Former President Donald Trump is bracing for another possible indictment. This time, it may be in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with his and his allies’ possible interference in the 2020 presidential election. Fani Willis, the county’s Democratic district attorney, has been investigating Trump’s phone calls to Georgia officials and the arrangement of a fake slate […]
A high-profile athlete’s cardiac emergency triggered a torrent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Sound familiar? Just minutes after news about Bronny James’ cardiac arrest hit social media, Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), amplified anti-vaccine rhetoric, speculating that the COVID-19 vaccine might have caused the medical emergency. This trend in anti-vaccine disinformation isn’t new: News […]
So much for the summer being slow for political news! At PolitiFact, we have been fact-checking statements related to the 2024 presidential contest, the indictments of former President Donald Trump and Florida’s classroom controversies. Here’s a selection of reader reactions to our recent fact-checks, edited for length, style and clarity. Readers can email us fact-check […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has frequently faced political criticism. But a new wave hit in early July over breastfeeding — or “chestfeeding,” as the agency described it on a website. “In case you missed it, transgender extremists running @CDC push abuse of newborns through ‘chestfeeding,’” conservative activist Tom Fitton tweeted July 9. […]
It was an attempted heist right out in the open: a plan by Donald Trump’s allies to get “alternate” slates of electors to sign certificates declaring that Trump won key battleground states in 2020. The plan, which would come to be known as the “fake elector” scheme, failed, as Vice President Mike Pence refused to […]
What could an indictment of former President Donald Trump for the events of Jan. 6 include? Only special counsel Jack Smith and his team have a solid idea, but media reports and legal experts are zeroing in on charges to look for. Court watchers suggest that a Jan. 6 indictment — which would be Trump’s […]
Yusef Salaam turned the historical tides when he won a Democratic primary election for New York City Council on June 27. Salaam was one of five Black teens convicted and imprisoned for the 1989 rape and beating of a 28-year-old jogger, in a case that became known nationally as the Central Park Five. Salaam spent […]
Forget “repeal and replace,” an oft-repeated Republican rallying cry against the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans have advanced a package of bills that could reduce health insurance costs for certain businesses and consumers, partly by rolling back some consumer protections. Rather than outright repeal, however, the subtler effort could allow more employers to bypass the […]
Weeks before he failed to persuade Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to swing the election in his favor, Donald Trump called up two other Georgia officials with some different ideas. His separate December 2020 phone calls with election investigator Frances Watson and then-House Speaker David Ralston, who died in 2022, have also […]
Former President Donald Trump has described his January 2021 phone call with Georgia election officials as “perfect.” Prosecutors may use another phrase: evidence of a crime. Trump, who refused to accept his loss in Georgia and other states after the 2020 presidential election, repeatedly pushed back against the Georgia officials’ assurances that the state’s election […]
Robert Califf, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, doesn’t seem to be having fun on the job. “I would describe this year as hand-to-hand combat. Really, every day,” he said at an academic conference at Stanford in April. It’s a sentiment the FDA commissioner has expressed often. What’s been getting Califf’s goat? Misinformation, […]
In “Try That in a Small Town,” country singer Jason Aldean sings about big city violence and rural intolerance of such violence. His music video shows Aldean and his band performing in front of an American flag-draped Tennessee courthouse — the site of an infamous 1927 lynching and a 1946 race riot that The Washington […]