Latest Stories By Grace Abels

Showing 25-36 of 52 items
Jesse Watters hosting Primetime, 2-26-2024

Do Jesse Watters’ claims about the federal budget, LGBTQ+ and DEI funding add up?

The U.S. Senate passed a $1.2 trillion dollar spending package, narrowly avoiding a partial government shutdown. Before the bill was signed into law in the wee hours of March 23, one pundit criticized some of its details. “What’s in the new monster bill Congress is rushing to pass?” Fox News host Jesse Watters posted March […]
Read More

What is ‘sex’? What is ‘gender’? How these terms changed and why states now want to define them

After decades of creating laws that assumed “sex” and “gender” were synonymous, lawmakers across the country are taking another look at how states define those terms. Scientific and legal interpretations of these words have evolved considerably in the past century. Today, medical experts understand biological sex assigned at birth as more complex and consider it […]
Read More
Florida rainbow flag trans flag on pole in Wilton Manors, Fla., 1-17-2024

Can you ‘say gay’ in Florida schools? Explaining new settlement over LGBTQ+ ‘instruction’

Two years after Florida’s governor received national attention over a new law restricting LGBTQ+ instruction in schools, the state reached a settlement with plaintiffs who said the law was unconstitutional. Critics and some media outlets panned the law, nicknaming it “Don’t Say Gay.” LGBTQ+ advocates sued over the measure, saying it was vague enough that […]
Read More

No evidence of rising LGBTQ+ violent extremism or ‘trans terrorism’

Genesse Ivonne Moreno entered a Houston megachurch on Super Bowl Sunday and began firing an AR-style rifle at worshippers, police said. Investigators were still piecing together details from the violent scene — celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church — when social media claims focused on the shooter’s gender. “The Lakewood Church shooter was transgender,” the […]
Read More

What Florida’s driver’s license policy change means for transgender people

No one likes going to the DMV, but what drove LGBTQ+ activists in Florida to stage a “die-in” at the traditionally mundane administrative buildings on Feb. 9? Answer: a memo, shared online Jan. 29, from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles that transgender Floridians and their advocates say threatens to subject them […]
Read More

Fact-checking Joe Biden about sharing classified materials, keeping them in lockable cabinets

In a Feb. 8 press conference responding to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents report, President Joe Biden made misleading and inaccurate statements about the documents — including how documents were stored in lockable cabinets in his home and who the material was shared with — points the report contradicts.   Here are Biden’s statements and what […]
Read More

What PolitiFact learned in 1,000 fact-checks of Donald Trump

PolitiFact has hit a milestone: We published our 1,000th rated fact-check of Donald Trump. In classic Trump fashion, he claimed in his New Hampshire primary victory speech Jan. 23 that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to “cheat” in the 2020 presidential election.  Unsurprisingly to our regular readers, his claim was Pants on Fire. It’s not […]
Read More

Nikki Haley said ‘DeSantisLies.com’ 16 times in Iowa debate. How accurate is the website?

Four minutes into the Iowa Republican presidential debate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley directed viewers to a website her campaign started to counter what she called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “lies.” “You’re gonna find out tonight there’s going to be a lot of Ron’s lies that have happened,” Haley said  in the Jan. 10 CNN […]
Read More
Trump Durham NH rally, 12-16-2023

Fact-checking 5 claims Trump made at New Hampshire rally

DURHAM, N.H. — With 38 days to go until New Hampshire voters cast their first-in-the-nation ballots in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, former President Donald Trump told an arena full of his Granite State supporters why they should put him back in the White House. In a 90-minute address, Trump regaled an arena full of […]
Read More
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at Republican presidential primary debate in Tuscaloosa, Ala., 12-6-2023

DeSantis and Haley’s back and forth over bathroom bills in fourth GOP primary debate

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brought up bathroom access as one of many attacks on former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the fourth Republican presidential primary debate.   “They had a bill to try to say that men shouldn’t go into girls’ bathrooms, and she killed that bill,” DeSantis said. DeSantis has a point that the […]
Read More
Gay pride flag for Murfeesboro, Tennessee, ordinance check, 11-28-2023

Did a city in Tennessee ban being gay in public? It’s complicated

The town in the movie “Footloose” banned dancing. Did a city in Tennessee just ban being openly gay? That’s what some social media users are saying, but the reality is more complicated. Murfreesboro, Tennessee, made recent headlines over a city ordinance it passed in mid-June. “A city in Tennessee has banned being gay in public,” […]
Read More
Tucker Carlson speaking at Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Fla., 7-15-2023

Fact-checking 3 claims in Tucker Carlson’s show on trans health care

Since his firing from Fox News, former prime-time host Tucker Carlson has taken his show on the digital road — to X, where he has interviewed public figures such as former President Donald Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  On Oct. 4, Carlson released an episode titled “Trans, Inc” that focused on […]
Read More
Showing 25-36 of 52 items