their communities more often to travel. They're heading to Disney World, the beach or mountains more often, meaning there's more demand for hotel rooms or other short-term rentals. 'The price increase has been driven by a surge in demand,' the USA TODAY report said. For instance, a quarterly AAA survey of Wisconsin residents conducted in June 2021 found that 80% of respondents said they felt more comfortable traveling than they did three months earlier. Simply put, said Kevin Pahr, a professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, inflation did occur for many travel-related expenses, but it wasn't because of spending this year by the government. 'The recent spike in inflation can be primarily attributable to three main factors (rather than any stimulus plan),' Pahr said. 'The realization of pent-up demand, particularly in the travel, leisure, and hospitality industries, as the U.S. economy reopened and concerns over COVID-19 were mitigated, energy prices and supply chain disruptions.'	Our ruling Tiffany claimed that spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer. While inflation has gone up about 5% between May 2020 and May 2021, that doesn't account for the much larger spikes in the price of rental cars, gas and hotels, which are driven more by supply and demand issues, rather than a general growth in costs. During the pandemic, rental car companies sold off some of their cars to help make ends meet. Oil production dropped. And hotels stood mostly empty. But now demand is soaring, driving prices up. For a claim that is partially accurate but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False.	[ "105153-proof-38-fd1adb9c23caf3eb73196435a34a5fcb.jpeg" ]
Says spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer	Contradiction	Since the introduction of the coronavirus vaccine, people have been spending more time outside their homes. With that has come more travel. And if you're a traveler, you've surely noticed an increase in price for things such as gas, rental cars and hotels. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, certainly has. In a July 20, 2021 tweet, Tiffany attributed big jumps in the price for car rentals, gas and hotels to 'reckless spending' by Democrats. The tweet noted that 'car rentals' are up 87%, gas prices are up 45.1% and hotel prices are up 16.9%. Before we begin, an important note: Tiffany does not offer a timeframe for the period he is citing and, to be sure, 'car rentals' is different than 'car rental costs.' We'll assume that he means the cost of rentals and that he is citing increases since the start of Biden's term -- but, in the end, the specific increases are not the most important part of this fact-check. The real question is one of blame. So, are Democratic bills and proposals -- many of which have not been passed or implemented yet -- fueling the rise in costs of travel? Let's unpack this one. Tiffany points to inflation When we asked Tiffany's staff for backup, staffers pointed to several articles about the American Rescue Plan Act-- advanced by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress -- and the risk that the plan would boost inflation to rates the country hasn't seen in decades. Of course, not every economist shares that view. Inflation, of course, occurs when prices rise, decreasing your purchasing power. For example, in 1980, a movie ticket cost on average $2.89, but by 2019 an average ticket cost $9.16. So if you had saved a $10 bill from 1980, it would buy fewer movie tickets now than it did then. According to economists, inflation is generally a product of several factors, including higher government spending, higher deficits and borrowing costs. (In this case, interest rates have remained steady, according to a June 10, 2021 report from the Washington Post, meaning it's cheap for the U.S. government to borrow money right now.) Day-to-day price changes, though, are driven by other factors, chiefly the laws of supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, costs go up. The same Post article notes that inflation rose by 5% between May 2020 and May 2021. That, of course, comes a year after most of the country was locked down and people were purchasing less -- and, notably, traveling much less. So, if inflation went up 5%, why have travel costs grown so much more? That's where supply and demand come in. Rental cars The rental car industry was hit especially hard by the pandemic. With almost no people traveling or renting cars, the top rental companies were forced to sell off about a third of their total fleet, according to a July 26, 2021 report in New York Magazine. Hertz, one of the largest, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once the pandemic ebbed and people began to travel again, a shortage of microchips caused car manufacturing to stall, limiting the ability of rental companies to restock their fleets. The rising demand for rentals has forced prices higher and higher, reaching upwards of $1,000 per trip for some travelers, depending on location and duration. Gas prices The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $3.18 on Aug. 3, 2021, according to the AAA Gas Price map. One year earlier, it was $2.18. Before that, prices had dipped as low as $.99 in some places. According to a June 10, 2021 fact check from USA TODAY, gas prices have been increasing since April 2020, after the pandemic forced prices down as people stayed home amid widespread closure orders aimed at controlling the coronavirus. The data also shows prices have been rising -- for the most part -- since before Joe Biden was elected and Democrats took control of the House and Senate. That is, when Republican Donald Trump was in office. So, clearly, action by Democrats is not solely responsible for the increase, as Tiffany claims. 'Gas prices fluctuate regardless of who is in office,' said Molly Hart, a public and government relations spokesperson for AAA, in an email. 'During the past year and a half, pump prices have primarily been driven by the pandemic's influence on supply and demand.' Some critics have tried to link the higher prices to cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and other green energy policies proposed by the Biden Administration. But experts say they have not had any major impact on prices yet, though they may have an impact in the future. Hotel prices According to a June 20, 2021 report from USA TODAY, the COVID pandemic itself -- not Democratic-backed relief packages -- are behind these increases, too. Now that restrictions have been lifted, people are leaving their communities more often to travel. They're heading to Disney World, the beach or mountains more often, meaning there's more demand for hotel rooms or other short-term rentals. 'The price increase has been driven by a surge in demand,' the USA TODAY report said. For instance, a quarterly AAA survey of Wisconsin residents conducted in June 2021 found that 80% of respondents said they felt more comfortable traveling than they did three months earlier. Simply put, said Kevin Pahr, a professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, inflation did occur for many travel-related expenses, but it wasn't because of spending this year by the government. 'The recent spike in inflation can be primarily attributable to three main factors (rather than any stimulus plan),' Pahr said. 'The realization of pent-up demand, particularly in the travel, leisure, and hospitality industries, as the U.S. economy reopened and concerns over COVID-19 were mitigated, energy prices and supply chain disruptions.'	Our ruling Tiffany claimed that spending by Democrats is driving major jumps in car rentals, gas prices and hotel prices this summer. While inflation has gone up about 5% between May 2020 and May 2021, that doesn't account for the much larger spikes in the price of rental cars, gas and hotels, which are driven more by supply and demand issues, rather than a general growth in costs. During the pandemic, rental car companies sold off some of their cars to help make ends meet. Oil production dropped. And hotels stood mostly empty. But now demand is soaring, driving prices up. For a claim that is partially accurate but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, we rate it Mostly False.	[ "105153-proof-38-fd1adb9c23caf3eb73196435a34a5fcb.jpeg" ]
'80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.	Contradiction	No, Bill Gates, one of the world's leading proponents of COVID-19 vaccinations, did not say that 80% of the people who took the Moderna vaccine suffered significant side effects. Nevertheless, this claim was widely shared on Facebook: '80% of People Taking The #Maderna Vaccine Had Significant Side-Effectives Via #BillGates.' The post, which relies on a misleading video clip from comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan, 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 not uncommon for some people receiving the two-dose Moderna regimen to report pain in the arm that received the shot, or feeling tired or sick for a day or so, particularly after the second dose. But Gates did not say that 80% of people receiving the Moderna vaccine experience significant side effects. And reports of 'severe adverse events' associated with the Moderna vaccine are extremely rare. Post relies on video that misquotes Gates The Facebook post includes video from a Rogan podcast in which Rogan recalls that Alex Jones, who runs a website that has published fake news and conspiracy theories, told him on a previous podcast that '80% of the people that took the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, particularly after the second dose.' Rogan says that after he received pushback about Jones' claim, 'I played the Bill Gates clip where Bill Gates is being interviewed by CBS and he says it himself.' But Gates didn't say that in the excerpt that Rogan played. In fact, he didn't say it at any point in the CBS interview. Here's that portion of CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell's interview with Gates, which was done in July. O'Donnell: 'You mentioned side effects. The side effects for the Moderna vaccine sound concerning. We looked. After the second dose, at least 80% of participants experienced a systemic side effect, ranging from severe chills to fevers. So, are these vaccines safe?' Gates: 'Well, the FDA, not being pressured, will look hard at that. The FDA is the gold standard of regulators and their current guidance on this, if they stick with that, is very, very appropriate. The side effects were not super-severe; that is, it didn't cause permanent health problems. Moderna did have to go with a fairly high dose to get the antibodies. Some of the other vaccines are able to go with lower doses to get responses that are pretty high, including the' Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines. ... O'Donnell: 'But everybody with a high dose had a side effect.' Gates: 'Yeah, but some of that is not dramatic, where it's just super-painful. But, yes, we need to make sure there's not severe side effects. The FDA, I think, will do a good job of that, despite the pressure.' Video includes two other misleading clips The post is also misleading in that its video includes two other misleading clips. As Gates is heard speaking in the CBS interview, clips roll showing two women. No audio is played with those clips and no other description of them is given. One shows a Tennessee nurse who became dizzy and was assisted to the ground after getting the Pfizer vaccine. She recovered and later said that she regularly feels dizzy after experiencing any kind of pain, even after stubbing a toe. The other clip is of an Indiana woman seated in a hospital bed shaking. She had claimed in viral videos in January that she suffered from uncontrollable shaking after taking the first round of the Moderna vaccine. Doctors at a neuroscience hospital told the woman her problem was likely stress-related, her fiance told an Indiana newspaper. Moderna's side effects So, where might the 80% figure claimed in the post have originated? In July, about a week before Gates' CBS interview, the New England Journal of Medicine published a preliminary report on a trial involving 45 healthy adults who were given two doses of the Moderna vaccine, 28 days apart. They were divided into three groups of 15, with each group receiving a different dose level. In an article about that report, Wired magazine said: 'By the time they'd had two doses, every single one was showing signs of headaches, chills, or fatigue, and for at least 80%, this could have been enough to interfere with their normal activities.' Moderna later submitted data from a large trial to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A December FDA report said that out of 15,184 people who received the vaccine, 82 had a serious adverse event, such as death, heart attack or pneumonia - fewer than 0.5%. That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. The most commonly reported side effects of the Moderna vaccine, which typically lasted several days, were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes in the same arm as the injection, nausea and vomiting, and fever, according to the FDA. More people experienced those side effects after the second dose. There is a remote chance that the vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction, the FDA says.	Our ruling A Facebook post claimed: '80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.' Gates was asked in July about 80% of the people in an early trial of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine reporting 'systemic' side effects such as severe chills and fevers. He did not say that 80% of people who got that vaccine experienced significant side effects. An FDA report in December said 0.5% of 15,184 people who took the Moderna vaccine experienced a 'severe adverse event.' That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. We rate the post False.	[ "105159-proof-18-de264b5b3c6c12ec51d7ba8586fa7fe4.jpg" ]
'80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.	Contradiction	No, Bill Gates, one of the world's leading proponents of COVID-19 vaccinations, did not say that 80% of the people who took the Moderna vaccine suffered significant side effects. Nevertheless, this claim was widely shared on Facebook: '80% of People Taking The #Maderna Vaccine Had Significant Side-Effectives Via #BillGates.' The post, which relies on a misleading video clip from comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan, 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 not uncommon for some people receiving the two-dose Moderna regimen to report pain in the arm that received the shot, or feeling tired or sick for a day or so, particularly after the second dose. But Gates did not say that 80% of people receiving the Moderna vaccine experience significant side effects. And reports of 'severe adverse events' associated with the Moderna vaccine are extremely rare. Post relies on video that misquotes Gates The Facebook post includes video from a Rogan podcast in which Rogan recalls that Alex Jones, who runs a website that has published fake news and conspiracy theories, told him on a previous podcast that '80% of the people that took the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, particularly after the second dose.' Rogan says that after he received pushback about Jones' claim, 'I played the Bill Gates clip where Bill Gates is being interviewed by CBS and he says it himself.' But Gates didn't say that in the excerpt that Rogan played. In fact, he didn't say it at any point in the CBS interview. Here's that portion of CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell's interview with Gates, which was done in July. O'Donnell: 'You mentioned side effects. The side effects for the Moderna vaccine sound concerning. We looked. After the second dose, at least 80% of participants experienced a systemic side effect, ranging from severe chills to fevers. So, are these vaccines safe?' Gates: 'Well, the FDA, not being pressured, will look hard at that. The FDA is the gold standard of regulators and their current guidance on this, if they stick with that, is very, very appropriate. The side effects were not super-severe; that is, it didn't cause permanent health problems. Moderna did have to go with a fairly high dose to get the antibodies. Some of the other vaccines are able to go with lower doses to get responses that are pretty high, including the' Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines. ... O'Donnell: 'But everybody with a high dose had a side effect.' Gates: 'Yeah, but some of that is not dramatic, where it's just super-painful. But, yes, we need to make sure there's not severe side effects. The FDA, I think, will do a good job of that, despite the pressure.' Video includes two other misleading clips The post is also misleading in that its video includes two other misleading clips. As Gates is heard speaking in the CBS interview, clips roll showing two women. No audio is played with those clips and no other description of them is given. One shows a Tennessee nurse who became dizzy and was assisted to the ground after getting the Pfizer vaccine. She recovered and later said that she regularly feels dizzy after experiencing any kind of pain, even after stubbing a toe. The other clip is of an Indiana woman seated in a hospital bed shaking. She had claimed in viral videos in January that she suffered from uncontrollable shaking after taking the first round of the Moderna vaccine. Doctors at a neuroscience hospital told the woman her problem was likely stress-related, her fiance told an Indiana newspaper. Moderna's side effects So, where might the 80% figure claimed in the post have originated? In July, about a week before Gates' CBS interview, the New England Journal of Medicine published a preliminary report on a trial involving 45 healthy adults who were given two doses of the Moderna vaccine, 28 days apart. They were divided into three groups of 15, with each group receiving a different dose level. In an article about that report, Wired magazine said: 'By the time they'd had two doses, every single one was showing signs of headaches, chills, or fatigue, and for at least 80%, this could have been enough to interfere with their normal activities.' Moderna later submitted data from a large trial to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A December FDA report said that out of 15,184 people who received the vaccine, 82 had a serious adverse event, such as death, heart attack or pneumonia - fewer than 0.5%. That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. The most commonly reported side effects of the Moderna vaccine, which typically lasted several days, were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes in the same arm as the injection, nausea and vomiting, and fever, according to the FDA. More people experienced those side effects after the second dose. There is a remote chance that the vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction, the FDA says.	Our ruling A Facebook post claimed: '80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.' Gates was asked in July about 80% of the people in an early trial of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine reporting 'systemic' side effects such as severe chills and fevers. He did not say that 80% of people who got that vaccine experienced significant side effects. An FDA report in December said 0.5% of 15,184 people who took the Moderna vaccine experienced a 'severe adverse event.' That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. We rate the post False.	[ "105159-proof-18-de264b5b3c6c12ec51d7ba8586fa7fe4.jpg" ]
'80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.	Contradiction	No, Bill Gates, one of the world's leading proponents of COVID-19 vaccinations, did not say that 80% of the people who took the Moderna vaccine suffered significant side effects. Nevertheless, this claim was widely shared on Facebook: '80% of People Taking The #Maderna Vaccine Had Significant Side-Effectives Via #BillGates.' The post, which relies on a misleading video clip from comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan, 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 not uncommon for some people receiving the two-dose Moderna regimen to report pain in the arm that received the shot, or feeling tired or sick for a day or so, particularly after the second dose. But Gates did not say that 80% of people receiving the Moderna vaccine experience significant side effects. And reports of 'severe adverse events' associated with the Moderna vaccine are extremely rare. Post relies on video that misquotes Gates The Facebook post includes video from a Rogan podcast in which Rogan recalls that Alex Jones, who runs a website that has published fake news and conspiracy theories, told him on a previous podcast that '80% of the people that took the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, particularly after the second dose.' Rogan says that after he received pushback about Jones' claim, 'I played the Bill Gates clip where Bill Gates is being interviewed by CBS and he says it himself.' But Gates didn't say that in the excerpt that Rogan played. In fact, he didn't say it at any point in the CBS interview. Here's that portion of CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell's interview with Gates, which was done in July. O'Donnell: 'You mentioned side effects. The side effects for the Moderna vaccine sound concerning. We looked. After the second dose, at least 80% of participants experienced a systemic side effect, ranging from severe chills to fevers. So, are these vaccines safe?' Gates: 'Well, the FDA, not being pressured, will look hard at that. The FDA is the gold standard of regulators and their current guidance on this, if they stick with that, is very, very appropriate. The side effects were not super-severe; that is, it didn't cause permanent health problems. Moderna did have to go with a fairly high dose to get the antibodies. Some of the other vaccines are able to go with lower doses to get responses that are pretty high, including the' Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer vaccines. ... O'Donnell: 'But everybody with a high dose had a side effect.' Gates: 'Yeah, but some of that is not dramatic, where it's just super-painful. But, yes, we need to make sure there's not severe side effects. The FDA, I think, will do a good job of that, despite the pressure.' Video includes two other misleading clips The post is also misleading in that its video includes two other misleading clips. As Gates is heard speaking in the CBS interview, clips roll showing two women. No audio is played with those clips and no other description of them is given. One shows a Tennessee nurse who became dizzy and was assisted to the ground after getting the Pfizer vaccine. She recovered and later said that she regularly feels dizzy after experiencing any kind of pain, even after stubbing a toe. The other clip is of an Indiana woman seated in a hospital bed shaking. She had claimed in viral videos in January that she suffered from uncontrollable shaking after taking the first round of the Moderna vaccine. Doctors at a neuroscience hospital told the woman her problem was likely stress-related, her fiance told an Indiana newspaper. Moderna's side effects So, where might the 80% figure claimed in the post have originated? In July, about a week before Gates' CBS interview, the New England Journal of Medicine published a preliminary report on a trial involving 45 healthy adults who were given two doses of the Moderna vaccine, 28 days apart. They were divided into three groups of 15, with each group receiving a different dose level. In an article about that report, Wired magazine said: 'By the time they'd had two doses, every single one was showing signs of headaches, chills, or fatigue, and for at least 80%, this could have been enough to interfere with their normal activities.' Moderna later submitted data from a large trial to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A December FDA report said that out of 15,184 people who received the vaccine, 82 had a serious adverse event, such as death, heart attack or pneumonia - fewer than 0.5%. That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. The most commonly reported side effects of the Moderna vaccine, which typically lasted several days, were pain at the injection site, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes in the same arm as the injection, nausea and vomiting, and fever, according to the FDA. More people experienced those side effects after the second dose. There is a remote chance that the vaccine could cause a severe allergic reaction, the FDA says.	Our ruling A Facebook post claimed: '80% of people taking the Moderna vaccine had significant side effects, via Bill Gates.' Gates was asked in July about 80% of the people in an early trial of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine reporting 'systemic' side effects such as severe chills and fevers. He did not say that 80% of people who got that vaccine experienced significant side effects. An FDA report in December said 0.5% of 15,184 people who took the Moderna vaccine experienced a 'severe adverse event.' That was the same level for the placebo group. There was no indication the vaccine caused any of the serious events. We rate the post False.	[ "105159-proof-18-de264b5b3c6c12ec51d7ba8586fa7fe4.jpg" ]
Wisconsin voter turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020.	Contradiction	The long wait for presidential election results has created a void where citizens are seeking information on how we got here - a void being filled often with poorly researched information. Donald Trump Jr. was among the many on social media the day after the election reacting to voting numbers without first considering or researching whether they're legitimate. The president's son tweeted 'I'm calling bull****,' at about 2 p.m. on Nov. 4, sharing another tweet that claimed turnout in Wisconsin jumped from 67.34% in 2016 to 89.25% in 2020. (Eric Trump, another of the president's sons, posted the same thing on Facebook, saying, 'Looks like fraud!') It fed into the false narrative swirling among conservatives that Wisconsin and other key states went to Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a result of voter fraud. The turnout claim - retweeted based on Trump Jr.'s share more than 13,000 times - is absurd and based on a misunderstanding of basic election math. Twitter has since suppressed the original tweet, noting it 'might be misleading about an election.' It is misleading. The real turnout numbers Wisconsin had more than 3.6 million registered voters heading into Election Day, and more than 3.2 million Wisconsinites voted in the presidential race. But those aren't the numbers used to calculate turnout here. For starters, Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration, so that number of registered voters goes up throughout the day. In 2016, for example, 12.7% of voters registered on Election Day, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Even more important, registered voters is the wrong figure entirely for calculating turnout. Voter turnout in a same-day registration state is based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot. So when you divide the number of votes cast in Wisconsin - 3,278,963 as of Nov. 5 - by the voting-age population in Wisconsin (4,536,293 as of 2019, according to the elections commission), you get a turnout rate of 72.3%. That's the highest rate ever behind the 2004 election, but solidly in the range of past presidential contests here. Recent presidential election turnouts in Wisconsin: 2020 - 72.3% 2016 - 67.3% 2012 - 70.4% 2008 - 69.2% 2004 - 72.9% 2000 - 67% It is also worth noting that while Biden received about 250,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Trump exceeded his own 2016 totals by 14.6% percent, or about 200,000 votes. So, a good chunk of the increased turnout was due to his supporters.	Our ruling Trump Jr. shared a claim that Wisconsin's turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020, and intimated it is due to fraud or something nefarious. But it's due to bad math. Turnout is measured as a percentage of eligible voters, not registered voters. Trump Jr.'s figures use eligible voters for the 2016 figure but registered voters for 2020. Using the proper denominator for 2020 shows a turnout around 72%, firmly in the range of past presidential elections. We rate this Pants on Fire!	[ "105162-proof-43-e9de37fd930215501bf1b39a7fb10aaf.jpg" ]
Wisconsin voter turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020.	Contradiction	The long wait for presidential election results has created a void where citizens are seeking information on how we got here - a void being filled often with poorly researched information. Donald Trump Jr. was among the many on social media the day after the election reacting to voting numbers without first considering or researching whether they're legitimate. The president's son tweeted 'I'm calling bull****,' at about 2 p.m. on Nov. 4, sharing another tweet that claimed turnout in Wisconsin jumped from 67.34% in 2016 to 89.25% in 2020. (Eric Trump, another of the president's sons, posted the same thing on Facebook, saying, 'Looks like fraud!') It fed into the false narrative swirling among conservatives that Wisconsin and other key states went to Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a result of voter fraud. The turnout claim - retweeted based on Trump Jr.'s share more than 13,000 times - is absurd and based on a misunderstanding of basic election math. Twitter has since suppressed the original tweet, noting it 'might be misleading about an election.' It is misleading. The real turnout numbers Wisconsin had more than 3.6 million registered voters heading into Election Day, and more than 3.2 million Wisconsinites voted in the presidential race. But those aren't the numbers used to calculate turnout here. For starters, Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration, so that number of registered voters goes up throughout the day. In 2016, for example, 12.7% of voters registered on Election Day, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Even more important, registered voters is the wrong figure entirely for calculating turnout. Voter turnout in a same-day registration state is based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot. So when you divide the number of votes cast in Wisconsin - 3,278,963 as of Nov. 5 - by the voting-age population in Wisconsin (4,536,293 as of 2019, according to the elections commission), you get a turnout rate of 72.3%. That's the highest rate ever behind the 2004 election, but solidly in the range of past presidential contests here. Recent presidential election turnouts in Wisconsin: 2020 - 72.3% 2016 - 67.3% 2012 - 70.4% 2008 - 69.2% 2004 - 72.9% 2000 - 67% It is also worth noting that while Biden received about 250,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Trump exceeded his own 2016 totals by 14.6% percent, or about 200,000 votes. So, a good chunk of the increased turnout was due to his supporters.	Our ruling Trump Jr. shared a claim that Wisconsin's turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020, and intimated it is due to fraud or something nefarious. But it's due to bad math. Turnout is measured as a percentage of eligible voters, not registered voters. Trump Jr.'s figures use eligible voters for the 2016 figure but registered voters for 2020. Using the proper denominator for 2020 shows a turnout around 72%, firmly in the range of past presidential elections. We rate this Pants on Fire!	[ "105162-proof-43-e9de37fd930215501bf1b39a7fb10aaf.jpg" ]
Wisconsin voter turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020.	Contradiction	The long wait for presidential election results has created a void where citizens are seeking information on how we got here - a void being filled often with poorly researched information. Donald Trump Jr. was among the many on social media the day after the election reacting to voting numbers without first considering or researching whether they're legitimate. The president's son tweeted 'I'm calling bull****,' at about 2 p.m. on Nov. 4, sharing another tweet that claimed turnout in Wisconsin jumped from 67.34% in 2016 to 89.25% in 2020. (Eric Trump, another of the president's sons, posted the same thing on Facebook, saying, 'Looks like fraud!') It fed into the false narrative swirling among conservatives that Wisconsin and other key states went to Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a result of voter fraud. The turnout claim - retweeted based on Trump Jr.'s share more than 13,000 times - is absurd and based on a misunderstanding of basic election math. Twitter has since suppressed the original tweet, noting it 'might be misleading about an election.' It is misleading. The real turnout numbers Wisconsin had more than 3.6 million registered voters heading into Election Day, and more than 3.2 million Wisconsinites voted in the presidential race. But those aren't the numbers used to calculate turnout here. For starters, Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration, so that number of registered voters goes up throughout the day. In 2016, for example, 12.7% of voters registered on Election Day, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Even more important, registered voters is the wrong figure entirely for calculating turnout. Voter turnout in a same-day registration state is based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot. So when you divide the number of votes cast in Wisconsin - 3,278,963 as of Nov. 5 - by the voting-age population in Wisconsin (4,536,293 as of 2019, according to the elections commission), you get a turnout rate of 72.3%. That's the highest rate ever behind the 2004 election, but solidly in the range of past presidential contests here. Recent presidential election turnouts in Wisconsin: 2020 - 72.3% 2016 - 67.3% 2012 - 70.4% 2008 - 69.2% 2004 - 72.9% 2000 - 67% It is also worth noting that while Biden received about 250,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Trump exceeded his own 2016 totals by 14.6% percent, or about 200,000 votes. So, a good chunk of the increased turnout was due to his supporters.	Our ruling Trump Jr. shared a claim that Wisconsin's turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020, and intimated it is due to fraud or something nefarious. But it's due to bad math. Turnout is measured as a percentage of eligible voters, not registered voters. Trump Jr.'s figures use eligible voters for the 2016 figure but registered voters for 2020. Using the proper denominator for 2020 shows a turnout around 72%, firmly in the range of past presidential elections. We rate this Pants on Fire!	[ "105162-proof-43-e9de37fd930215501bf1b39a7fb10aaf.jpg" ]
Wisconsin voter turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020.	Contradiction	The long wait for presidential election results has created a void where citizens are seeking information on how we got here - a void being filled often with poorly researched information. Donald Trump Jr. was among the many on social media the day after the election reacting to voting numbers without first considering or researching whether they're legitimate. The president's son tweeted 'I'm calling bull****,' at about 2 p.m. on Nov. 4, sharing another tweet that claimed turnout in Wisconsin jumped from 67.34% in 2016 to 89.25% in 2020. (Eric Trump, another of the president's sons, posted the same thing on Facebook, saying, 'Looks like fraud!') It fed into the false narrative swirling among conservatives that Wisconsin and other key states went to Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a result of voter fraud. The turnout claim - retweeted based on Trump Jr.'s share more than 13,000 times - is absurd and based on a misunderstanding of basic election math. Twitter has since suppressed the original tweet, noting it 'might be misleading about an election.' It is misleading. The real turnout numbers Wisconsin had more than 3.6 million registered voters heading into Election Day, and more than 3.2 million Wisconsinites voted in the presidential race. But those aren't the numbers used to calculate turnout here. For starters, Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration, so that number of registered voters goes up throughout the day. In 2016, for example, 12.7% of voters registered on Election Day, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Even more important, registered voters is the wrong figure entirely for calculating turnout. Voter turnout in a same-day registration state is based on the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot. So when you divide the number of votes cast in Wisconsin - 3,278,963 as of Nov. 5 - by the voting-age population in Wisconsin (4,536,293 as of 2019, according to the elections commission), you get a turnout rate of 72.3%. That's the highest rate ever behind the 2004 election, but solidly in the range of past presidential contests here. Recent presidential election turnouts in Wisconsin: 2020 - 72.3% 2016 - 67.3% 2012 - 70.4% 2008 - 69.2% 2004 - 72.9% 2000 - 67% It is also worth noting that while Biden received about 250,000 more votes than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016, Trump exceeded his own 2016 totals by 14.6% percent, or about 200,000 votes. So, a good chunk of the increased turnout was due to his supporters.	Our ruling Trump Jr. shared a claim that Wisconsin's turnout jumped from 67% in 2016 to 89% in 2020, and intimated it is due to fraud or something nefarious. But it's due to bad math. Turnout is measured as a percentage of eligible voters, not registered voters. Trump Jr.'s figures use eligible voters for the 2016 figure but registered voters for 2020. Using the proper denominator for 2020 shows a turnout around 72%, firmly in the range of past presidential elections. We rate this Pants on Fire!	[ "105162-proof-43-e9de37fd930215501bf1b39a7fb10aaf.jpg" ]
$100B contact tracing bill 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.	Contradiction	Proposed legislation in the U.S. House would provide new funding for testing and contract tracing to help public-health officials track and control the spread of the coronavirus. But a Facebook post claims that the $100 billion bill 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.' The May 12 post, which had more than 100,000 views by the next day, 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 $100 billion is strictly targeted to fight COVID-19. It would fund not only contact tracing, a process aimed at stopping the spread of the disease, but also COVID-19 testing and services for people isolating at home. What is contact tracing? Contact tracing has become a key strategy of the White House plan to reopen states that went into shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. The process tasks public health workers with learning as much as they can about whom a patient has been in contact with, so they can be notified about their potential exposure. While it does raise some privacy concerns, contact tracing has been used to slow the spread of other diseases, such as SARS and HIV. It's a common strategy in public health agencies across the country. State and local public health officials are hiring thousands of new contact tracers, but some experts say the federal government needs to spend billions of dollars to bolster those efforts. The post The claim about the proposed legislation is made by former television news reporter Ben Swann, who describes himself as a 'journalist who speaks truth to power!' He runs TruthInMedia.com, which says it provides 'content focusing on issues that impact humanity.' The headline of Swann's post is: 'H.R. 6666: $100 Billion Contact Tracing Bill is About Controlling/Tracking Population, Not About Coronavirus.' The post says: 'A House resolution from Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush that would put Big Government in charge of tracking citizens' movements as they relate to COVID-19 mitigation efforts - even sending health bureaucrats to 'individuals' residences, as necessary,' as the legislation states.' That wording is nearly the same as the first paragraph of a Washington Times article that's labeled opinion/analysis and was published the same day as the Facebook post. The post also includes a 15-minute video in which Swann claims the bill would create 'a massive new surveillance structure in this country.' In the video, which we did not fact-check, Swann argues that contact tracing is useful only in the early stages of an outbreak and now 'is completely useless' in the United States because 'a massive amount of the population have been exposed to the disease.' Based on that, Swann argues that the contact tracing supported by the bill would be done to 'monitor you in your own home, traced in your home, your associations monitored, your movements monitored.' Bill broader than contact tracing H.R. 6666 was introduced by Rush on May 1 and is called the COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act, or TRACE Act. It would provide $100 billion in grants in the current fiscal year to faith-based organization, clinics, medical centers and other organizations that: Perform testing for COVID-19; Do contact tracing; or Provide services for individuals who are isolating at home. The bill would 'authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals' residences, and for other purposes.' Swann told PolitiFact that the 'other purposes' wording 'leaves room for interpretation and expansion.'	Our ruling A Facebook post claims new federal legislation to support COVID-19 testing and contact tracing 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.' The bill strictly targets the novel coronavirus. It would provide $100 billion to organizations that do COVID-19 testing or contact tracing or that provide services to people who are isolating at home. We rate the Facebook post False.	[ "105163-proof-19-fce7964ba7383ec2deebcd50313478c2.JPG.jpg" ]
$100B contact tracing bill 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.	Contradiction	Proposed legislation in the U.S. House would provide new funding for testing and contract tracing to help public-health officials track and control the spread of the coronavirus. But a Facebook post claims that the $100 billion bill 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.' The May 12 post, which had more than 100,000 views by the next day, 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 $100 billion is strictly targeted to fight COVID-19. It would fund not only contact tracing, a process aimed at stopping the spread of the disease, but also COVID-19 testing and services for people isolating at home. What is contact tracing? Contact tracing has become a key strategy of the White House plan to reopen states that went into shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. The process tasks public health workers with learning as much as they can about whom a patient has been in contact with, so they can be notified about their potential exposure. While it does raise some privacy concerns, contact tracing has been used to slow the spread of other diseases, such as SARS and HIV. It's a common strategy in public health agencies across the country. State and local public health officials are hiring thousands of new contact tracers, but some experts say the federal government needs to spend billions of dollars to bolster those efforts. The post The claim about the proposed legislation is made by former television news reporter Ben Swann, who describes himself as a 'journalist who speaks truth to power!' He runs TruthInMedia.com, which says it provides 'content focusing on issues that impact humanity.' The headline of Swann's post is: 'H.R. 6666: $100 Billion Contact Tracing Bill is About Controlling/Tracking Population, Not About Coronavirus.' The post says: 'A House resolution from Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush that would put Big Government in charge of tracking citizens' movements as they relate to COVID-19 mitigation efforts - even sending health bureaucrats to 'individuals' residences, as necessary,' as the legislation states.' That wording is nearly the same as the first paragraph of a Washington Times article that's labeled opinion/analysis and was published the same day as the Facebook post. The post also includes a 15-minute video in which Swann claims the bill would create 'a massive new surveillance structure in this country.' In the video, which we did not fact-check, Swann argues that contact tracing is useful only in the early stages of an outbreak and now 'is completely useless' in the United States because 'a massive amount of the population have been exposed to the disease.' Based on that, Swann argues that the contact tracing supported by the bill would be done to 'monitor you in your own home, traced in your home, your associations monitored, your movements monitored.' Bill broader than contact tracing H.R. 6666 was introduced by Rush on May 1 and is called the COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act, or TRACE Act. It would provide $100 billion in grants in the current fiscal year to faith-based organization, clinics, medical centers and other organizations that: Perform testing for COVID-19; Do contact tracing; or Provide services for individuals who are isolating at home. The bill would 'authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals' residences, and for other purposes.' Swann told PolitiFact that the 'other purposes' wording 'leaves room for interpretation and expansion.'	Our ruling A Facebook post claims new federal legislation to support COVID-19 testing and contact tracing 'is about controlling/tracking population, not about coronavirus.' The bill strictly targets the novel coronavirus. It would provide $100 billion to organizations that do COVID-19 testing or contact tracing or that provide services to people who are isolating at home. We rate the Facebook post False.	[ "105163-proof-19-fce7964ba7383ec2deebcd50313478c2.JPG.jpg" ]
'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.	Contradiction	Speaking about the controversial new elections law passed by Republicans in Georgia, Fox Business Network reporter Edward Lawrence wrongly claimed that the law's provisions around early voting will allow Georgians to vote on Sundays for the first time. 'The fact is the law expands early voting to include Saturdays and Sundays,' Lawrence said April 2 on Fox News. 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's inaccurate. Sundays have been popular early voting days in Georgia for years among Black voters who use 'souls to the polls' events to mobilize church goers to the ballot box. In the 2020 general election, approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays, said Walter Jones, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office. Fox News did not offer comment for this fact-check. What Georgia's new law means for Sunday voting After Georgia voters sent President Joe Biden and a pair of Democratic senators to Washington in the 2020 elections, the state's GOP lawmakers drafted bills that they said would protect the vote, despite the fact that the state's elections officials said the elections were safe and secure. The law signed by Republican Gov. Brain Kemp made several changes to elections in the state, including adjustments related to early voting on the weekends leading up to Election Day. In 2020, counties had to offer one Saturday for early voting, and they had the option to make an additional Saturday and two Sundays available for early voting. The new law requires counties to provide two Saturdays of early voting and gives them the option of also offering two Sundays. Georgia Republicans had initially proposed scrapping Sunday early voting altogether, but they backtracked following criticism. The history of Sunday voting in Georgia Voting after Sunday church services is a tradition for Black communities in Georgia and across the country that traces back decades to the civil rights movement. The phrase 'souls to the polls' started being used in Florida in the 1990s, according to David D. Daniels III, a professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Sunday early voting was first allowed in Georgia in 2014, and it has been available for every state and federal election since then, Jones said. Not every Georgia county has allowed Sunday voting in the past. The text of the new law says that 'more than 100 counties have never offered voting on Sunday.' But a list provided by the Georgia secretary of state's office shows that during the 2020 general election, the 16 counties that offered Sunday early voting included several of the state's most populous, such as Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Chatham, Clayton and Richmond counties. In Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta, early voting for the Nov. 3 election was offered Sunday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 25. Early voting data provided by the county - the state's second largest - shows that over 19,000 voters cast their ballots on those Sundays. Black voters made up roughly 37% of those who voted early on Sundays in Georgia, even as Black people make up about 32% of the state's population, the New York Times reported, citing internal data from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group. The Center for New Data, a nonprofit research group, also found that in 107 of Georgia's counties, African Americans voted at a higher rate on weekends than voters in the same counties who identify as white. Strong turnout among Black voters was considered key to the Democratic victories in 2020.	Our ruling Lawrence said, 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's not accurate. Early voting on Sundays has been allowed in Georgia for every federal and state election since 2014, although many counties have never offered it. For the 2020 general election, several of the state's most populous counties offered Sunday early voting, and approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays statewide. We rate Lawrence's statement False. RELATED: What's in Georgia's new voting law that lost it the All-Star Game	[ "105196-proof-25-0c193355ff6114c01cdbc24be42543b7.jpg" ]
'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.	Contradiction	Speaking about the controversial new elections law passed by Republicans in Georgia, Fox Business Network reporter Edward Lawrence wrongly claimed that the law's provisions around early voting will allow Georgians to vote on Sundays for the first time. 'The fact is the law expands early voting to include Saturdays and Sundays,' Lawrence said April 2 on Fox News. 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's inaccurate. Sundays have been popular early voting days in Georgia for years among Black voters who use 'souls to the polls' events to mobilize church goers to the ballot box. In the 2020 general election, approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays, said Walter Jones, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office. Fox News did not offer comment for this fact-check. What Georgia's new law means for Sunday voting After Georgia voters sent President Joe Biden and a pair of Democratic senators to Washington in the 2020 elections, the state's GOP lawmakers drafted bills that they said would protect the vote, despite the fact that the state's elections officials said the elections were safe and secure. The law signed by Republican Gov. Brain Kemp made several changes to elections in the state, including adjustments related to early voting on the weekends leading up to Election Day. In 2020, counties had to offer one Saturday for early voting, and they had the option to make an additional Saturday and two Sundays available for early voting. The new law requires counties to provide two Saturdays of early voting and gives them the option of also offering two Sundays. Georgia Republicans had initially proposed scrapping Sunday early voting altogether, but they backtracked following criticism. The history of Sunday voting in Georgia Voting after Sunday church services is a tradition for Black communities in Georgia and across the country that traces back decades to the civil rights movement. The phrase 'souls to the polls' started being used in Florida in the 1990s, according to David D. Daniels III, a professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Sunday early voting was first allowed in Georgia in 2014, and it has been available for every state and federal election since then, Jones said. Not every Georgia county has allowed Sunday voting in the past. The text of the new law says that 'more than 100 counties have never offered voting on Sunday.' But a list provided by the Georgia secretary of state's office shows that during the 2020 general election, the 16 counties that offered Sunday early voting included several of the state's most populous, such as Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Chatham, Clayton and Richmond counties. In Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta, early voting for the Nov. 3 election was offered Sunday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 25. Early voting data provided by the county - the state's second largest - shows that over 19,000 voters cast their ballots on those Sundays. Black voters made up roughly 37% of those who voted early on Sundays in Georgia, even as Black people make up about 32% of the state's population, the New York Times reported, citing internal data from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group. The Center for New Data, a nonprofit research group, also found that in 107 of Georgia's counties, African Americans voted at a higher rate on weekends than voters in the same counties who identify as white. Strong turnout among Black voters was considered key to the Democratic victories in 2020.	Our ruling Lawrence said, 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's not accurate. Early voting on Sundays has been allowed in Georgia for every federal and state election since 2014, although many counties have never offered it. For the 2020 general election, several of the state's most populous counties offered Sunday early voting, and approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays statewide. We rate Lawrence's statement False. RELATED: What's in Georgia's new voting law that lost it the All-Star Game	[ "105196-proof-25-0c193355ff6114c01cdbc24be42543b7.jpg" ]
'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.	Contradiction	Speaking about the controversial new elections law passed by Republicans in Georgia, Fox Business Network reporter Edward Lawrence wrongly claimed that the law's provisions around early voting will allow Georgians to vote on Sundays for the first time. 'The fact is the law expands early voting to include Saturdays and Sundays,' Lawrence said April 2 on Fox News. 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's inaccurate. Sundays have been popular early voting days in Georgia for years among Black voters who use 'souls to the polls' events to mobilize church goers to the ballot box. In the 2020 general election, approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays, said Walter Jones, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office. Fox News did not offer comment for this fact-check. What Georgia's new law means for Sunday voting After Georgia voters sent President Joe Biden and a pair of Democratic senators to Washington in the 2020 elections, the state's GOP lawmakers drafted bills that they said would protect the vote, despite the fact that the state's elections officials said the elections were safe and secure. The law signed by Republican Gov. Brain Kemp made several changes to elections in the state, including adjustments related to early voting on the weekends leading up to Election Day. In 2020, counties had to offer one Saturday for early voting, and they had the option to make an additional Saturday and two Sundays available for early voting. The new law requires counties to provide two Saturdays of early voting and gives them the option of also offering two Sundays. Georgia Republicans had initially proposed scrapping Sunday early voting altogether, but they backtracked following criticism. The history of Sunday voting in Georgia Voting after Sunday church services is a tradition for Black communities in Georgia and across the country that traces back decades to the civil rights movement. The phrase 'souls to the polls' started being used in Florida in the 1990s, according to David D. Daniels III, a professor of church history at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Sunday early voting was first allowed in Georgia in 2014, and it has been available for every state and federal election since then, Jones said. Not every Georgia county has allowed Sunday voting in the past. The text of the new law says that 'more than 100 counties have never offered voting on Sunday.' But a list provided by the Georgia secretary of state's office shows that during the 2020 general election, the 16 counties that offered Sunday early voting included several of the state's most populous, such as Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Chatham, Clayton and Richmond counties. In Gwinnett County northeast of Atlanta, early voting for the Nov. 3 election was offered Sunday, Oct. 18, and Sunday, Oct. 25. Early voting data provided by the county - the state's second largest - shows that over 19,000 voters cast their ballots on those Sundays. Black voters made up roughly 37% of those who voted early on Sundays in Georgia, even as Black people make up about 32% of the state's population, the New York Times reported, citing internal data from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group. The Center for New Data, a nonprofit research group, also found that in 107 of Georgia's counties, African Americans voted at a higher rate on weekends than voters in the same counties who identify as white. Strong turnout among Black voters was considered key to the Democratic victories in 2020.	Our ruling Lawrence said, 'Sunday was never used before as a voting day in Georgia.' That's not accurate. Early voting on Sundays has been allowed in Georgia for every federal and state election since 2014, although many counties have never offered it. For the 2020 general election, several of the state's most populous counties offered Sunday early voting, and approximately 65,000 votes were cast on Sundays statewide. We rate Lawrence's statement False. RELATED: What's in Georgia's new voting law that lost it the All-Star Game	[ "105196-proof-25-0c193355ff6114c01cdbc24be42543b7.jpg" ]
Says Biden 'didn't win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.	Contradiction	A GOP-led review of 2 million ballots in Maricopa County, Ariz., confirmed on Sept. 24 what official election results showed months ago: Joe Biden won the county in the 2020 election. But speaking the next night to a crowd of fans in Georgia, Trump insisted that Biden lost. 'We won on the Arizona forensic audit yesterday at a level that you wouldn't believe,' Trump said during a Sept. 25 'Save America' rally in Perry, Ga, referring to the ballot review ordered by Republicans in the Arizona state Senate. 'They had headlines that Biden wins in Arizona when they know it's not true,' Trump added. 'He didn't win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.' In fact, the review found the exact opposite - that Biden had 45,469 more votes than Trump in Maricopa, roughly in line with the official results certified in November 2020. According to the report issued by Cyber Ninjas, the firm hired to conduct the review, Biden's margin of victory was 360 votes larger than the county's official canvass showed. 'There were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official election canvass results for Maricopa County,' the firm's report said. Trump's statement is 'complete nonsense,' said Benny White, a Republican and longtime volunteer data analyst for the state Republican Party. (White had offered to help check the report's findings but was turned down.) 'The official results are correct,' White said. As for Trump, 'he lost.' Biden beat Trump in Arizona by about 10,500 votes, the first time a Democratic presidential nominee had won there since 1996. Trump spokespersons didn't respond to our email asking for his evidence. While the Republicans have referred to the ballot review as an 'audit,' election experts say that it did not follow typical post-election auditing procedures and lacked credibility. Meanwhile, during the rally, Trump made other claims about the review. We have fact-checked two of them: Trump said 'there were 17,322 duplicate ballots' which a computer scientist identified as having 'surged right after the election was over.' This is misleading. A scientist who has spread conspiracy theories in the past claimed that he had identified over 17,000 duplicate ballot envelope images. Duplicate ballot images aren't the same thing as duplicate votes, and there is no evidence that illegitimate votes were duplicated as part of a voter fraud scheme. (There has been scant evidence of any voter fraud in Arizona.) Duplicate ballot envelopes are created when election officials contact voters with inconsistent or blank signatures to cure their signatures. Each set of 'duplicate' images is counted only once. Arizona state law gives Maricopa County staff five business days after an election to contact voters with inconsistent signatures. As a result, there was a spike in duplicate envelopes after the election as workers contacted people who had cast their ballots on or shortly before Election Day, said Megan Gilbertson, a spokesperson for Maricopa Elections Department. Trump said that 'millions of election-related files were deleted,' including 'a purge of the 'election management system' ... the day before the audit began.' The Maricopa County Elections Department has denied this, saying its 2020 election data was not deleted and instead was archived and backed up elsewhere, as is standard procedure before a forensic audit of ballot tabulation equipment, such as the one the county commissioned in February.	Our ruling Trump said Biden 'didn't win in Arizona. He lost in Arizona based on the forensic audit.' That's not true. The review found that Biden won Maricopa by 45,469 votes - a slightly larger margin than the county's official canvass. And Biden won Arizona. Nothing in the report written by the Cyber Ninjas contractors stated otherwise. We rate this statement Pants on Fire! RELATED: No evidence Maricopa County audit found 17,000 'duplicate' votes RELATED: No evidence for claim that Maricopa County 'purged machine records before audit'	[ "105226-proof-16-6e9aab15086fb3f91386041223b87472.jpg" ]
Says Don Lemon's show has been canceled and he is leaving CNN.	Contradiction	CNN anchor Don Lemon inadvertently set off a frenzy of misinformation when he made comments about the future of his prime-time show during a segment on May 14. 'It's been really, really great,' Lemon says. 'This is the last night that we'll be 'CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.' So, I appreciate all the years of 'CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,' but changes are coming, and I will fill you in.' Those remarks sparked false claims - circulated on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram - that the show was canceled and the CNN veteran was leaving the network. 'Don Lemon LOSES HIS SHOW As CNN Plunges Into Further In Ratings... CNN IS DYING.' reads one YouTube video title. 'Don Lemon announced that tonight will be his last show on CNN,' a Facebook post says. 'One by one they fall!' That's not the case. Lemon isn't leaving CNN and his show is not being canceled - it just got a new name. 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.) Hours after making the announcement, Lemon, who has been working at CNN since 2006, posted a video on his Twitter account to clarify his comments for viewers. 'Everybody calm down, I didn't say I was leaving CNN,' Lemon explains in the clip while laughing. 'I just said it was the end of an era for 'CNN Tonight with Don Lemon' ... so relax, I'm not leaving.' Hey everyone. Not what you think. I'm not leaving CNN. Tune in for the handoff on Monday at 10pE and I'll explain. pic.twitter.com/oOwDferY2i- Don Lemon (@donlemon) May 15, 2021 In a second tweet, Lemon tried to dispel the confusion further by explaining that the show was being renamed, not canceled: 'Didn't mean to set the internet on fire. What I said last night was true. CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is no more. I'll be back on Monday with my newly named show Don Lemon Tonight.' Didn't mean to set the internet on fire. What I said last night was true. CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is no more. I'll be back on Monday with my newly named show Don Lemon Tonight. See you Monday at 10pE. pic.twitter.com/89GFXULV9m- Don Lemon (@donlemon) May 15, 2021 Lemon returned to the prime-time slot the following week.	Our ruling Social media posts claim that Don Lemon's CNN show was canceled and that he is leaving CNN. After a seven-year run, Lemon's show, 'CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,' was renamed, not canceled, and Lemon confirmed that he isn't leaving the network. He was broadcasting again the following week. We rate this False.	[]
Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a chicken farm fire.	Contradiction	The partisan, Republican-led audit of state-certified election results in Arizona's Maricopa County is fueling yet another baseless rumor online, as some social media users suggest that a county official intentionally destroyed ballots in a fire at his family's chicken farm. 'A friend called me when they found out ballots were shredded at the farm,' said one such post uploaded to Instagram on May 20. 'An hour later it was on fire. The fire burned two huge barns. It killed 162,000 egg laying hens. (Clint) Hickman is the Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. He owns Hickman Egg Farms. This was no coincidence.' 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.) There's no evidence that Maricopa County ballots were destroyed in a fire at a chicken farm. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said May 18 that the chicken-farm rumor is the 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' to come out of the state GOP's audit. 'The craziest conspiracy theory by far is that one of the board of supervisors, who happens to own a very large chicken farm, took ballots from the 2020 election, fed them to 165,000 chickens and then had them incinerated,' Richer told CNN's Don Lemon. 'Now, what actually happened is that this poor man had a serious fire at one of his barns, and 165,000 chickens did die. But the idea that they had ballots inside of them ... that's facially laughable.' A screenshot of a May 20, 2021, Instagram post falsely suggesting 2020 general election ballots from Maricopa County, Arizona, were burned in a chicken farm fire. Hickman - who is not the chairman, but is a one of five elected district supervisors in Maricopa County - is also the vice president of sales and marketing at Hickman's Family Farms, which lost two barns and over 165,000 chickens to a fire in March, according to the Arizona Republic. The fire took place at a location in Arlington, Arizona, about an hour west of Phoenix. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the cause of the fire at the farm, said in a statement that the investigation 'revealed there was no evidence of a crime.' 'The cause of the fire was listed as unknown,' the statement said. 'The arson investigation revealed no election ballots.' The Buckeye Valley Fire District, whose firefighters responded to the scene, also told Snopes there was no evidence of wrongdoing and no evidence that ballots were destroyed at the site. Megan Gilbertson, communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department, said the chicken-farm rumors originated in March with the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. The Gateway Pundit published two articles on March 6 about ballots in Maricopa County. The first alleged that 'dumpsters full of shredded ballots' had been found in the county. The second was headlined: 'After Finding Shredded Ballots in the Dumpster Earlier Today - A Mysterious Fire Breaks Out at Maricopa County Official's Farm.' PolitiFact fact-checked the first of those two articles and rated the Gateway Pundit's claim about shredded ballots in a dumpster False. Gilbertson told us then that all ballots for the 2020 general election were in a vault and under surveillance. State law requires counties to keep ballots for 24 months after an election is canvassed. 'No ballots from the 2020 General Election were ever removed from the vault at the Elections Department until we had to prepare them for transport to the Arizona Senate,' Gilbertson said in reference to the new chicken-farm claims, which she called 'false accusations.' The county's ballots were transported on April 22 to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix for the partisan-driven audit. Hickman and Hickman's Family Farms did not respond to requests for comment. The Arizona state Republicans' liaison for the audit declined to comment. There were nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 general election, which saw Arizona vote for President Joe Biden. Maricopa County conducted a hand count audit of a sample of ballots, as is required by state law, and it hired independent firms to conduct a forensic audit of tabulation equipment. The county found no abnormalities. National, state and local officials affirmed that Biden won a free and fair election, as judges across the country rejected lawsuits aimed at overturning the election in favor of former President Donald Trump. There remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud.	Our ruling An Instagram post claimed that Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a fire at a Maricopa County official's family chicken farm. A fire did break out in March at a family chicken farm connected to an elected official on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. But an investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office found no evidence of a crime - and no election ballots. Maricopa County stored all ballots for the 2020 general election securely in a vault until they were transported on April 22 - more than a month after the fire - for the audit led by state Senate Republicans, an elections department spokesperson said. Richer, the county recorder, called the chicken-farm rumor 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' related to the audit. We rate this statement Pants on Fire!	[ "105242-proof-25-9e0d66d444c97f4ff9234d33ac4b11f6.jpeg" ]
Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a chicken farm fire.	Contradiction	The partisan, Republican-led audit of state-certified election results in Arizona's Maricopa County is fueling yet another baseless rumor online, as some social media users suggest that a county official intentionally destroyed ballots in a fire at his family's chicken farm. 'A friend called me when they found out ballots were shredded at the farm,' said one such post uploaded to Instagram on May 20. 'An hour later it was on fire. The fire burned two huge barns. It killed 162,000 egg laying hens. (Clint) Hickman is the Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. He owns Hickman Egg Farms. This was no coincidence.' 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.) There's no evidence that Maricopa County ballots were destroyed in a fire at a chicken farm. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said May 18 that the chicken-farm rumor is the 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' to come out of the state GOP's audit. 'The craziest conspiracy theory by far is that one of the board of supervisors, who happens to own a very large chicken farm, took ballots from the 2020 election, fed them to 165,000 chickens and then had them incinerated,' Richer told CNN's Don Lemon. 'Now, what actually happened is that this poor man had a serious fire at one of his barns, and 165,000 chickens did die. But the idea that they had ballots inside of them ... that's facially laughable.' A screenshot of a May 20, 2021, Instagram post falsely suggesting 2020 general election ballots from Maricopa County, Arizona, were burned in a chicken farm fire. Hickman - who is not the chairman, but is a one of five elected district supervisors in Maricopa County - is also the vice president of sales and marketing at Hickman's Family Farms, which lost two barns and over 165,000 chickens to a fire in March, according to the Arizona Republic. The fire took place at a location in Arlington, Arizona, about an hour west of Phoenix. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the cause of the fire at the farm, said in a statement that the investigation 'revealed there was no evidence of a crime.' 'The cause of the fire was listed as unknown,' the statement said. 'The arson investigation revealed no election ballots.' The Buckeye Valley Fire District, whose firefighters responded to the scene, also told Snopes there was no evidence of wrongdoing and no evidence that ballots were destroyed at the site. Megan Gilbertson, communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department, said the chicken-farm rumors originated in March with the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. The Gateway Pundit published two articles on March 6 about ballots in Maricopa County. The first alleged that 'dumpsters full of shredded ballots' had been found in the county. The second was headlined: 'After Finding Shredded Ballots in the Dumpster Earlier Today - A Mysterious Fire Breaks Out at Maricopa County Official's Farm.' PolitiFact fact-checked the first of those two articles and rated the Gateway Pundit's claim about shredded ballots in a dumpster False. Gilbertson told us then that all ballots for the 2020 general election were in a vault and under surveillance. State law requires counties to keep ballots for 24 months after an election is canvassed. 'No ballots from the 2020 General Election were ever removed from the vault at the Elections Department until we had to prepare them for transport to the Arizona Senate,' Gilbertson said in reference to the new chicken-farm claims, which she called 'false accusations.' The county's ballots were transported on April 22 to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix for the partisan-driven audit. Hickman and Hickman's Family Farms did not respond to requests for comment. The Arizona state Republicans' liaison for the audit declined to comment. There were nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 general election, which saw Arizona vote for President Joe Biden. Maricopa County conducted a hand count audit of a sample of ballots, as is required by state law, and it hired independent firms to conduct a forensic audit of tabulation equipment. The county found no abnormalities. National, state and local officials affirmed that Biden won a free and fair election, as judges across the country rejected lawsuits aimed at overturning the election in favor of former President Donald Trump. There remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud.	Our ruling An Instagram post claimed that Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a fire at a Maricopa County official's family chicken farm. A fire did break out in March at a family chicken farm connected to an elected official on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. But an investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office found no evidence of a crime - and no election ballots. Maricopa County stored all ballots for the 2020 general election securely in a vault until they were transported on April 22 - more than a month after the fire - for the audit led by state Senate Republicans, an elections department spokesperson said. Richer, the county recorder, called the chicken-farm rumor 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' related to the audit. We rate this statement Pants on Fire!	[ "105242-proof-25-9e0d66d444c97f4ff9234d33ac4b11f6.jpeg" ]
Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a chicken farm fire.	Contradiction	The partisan, Republican-led audit of state-certified election results in Arizona's Maricopa County is fueling yet another baseless rumor online, as some social media users suggest that a county official intentionally destroyed ballots in a fire at his family's chicken farm. 'A friend called me when they found out ballots were shredded at the farm,' said one such post uploaded to Instagram on May 20. 'An hour later it was on fire. The fire burned two huge barns. It killed 162,000 egg laying hens. (Clint) Hickman is the Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. He owns Hickman Egg Farms. This was no coincidence.' 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.) There's no evidence that Maricopa County ballots were destroyed in a fire at a chicken farm. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, said May 18 that the chicken-farm rumor is the 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' to come out of the state GOP's audit. 'The craziest conspiracy theory by far is that one of the board of supervisors, who happens to own a very large chicken farm, took ballots from the 2020 election, fed them to 165,000 chickens and then had them incinerated,' Richer told CNN's Don Lemon. 'Now, what actually happened is that this poor man had a serious fire at one of his barns, and 165,000 chickens did die. But the idea that they had ballots inside of them ... that's facially laughable.' A screenshot of a May 20, 2021, Instagram post falsely suggesting 2020 general election ballots from Maricopa County, Arizona, were burned in a chicken farm fire. Hickman - who is not the chairman, but is a one of five elected district supervisors in Maricopa County - is also the vice president of sales and marketing at Hickman's Family Farms, which lost two barns and over 165,000 chickens to a fire in March, according to the Arizona Republic. The fire took place at a location in Arlington, Arizona, about an hour west of Phoenix. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the cause of the fire at the farm, said in a statement that the investigation 'revealed there was no evidence of a crime.' 'The cause of the fire was listed as unknown,' the statement said. 'The arson investigation revealed no election ballots.' The Buckeye Valley Fire District, whose firefighters responded to the scene, also told Snopes there was no evidence of wrongdoing and no evidence that ballots were destroyed at the site. Megan Gilbertson, communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department, said the chicken-farm rumors originated in March with the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website. The Gateway Pundit published two articles on March 6 about ballots in Maricopa County. The first alleged that 'dumpsters full of shredded ballots' had been found in the county. The second was headlined: 'After Finding Shredded Ballots in the Dumpster Earlier Today - A Mysterious Fire Breaks Out at Maricopa County Official's Farm.' PolitiFact fact-checked the first of those two articles and rated the Gateway Pundit's claim about shredded ballots in a dumpster False. Gilbertson told us then that all ballots for the 2020 general election were in a vault and under surveillance. State law requires counties to keep ballots for 24 months after an election is canvassed. 'No ballots from the 2020 General Election were ever removed from the vault at the Elections Department until we had to prepare them for transport to the Arizona Senate,' Gilbertson said in reference to the new chicken-farm claims, which she called 'false accusations.' The county's ballots were transported on April 22 to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix for the partisan-driven audit. Hickman and Hickman's Family Farms did not respond to requests for comment. The Arizona state Republicans' liaison for the audit declined to comment. There were nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the 2020 general election, which saw Arizona vote for President Joe Biden. Maricopa County conducted a hand count audit of a sample of ballots, as is required by state law, and it hired independent firms to conduct a forensic audit of tabulation equipment. The county found no abnormalities. National, state and local officials affirmed that Biden won a free and fair election, as judges across the country rejected lawsuits aimed at overturning the election in favor of former President Donald Trump. There remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud.	Our ruling An Instagram post claimed that Arizona ballots were shredded and burned in a fire at a Maricopa County official's family chicken farm. A fire did break out in March at a family chicken farm connected to an elected official on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. But an investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office found no evidence of a crime - and no election ballots. Maricopa County stored all ballots for the 2020 general election securely in a vault until they were transported on April 22 - more than a month after the fire - for the audit led by state Senate Republicans, an elections department spokesperson said. Richer, the county recorder, called the chicken-farm rumor 'the craziest conspiracy theory by far' related to the audit. We rate this statement Pants on Fire!	[ "105242-proof-25-9e0d66d444c97f4ff9234d33ac4b11f6.jpeg" ]
Quotes LeBron James as saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.	Contradiction	Images shared on Facebook claim LeBron James does not want to befriend or associate himself with white people. An image posted June 6 quotes the 16-time NBA all-star saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.' This image and this one have also racked up thousands of shares, linking the comment to an episode of 'The Shop,' an HBO talk show that launched in 2018. These 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.) James did say this, but the quote is cut short and leaves out crucial context. The quote does originate from the Aug. 28, 2018, pilot episode of 'The Shop,' which James co-produced. But he makes the comment while reflecting on his feelings in high school. James tweeted a clip that contains the full quote the same day. In the episode, former high school teammate and current business partner Maverick Carter asked James to explain his transition from a predominantly non-white childhood neighborhood to the largely white St. Vincent-St. Mary Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. James said, 'I went to an all-white, Catholic high school. So when I first went to the ninth grade I was on some, 'I'm not f***ing with white people.'' He went on to tell Carter that growing up in his neighborhood led him to think that white people didn't want anything to do with him or his friends, and that they did not want them to succeed. In the hierarchy of race in his high school, white people were at the top and Black people were at the bottom, he said. The only reason he was there was to play basketball, James said. 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe that they want anything to do with - it's me and my boys. We're going to high school together and we're here to hoop. So that was my initial thoughts and shocks to like white America,' he said. James has been open about his experiences growing up poor and how it contributed to his drive for success. By the end of freshman year, Carter went on to say in the clip from 'The Shop,' the initial feelings of separation from white students dwindled as the basketball season progressed. 'By the end of the year, all of us were best friends,' Carter said. Other news outlets reported on the quote after the show's premiere, and Reuters fact-checked similar posts more recently.	Our ruling Facebook posts quote LeBron James saying that he does not want to associate himself with white people. The posts leave out crucial context: When James said this, he was reflecting on how he felt as a freshman in high school when he entered a predominantly white high school. Later in school, James recalled, he became friends with his white peers in the school.	[ "105251-proof-10-781ff795d75f0e06168dfdd3c8446129.jpeg" ]
Quotes LeBron James as saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.	Contradiction	Images shared on Facebook claim LeBron James does not want to befriend or associate himself with white people. An image posted June 6 quotes the 16-time NBA all-star saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.' This image and this one have also racked up thousands of shares, linking the comment to an episode of 'The Shop,' an HBO talk show that launched in 2018. These 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.) James did say this, but the quote is cut short and leaves out crucial context. The quote does originate from the Aug. 28, 2018, pilot episode of 'The Shop,' which James co-produced. But he makes the comment while reflecting on his feelings in high school. James tweeted a clip that contains the full quote the same day. In the episode, former high school teammate and current business partner Maverick Carter asked James to explain his transition from a predominantly non-white childhood neighborhood to the largely white St. Vincent-St. Mary Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. James said, 'I went to an all-white, Catholic high school. So when I first went to the ninth grade I was on some, 'I'm not f***ing with white people.'' He went on to tell Carter that growing up in his neighborhood led him to think that white people didn't want anything to do with him or his friends, and that they did not want them to succeed. In the hierarchy of race in his high school, white people were at the top and Black people were at the bottom, he said. The only reason he was there was to play basketball, James said. 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe that they want anything to do with - it's me and my boys. We're going to high school together and we're here to hoop. So that was my initial thoughts and shocks to like white America,' he said. James has been open about his experiences growing up poor and how it contributed to his drive for success. By the end of freshman year, Carter went on to say in the clip from 'The Shop,' the initial feelings of separation from white students dwindled as the basketball season progressed. 'By the end of the year, all of us were best friends,' Carter said. Other news outlets reported on the quote after the show's premiere, and Reuters fact-checked similar posts more recently.	Our ruling Facebook posts quote LeBron James saying that he does not want to associate himself with white people. The posts leave out crucial context: When James said this, he was reflecting on how he felt as a freshman in high school when he entered a predominantly white high school. Later in school, James recalled, he became friends with his white peers in the school.	[ "105251-proof-10-781ff795d75f0e06168dfdd3c8446129.jpeg" ]
Quotes LeBron James as saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.	Contradiction	Images shared on Facebook claim LeBron James does not want to befriend or associate himself with white people. An image posted June 6 quotes the 16-time NBA all-star saying, 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe they want anything to do with me. I don't want no (white) friends. It's me and my boys.' This image and this one have also racked up thousands of shares, linking the comment to an episode of 'The Shop,' an HBO talk show that launched in 2018. These 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.) James did say this, but the quote is cut short and leaves out crucial context. The quote does originate from the Aug. 28, 2018, pilot episode of 'The Shop,' which James co-produced. But he makes the comment while reflecting on his feelings in high school. James tweeted a clip that contains the full quote the same day. In the episode, former high school teammate and current business partner Maverick Carter asked James to explain his transition from a predominantly non-white childhood neighborhood to the largely white St. Vincent-St. Mary Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. James said, 'I went to an all-white, Catholic high school. So when I first went to the ninth grade I was on some, 'I'm not f***ing with white people.'' He went on to tell Carter that growing up in his neighborhood led him to think that white people didn't want anything to do with him or his friends, and that they did not want them to succeed. In the hierarchy of race in his high school, white people were at the top and Black people were at the bottom, he said. The only reason he was there was to play basketball, James said. 'I don't want nothing to do with white people. I don't believe that they want anything to do with - it's me and my boys. We're going to high school together and we're here to hoop. So that was my initial thoughts and shocks to like white America,' he said. James has been open about his experiences growing up poor and how it contributed to his drive for success. By the end of freshman year, Carter went on to say in the clip from 'The Shop,' the initial feelings of separation from white students dwindled as the basketball season progressed. 'By the end of the year, all of us were best friends,' Carter said. Other news outlets reported on the quote after the show's premiere, and Reuters fact-checked similar posts more recently.	Our ruling Facebook posts quote LeBron James saying that he does not want to associate himself with white people. The posts leave out crucial context: When James said this, he was reflecting on how he felt as a freshman in high school when he entered a predominantly white high school. Later in school, James recalled, he became friends with his white peers in the school.	[ "105251-proof-10-781ff795d75f0e06168dfdd3c8446129.jpeg" ]