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Quick Take
A missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi militants damaged a British-owned cargo ship on the Red Sea on Feb. 18 and forced its crew to evacuate. Some social media posts falsely claimed the Houthis “made sure to rescue” the 24-member crew. U.S. Central Command said the crew was rescued by a “coalition warship along with another merchant vessel.”
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The Houthis, who control much of western Yemen, have attacked more than 50 commercial and military shipssince Nov. 19 as the vessels sailed through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The Iran-aligned Houthis said the attacks are in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in its war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
As a result of the Houthi attacks, trade routes have been disrupted, causing delays and higher shipping costs as cargo ships bound for the Suez Canal instead go around the southern tip of Africa.
In response to the attacks, the United States has carried out airstrikes since Jan. 12 in Houthi-controlled Yemen, targeting the missiles, drones and rocket launchers used by the militants. The U.S. has also conducted joint operations with the British military.
A picture taken during an organized tour by Yemen’s Houthi militants on Nov. 22, 2023, shows the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, seized by Houthi fighters two days earlier, at a port on the Red Sea. Photo by AFP via Getty Images.
The Houthi attacks caused fires aboard severalships and, in at least one case, crew members were taken hostage. The Galaxy Leader, a cargo ship operated by a Japanese company and linked to an Israeli businessman, was hijacked by the Houthis on Nov. 19 and its 25-person crew were still hostages in Yemen as of Feb. 19.
But some social media posts falsely claimed that the Houthis themselves participated in rescue efforts after attacking a British-owned ship, the MV Rubymar, on Feb. 18.
“Yemen sunk a British ship this week, but made sure to rescue the entire 24-man crew of the RUBYMAR,” YouTube host Richard Medhurstposted to X on Feb. 24. “They’re all safe.” He added, “This is the difference between how they conduct their warfare, and how the US/UK show up and start killing people,” a reference to U.S. and British airstrikes, which the Houthis said killed one person and injured six.
Medhurst’s post, which has been viewed more than 700,000 times, was also shared on Instagram by user @HandsOffYemen, a popular slogan for protesting U.S. intervention in Yemen.
But we could find no evidence that the Houthis rescued the crew of the Rubymar, which included Syrians, Egyptians, Indians and Filipinos, the Washington Post reported.
On Feb. 19, U.S. Central Command posted on X and issued a press release saying that the crew received aid and transport from a “coalition warship along with another merchant vessel.”
U.S. Central Command, Feb. 19: Between 9:30 and 10:45 p.m., Feb. 18, two anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen toward MV Rubymar, a Belize-flagged, UK-owned bulk carrier. One of the missiles struck the vessel, causing damage. The ship issued a distress call and a coalition warship along with another merchant vessel responded to the call to assist the crew of the MV Rubymar. The crew was transported to a nearby port by the merchant vessel.
In a Feb. 27 phone call, a spokesperson for Central Command told us, in response to the social media posts, “We have no intel supporting the claim that [the Houthis] assisted in the rescue.”
Also, rather than sinking the ship, as the posts claimed, the Houthi attack damaged the Rubymar. The damage caused an 18-mile oil slick, and Central Command said the ship’s cargo of 41,000 tons of fertilizer could spill and lead to an “environmental disaster,” the Associated Press reported.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
An international study of around 99 million people confirmed known serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccination. It also identified a possible relationship between the first dose of the Moderna vaccine and a small risk of a neurological condition. Social media posts about the study left out information on the vaccines’ benefits and the rarity of the side effects.
More than half a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered in the U.S. and only a few, very rare, safety concerns have emerged. The vast majority of people experience only minor, temporary side effects such as pain at the injection site, fatigue, headache, or muscle pain — or no side effects at all. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said, these vaccines “have undergone and will continue to undergo the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history.”
A small number of severe allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis, which are expected with any vaccine, haveoccurred with the authorized and approved COVID-19 vaccines. Fortunately, these reactions are rare, typically occur within minutes of inoculation and can be treated. Approximately 5 per million people vaccinated have experienced anaphylaxis after a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
To make sure serious allergic reactions can be identified and treated, all people receiving a vaccine should be observed for 15 minutes after getting a shot, and anyone who has experienced anaphylaxis or had any kind of immediate allergic reaction to any vaccine or injection in the past should be monitored for a half hour. People who have had a serious allergic reaction to a previous dose or one of the vaccineingredients should not be immunized. Also, those who shouldn’t receive one type of COVID-19 vaccine should be monitored for 30 minutes after receiving a different type of vaccine.
There is evidence that the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines may rarely cause inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) or of the surrounding lining (pericarditis), particularly in male adolescents and young adults.
Based on data collected through August 2021, the reporting rates of either condition in the U.S. are highest in males 16 to 17 years old after the second dose (105.9 cases per million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine), followed by 12- to 15-year-old males (70.7 cases per million). The rate for 18- to 24-year-old males was 52.4 cases and 56.3 cases per million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, respectively.
Health officials have emphasized that vaccine-related myocarditis and pericarditis cases are rare and the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks. Early evidence suggeststhese myocarditis cases are less severe than typical ones. The CDC has also noted that most patients who were treated “responded well to medicine and rest and felt better quickly.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been linked to an increased risk of rare blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets, especially in women ages 30 to 49. Early symptoms of the condition, which is known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, can appear as late as three weeks after vaccination and include severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision, leg swelling, and easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin outside of the injection site.
According to the CDC, TTS has occurred in around 4 people per million doses administered. As of early April, the syndrome has been confirmed in 60 cases, including nine deaths, after more than 18.6 million doses of the J&J vaccine. Although TTS remains rare, because of the availability of mRNA vaccines, which are not associated with this serious side effect, the FDA on May 5 limited authorized use of the J&J vaccine to adults who either couldn’t get one of the other authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines because of medical or access reasons, or only wanted a J&J vaccine for protection against the disease. Several months earlier, on Dec. 16, 2021, the CDC had recommended the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots over J&J’s.
The J&J vaccine has also been linked to an increased risk of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks nerve cells. Most people who develop GBS fully recover, although some have permanent nerve damage and the condition can be fatal.
Safety surveillance data suggest that compared with the mRNA vaccines, which have not been linked to GBS, the J&J vaccine is associated with 15.5 additional GBS cases per million doses of vaccine in the three weeks following vaccination. Most reported cases following J&J vaccination have occurred in men 50 years old and older.
COVID-19 vaccines — like all vaccines and other medical products — come with side effects, including serious side effects in rare cases. The vaccines were rolled out to protect people from a novel virus that has killed millions of people globally and would likely have killed millions more without the arrival of the vaccines. There is a broad consensus from experts and governmental health agencies that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the risks.
Researchers have scrutinized the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety and continue to do so. A study published Feb. 12 in the journal Vaccine reported on an international group of more than 99 million people who received COVID-19 vaccines, primarily finding links to known rare side effects. The study largely focused on the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which have been widely given in the U.S., as well as the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was never authorized in the U.S.
“What we take away, is that the Covid-19 vaccination campaigns have been very effective in preventing severe disease,” study co-author Anders Hviid, head of the department of epidemiology research at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark, told us in an email. “The few serious side effects that we have observed in this and other studies have been rare.”
Many popular posts on social media have shared results from the study, some lacking the context that the identified health problems are rare, that most aren’t new and that the vaccines have proven benefits. Various posts made unfounded claims, stating or implying that people should not have received the vaccines, that the risks outweigh the benefits or that the risk of the rare side effects is greater than was reported in the study.
“Hundreds of millions of people were used as lab rats and now the truth that WE ALL ALREADY KNEW can no longer be denied,” said one popular post, referring to the vaccines as “experimental” and “UNTESTED.” The post shared a screenshot of the headline of a New York Post article about the new study, which read, “COVID vaccines linked to slight increases in heart, brain, blood disorders: study.”
“This thing was forced on people who faced almost no risk from Covid,” said another widely read post. “It is completely unacceptable.” The post shared statistics from the paper without making it clear that serious health problems after vaccination were rare and that risk varied by vaccine type and dose.
The Vaccine study confirmed that the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines are linked in rare cases to myocarditis and pericarditis, conditions involving inflammation of the heart muscle and lining. The rate of myocarditis was most elevated after the second dose of the Moderna vaccine. Myocarditis risk — which is greatest in men in their late teens and early twenties — was identified via vaccine safety monitoring and first reported in 2021. Based on the current evidence, the CDC says, the benefit of vaccination outweighs the risk of these conditions, which improve for most people after medical treatment and rest.
The study confirmed neurological and blood clotting conditions associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. In the U.S., these problems were linked to the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, contributing to this vaccine no longer being recommended or available.
The study also identified a new possible safety signal indicating a potential link between the first dose of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines and rare neurological conditions. This included an association between the first doses of the vaccines and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM, an autoimmune condition that causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
Hviid emphasized that the researchers only saw these neurological events after first doses of the two vaccines. “We did not see these signals following further doses of these two Covid-19 vaccines, nor did we see them after any dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine which has been more widely used,” he said.
“We are also talking about very rare events,” Hviid continued. “As an example, the association between the first dose of Moderna and acute inflammation of the brain and spine would, if causal, correspond to 1 case per 1.75 million vaccinated. It is only due to the sheer scale of our study, that we have been able to identify this minute potential risk.”
Study Bolsters the Evidence Serious COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects Are Rare
The Vaccine study drew on national or regional health records from eight countries with institutions participating in the Global Vaccine Data Network, an international group that studies vaccine safety. The researchers analyzed health outcomes after around 184 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, 36 million doses of the Moderna vaccine and 23 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The researchers focused on 13 health problems that either had a known association with vaccination or for which there was some rationale to investigate whether there was an association. To determine whether the health problems were associated with vaccination, they compared the expected rates of the health problems — or the number of health events that should occur based on background rates in the regions studied — with the number of events they observed in the 42 days after vaccination.
“This study confirms the primary already detected and validated side effects established by previous literature,” Jeffrey S. Morris, director of the division of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, told us via email, referring to the rare heart conditions associated with the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, as well as the rare conditions associated with the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines.
Morris said that findings on ADEM — the rare autoimmune neurological condition linked to first doses of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines — “might be a new safety signal.”
ADEM involves inflammation to the brain and spinal cord, arising most often in children following an infectious illness. It has a sudden onset and typically eventually improves, with a full recovery in many, although not all, cases.
After the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, researchers observed seven ADEM cases, when they expected two. As we’ve said, Hviid calculated the rate of this side effect — if ultimately shown to be related to vaccination — to be 1 in 1.75 million following the first dose of the Moderna vaccine.
The data show “this was indeed an EXTREMELY rare adverse event,” Morris said, referring to ADEM. “It is understandable at this incidence rate why it may not have been detected before now, and why a study with 99 million participants like this is important to find even the most rare serious adverse events that are potential minority harm risks of these vaccines.”
The authors of the study wrote that more research is needed into ADEM following COVID-19 vaccination, saying that “the number of cases of this rare event were small and the confidence interval wide, so results should be interpreted with caution and confirmed in future studies.” The authors also wrote that neurological events have been found to occur at a much higher rate after COVID-19 than after COVID-19 vaccination.
The study means that “early warning systems are solid,” said Marc Veldhoen, an immunologist at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes in Portugal, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “To avoid any adverse reaction is not possible, but, identifying those at higher risk may be possible.”
Identifying those at greater risk of side effects can help guide decisions on which vaccines to recommend and what problems doctors should watch for in their patients.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.
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Quick Take
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has traveled throughout the world seeking support for Ukraine’s effort to resist Russia’s invasion, but he has always returned to his war-torn country. Some social media posts — showing a fake naturalization document — falsely claim preparations are underway to bring him to the United States.
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The war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, is approaching its second anniversary, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is facing new challenges domestically and internationally.
Zelenskyy replaced his top general, Army Commander Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, on Feb. 8 after Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive and Zaluzhnyi’s comments that the war had reached a stalemate.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has had trouble in recent months securing U.S. funding to support its ongoing war effort. The Biden administration has committed $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion. But as of late, Ukraine has had problems getting U.S. assistance, as a $60 billion aid package remains stalled in Congress.
Against that backdrop, a video sharedon social media falsely claims a report from an anonymous Secret Service agent shows a plan is underway to bring Zelenskyy to the U.S. as an American citizen.
The video, narrated by former Fox News host Clayton Morris, begins with the text, “Is Vladimir Zelensky about to become a U.S. citizen and be shipped off to live in the sunny state of Florida?” Morris, the host of the YouTube show Redacted, has spread other misinformation about the war in Ukraine, as we’ve written.
The video claims to show a naturalization document with Zelenskyy’s photo, and shares audio of the purported Secret Service agent saying, in part, “the Biden administration is making active preparations based on the idea that first, Zelenskyy won’t be the president of Ukraine after next spring, and second, that he and his family will need long-term or permanent security in the United States.”
Elements of the naturalization document shown in the video reveal it is not authentic. The document omits Zelenskyy’s middle name, Oleksandrovych, which is required on a certificate of naturalization. The certificate must include “an applicant’s full legal name” which “includes the person’s first name, middle name(s) (if any), and family name (or surname) without any initials or nicknames.”
Also, in an interview with AFP Fact Check, immigration lawyer Marcin Muszynski said that all naturalization certificates issued in 2023 would have been signed by Ur M. Jaddou, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. However, the document shown in the video is signed by a person named “Haley Burns.”
Steve Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University, also told AFP Fact Check that an authentic naturalization certificate would include the person’s signature next to the photo. But the certificate shown in the video has no such signature.
In addition, the bio for the author of the DC Weekly story, Jessica Delvin, seems to be fabricated. The image that is supposedly Jessica Delvin is actually an image of New York-based author Judy Batalion.
When the war began, Ukraine’s security service reportedly held an empty train on standby in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to take the president to Poland or another safe location outside the country. Zelenskyy remained in the city.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
The IRS has not introduced a tax incentive for U.S. families to house immigrants in exchange for labor. A bogus claim that was originally posted as satire is circulating on social media without a disclaimer.
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There is no new tax incentive for families who house immigrants in exchange for labor.
A conservative satire account called U.S. Ministry of Truth had posted the claim on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Feb. 16, saying, “JUST IN:President Biden announces tax incentives for families willing to take in slav—migrants in a new ‘Housing for Labor’ initiative. ‘You can now apply to keep a migrant in your home in exchange for cooking, cleaning, picking crops, and landscaping.’ – via @IRSnews.”
There is no such announcement on the IRS X account. Also, the photo featured in the U.S. Ministry of Truth’s post shows President Joe Biden signing legislation, but it has nothing to do with immigration. The picture, from the White House Flickr account, shows Biden on June 3 signing an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
Otherfact–checking outlets have written about the claim, and the U.S. Ministry of Truth hasmockedthem for “fact-checking a satire account.” But the problem with content posted by self-described satire accounts is that such claims get copied and reposted by other accounts without the satire disclaimer, so social media users have no way of knowing the claim is supposed to be a joke. We’vewrittenaboutmanyothersimilarexamplesovertheyears.
In this case, screenshotsof the original X post are circulating on other platforms without any indication that the claim was intended to be satirical. For example, one California politician shared the meme with his 229,000 followers on Instagram, and he included this message: “Modern day slavery signed into law.”
But, as we said, the claim is made up. “Modern day slavery” has not been codified in the U.S.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar posted condolences and support for two police officers and a firefighter killed Feb. 18 while responding to a domestic incident. A post on social media uses an altered photo to falsely claim Klobuchar previously attended a meeting with people holding “DEFUND THE POLICE” signs. The original image shows the people were not holding any such signs.
Full Story
Two police officers and a firefighter were shot to death on Feb. 18 while responding to reports of a man armed and barricaded with his seven children in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville, Minnesota. Authorities identified the first responders as Officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, and Adam Finseth, 40, a firefighter and paramedic. The suspect, Shannon Gooden, 38, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Associated Press reported.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota released a statement on Feb. 18 about the deaths of the first responders, and posted their photos on Facebook. She wrote: “Attended vigil in Burnsville last night with hundreds of community members to honor Paul Elmstrand, Matthew Ruge, and Adam Finseth. They answered the call of duty and now it’s our time to support them.”
But a Feb. 19 post on Facebook juxtaposes screenshots of Klobuchar’s social media posts supporting the first responders with an altered photo showing Klobuchar, circled in red, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison with a group of people holding signs that read “DEFUND THE POLICE.” Text at the top of the Facebook post asks, “… which is it Amy Klobuchar????? You never let a tragedy go to waste.”
The photo shown on that Facebook post has been digitally altered.
The original image was posted on Oct. 16, 2022, by Ellison on X. On that post, Ellison wrote: “Minnesotans are fired up to elect DFLers up & down the ballot who will protect their personal freedoms, make sure they take home every $ they earn, protect them from corporate fraud, and protect our multiracial democracy. Let’s build a MN where everybody counts, everybody matters.” (DFL refers to the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which was established in 1944.)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar attends a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party event in 2022.
The crowd in the original photo are not holding signs, and Ellison’s post makes no mention of “defunding the police.”
Ellison was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz to lead the 2021 prosecution of Derek Chauvin and three other former police officers for the death of George Floyd, which had sparked calls from some protesters to defund the police.
Brian Evans, a spokesperson for Ellison’s office, told us in Feb. 21 email, “I can confirm that the photo of Attorney General Ellison speaking in front of a crowd of people holding defund the police signs is digitally altered.”
“While the photo itself is fake, the idea it puts forward is false as well. Attorney General Ellison does not and has never supported defunding the police,” Evans said. “What Keith Ellison has done is support the work of law enforcement as Minnesota’s Attorney General while also bringing people together to find ways to reduce the use of deadly force during encounters with law enforcement.”
At a 2022 Senate judiciary committee hearing on violence against police, Klobuchar said policing practices should be reformed, the Minnesota Reformer reported. “One of the focuses has got to be … reforming some of the practices, but at the same time funding the police,” Klobuchar said.
Update, Feb. 21: After we posted our article, a spokesperson for Klobuchar emailed usthis response on Feb. 21 to the social media post: “Senator Klobuchar strongly and publicly opposed the defund the police measure in Minnesota, has repeatedly made clear she opposes defunding the police, and is in fact the longtime lead author of the bipartisan bill in Congress which funds police.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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SciCheck Digest
Comedian Amy Schumer has said she’s having “some medical and hormonal” issues related to endometriosis that have affected her appearance. But some social media users are falsely claiming that Schumer announced she is suffering from a vaccine-related ailment. Schumer has said no such thing.
Following those appearances, some social media users commented on her looks and speculated about her health.
Schumer responded in a Feb. 15 Instagram post reminding people that she has endometriosis — a painful condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. The condition “may affect more than 11% of American women between 15 and 44,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“There are some medical and hormonal things going on in my world right now but I’m okay,” Schumer explained.
Schumer also wrote, “[T]hank you so much for everyone’s input about my face! I’ve enjoyed feedback and deliberation about my appearance as all women do for almost 20 years. And you’re right it is puffier than normal right now.”
Despite her clear explanation, some social media posts have taken the speculation further, falsely claiming that Schumer “Says She Developed VAIDS After Third Booster.”
The claim is spreading as a screenshotmeme that appears to have been taken from a website called ThaiMBC, which appears to post dubious news and health content along with articles about traveling to Thailand.
The pictures featured in the ThaiMBC post and in the social media memes show Schumer in a hospital gown. They were taken from a Sept. 18, 2021, post to Schumer’s Instagram account after she had her uterus removed due to endometriosis.
So, the pictures shown in the posts have nothing to do with vaccination, and Schumer has made no such statement about vaccine-related illness.
In fact, “VAIDS,” the ailment mentioned in the posts, doesn’t even exist.
“There is no phenomenon that I know of ‘Vaccine-induced immunodeficiency syndrome.’ It is not a real syndrome,” Donna Farber, chief of the division of surgical sciences and professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told Reuters.
Similarly, Dr. Stephen Gluckman, a professor of infectious diseases in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told the outlet, “VAIDS” is “absolutely not” a real condition.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s articles providing accurate health information and correcting health misinformation are made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.
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Quick Take
Abortion is illegal in Texas, with narrow exceptions for the life and health of a pregnant patient. Those who provide abortions can face stiff penalties, but Texas law specifies that those who get an abortion are not to be penalized. Posts have been circulating online falsely claiming that those who get an abortion in Texas can face fines and prison time.
Full Story
Texas has a long history when it comes to banning abortion.
Within a decade of joining the United States in 1845, Texas had criminalized abortion. The laws remained largely unchanged until a woman using the pseudonym Jane Roe challenged the state’s laws in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted, in 1973, in ensuring the right to access abortion across the country.
The Roe v. Wade decision stood until the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022, which overruled Roe.
Texas was one of 13 states, according to the Congressional Research Service, that had a so-called “trigger law” that would ban abortion in the event Roe was overturned.
The Texas trigger law, which was passed in 2021, became effective 30 days after the Dobbs ruling, making it illegal to have an abortion in Texas outside of narrow exceptions to preserve the life and health of a pregnant patient.
The law includes penalties for those who perform an abortion, including a minimum fine of $100,000, the loss of the health care provider’s medical license, and the potential for a life-time term in prison.
It also specifies that the person who gets an abortion will not be penalized. The law does not “authorize the initiation of a cause of action against or the prosecution of a woman on whom an abortion is performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced.”
Another pre-Dobbs Texas abortion law has a similar provision. That law, commonly called SB8 or the Texas Heartbeat Act, was passed in 2021 and prohibited doctors from performing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat was detectable. That law also allows anyone to sue an abortion provider who violates it.
But, like the trigger law, SB8 specifies that those who get an abortion cannot be penalized. As codified, it says, “This subchapter may not be construed to: (1) authorize the initiation of a cause of action against or the prosecution of a woman on whom an abortion is performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter.”
There was some confusion after SB8 was passed and a 26-year-old woman in Starr County, Texas, was charged for an alleged “self-induced abortion.”
The district attorney dropped the charges, though, and issued a statement saying, “In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. [Lizelle] Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.”
Despite that, some falsehoods about the law persist online.
For example, Qasim Rashid, who is challenging incumbent Rep. Bill Foster in the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 11th Congressional District, posted one such claim on X, formerly known as Twitter.
•Doctor performs abortion: $100K fine, lose license, life in prison
•Woman gets abortion: $10K fine, life in prison”
Rashid appears to have conflated the penalties from the Texas trigger law with the penalties under SB8. But, more importantly, he falsely claimed that those who get an abortion would be subject to penalties.
That post has been copied and shared as a screenshot meme on otherplatforms, too.
We asked Rashid’s campaign for evidence to support the claim and were provided with links to two newsstories, neither of which substantiated the claim.
In fact, one of the articles provided by the campaign says, “The statute specifically prohibits prosecuting a pregnant patient who undergoes an abortion.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Kansas City authorities charged two juvenile suspects with crimes connected to the Feb. 14 shootings at the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory celebration, in which one person was killed and 22 others were injured. Social media posts falsely identified one of the shooting suspects as “Sahil Omar, a 44 year old illegal.” A police spokesperson said that was a “fake claim.”
Full Story
The Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade and celebration on Feb. 14 ended with a mass shooting outside the city’s Union Station building. One woman, radio DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan, was killed, and 22 other people — half of them younger than 16 — were injured during the shootings and panic that followed, the Associated Press reported.
Kansas City, Missouri, police detained two juvenile suspects who were charged on Feb. 16 with gun-related offenses and resisting arrest, authorities told the AP. The shootings appeared to have been sparked by a dispute, police said, and several guns were found at the scene. A third person, also a juvenile, had been detained but was released, police told ABC News.
None of those detained has been identified by police. But some social mediaposts have falsely claimed that one of those held by authorities was a 44-year-old “illegal immigrant.”
Police respond to a shooting at Union Station during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl LVIII victory parade on Feb. 14 in Kansas City, Missouri. Photo by Jamie Squire via Getty Images.
“At least one of the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooters identified as Sahil Omar, a 44 year old illegal immigrant. Biden has failed to protect America from invasion and terrorism,” one Instagram post claimed. The post, which shows a photo of a man in a red sweatsuit sitting on a curb between police officers, received more than 1,200 likes.
But the claim is wrong.
A Kansas City Police spokesperson told us in a Feb. 16 email that police have seen the post and image on social media and called it “false information/fake claim.”
“The two people that remain in custody are juveniles, thus not the individual named Omar. There’s no indication that person is involved in the shooting,” the police spokesperson said.
USA Today reported that the name Sahil Omar had previously been falsely linked in social media posts to a hotel explosion in Fort Worth, Texas, on Jan. 8, and to a shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in December.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Neither Taylor Swift nor Travis Kelce has endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential race as of Feb. 16. But social media posts are making the unfounded claim that the pair said they plan to leave the U.S. if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 election.
Full Story
The romance between pop star Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce has moved beyond the realms of music and sports and has become a flash point in the world of politics.
Kelce, the tight end for the champion Kansas City Chiefs, made his own endorsement in 2023 — for getting COVID-19 and flu vaccinations — by appearing in a Pfizer television ad. His support for getting the COVID-19 vaccine drew a backlash from those opposed to the vaccines, including a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, from commentator Tomi Lahren, who asked, “Is this what happens when you date Taylor Swift?”
Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce embraces girlfriend and singer Taylor Swift following the team’s victory at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas. Photo by Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images.
As of Feb. 16, neither Swift nor Kelce has made any public political endorsements in the 2024 presidential race.
However, a few days after the Chiefs won Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, posts on social media made the unfounded claim, “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce say they will leave the United States if Donald Trump becomes President in 2024.”
A Facebook post said, “So now Taylor Swift and her violent boyfriend will leave the country if Trump is re-elected, good.”
The social media posts provide no source for the claim, and we could find no public statements from the performer or the football player about their plans if former President Donald Trump were to win the election in November.
It’s worth noting that Kelce’s current four-year, $57.25 million contract with the Chiefs runs through 2025.
As for Swift, she has an estimated $150 million invested in eight homes in four states in the U.S., according to Elle Decor.
So there is no evidence either is making plans for moving out of the U.S. anytime soon.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
The record-setting Canadian wildfires in 2023 were caused mainly by lightning igniting forests that were unusually hot and dry, in part due to climate change. But the recent conviction of a Quebec man led to false claims on social media that the majority of the fires were the result of arson.
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In 2023, Canada experienced its most extreme fire season to date. Beginning in the spring, the record-setting wildfires in both the eastern and western provinces burned about 46 million acres and displaced more than 150,000 people. As a result of smoke from the fires, U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit, also endured poor — and, in some cases, hazardous— air quality.
On Jan. 15, a Quebec man, Brian Paré, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life. In May, with 12 active fires already burning in Quebec, Paré, a conspiracy theorist, began setting his own fires with the intention of finding out “whether the forest was really dry or not,” Quebec Prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron told the court. Paré claimed on social media posts that the previous fires had been set by the Canadian government to convince people to believe in climate change, the Canadian Press reported.
Two of the 14 fires set by Paré forced evacuations of hundreds of nearby homes. The largest blaze, the Lake Cavan fire, burned about 2,000 acres of forest.
A view of wildfires at Lebel-sur-Quevillon in Quebec, Canada, on June 23, 2023. Photo by Frederic Chouinard/SOPFEU / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.
By comparison, more than 11 million acres burned in Quebec in 2023.
Experts say that climate change did play a role in Quebec’s unusually bad fire season. An analysis by 17 researchers for World Weather Attribution — an organization that “quantifies how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event” — found that climate change made the hot and dry conditions more likely and made the fire season in Quebec 50% more intense than it would have been otherwise.
But somesocial mediaposts, citing the guilty plea of Paré, have falsely claimed that arson was responsible for most of the fires in Quebec — not climate change.
In a Jan. 15 Instagram post sharing the news of the guilty plea by Paré, one user wrote: “FakeNews Media and corrupt politicians made it clear to all that forest fires were a direct result of GlobalWarming… A small minority knows to follow the facts carefully and know that majority of fires were from man’s arson or negligence.” The post received more than 2,000 likes.
In a post on Feb. 6, another user shared the headline, “Quebec man pleads guilty to setting 14 forest fires — [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau claimed it was climate change.” The user added in the caption: “They squashed the arson story immediately, well it was true.”
But as we said, the largest fire set by Paré burned about 2,000 of the total 11 million acres burned in Quebec during the 2023 fire season. A spokesman for the Quebec Forest Fire Protection Agency told AFP Fact Check that fires with a criminal origin accounted for less than 0.02% of the fires in that province. The vast majority of the fires were caused by lightning that ignited abnormally dry forests.
“Human-caused fires can be distinguished from lightning-caused fires with pretty good certainty,” Mike Wotton, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service stationed at the University of Toronto, told us in a Feb. 8 email. “The large fires in Quebec that burned from June onward and led to smoke circulating through the Eastern seaboard for many days were very clearly the result of lightning.”
The social media posts also create a false dichotomy between arson and climate change as the “cause” of the fires. In reality, neither would be the sole cause of any wildfire. A person can intentionally or accidentally light a fire — or lightning can strike — but if the conditions aren’t right, the blaze won’t take off or spread easily. And regardless of what starts a fire, climate change can be a contributing factor in making a fire more likely or more severe.
“In the areas of the north where those fires started in Eastern Ontario and Quebec, it was an extremely warm late spring and early summer,” explained Wotton, whose research has focused on the effects of climate change on fire activity. “When lightning storms went through the north of Ontario and Quebec many new fires were ignited” in the dried forests.
“It was earlier than normal to get such an impactful lightning fire event. … But that is the challenge we are facing with warmer temperatures that we are experiencing most every year these days,” he said.
“They will not all be terrible years like this past one,” Wotton said, “but we will have to get used to a lot more threat from fire and smoke being in our lives a lot more regularly.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested money with Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, after he left the White House in 2021. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News that the fund would keep its commitment to that investment. But social media posts are making the unfounded claim that Kushner has to return the money.
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Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former advisor to former President Donald Trump, started an investment fund, Affinity Partners, after leaving the White House following Trump’s failed bid for reelection in 2020.
Among the first funders was the Saudi Public Investment Fund — run by the Saudi Arabian government — which reportedly invested $2 billion. House Democrats had begun an investigation into the deal before losing control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm election.
Jared Kushner, who was a White House advisor, at a 2018 meeting between then-President Donald Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool via Getty Images.
Now, posts are circulating on Instagram with the unfounded claim, “looks like Jared Kushner has to ‘pay back the $2billion from Saudi Arabia In Full to The Government.’”
The posts echo a Feb. 2 thread that was posted on X and has been viewed 1.5 million times, according to the platform.
The thread cites an interview aired on Fox News in September between anchor Bret Baier and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The thread claims that, in the interview, Salman “suggested the money could be moved if Trump, who currently leads the 2024 GOP primary field, loses the 2024 Election.”
But the crown prince said no such thing.
In fact, Salman, speaking in English, told Baier that the investment is “a commitment that PIF have and when PIF have commitment with any investor around the globe, it keep it.”
The website associated with the X account that posted the claim is called Politics Video Channel. It was registered in 2017 and has, since then, regularly posted left-leaning content about American politics. The site is registered to a person in Australia, though. We emailed him to ask if there was any evidence to support his claim about the Saudi investment in Kushner’s fund, but we didn’t get a response.
So, all the copy-cat claims circulating on social media are just repeating a misrepresentation of what Salman said in a September interview.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Maloney, Carolyn B. Chairwoman, U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Letter to Jared Kushner. 2 Jun 2022.
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Quick Take
Taylor Swift has previously endorsed political candidates, including Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Online posts, however, share an altered photo of Swift that purports to show she endorses former President Donald Trump’s false claim that he won in 2020 and that Democrats “cheated” in the election.
Full Story
Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift decided to use her celebrity influence in 2018 by endorsing Tennessee Democratic candidates Phil Bredesen for the U.S. Senate and Jim Cooper for the House.
In an Oct. 7, 2018, Instagram post, which received more than 2 million likes, Swift wrote, in part: “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”
As of Feb. 2, Swift had not publicly announced her 2024 presidential preference.
Social mediaposts, however, are sharing a photo of Swift that purports to show her holding a sign that says, “TRUMP WON. DEMOCRATS CHEATED!”
Swift reacts during the Sept. 24 game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. Photo by David Eulitt/Getty Images.
But the photo has been altered to add the political signage.
The original photo of Swift, shown to the left, was taken at a Sept. 24 football game where Swift was cheering for her boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, in a skybox at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. In that photo, Swift was not holding any sign.
Swift is increasingly a target of conspiracy theories and online misinformation, as we’ve written. That’s likely to continue, because Swift’s political influence is evident. A September Instagram post by the singer encouraging her fans to register to vote on the website Vote.org was followed by 35,000 registrations. Vote.org could not say how many registrations were directly due to Swift’s post, but the site reported more than a 1,200% jump in participation in the hour after the post, according to NPR.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Misinformation peddlers baselessly claim a judge who presided over the defamation case that ended with an $83 million verdict against former President Donald Trump is linked to sex trafficking, noting that the judge dismissed a case related to Jeffrey Epstein. But the Epstein-related case was settled by the parties, and the defamation verdict was rendered by a jury.
Full Story
Afederal judge in New York oversaw a 2021 case related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as well as the recent defamation trial that ended with an $83.3 million verdict against former President Donald Trump.
Now, in an effort to criticize the outcome of Trump’s trial, partisan misinformation peddlers are baselessly citing the earlier case as an indication that the judge was connected to Epstein in a nefarious way. There’s nothing to support that claim.
Posts are circulating on social media with unsubstantiated claims that the judge “was involved in sex trafficking” or “is linked” to Epstein.
He said on the Jan. 26 episode of his podcast that U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York dismissed the Epstein-related case without going to trial, “yet Trump’s [case] — $83.3 million.” Bet-David later said, “I’m sorry man, this is ‘American Gangster,’ connect the dots. … There’s motive, the motive is linked to [former President Bill] Clinton, to Epstein, protecting the enemy. Protecting the bad guy and going after the good guy.”
Clinton nominated Kaplan to the federal bench in 1994. But some of those who have shared Bet-David’s claim have amplified the false suggestion that Clinton had been a party to the 2021 litigation in front of Kaplan that involved Epstein. The civil suit concerned Britain’s Prince Andrew.
For example, one Instagram post that shared a clip from Bet-David’s podcast also included text that said, “The judge that just made Trump pay $83.3 million – Let Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton go relating to Epstein.”
Clinton wasn’t a party to the suit against Andrew, but he is often invoked in relation to Epstein conspiracy theories, since he is among the powerful people who associated with Epstein. It’s worth noting that Trump, too, had associated with Epstein.
Bet-David’s claim misrepresents how the 2021 case unfolded and misleadingly equates it with the outcome of the recentTrump trial, which was decided by a jury, not the judge.
Settlement in Epstein-Related Case
In 2021, Virginia Giuffre — who accused Epstein of running a sex-trafficking ring for himself and his powerful friends — filed a civil suit alleging that one of those friends, Prince Andrew, sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager and caused her emotional distress.
Andrew settled the suit in 2022 without admitting liability.
The amount he paid wasn’t disclosed, but reports in the British press have estimated that it was anywhere from $3.8 million to $15 million.
A joint letter submitted to the court at the time of the settlement by attorneys for Andrew and Giuffre said, in part:
“Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks.”
That routine judicial action is now fodder for misinformation peddlers who claim it showsthat Kaplan was connected to Epstein or acted favorably toward him in the case. But, as we said, there’s nothing to support that claim.
Jury’s Finding in Trump Trial
Kaplan also presided atthe trial that recently ended with an $83.3 million verdict against Trump.
A jury found Trump liable in 2023 for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s and later defaming her,awarding her a $5 million verdict. Trump continued to deny the allegations, and during a town hall discussion aired on CNN shortly after that verdict, Trump called Carroll a “whack job.” She then added Trump’s statement’s following the verdict to an ongoing a defamation suit.
To be clear, Kaplan was not responsible for finding Trump liable or for the amount of damages awarded to Carroll. The jury decided both.
In a jury trial, the judge decides what evidence can be presented and instructs the jury on matters of law, including the burden of proof that must be present to find a defendant at fault. “A judge is similar to a referee in a game, they are not there to play for one side or the other but to make sure the entire process is played fairly,” the U.S. Department of Justice has explained.
So, it’s misleading to compare the outcomes of these two cases. The first was settled by the two sides, which caused its dismissal, and the second was decided by a jury. Neither outcome indicates any bias by the judge or any link to Epstein.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Former President Donald Trump is competing in Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses but not the state-run primary election. Nevada’s delegates are awarded based on the results of caucuses, not the primary election. Social media posts falsely claim Trump “forgot to file” or “election interference” prevented his name from appearing on the primary ballot.
Full Story
From 1984 to 2020, Nevada used a system of closed caucuses all but once to award delegates for the presidential nominating conventions. In caucuses, voters at local gatherings determine which presidential candidates to support from their party and select delegates to the nationalconventions. Since 2008, Nevada has been one of the earliest states on the presidential nominating calendar.
But in an effort to move Nevada further ahead in that schedule, the state passed a law in 2021 that requires a statewide presidential primary election to “be held for each major political party on the first Tuesday in February of each presidential election year.” At the time of the law’s passage, Nevada was scheduled to be the first presidential primary in 2024.
In response to Nevada’s law, Iowa and New Hampshire — historically the first states to hold caucuses or a primary election, respectively, in the presidential nominating cycle — moved their contests earlier to retain their first-in-the-nation status.
In the Republican race so far, former President Donald Trump has won a total of 32 delegates from Iowa and New Hampshire, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has won 17. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won nine delegates in Iowa before suspending his presidential campaign prior to the New Hampshire primary.
A Donald Trump supporter walks by a poster of Trump and a photo of former President Ronald Reagan outside a Commit to Caucus Rally in Las Vegas on Jan. 27. Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images.
However, the two Republican front-runners, Trump and Haley, will not face off in Nevada.
The Nevada Republican Party has decided that it will continue to use a system of caucuses, in which Trump will participate, to elect its delegates for the Republican National Convention. Despite this, Nevada is still required by law to hold a Republican primary election, and Haley has registered in that contest.
The Nevada primary elections will be held Feb. 6, and the Republican caucuses will be Feb. 8.
Due to the competing formats, the Nevada Republican Party has called the primary election “an illegitimate process.” Additionally, the Nevada Republican Central Committee announced that presidential candidates running in the state-run primary elections are ineligible to earn any of Nevada’s delegates at the Republican presidential nominating convention.
So only the party’s caucuses count toward a candidate’s delegate total for the Republican presidential nomination.
But posts onsocial media have used the existence of both the caucuses and a primary election to make unfounded claims about the Trump campaign and Nevada’s process.
A Jan. 17 Facebook post falsely claimed that “Trump will not be in the Nevada primary” because his team “forgot to file the paperwork.”
Another Facebook post, on Jan. 19, alleged that Trump’s “name is missing on official Nevada primary ballots. Just when you thought uniparty election interference couldn’t get worse, it does.”
But as we said, Trump’s absence from the Nevada primary ballot is not a result of his team not filing the requisite paperwork, nor is it the result of “election interference.”
A spokesperson for the Nevada secretary of state told us in a Jan. 30 email, “Only candidates who filed for the Presidential Preference Primary will appear on the ballot. Former President Trump did not file for the Presidential Preference Primary, and is instead participating in the party-run Republican caucus.”
Trump’s participation in the Nevada caucuses, rather than the primary election, ensures he can receive delegate votes from Nevada at the Republican National Convention. His biggest challenger, Haley, is ineligible to receive state delegate votes because she is running in the primary, and Trump is expected to easily win the state’s 26 delegate votes.
Nevada is the only state that will hold both caucuses and a presidential preference primary for the same political party this year.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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SciCheck Digest
The World Health Organization began using the term “Disease X” in a2018 planning document to refer to a “currently unknown” illness. But since the term was used at the January meeting of the World Economic Forum, conspiracy theorists baselessly claim Disease X is part of a “Globalist Plan to … Install World Government.”
Full Story
Disease X is the term the World Health Organization uses as a placeholder to represent an as-yet unknown new illness.
That’s like the term Xfactor, meaning an essential quality that is hard to define, or the use of X in mathematics, where the letter represents an unknown variable.
But online, conspiracy theorists and misinformation peddlers have twisted the term Disease X into something that is supposedly part of a sinister plot to wreak havoc on the world.
For example, Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars, claimed in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that there is a “Globalist Plan to Launch #DiseaseX to Install World Government.”
And Donald Trump Jr. referred to a Jan. 17 panel held at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when he wrote on Instagram, “I don’t trust the WEF clowns as far as I could throw them… They’re already talking about Disease X. Be prepared for whatever they throw you by checking out The Wellness Company, one of my triggered podcast’s newest sponsors!!!!”
Trump’s post asks “Why are they preparing for a hypothetical disease?” and encourages followers to purchase the Wellness Company’s “emergency medical kit.” The kit includes ivermectin and sells for $299.99 from his podcast sponsor, which we’ve written about before.
But posts that suggest or claim Disease X will be intentionally released in pursuit of world domination are unfounded.
As we said, the term is a placeholder that public health officials use to refer to potential future diseases, and the WEF panel Trump Jr. mentioned was focused on how governments and health systems can prepare for the next pandemic.
During the panel discussion in Davos earlier this month, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the misinformation circulating on social media about Disease X. He explained, “we annually list the emerging diseases and MERS could be one, Zika, Ebola — those we know — but then we said, there are things that are unknown, that may happen and anything happening is a matter of when, not if, so we need to have a placeholder for that, for the diseases we don’t know that may come. And that was when we gave the name, ‘Disease X.’ So, ‘Disease X’ is a placeholder for unknown diseases.”
The WHO began using the term in 2018, Tedros said.
The organization’s February 2018 “annual review of diseases prioritized under the Research and Development Blueprint” listed eight types of priority diseases. The list included “Disease X,” which the document described as representing “the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease, and so the R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown ‘Disease X’ as far as possible.”
So the term is nothing new. It has been used for six years.
Tedros acknowledged that discussing the possible emergence of a deadly, new pathogen “may create panic.” But, he said, “It’s better actually to anticipate something that may happen — because it has happened in our history many times — and prepare for it. We shouldn’t face things unprepared. We can prepare for some unknown things as well. Because there are basic things you can do.”
During the panel discussion, some of the suggestions for ways to prepare for the next Disease X were smoothing supply chains for vaccines, treatments and medical equipment; reinforcing epidemiological centers so there is better surveillance; and building health care systems that can expand when the need arises.
“Whatever the disease is, you should prepare for it,” Tedros said. “You don’t need to know the disease — there are common factors.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Efforts are underway in many states to disqualify former President Donald Trump from primary ballots, based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. Some viral posts compare Trump to Abraham Lincoln and falsely claim Lincoln was “removed” from state ballots in 1860. A Lincoln scholar said the claim “could not be more historically misleading.”
Full Story
Challenges have been filed in at least 35 states to keep former President Donald Trump from appearing on the states’ presidential primary ballots, according to a review of court records and documents by the New York Times.
In Colorado, the state Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump was disqualified from the presidency based on the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, though the court allowed him to remain on the ballot for the state’s March 5 primary pending a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Colorado court found that then-President Trump engaged in insurrection based on his actions around Jan. 6, 2021, that led to his supporters’ assault on the Capitol and attempted disruption of the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. Trump appealed the Colorado ruling on Jan. 3.
In Maine last month, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows barred Trump from the primary ballot, also based on the insurrection clause. A Maine Superior Court judge put a hold on Bellows’ decision until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the Colorado case.
While the nation awaits the high court’s ruling, some social media users have posted false claims about the basis for the efforts to disqualify Trump from state primary ballots and have distorted American history to draw parallels to the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln.
A Jan. 18 post on Instagram claims, “The satanic left removed Abraham Lincoln from ballots for fighting slavery. Lincoln won due to record voter turnout. Now they’re trying to remove Donald Trump from ballots for fighting child sex slavery… The American People stand with Trump! HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF!” The post has received more than 4,000 likes.
But as we said, the legal efforts to keep Trump off some state ballots is based on the insurrection clause, not for Trump “fighting child sex slavery.”
The text on another Instagram post, accompanied by a music video featuring a singer in a “Make America Great Again” hat, inaccurately claims, “The last presidential candidate to be removed from the ballots was Abraham Lincoln by the Democrats because they wanted to keep their slaves.” The post has received more than 7,000 likes.
But Lincoln was not “removed from the ballots.” Both posts misrepresent how the election system worked in the 1860s.
Voting for President in 19th-Century America
Christian McWhirter, a historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, told us he has seen similar social media claims about Lincoln’s failure to appear on ballots in some states in the 1860 presidential election. “The problem with statements like this is it assumes voting practices worked the way they do now and that wasn’t true,” McWhirter said in a Jan. 22 email.
Rather than a series of state primaries, presidential nominees were chosen in the mid-19th century at a national convention. Lincoln was chosen as the Republican Party nominee at the 1860 convention in Chicago, defeating three other contenders, including front-runner and former New York Gov. William Seward, who would later serve as Lincoln’s secretary of state.
During the general election in the mid-19th century, “voters were not presented with official ballots at polling stations like we have today that allowed them to check off which candidate they were voting for,” McWhirter said. “Instead, a 19th-century ballot or ‘political ticket’ was a slip of paper, provided by each party, listing their candidates for whatever offices were up for election. This allowed voters to easily ‘vote the ticket’ for their party without having to know the names of every candidate and office.”
“So, a voter would receive tickets like these, often at a political event or in a newspaper before an election or even from a party representative at their polling station. Then they could just drop it in the ballot box as is, and that was their vote,” McWhirter continued.
Because the “1860 Republican Party had no real presence in most Southern slaveholding states —especially the Deep South — there were no political tickets being distributed. So that’s actually what was happening, rather than Lincoln being ‘left off’ some kind of official ballot like we have today,” McWhirter said. “That didn’t mean people couldn’t vote for Lincoln, but they would have had to ‘write him in’ like we would a 3rd-party candidate today, and results show very little of that happened in those states.”
Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer said the Jan. 18 Instagram post “could not be more historically misleading.”
In 1860, “no jurisdiction actually barred [Lincoln] from the ballot, such as it was. Voting was conducted with pre-printed ballots, and Republicans did not create Lincoln ballots for regions where pro-slavery forces repudiated him; electors did not run in these hostile districts pledged to Lincoln,” Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, told us in a Jan. 22 email.
“To compare this situation to Donald Trump’s travails in 2024 is a miscarriage of historical justice. Lincoln pledged himself to fighting insurrection, not inciting it,” Holzer said.
McWhirter noted that in 1860, “the 14th Amendment didn’t exist yet, which is the specific context for Trump’s potential removal.” (The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.)
Lincoln won the 1860 election with just under 40% of the popular vote, defeating Stephen Douglas of the Democratic Party, John Breckenridge of the Southern Democratic Party — who won the nine Southern states — and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
State Rep. Nick Wilson proposed changing Kentucky’s incest law to add a ban on “sexual contact” to the existing ban on “sexual intercourse” between family members, but says he accidentally struck “first cousins” from the list of illegal relationships. Viral posts wrongly claimed Wilson wanted to legalize incest between cousins. He refiled a corrected bill.
Full Story
An apparent error in a recently filed Kentucky bill has led to posts on social media wrongly claiming that a state legislator is trying to legalize incest between cousins.
He isn’t, the legislator said.
Here’s what happened:
Republican Rep. Nick Wilson, who was a winner on the 2018 season of CBS’ “Survivor” before joining the Kentucky General Assembly last year, proposed amending the state’s statute outlawing incest so that “sexual contact” between family members would be illegal. Currently, the law bans only “sexual intercourse” and “deviate sexual intercourse.”
The bill Wilson filed Jan. 16 included that change but, in an apparent accident, it also eliminated “first cousins” from the list of illegal sexual relationships.
“During the drafting process, there was an inadvertent change, which struck ‘first cousins’ from the list of relationships included under the incest statute, and I failed to add it back in,” Wilson explained in a Jan. 17 Facebook post.
He withdrew that version of the bill and filed a corrected version on Jan. 17 with the language banning relations between “first cousins” intact.
But posts about the removal of “first cousins” from the law had already begun circulating.
For example, one post on Instagram — which misspelled the word “legalize” — claimed, “A Republican politician is trying to legalise cousin incest.” Otherposts featured screenshots from news websites that had written about the bill before the corrected version was filed.
Newsweek had published a story about the bill after a TikTok video, which received more than 106,000 views. That video said, “Nick Wilson is not only supporting, but has introduced a bill that would reclassify incest in the state of Kentucky to not include your own first cousin.”
Newsweek later updated its story with a comment from Wilson describing the removal of “first cousins” as a mistake and explaining that he had refiled the bill. The outlet didn’t update its headline, though.
But the social media posts saying that the bill would legalize sexual relationships between cousins are still circulating without updates.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Kentucky Revised Statutes — Incest. 530.020. Effective 29 Jun 2023.
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Quick Take
Nine men were charged with criminal mischief or attempted criminal mischief and other offenses after New York officials ordered an unauthorized tunnel built adjacent to a Brooklyn synagogue be stabilized. Viral posts made baseless claims that the tunnel was related to child sex trafficking. But the tunnel apparently resulted from a dispute between two sects over synagogue expansion.
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A long-brewing dispute within a Hasidic Jewish group in Brooklyn boiled over when an unauthorized tunnel adjacent to a synagogue was discovered and ordered stabilized by New York City officials. Videos of the skirmish between some members of the group and city officials that ensued last week went viral on social media and quickly led to conspiracy-laden claims.
For example, social media influencer AndrewTate, who has a history of spreading misinformation, falsely claimed that the tunnel led to a children’s museum. His post on X — which has been viewed more than 11 million times, according to the platform — prompted responses from users such as, “Well they have been involved in pedophilic ritual sacrifice for hundreds of years,” and, “you weren’t supposed to find out about the rape tunnels.”
Other social media posts had a similar tone, like a post on Instagram that included a video purportedly of the tunnel and asked, “Was this part of an underground pedophile ring?”
A Brooklyn synagogue is facing structural safety concerns due to an illegal tunnel adjacent to it. Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they dug a tunnel all the way to Episten’s island !” responded one commenter, referring to the accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, whose last name was misspelled in the post.
There is no evidence that the tunnel had anything to do with human trafficking.
Nine young men — members of the Hasidic group — were arrested on Jan. 8, the day the dispute over the tunnel broke out. But none of them were charged with anything related to human trafficking. According to an email from the New York Police Department, all nine were charged with either criminal mischief and reckless endangerment or attempted criminal mischief and attempted reckless endangerment. In addition, one was also charged with obstruction of governmental administration and two were charged with an attempted hate crime. The police did not provide details about the attempted hate crime or the other charges.
Levi Huebner, thelawyerrepresentingthemen, told us in a phone interview that the excavation adjacent to the synagogue was intended to be part of an expansion for the building, which is one factor in a controversy between two divided groups within the community.
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a branch of Hasidic Judaism, splintered after its last leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in 1994. A group within the movement believed that Schneerson was the Messiah and objected to descriptions of him as being dead. They also wanted to carry out his vision for expanding the synagogue.
It is not yet clear exactly why the area was excavated, but otherreporting on the controversy points to the same reason.
The tunnel “was a single linear 60-foot long underground tunnel, illegally excavated directly underneath a single-story rear extension behind 784 & 786 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn,” the New York City Department of Buildings told us in an email. It was not connected to the main synagogue building.
The Jewish Children’s Museum is located on the other side of Kingston Avenue from the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitcher Hasidic movement, where the tunnel was found. But the tunnel did not cross the street, contrary to rumors on social media, like the one posted by Tate.
The building department also provided an image showing the rough outline of the tunnel, which is drawn in red, and the two adjacent buildings, which are highlighted in yellow, that were destabilized by the excavation. (Image, which doesn’t include the children’s museum across the street, is shown at right.)
The building department also noted that “the tunnel was found to be empty other than dirt, tools and debris from workers.” This is notable since some of the social media posts suggest that sinister items were found in the area.
One post on Instagram, for example, said, “Who is being forced to sleep on these child-sized soiled mattress hidden in illegal tunnels connected to a NYC Jewish temple?” The post included part of a video that shows a mattress being removed from a wall before community members broke through to the excavated area.
But the mattress wasn’t in the tunnel. It was standing vertically between the wood paneling inside the synagogue and the external cinder block wall. Huebner, the lawyer, said that it had been put there to provide structure and padding to support the thin wood paneling.
While many of the facts surrounding the tunnel are still unclear, what we know so far is that many of those involved say that the excavation was part of a controversial expansion of the building, that the tunnel did not connect to a children’s museum, and that there is no evidence to suggest human trafficking was happening there.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, and as a natural born citizen is eligible to serve as U.S. president. But social media posts — including one shared by former President Donald Trump — falsely claim she is ineligible because her parents weren’t American citizens when she was born.
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Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, was born on Jan. 20, 1972 in Bamberg, South Carolina. Haley is now running to be the Republican nominee for president, and as a natural born citizen, she is eligible to serve in that position, according to constitutional scholars.
As we have written before, the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
But posts on social media falsely claim she is ineligible to serve because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race, shared the bogus claim on Jan. 8 on his social media platform, Truth Social, citing an Instagram post from the conservative website Gateway Pundit.
“In @NikkiHaley’s situation, reports indicate that her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972. Based on the Constitution as interpreted by @PaulIngrassia, this disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice-presidential candidacy under the 12th Amendment,” the post said.
The Gateway Pundit is referring to Paul Ingrassia, a 2022 Cornell Law School graduate, who wrote on Substack that the U.S. Constitution “absolutely prohibits” Haley from becoming president or vice president. (In his Substack bio, Ingrassia says his Substack is “President Trump’s go-to source on political and social commentary.”)
Haley’s parents were born in the Punjab region of India and immigrated to the U.S., she wrote in her autobiography, “Can’t Is Not an Option: My American Story.” Her father became a U.S. citizen in 1978 and her mother in 2003.
But the citizenship status of Haley’s parents at the time of her birth are irrelevant to her eligibility to serve as president, constitutional experts say. Similar false claims were made about Kamala Harris in 2020, when Joe Biden chose her as his vice presidential running mate. Social media posts claimed Harris could not serve as president, if such a need occurred, because her Indian mother and Jamaican father were not American citizens when she was born.
As we wrote at that time, Josh Chafetz, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center specializing in constitutional law, called those posts “racist nonsense.”
Chafetz told us in an email in 2020: “To serve as president, one must be at least 35 years old, have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years, and be a ‘natural born Citizen’ (Article II, sec. 1 of the Constitution). Additionally, one cannot have already been president for more than a term and a half (22nd Amendment).”
Chafetz also said the fact that Harris’ parents were immigrants is “wholly irrelevant” to her eligibility to serve as president.
Responding to the claims about Haley by Gateway Pundit, Geoffrey Stone, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, told the Associated Press, “Having been born in South Carolina, [Haley] is clearly a ‘natural born citizen,’ without regard to the fact that her parents were immigrants.”
Stone also told the AP that there are no legitimate arguments that Haley is ineligible to serve as president based on her parents’ citizenship when she was born.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC News that the “birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
NFL teams paid tribute to the victims in Israel of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack by holding moments of silence before games during the following week. But a recent social media post falsely claimed the NFL encouraged players “to kneel for Israel before every game.” An NFL spokesperson called the claim “patently false.”
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After the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the NFL announced that its teams would hold a moment of silence before their games during the following week to honor the victims.
Approximately 1,200 people were killed in Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli officials said. More than 22,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza in the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza’s health ministry reported on Jan. 8. Reuters reported on Jan. 9 that 187 Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting in Gaza.
“The NFL mourns the loss of innocent lives in Israel and strongly condemns all forms of terrorism,” the NFL said in an Oct. 9 statement, CBS Sports reported. “The depravity of these acts is beyond comprehension, and we grieve with the families of those killed, injured and still missing. We pray for peace and will always stand against the evils of hate.”
A Jan. 6 video post on Instagram, however, misrepresents the NFL’s response to the attacks in Israel. The text on the post claims, “the NFL is encouraging players to kneel for Israel before every game.” The post has received nearly 3,000 likes.
A male voice on the post contrasts the purported action by the NFL with its response to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who protested incidents of police brutality and racial injustice in 2016 by kneeling during the national anthem and inspired other players to do the same. Kaepernick then received no offers from NFL teams to play the following season or since then.
The video includes images of NFL players, including Kaepernick, kneeling on the sidelines. While the narrator may give the impression that some of the images represent players kneeling in support of Israel, we traced them backto the racial injusticeprotestsin 2016 and 2017. None of the images in the post represent players kneeling in support of Israel after Oct. 7.
Contrary to the post’s claim, the NFL has not encouraged players “to kneel for Israel” before any games. NFL spokesperson Tim Schlittner told us in a Jan. 8 email, “The post is patently false.”
It’s worth noting that in 2018, the NFL and the team owners announced a policy that requires players and other team personnel to stand during the national anthem, but allows players to remain in the locker room during the anthem if they prefer. Those who don’t follow the policy face possible fines by the league and their team.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Court documents that include names of people associated with accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein are being unsealed, but late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has not been implicated. The suggestion that Kimmel would be among the names came from football player Aaron Rodgers, who had no evidence to support the claim.
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Dozens of court documents were unsealed this week as part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The documents include the names of people who were associated with Epstein, the late financier accused of running a sex-trafficking ring for himself and his powerful friends.
Most of the names that have come out so far had already been publicized, though. Still, the anticipation that previously unknown associates would be revealed has caused a stir online, and Aaron Rodgers, an NFL quarterback who has a history of spreading misinformation, added to the confusion. As a guest on Pat McAfee’s ESPN show, Rodgers suggested without any evidence that late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel may be implicated in the list of names from the unsealed documents.
“There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, who are really hoping that doesn’t come out,” Rodgers said on the Jan. 2 episode of the show, in an apparent joke.
“All right, obviously, a clip from this particular program was run on Jimmy Kimmel’s show whenever Aaron brought up the list and then Jimmy mocked him for it and Aaron has not forgotten about that,” McAfee explained on the show.
None of the documents that have been unsealed so far include Kimmel’s name.
Kimmel also responded to Rodgers in a post on X, saying in part, “for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any ‘list’ other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality.”
Kimmel also threatened Rodgers with legal action, concluding his post, “Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court.”
McAfee apologized the following day, saying, “Some things obviously people get very pissed off about, especially when they’re that serious allegations. So we apologize for being a part of it. I can’t wait to hear what Aaron has to say about it. Hopefully those two will just be able to settle this, you know, not court-wise, but be able to chitchat and move along.”
But social media posts had already taken off with the claim, and an image showing Kimmel’s name that was purported to be from the new cache of unsealed documents spread widely on XandInstagram. The text in the image, which purports to be dialogue from a deposition tying Kimmel to Epstein, isn’t included in any of the roughly 60documents that have been unsealed so far.
One of the earliest versions of the image appeared on a meme-sharing site called iFunny from an account that posted several images related to the Epstein case. The account offered no explanation of where the image had originated.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
A sixth-grade student was killed, five people were injured and the 17-year-old gunman took his own life during a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, on Jan. 4. Social media posts baselessly labeled the incident a “false flag” event timed to draw attention away from the release of documents related to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s associates.
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On the first day back to school from the winter break, a teenage gunman killed a sixth-grader and injured four other students and the principal at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Jan. 4. Officials identified the shooter as Dylan Butler, 17, and said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Authorities said Butler, a student at the school, had been armed with a pump-action shotgun and a small caliber handgun, and a “rudimentary” improvised explosive was also found in the school, the New York Times reported. Officials said they believe Butler acted alone. CNN reported that authorities also believe he posted a TikTok video showing himself in a school bathroom shortly before the shooting.
Despite the details reported about the incident, posts on social media tried to cast doubt on the shooting, referring to it as a “false flag” meant to distract the public from the release of documents identifying associates of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide while jailed in 2019.
“With the release of the Epstein Docs yesterday and the Iowa Caucus next week we conveniently have a False Flag mass shooting event at High School in Perry, Iowa. It’s all so obvious,” read a Jan. 4 Instagram post that received more than 1,300 likes.
“Not even 24 hours after the Epstein court document was released we have multiple victims who were shot at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. Make no mistake this is a false flag to distract the media from discussing anything in relation to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients,” read another post.
A “false flag” refers to an action “designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it,” according to Merriam-Webster.com. We’ve written about other bogus claims of “false flags” related to the death of George Floyd and threats of Election Day violence.
There is no evidence for the conspiratorial claim in the social media posts that the deadly shooting in Perry, Iowa, involved or was planned by anyone other than the alleged teenage gunman.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
A federal judge has ordered the release of documents that will identify scores of accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s associates. The order has led many social media users to share a digitally manipulated image that purports to show Vice President Kamala Harris posing with Epstein. The original photo showed Harris with her husband, Douglas Emhoff.
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The names of more than 150 people who were associated with Jeffrey Epstein — the financier accused of running a sex-trafficking ring for him and his well-connected friends before killing himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019 — are set to be released in January.
The publication of those names — many of which have already been made public — is the result of an order to unseal hundreds of documents issued by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska, who is overseeing a civil suit brought by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime consort.
Anticipation of the release has prompted many social media users to share an old, manipulatedphoto made to suggest that Epstein was associated with Vice President Kamala Harris. There is no evidence to support any such association. Text shared with the photo further suggests that this purported relationship might shield others from being revealed.
The text says, “Maybe this is why we can’t see those flight logs,” which is a reference to lists of passengers on Epstein’s private plane. But, it’s worth noting, hundreds of pages of those flight logs have already been released.
The photo shown in the social media posts is digitally manipulated. The original picture shows Harris in 2015 with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, at the opening celebration for The Broad, an art museum in Los Angeles.
A mugshot from Epstein’s 2006 arrest on solicitation charges was transposed over Emhoff’s face to make it appear as though Epstein and Harris were photographed together. They weren’t.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Lia Thomas, who received widespread attention as a transgender member of the women’s swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania, has graduated from college and is no longer on the school team. But claims about her persist online, including one recent falsehood, which originated on a satirical site, claiming that she joined a men’s team.
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Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who competed on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team, became a focal point in the discussion about transgender women in sports after she started hormone therapy and qualified to join the women’s team in 2021, her final year as a college athlete.
Even though Thomas is no longer swimming on a school team and is swimming recreationally, claims about her persist online.
One such claim that was first posted in October is still circulating on social media, falsely claiming that Thomas has chosen to “Swim With A Men’s Team After Extreme Criticism.”
Posts of the claim, which look like news reports on Facebook, have garnered comments such as, “That is where he always belonged.”
But the claim originated on a satirical website that describes its articles as “fake news.”
The website, called SpaceXMania, describes its mission this way: “To bring you the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire, all rolled into one crazy concoction that orbits around Elon Musk and everything that’s lighting up the viral/trending charts.”
It also says, “every single article on our site is about as real as a unicorn sipping on a rainbow smoothie. They’re pure fantasy, folks, not a snapshot of reality.”
The claim circulating on social media doesn’t carry the satire label, appearing as if it’s a real news story. But it’s completely made up.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Army cadets rhythmically cheered to the beat of the military band during the annual Army-Navy football game on Dec. 9. The cheer was captured in a viral video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Some versions of the video circulating on social media sites have been dubbed over to falsely claim that the cadets were chanting “f— Joe Biden.” They weren’t.
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Army beat Navy 17-11 in the annual football game between the two military service academies, held this year at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium.
Video of Army cadets jumping and cheering in rhythm to the marching band has now caught fire on the internet, circulating on social media platforms with a false claim that politicizes the clip.
Stiefel covered the game for the network, and posts on his X account show that he was by the Army sideline.
Partway through the game, he posted the video clip showing Army cadets cheering with the caption, “I’ve never experienced anything like #ArmyNavy. This is an unbelievable atmosphere.”
Later that day, after the clip had picked up traction online, he reposted a Canadian network’s use of his video, saying, “The Canadians are using my #ArmyNavy video. I’m practically the king of international relations.”
Then a version of Stiefel’s video started circulating with dubbed audio, giving the false impression that the cadets were chanting a vulgar phrase about President Joe Biden that has been a popular saying among some conservatives since 2021. Altered videos on Instagram, forexample, include text that says, “Massive ‘Fuck Joe Biden’ chant breaks out at Army/Navy game.”
Stiefel took to X again the day after the game, clarifying that the clip with the politicized chant was “doctored.” Regardless, versions of the falsified video are still circulating online.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III reportedlytold House members that failure to provide more aid for Ukraine could lead to Russia’s invasion of a NATO ally and a directU.S. military response in accordance with the NATO treaty. A viral post by Tucker Carlson misleadingly omits Austin’s explanation of why U.S. troops might be required.
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For months,the Biden administration has been telling Congress that Ukraine needs more support in its war with Russia. The administration’s request for more funding for Ukraine has gotten increasingly urgent in recent weeks.
In an Oct. 20 address to the nation, President Joe Biden warned that the failure to stop Russia from conquering Ukraine will embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade countries that are members of NATO – a military alliance formed in 1949 to keep the peace in Europe after World War II.
Biden has said he would not send troops to fight in Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. But Biden said in his address, “if Putin attacks a NATO ally, we will defend every inch of NATO which the treaty requires and calls for.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III brought that message to a closed briefing of House members on Dec. 5. He said that failure to approve more aid for Ukraine could “very likely” lead to the need for U.S. troops to defend NATO allies in Europe against Russia, the Messenger reported.
But a Dec. 7 post by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, which was shared on Instagram on Dec. 8, misleadingly omits Austin’s explanation of why and where American troops would be needed if Ukraine loses the war with Russia.
Carlson’s post, which shows a photo of Austin shaking hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “The Biden administration is openly threatening Americans over Ukraine. In a classified briefing in the House yesterday, defense secretary Lloyd Austin informed members that if they don’t appropriate more money for Zelensky, ‘we’ll send your uncles, cousins and sons to fight Russia.’ Pay the oligarchs or we’ll kill your kids.”
Austin was referring to the U.S. commitment to its NATO allies in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in 1949. Carlson made no reference to Article 5 in his tweet, which received more than 100,000 likes, and he did not explain what could happen if Russia invades a NATO country.
North Atlantic Treaty, Article 5: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
A day after Austin’s meeting with congressional members, Biden referenced Article 5 in remarks urging Congress to provide more funding for Ukraine.
“If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there. It’s important to see the long run here. He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear,” Biden said on Dec. 6. “If Putin … keeps going and then he attacks a NATO ally — well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops — American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO.”
After Austin’s briefing, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told the Messenger, “If [Vladimir] Putin takes over Ukraine, he’ll get Moldova, Georgia, then maybe the Baltics.” The Baltic nations — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — are former republics of the Soviet Union and now members of NATO.
“And then the idea that we’ll have to put troops on the ground in Secretary Austin’s word was very likely,” said McCaul, a Texas Republican who has supported aid for Ukraine.
A spokesperson for McCaul told us in an email that Carlson’s post “is very much lacking context.” The spokesperson directed us to another McCaul staffer for more information, but that person didn’t provide further comment.
Some other Republican leaders have also warned of Russia’s possible aggression toward NATO countries if it succeeds in Ukraine.
In a Dec. 10 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said, “My own view is that it’s very much in America’s interest to see Ukraine successful and to provide the weapons that Ukraine needs to defend itself. Anything other than that would be a huge dereliction of our responsibility, I believe, to the world of democracy but also to our own national interest. Because if Putin thinks he can invade his neighbor with impunity and that we’re just going to step back, that we’re going to say, ‘Oh, we’re tired; we’re not going to keep on helping,’ then, guess what? He’s not going to stop. And he’s going to go into a NATO nation that’s going to draw NATO and our troops into war with Russia.”
After Carlson tweeted about Austin’s meeting with Congress, Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin, citing sources who attended the briefing, tweeted that Carlson’s “characterization” of Austin’s statements was wrong.
“This characterization of Austin’s remarks is 100 percent not true, acc to two sources who were in the briefings. Austin warned that it is not hyperbole to say Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. If he enters NATO territory US troops could be called to fight; cheaper to fund Ukraine now,” Griffin reported.
We wrote about a similar claim on social media when Zelenskyy warned that a Russian invasion of one of the Baltic states could spark a response from the U.S. military.
But we noted that Katherine Yon Ebright, of the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote in a 2022 report that the language of Article 5 is “relatively flexible.” It allows NATO members to determine how to respond to an attack on an ally — which could mean sending equipment, imposing sanctions, or engaging in direct military action, she wrote.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
The Earth is warming at the fastest rate seen in the last 10,000 years, according to NASA, and the consensus among climate scientists is that human activity is causing the change. But a meme on social media tries to undermine the reality of climate change by misrepresenting the views and media coverage of a climatologist popular among those who believe climate change is a “hoax.”
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As scientists and world leaders gathered in the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 climate summit, misleading claims about climate change circulated on social media.
One meme that’s been widely shared for months tries to cast doubt on the reality of climate change by suggesting that the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg gets an unfair proportion of media coverage compared with Judith Curry, a climatologist who is popular among those who believe climate change is a “hoax.”
The social media post shows side-by-side photos of the two women and compares Thunberg’s credentials and message to Curry’s, noting that Curry has published scientific papers and claiming that she “says it’s all a hoax.” The meme says that Thunberg “gets 24/7 media coverage” while Curry “gets no media coverage” and concludes, “This is what media manipulation looks like.”
But the meme overstates Curry’s position on climate change and, more importantly, sets up a false comparison between the two in order to give the impression that climate change isn’t happening.
“Comparing media coverage of Greta Thunberg versus Judith Curry is like comparing apples to oranges,” JohnCook, an expert in climate science communication, told us in an email. “Greta Thunberg is an environmentalist and typically media coverage about her focuses on the broader movement for climate action. Judith Curry is a scientist whose views are out of step with the mainstream climate science community.”
The evidence of climate change has led to consensus among climate scientists that the phenomenon is happening and is driven by human activity — primarily the burning of fossil fuels, which produce heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that increase temperatures.
“The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750,” NASA has explained on its website. “This increase is due to human activities, because scientists can see a distinctive isotopic fingerprint in the atmosphere.”
“What is the appropriate way for the media to cover contrarian scientists?” Cook said. “My research has found that it’s misleading for journalists to give equal weight between mainstream climate scientists and contrarian scientists because it gives the false impression of a 50:50 debate among the scientific community.
“Instead, we recommend in the Consensus Handbook that when airing contrarian viewpoints, they also communicate the weight of evidence or weight of experts,” said Cook, a co-author of the handbook with other researchers at the Center for Climate Change Communication.
So, any lack of coverage for Curry in the news isn’t evidence of a cover-up but, rather, in keeping with best practices for reporting on the issue. It’s also worth mentioning that she gets a fair bit of coverage from conservative media, including FoxNews and the New York Post.
As for Curry’s position on climate change — she doesn’t deny that it’s happening. Or that humans have contributed. She argues that natural climate variability is also a major contributing factor and that measures to stanch climate change are likely to be ineffective, which is where she falls out of line with most other scientists.
“I have never said that climate change is a hoax,” Curry told us in an email. “The earth’s climate has been changing for the past 4.6 billion years.”
“Climate change is a geological fact. What is causing the change for the past century is a different issue. Humans are contributing to the recent climate change, but there has also been natural climate variability/change,” Curry said.
But, as we said, that view is out of step with most other climate scientists, who have found that the temperature increases cannot be explained by natural climate fluctuations.
So, the meme is wrong about Curry’s position on the issue, and wrong in its implication that climate change isn’t happening, and the media is covering it up.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Cook, John. Senior research fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. Email exchange with FactCheck.org. 6 Dec 2023.
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Quick Take
More than 100 hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel have been released through a negotiated swap for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. A post on social media misleadingly claims the freed Israelis “look like people finishing a vacation.” But news reports say many of the Israelis returned malnourished, injured and traumatized.
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About 1,200 people were killed and 240 others were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attacks on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. More than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, as of Dec. 2, the Associated Press reported based on information from the health ministry in Gaza.
During a week-long pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas — a ceasefire that began Nov. 24 and was mediated by Qatar — the two sides began exchanging some of the hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
As of Dec. 3, 105 hostages had been released by Hamas. According to the American Jewish Committee, the released hostages included 81 Israelis, some with dual citizenship, as well as 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino. In exchange, Israel released 240 Palestinians, most of them teenagers, the New York Times reported.
Many of the Israeli hostages, according to interviews with family members, returned “malnourished, infested with lice, ill, injured and deeply traumatized,” the Times also reported.
An 84-year-old woman who had been held hostage was in “life-threatening condition after not receiving proper care in captivity,” and another freed hostage required surgery, according to the Associated Press.
But a Nov. 29 post on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, and Instagram presents a distorted view of the hostages’ condition when they were freed.
The post claims, “Videos of Israeli hostages being released look like people finishing a vacation and saying goodbye to the resort staff. They’re smiling, laughing, hugging, blowing kisses, and waving goodbye to their captors. Multiple Israeli hostages have been interviewed and said they were treated with kindness and respect while being well-fed.”
In a deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar before the ceasefire, one Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, was released on Oct. 23, and she was seen on video shaking the hand of one of her captors.At a press conference the next day, Lifshitz said that members of Hamas had treated her with “care” and “gentleness” during her captivity.
But she also described the violence of the Oct. 7 attack and her abduction from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. “As we rode, the motorcycle rider hit me with a wooden pole. They didn’t break my ribs, but it hurt me a lot in that area, making it difficult to breathe,” Lifshitz said.
The accounts of other Israeli hostages did not describe Hamas as treating them with “kindness and respect while being well-fed,” as the X post claims. In interviews with the New York Times, relatives speaking for the hostages said some were given a single piece of bread per day and were held in deep, sweltering tunnels.
A screen grab captured from a video shows the release of an Israeli hostage as part of the exchange agreement during the humanitarian pause in Gaza on Nov. 26, 2023. Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Devorah Cohen, whose 12-year-old nephew Eitan Yahalomi was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, said he “lived through horrors” during his captivity. “When he arrived in Gaza, civilians hit him,” Cohen said. He and other children were forced to watch videos of the violence committed on Oct. 7; if they cried, their guards threatened to shoot them, she said.
“What we hear from the stories from children –- the captivity’s harsh reality is unbelievable,” Omer Lubaton Granot, who founded the Israeli support group Hostages and Missing Family Forums,told CNN. “Sisters of other children told them that Hamas have told the children that their whole family has died, that nobody wants them back, that they don’t have a home to go to. They tried to scare the children.”
The Red Cross has been denied access to the Israeli hostages, the Times has reported.
“You can predict that the psychological or emotional consequences will be severe — and you could also predict, from what is known in the field, that they’re going to be very different across the hostages because of differences in what they experienced when they were taken captive and their ages,” Dr. Spencer Eth, chief of mental health at the Miami VA Healthcare System, told CNN.
Condition of Palestinians Released by Israel
The social media post also compares the condition of the Israeli hostages with the treatment of the Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in the recent exchanges. “Meanwhile Palestinian hostages, mostly kids and women, come back with burn marks, broken bones, and permanent mental anguish,” the post claims.
An analysis by the New York Times found that most Palestinians released by Israel were 18 and younger:107 teenagers younger than 18, including three girls, and 66 who were 18 years old. Three-quarters of them had not been convicted of any crime. They had been detained for what Israel said were offenses related to Israel’s security, the Times reported.
Ian Lustick, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told us in a Dec. 1 phone interview that he had seen “no reports or evidence that the batch of prisoners was released [in exchange for hostages] with signs of mistreatment. I have not seen that.”
He also said “some of the released [Israeli hostages] have been in much better shape than most Israelis expected. That is fair to say. But to say they look like they were on vacation, that’s ridiculous.”
Lustick said the content of the social media post comparing the conditions of the Israeli hostages with the Palestinian prisoners uses “two extreme examples.”
On one hand, the 85-year-old Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz was seen “shaking hands and thanking her captors and she remarked how well she was treated by them,” Lustick said. “She received tremendous criticism in Israel” for those actions and comments, and “that became a well-known incident.”
On the other hand, Lustick said, an Oct. 19 article on the news website Middle East Eye cited a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about three West Bank Palestinians who were detained on Oct. 12 for hours and beaten, burned and abused by Israeli soldiers and settlers before they were released later that night. They were not among the 240 Palestinians released as part of the Israel-Hamas exchange.
Lustick said it appeared the social media post was referring to the incident in the West Bank. The post, while “trying to make a drastic argument, conflated a report about mistreatment of Arabs by the military in the West Bank since the [Oct. 7] attack with the condition of the released [Palestinian] detainees,” he said.
But Lustick also said that “prisoners are not treated well” in Israeli prisons. “They’re kept alive, but they’re mistreated systematically right now.” Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, “has been trying to reduce their living standards, taking away privileges, and making life much more miserable for Palestinian prisoners of all types,” Lustick said.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
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Quick Take
Doctors Without Borders has been working in the West Bank since fighting intensified between the Israelis and Palestinians after Oct. 7. But a video post on social media misleadingly claims it shows an aid worker from that organization passing a gun to a Palestinian fighter. The worker is wearing a vest used by the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
Full Story
Amid a tenuous truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, some fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has continued in the West Bank. Misinformation about that area is spreading on social media.
A video that appears to show a person wearing a Palestinian Medical Relief Society vest who — under fire — transfers a gun from one fighter to another in the West Bank city of Jenin has been mislabeled as showing a worker from the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders.
The video was shared on Instagram by former model and Israeli celebrity Nataly Dadon on Nov. 9. A label on the video says, “Doctors Without Borders,” and in her post Dadon claims that the aid worker is affiliated with the group, which has a policy of neutrality in conflict zones.
“In this video taken today in Jenin, a medic from ‘Doctors without borders’ went to a terrorist who was shot by the IDF, lifted him up and took his weapon then brought it to another terrorist,” Dadon’s post reads. “Basically he abused his position as a medic, which the IDF cannot shoot, to break the law and assist terrorists to get a weapon.”
The same video has been shared on other social media platforms, but doesn’t include that label. Instead, it shows the Instagram handle for a Palestinian journalist named Obada Tahayna, whose Instagram account is no longer active. We reached out to him on Facebook for comment, but didn’t receive a response.
A person, left, appears to be wearing a Palestinian Medical Relief Society vest in a video posted by Israeli celebrity Nataly Dadon. The person on the right shown wearing a PMRS vest is from the organization’s Facebook page.
There’s nothing in the video itself that suggests anyone shown is related to Doctors Without Borders and, as we said, it appears that the vest the man is wearing is from the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, which was founded by Palestinian doctors and helps to provide health care in Gaza and the West Bank.
The fact-checking website Lead Stories wrote about Dadon’s video on Nov. 23 and was able to get the original video from Tahayna, the Palestinian journalist whose handle appears on many versions of the clip. Lead Stories posted that video on YouTube, where the vest and the PMRS logo are more clearly visible. It matches the orange vestsworn by some PMRS aid workers.
Medics affiliated with Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, usually wear white vests that bear the organization’s red logo.
That said, both organizations have been operating in the West Bank and a video posted by Doctors Without Borders shows some aid workers in orange vests delivering patients to the hospital. But there’s nothing to suggest that the person in the video posted by Dadon is tied to Doctors Without Borders.
We reached out to Doctors Without Borders and to Dadon for comment, but didn’t hear back from either. Doctors Without Borders, however, told Lead Stories that its staff does not provide medical care in the streets of Jenin. It “supports the Emergency Room of the Ministry of Health Hospital and supports the Pre-hospital emergency,” the organization told the fact-checking site.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de Google Translate.
Quick Take
At least 260 people were killed by Hamas during the militant group’s surprise attacks at an outdoor music festival in Israel on Oct. 7. A video clip on social media falsely claims to show Israel Defense Forces helicopters firing on festival-goers that day. The clip is from a video of IDF aircraft shooting at Hamas militants a day later at sites in the Gaza Strip.
Full Story
During the Oct. 7 surprise attacks on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, at least 260 people were killed at an outdoor concert, the Tribe of Nova music festival near Kibbutz Reim, as we’ve written.
About 240 Israelis and other nationals were taken hostage during the attacks at the festival and other locations in southern Israel.
Since war broke out between Israel and Gaza, about 1,200 Israelis and more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed as of Nov. 20, the United Nations said, citing Israeli official sources and the Gaza Ministry of Health, respectively. The majority of Israeli casualties occurred during Hamas’ initial attacks on Oct. 7.
As rockets fell on the festival crowd, the attackers converged on the site in trucks and on motorcycles, firing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at the fleeing revelers, according to reporting by the Associated Press based on survivors’ accounts.
But postson social media, including a Nov. 9 post from conspiracy theorist Stew Peters, falsely claim that a video shows many of the festival-goers were killed by Israeli helicopter fire, not the Hamas attackers.
“VIDEO PROVES and ISRAEL ADMITS it slaughtered its own people on Oct. 7th,” Peters falsely claims in the post on X, the platform formerly called Twitter. “Footage from Israeli helicopter shows the IDF killing many people at October 7 concert in Israel.”
Peters, a conservative radio host, also has spread misinformation about COVID-19 and other topics, as we’ve previously written.
The 14-second video clip in Peters’ post appears to be green-tinted, infrared aerial footage of explosions on the ground and people running from the assault. The text on the post claims, “IDF helicopters fired on civilians fleeing the PsyTrance Music Festival.”
In addition to the video,the post includes a link to an Oct. 30 article in the Middle East Monitor, a website that says it supports the “Palestinian cause.” That article includes a quote that reads: “Israeli commanders made ‘difficult decisions’ including ‘shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.’” The quote is attributed to a security coordinator at Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the settlements attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7.
But the aerial footage shown in the post comes from a longer compilation video shared by the IDF on Oct. 9 on X. The video shows aerial bombings at several sites inthe Gaza Strip on Oct. 8 — the day after the Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. The text on the IDF post, translated from Hebrew, reads: “Forces @idfonline Throughout the last day, Air Force planes have been carrying out extensive attacks along the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip, wreaking havoc on Hamas terrorists. In just the last three hours, about 130 targets were attacked using dozens of planes. The focus of the attack: Beit Hanon, Sajaya, Al Furkan and Rimal.”
Those locations are in the northern Gaza Strip; two are neighborhoods in Gaza City.
In response to the social media posts, the IDF told Newsweek in a story published Nov. 13: “On October 9, a video was published on the IDF’s official Twitter account describing IDF attacks in the Gaza Strip.The purpose of the strikes was to stop the murderous terrorists from penetrating into Israel to commit brutal and inhumane crimes. The viral post of an airstrike on the Nova festival is fake.”
The French television network France 24 debunked the claims about the video shared on social media in a Nov. 14 broadcast. An analysis cited in that report found that the infrared footage of the helicopter assault was taken at a location 10 kilometers, or six miles, away from the site of the music festival.
News Reports of Possible Friendly Fire
News reports have noted the possibility that Israeli forces fired on Israelis during their response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
In its Nov. 14 report, France 24 cited media reports that Israeli helicopter pilots had difficulty distinguishing militants from civilians on Oct. 7.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Nov. 18 that “according to a police source, an investigation into [the attack on the festival] also revealed that an IDF helicopter that arrived on the scene from the Ramat David base fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers who were there.” (The Haaretz article was translated from Hebrew by Google.)
Responding to that report, the Israeli police issued a statement saying its investigation did not focus on IDF operations at the concert site and did not provide “any indication about the harm of civilians due to aerial activity there,” the Times of Israel reported on Nov. 19.
We emailed the media offices of the Israel Defense Forces for an explanation of the video footage shared on social media and a response to the Haaretz report that a helicopter fired at Israelis.
A spokesperson for the IDF North American media desk told us in a Nov. 23 email, “The Israel Police clarifies that the investigation carried out by the Southern District focused on the heroism of the police officers who acted to stop the massacre committed by Hamas.
“Contrary to the misleading publication, the police investigation does not refer to the activity of the IDF forces, and therefore no indication was given of any harm to civilians caused by any aerial activity at the site.
“The preliminary findings of the ongoing national inquiry, spearheaded by law enforcement and communicated to the international media, cast a spotlight on the profound and reprehensible acts committed by Hamas terrorists during the Nova music festival. Any effort to downplay the severity of these atrocities, as depicted in the misleading Haaretz newspaper publication, deserves unequivocal rejection,” the IDF spokesperson said.
We cannot say whether there were any cases of friendly fire by Israeli forces responding to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. But the social media posts that claim the IDF video proves “many people” were killed by the IDF at the music festival are false.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
