Days before his 2025 inauguration, President Donald Trump announced the launch of his meme coin, a form of cryptocurrency. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., recently said it could be used for illicit purposes. He posted April 9 on X: “The U.S. President is running a backdoor bribery scheme in which any CEO or foreign oligarch can […]
A new Cleveland Clinic study on the flu vaccine grabbed vaccine skeptics’ interest, prompting questions and concerns about the vaccine’s safety. “Get the flu shot and you are 27% more likely to get the flu!” read an April 7 X post that referenced a preprint study published April 4. “GET THE SHOT GET THE DISEASE!” […]
After severe storms swept across the U.S. in mid March, killing more than 40 people, social media posts blamed the Trump administration’s recent firings for weakening emergency communication systems. “Catastrophic tornadoes rip through the southeast and warning systems were not operational because of the Ketamine Kid disbanding the National Weather Service warning system through DOGE!” […]
A midair collision between a passenger jet and a helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. A medevac jet that hurtled toward the ground and exploded in Philadelphia. A commercial flight that flipped upside down while landing in Toronto. In recent weeks, videos of planes crashing and burning have populated social media and news […]
Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona once famously defended his Democratic competitor, then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, when a woman at a Minnesota town hall falsely described Obama as “an Arab.” “No, ma’am,” McCain responded at the 2008 event, taking the microphone back from her. “He’s a decent family man and citizen that […]
Even as emergency responders were working to recover the remains of passengers and crew members who died in the Jan. 29 midair collision near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, social media users, especially critics of President Donald Trump, pointed to some of Trump’s policies as contributors to the crash. “Just last week, Trump FIRED […]
If you scroll through your Facebook feed, you might see a promotion for a new government stimulus, available to all Americans. The claim: You could get $1,000, no strings attached, available within 24 hours. Just click a link. It’s everywhere: multiple Facebook pages run ads about it constantly. PolitiFact debunked posts saying a “no-strings-attached $1,000 […]
Days after New Hampshire voters received a robocall with an artificially generated voice that resembled President Joe Biden’s, the Federal Communications Commission banned using AI-generated voices in robocalls. It was a flashpoint. The 2024 election would be the first to unfold amid wide public access to AI generators, which let people create images, audio and […]
In the months preceding the 2024 election and during early voting, PolitiFact fact-checked numerous claims about election fraud. Most were about vote counting, mail-in ballots and voting machines, but there were also false claims about noncitizens voting, election workers committing fraud and early voting. These claims flourished on Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and […]
Elon Musk has been credited with a lot of things: Tesla. SpaceX. Twitter’s rebrand to X. But, on Facebook, he has also been credited with some spectacular new inventions: a Tesla water engine. A $1,000 Tesla e-bike. Low-cost Tesla houses. A robot for surrogate pregnancies. A “UFO fighter jet that defies physics.” If these seem […]
A hit-and-run cover-up. Sexual abuse allegations from 27 years ago. An election worker ripping up ballots. Haitian immigrants admitting to voter fraud. These were some of the stories featured in a series of videos from a Russia-linked disinformation network that laid out serious allegations of fraud and other misdeeds in the 2024 U.S. presidential election’s […]
“Do not get out of line! Do not get out of line!” a woman in a video shouts as two police officers whisk her away. Off camera, the person filming the incident can be heard saying, “Wow, wow, wow. That’s crazy. You locked her up? That is insane, man.” “She is influencing people,” one observer […]