After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, tech platforms enforced bans against Russian state media. But actors found ways to circumvent these bans and continue circulating Russian propaganda — often through websites posing local news. As part of PolitiFact’s United Facts of America, Peter Benzoni, investigative data and research analyst on the Alliance for Securing […]
Video footage of beams of light pulsing through the night sky prompted speculation about the potential use of a new weapon in the Israel-Hamas war — the Iron Beam. “Breaking: Israel activates new energy based iron beam system in taking out missles (sic) heading towards Tel Aviv,” read the caption of an Oct. 15 Instagram […]
The movie “Oppenheimer” is less about the bomb and more about the trials — both moral and political — that beset J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the World War II physicist who spearheaded America’s race to beat the Nazis before they could invent an atomic bomb. But to the extent that this is a war […]
The rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence is fueling fears that it’s developing more quickly than its effects can be understood. The use of generative AI — systems that create new content such as text, photos, videos, music, code, speech and art — dramatically increased after the emergence of tools such as ChatGPT. Although these […]
Former President Donald Trump and his fiercest critics agree on this: It took a long time to bring charges against Trump related to his efforts to hold onto the presidency after the 2020 election. Democrats who felt the charges were long overdue questioned why a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack […]
Never Back Down, a political action committee supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination, used former President Donald Trump’s own words against him in a new ad. Candidates do that all of the time. In this case, however, the ad-makers pushed the boundaries by manipulating audio to read out loud an attack against […]
Generative AI has exploded onto the scene, raising questions about its role in the creation and spread of misinformation. Generative AI is a broad term that describes when computers create new content — such as text, photos, videos, music, code, audio and art — by identifying patterns in existing data. The most popular platforms include […]
A presidential election hits a fiery snag in the latest episode of HBO’s “Succession,” leading to morally dubious decision-making by the protagonist Roy family and raising questions about how damaged ballots in a critical state would be handled in real life. Central to the story is an election-night crisis in Wisconsin. In the episode, 100,000 […]
A jury found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll at a New York department store almost three decades ago and also found that Trump defamed her. The jury was split on whether Trump was liable for raping Carroll, but awarded her a $5 million judgment. Trump plans to appeal […]
Former President Donald Trump has framed a New York criminal investigation into his business activities as a politicized effort brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who Trump says campaigned on taking him down. “Beginning with the radical left to George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York, who campaigned on the fact that he […]
Chinese investors’ ramped-up purchases of U.S. land in the past decade are drawing concerns among U.S. politicians who say this poses a national security threat. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his March 7 State of the State address said the Chinese Communist Party “represents the greatest economic strategic and security threat that our country […]
It’s not every day that a Chinese spy balloon is spotted flying across the United States. But when the Pentagon announced Feb. 2 that a Chinese surveillance balloon had been seen hovering over the Northwest, the news unleashed a torrent of questions and political rhetoric. But how much of this chatter is just hot air? […]