Category: Fact Check

La deuda de tarjetas de crédito puede causar mucha ansiedad a latinos, pero hay que tener cuidado con publicaciones en redes sociales que buscan aprovecharse de esta situación. Un video en Facebook asegura falsamente que el presidente Joe Biden lanzó un programa dirigido a Latinos con deuda.

“El presidente Biden acaba de anunciar el nuevo programa Latinos sin deudas 2024 que ayudará a toda la comunidad hispana con problemas de deudas”, dice el narrador del video publicado el 21 de marzo. El texto que acompaña el video dice que uno de los requisitos es deber más de $10,000 “en tus Tarjetas”. También dice que lo que se ofrece “NO es un préstamo ni Dinero Gratis del Gobierno”.

La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).

@politifactenespanol ¡Sigue el canal de WhatsApp de PolitiFact en Español para estar al día de lo que es cierto, falso, engañoso o fuera de contexto! #whatsapp #canales #verificacion #factcheck ♬ Querulous Shred – DJ BAI

El video muestra a Biden hablando, aunque no se escucha lo que él dice, solo se escucha la voz del narrador. El video también presenta imágenes de personas con billetes, tarjetas de crédito y gente celebrando. El narrador urge a los usuarios a aplicar, ya que supuestamente el cupo está limitado. 

Diversos usuarios dejaron comentarios en la publicación mostrando interés ya que ellos tenían deudas. Pero esta publicación es falsa.

El video no tiene marcas de ser un comunicado oficial de la campaña de Biden o de la Casa Blanca. PolitiFact tampoco encontró anuncios oficiales del gobierno federal de Estados Unidos, ni artículos de medios verídicos sobre tal programa. 

Hicimos una búsqueda de imágenes inversa y la imagen de Biden que aparece al principio del video, es de una conferencia que el presidente dio el 8 de febrero en Leesburg, Virginia, sobre temas relacionados con el caucus demócrata de la Cámara de Representantes.

La campaña de Biden está apelando a los votantes latinos, y defendiendo los logros de su presidencia, diciendo que el desempleo hispano es bajo gracias a las acciones de su gobierno. Pero no ha anunciado ningún programa para eliminar la deuda de los hispanos llamado “Latinos sin deudas 2024”.

PolitiFact contactó a la Casa Blanca y a su campaña, pero no obtuvimos respuesta. 

Calificamos esta declaración como Falsa.

Lee más:

No, no hay un programa que borra la deuda de los hispanos en Estados Unidos

No, no hay ninguna ley que elimine hasta $15,000 de deuda a los estadounidenses

Lee más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

From fruitless speaker votes to recurring threats of government shutdowns, the 118th Congress has had its share of challenges. But is it also the least productive Congress in history?

That’s what former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said during a recent roundtable on ABC’s “This Week.”

During a segment on March 24, former Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said a flurry of impeachment efforts had hurt the credibility of the current Congress. The secretary of state, the defense secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, the attorney general, the FBI director, the homeland security director and the president have all been targets, he said.

Brazile thanked Buck for his congressional service and said the current Congress is “the least productive in our lifetime.” 

Brazile, who is 64, didn’t define “our lifetime,” and the 118th session of Congress ends in January 2025.

But the historical data says she has a point.

The 118th Congress “is certainly on track to be the least productive in modern history,” said Matthew Green, a Catholic University of America political scientist.

We asked Quorum, a public affairs software company, to crunch the official congressional data for us. It found that through March 26, the 118th Congress had enacted 42 bills, meaning that identical bills were passed by the House and Senate and then signed by the president. That was just 0.4% of the 11,877 bills introduced. 

This is easily the smallest number through that date as far back as the 101st Congress, which met in 1989 and 1990. 

The closest contender during that period was the 113th Congress, in 2013 and 2014, which enacted 86 bills — more than twice as many as the current Congress to date.

Data compiled by Southern Illinois University political scientist J. Tobin Grant and published by Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute found that the 112th Congress was “the least productive since the Civil War,” referring to final numbers. That post was written before the 113th Congress was complete, and it turned out that the 113th Congress was even less productive than the 112th.

Since the 113th Congress was downright busy compared with the 118th, it’s safe to say there’s no one alive who has experienced a Congress that has enacted fewer laws than the current one. Although there’s time left for an unprecedented frenzy of lawmaking, presidential election years are notorious for fostering little bipartisan legislative cooperation.

One structural reason for the 118th Congress’ low legislative output is divided government. A Democrat holds the presidency, the Republicans hold the House (narrowly) and the Democrats hold the Senate (also narrowly). 

From 1947 to 2015, there were six congresses in which Republicans held one chamber and Democrats held the other; Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute found that these split congresses enacted 27% fewer laws than those with unified partisan control, regardless of which party controlled the White House. 

Like the current Congress, the previous record-holder for the fewest laws enacted, the 113th, had a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. 

John Frendreis, a political science professor emeritus at Loyola University Chicago, added another complicating factor for the 118th Congress: narrow margins. The Democrats have a 51-49 edge in the Senate, and most Senate legislation needs to clear a 60-vote procedural hurdle, giving the minority significant leverage.

In the House, the Republican majority has hovered in the low single digits, depending on vacancies. 

Such a narrow margin “aggravates the normal tendency of divided government to make it more difficult to pass legislation,” Frendreis said. “Without some negotiations, most things passed by the House on partisan votes are dead on arrival in the Senate.”

The GOP’s slender edge in the House enabled a rebellious minority of the party to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in October 2023. Besides causing chaos, this ouster cut into legislative time, forcing three weeks of failed votes to replace McCarthy.

University of Utah political science professor James Curry said a productive Congress need not be synonymous with an effective Congress, since not all bills are of equal importance.

“Some laws are longer and some are shorter,” Curry said. “Some do just one thing, while other laws are collections of dozens and dozens of separate policy proposals that at one point were separate bills, but were combined for enactment.” 

Steven Smith, an Arizona State University political scientist, said a better measure may be the number of pages enacted in public law.

“The number of pages per bill enacted has been large for some time,” he said. “Simply moving appropriations from a dozen separate bills each year, 24 per Congress, to omnibus or minibus formats can radically affect the number of pages per bill enacted.”

Joshua Huder, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute, said that although some bills have broader reach than others, even with that caveat, “the takeaway is the same: On the whole, this Congress is historically unproductive.”

Brazile expressed hope that the 118th Congress’ pace will accelerate.

“As a former Hill staffer, I follow the Congress more than the courts and the executive branches of government,” she wrote PolitiFact in an email. “While they have moved on the budget and more, there’s still sufficient time to address some important issues before taking another long recess to celebrate the 4th of July and the upcoming party conventions.”

Our ruling

Brazile said the current Congress is “the least productive in our lifetime.”

It’s too early to know where the current Congress will end up in the number of laws enacted, as the session doesn’t end until January 2025. But through March 26, the 118th has passed half as many bills in about 15 months as any previous Congress did through that date going back to 1989.

A longer look at the data shows that someone would need to go back to at least the Civil War to find any competitor for enacting the fewest laws.

We rate this claim Mostly True.

Echoing a common conservative media talking point, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., posted a video to X in which she said that crime had exploded under President Joe Biden.

“Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country,” Mace said in the March 30 post. 

Federal data shows that the overall number of violent crimes, including homicide, have declined on Biden’s watch. 

Nationally, property crimes are up — mostly driven by motor vehicle thefts — but have not “skyrocketed” under Biden.

“Reported crime has not surged since 2021, when Biden took office, and the best data on the subject shows declining reported violent crime and massively declining murder rates,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics.

It’s possible to single out some types of crimes and certain cities for which the numbers have risen since Biden took office, but that isn’t what Mace said.

Criminologists point to the coronavirus pandemic’s physical and economic disruptions as a major factor in crime patterns, in either direction. Even today, homicide and aggravated assault remain at higher levels than before the pandemic, although rape and robbery are down.

Also, the data shows that crime is far less prevalent today than it was from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

Mace’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

The FBI’s violent crime data mainly shows declines under Biden

The FBI publishes annual statistics on crime, based on data from local police departments. However, the data has a significant lag— it counts only crimes reported to police. For Biden’s presidency, the FBI has data covering 2021 and 2022, but not 2023.

First, we’ll start with violent crime.

According to the FBI data, the overall violent crime rate — which includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault per 100,000 population  — fell by about 2.9% between 2020 (Donald Trump’s last year as president) and 2021 (Biden’s first year in office). It fell further, by about 1.6%, between 2021 and 2022.

The violent crime rate has moved within a narrow window during Trump’s and Biden’s presidencies, ranging from about 380 incidents per 100,000 people to 398 per 100,000 people. None of this data shows a skyrocketing pattern.

Three of the four components of violent crime also fell between 2021 and 2022, including one of the most closely watched, homicide. The homicide rate rose by 4.6% between 2020 and 2021, but it then fell below its 2020 level, declining by 7.4% between 2021 and 2022.

The rate of rape rose by 10.4% from 2020 to 2021, then fell by 5.7% from 2021 to 2022. The aggravated assault rate declined by 2.7% from 2020 to 2021, then fell again by 1.5% from 2021 to 2022.

The only increase among violent crimes under Biden was in robberies. The rise was small (less than 1% from 2021 to 2022), and followed a record low. Robbery fell by 11.4% from 2020 to 2021.

The crime trends stemming from the pandemic did not exclusively occur on Biden’s watch; they included some of Trump’s presidency as well, since he was president for most of the pandemic’s first year, 2020.

2023 data from a different source shows a continued decline in violent crime 

The Council on Criminal Justice, an independent group based in Washington, D.C., samples reports from law enforcement agencies in several dozen cities to provide a look at crime data on a faster timetable than the FBI’s reporting.

The council’s data shows the declining trend for violent crime continued into 2023.

The number of homicides in the 32 cities that shared homicide data with the council fell by 10%. Aggravated assaults fell by 3%, and robberies rose by 2%. (The council does not track rape statistics.)

Data on property crime is more mixed

The trend lines are more mixed for property crimes. In general, they have gone up modestly under Biden, though three of the four main categories tracked by the FBI — larceny, burglary, and arson — were either at or below their pre-pandemic level by 2022. 

The main exception has been motor vehicle theft, which rose by 4% from 2020 to 2021 and by 10.4% from 2021 to 2022.

For 2023, the Council on Criminal Justice data shows that larcenies and burglaries continued to drop from 2022 to 2023 but that motor vehicle theft rose significantly, by 29%. In four cities (Rochester and Buffalo, New York; Baltimore; and Charlotte, N.C.) the rate doubled.

What explains recent crime patterns?

So, the data on crimes reported to law enforcement shows some positive signs. But that reality coexists with some exceptions.

Some of that depends on where you are. Certain cities had increases in homicides in 2023 even as the rate declined nationally. The hard-hit cities include Syracuse, New York; Washington, D.C.; Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; St. Petersburg, Florida; Seattle; and Denver.

• 

Chart courtesy of the Council on Criminal Justice

Also, certain crimes are spiking even as the overall crime rate falls. 

Besides the sharp increase in motor vehicle theft, carjacking in the council’s 10-city sample has risen by 93% over pre-pandemic levels. Although this sample is incomplete, the group calls it a development meriting “significant attention.” Motor vehicle theft, the group writes, “is considered a ‘keystone’ crime because stolen vehicles are often used in the commission of a robbery, drive-by shooting, or other violent offense.”

Finally, responses to federal surveys show that there might be a gap between crimes being committed and crimes being reported to police. The National Crime Victimization Survey found that respondents reported being victimized by rape, robbery or sexual assault rose by 75% between 2021 and 2022. 

Asher, the data analyst, cautioned that the survey’s margin of error means the 75% increase could be lower (or higher), and polling difficulties during the pandemic may have made the data for 2021 artificially low.

The current level of crime victimization seen on the survey is about where it was in 2018 and remains lower than it was from 1993 to 2008.

Our ruling

Mace said, “Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country.”

Overall violent crime and homicides are down during Biden’s presidency, according to both the official government measures through 2022 and a private-sector analysis of sampled data through 2023. Some types of property crime are also down, but motor vehicle theft is a notable exception.

Experts caution that specific cities have experienced crime spikes even as the national numbers have generally fallen. Also, a federal survey found that, despite the decline in crimes reported to police, more Americans said they experienced violent crimes in 2022 than said so in 2021.

Still, none of the reported crimes have “skyrocketed” in prevalence under Biden. Recent upticks still leave today’s levels far lower than what prevailed from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

At 1:29 a.m. March 26, the Dali, a large container ship, struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing its collapse. 

Within hours — as many Americans slept — misinformers on X and other platforms posted wild theories, unsubstantiated claims and speculation about who was to blame for the catastrophe.

Without evidence, misinformers coalesced around the idea that the bridge collapsed because of a coordinated attack. PolitiFact repeatedly saw social media users falsely assign blame to two nations: Israel and Ukraine. 

“If you’re pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, then it was a Ukrainian attack,” said Mike Rothschild, a journalist and conspiracy theory expert who has written books about conspiracy theories.

As of April 1, there have been no credible reports or evidence that the ship’s collision with the bridge was linked to terrorism or an attack.

Nevertheless, the invented narratives proliferated — often customized to suit individual posters’ preexisting beliefs and brands, researchers said.

Sara Aniano, a disinformation analyst at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said these claims often came from people who make it their literal business to spread conspiracy theories. 

“A content creator who does makeup tutorials is not much different than the content creator who is selling conspiracy theories,” Aniano said. “These theories and these events are the equivalent of their products.”

We found that X subscribers paying for blue check marks that guarantee greater reach from the platform’s algorithm were responsible for nearly all of the most popular posts linking Israel or Ukraine to the bridge collapse. 

X promotes subscribers’ posts even if they contain unverified or false information. The platform also shares ad revenue with “blue check” subscribers, letting them earn profit when people interact with their posts. 

On X, rampant unverified and false claims persisted, even as verified information emerged

Misinformation experts said bridge collapse conspiracy theories were widespread and also successfully reached a larger, more mainstream audience on X.

PolitiFact used advanced searches on X to analyze more than 100 posts and create a timeline of the anti-Ukraine and anti-Israel narratives that emerged immediately following the incident. Misinformation experts also shared some examples with us.

Here’s our timeline of the day’s events and examples of anti-Ukraine and anti-Israel claims:

1:29 a.m. The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed.

3:02 a.m. The earliest posts mentioning Ukraine or Israel did not immediately assign blame, but brought both countries into the bridge collapse discussion.

“Collapse of a Bridge in Baltimore after being hit by a ship. US infrastructures emblematic of a declining/collapsing empire,” one paid X subscriber posted. “Money spent in endless wars, to finance Nazis in Ukraine and baby killers in Gaza rather than taking care of US citizens.”

3:22 a.m. A paid X user with 185,000 followers and a Russian flag emoji in its name asked, “Did Israel just hit the US over not using the Veto power yesterday?”

The U.S. on March 25 abstained from voting on a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Three times prior, the U.S. vetoed similar resolutions.

(Screenshots from X.)

4:07 a.m. A paid X subscriber with 24,000 followers posted, “Israel cancels its visit to Washington after the US allows the UN Gaza cease-fire resolution to pass and then the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is attacked? This is not a coincidence, nor was it an accident!” 

7:21 a.m. Andrew Tate, a conservative internet personality who is facing rape, human trafficking and gang activity charges in Romania, said to his 9 million followers on X that the ship “was cyber-attacked,” before claiming that “foreign agents of the USA attack digital infrastructure.” We rated his claim False.

9:11 a.m. Alex Jones, a conservative radio host with 2.2 million X followers who is known for spreading conspiracy theories, reshared Tate’s post, adding that the incident “looked deliberate.”

(Screenshots from X.)

9:17 a.m. A paid X user whose account description includes “tweeting for Palestine,” replied to Jones’s reply to Tate, expressing doubt that the ship’s collision with the bridge was a coincidence. 

9:53 a.m. Federal and Maryland state officials said during a press conference that no credible information suggested a terrorist attack caused the collapse.

9:57 a.m. “Our supposed ‘friends’ from Ukraine are enjoying the news of 20 Americans missing after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore,” one blue check X subscriber posted. “They are claiming it’s punishment for not sending them more billions of our tax dollars.” 

9:59 a.m. An anti-Gov. Katie Hobbs, D-Ariz., blue check subscriber X account with nearly 56,000 followers said “it’s not plausible” that the bridge collapse was accidental “during an election season and in the middle of two theaters or combat in Ukraine and Israel.”

10 a.m. An X subscriber falsely claimed the container ship’s captain was Ukrainian. 

“Here is information circulating regarding the container ship that hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge and its alleged drivers,” read the post. “One is reportedly from Ukraine. The information does not account for any remote operating. Developing.”

Posts shared at 10:11 a.m. and 10:24 a.m. used nearly identical language. 

(Screenshots from X.)

The vessel was crewed by 22 Indian nationals, according to the ship’s management company.

10:24 a.m. A blue check X subscriber whose account features hallmarks of the discredited QAnon conspiracy theory movement posted that something seemed “very off” about the collapse because of a “vessel operator” with “ties to Ukraine.” 

11:31 a.m. “The captain of the ship that hit the bridge in Baltimore is Ukrainian,” wrote one blue check subscriber with 362,500 followers.

12:46 p.m. President Joe Biden said the incident was “a terrible accident,” adding that there was no indication it was caused by “any intentional act.” 

1:10 p.m. An X subscriber account whose name includes Nigerian and Russian flags posted that the Dali’s captain was, “a citizen of Ukraine.” 

We found three more posts echoing the false Ukrainian captain theory before 3 p.m.

(Screenshot from X.)

2:51 p.m. DC Draino, a blue check X subscriber who frequently shares misinformation to approximately 1.4 million followers, amplified claims that the collapse was an attack and questioned who was to blame: “Iran for our support of Israel? Russia for Biden’s support of Ukraine? China … just because?” 

3:54 p.m. The news website Voice of Europe, which has 182,500 followers on X, posted that the captain “may be a citizen of Ukraine.” 

Less than 12 hours later, on March 27, the Czech Foreign Ministry announced that it had sanctioned the leader of Voice of Europe for using the site to spread anti-Ukrainian disinformation. As of April 1, Voice of Europe’s website had been taken down. The site’s X account — which has a gold X verification badge signaling that it is “an official organization on X” — temporarily stopped posting.

(Screenshot from X.)

6:45 p.m. “The Baltimore bridge terror attack stems from the United States didn’t veto a U.N. Resolution on the Gaza ceasefire,” wrote a blue check subscriber whose bio includes a Russian flag before the words “defeat NATO.” “And the U.S. didn’t send Ukraine the $60 billion.”

False claims linked to pro-Russia and paid “MAGA” and QAnon accounts

Some posts sharing anti-Ukraine or anti-Israel sentiment came from accounts that declared support for the conservative “MAGA” movement or used language linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Pro-Russia accounts also promoted these narratives. 

The 3:22 a.m. X post that questioned whether Israel “hit” the U.S. came from a user NewsGuard analyst Coalter Palmer described as a “notorious purveyor of misinformation related to the Russia Ukraine war.” Coalter pointed to two other X posts in which that user falsely claimed the Bucha massacre was a false flag operation and that Ukraine is a “Nazi state.” 

Memetica, a digital investigations company that studies disinformation and violent extremism, found that the false Ukrainian ship captain claim was pushed by pro-Russia accounts and QAnon conspiracy theory promoters, said Adi Cohen the company’s chief operating officer. 

Looking at a sample of X posts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 26, Cohen said Memetica found that 7% of the accounts sharing that narrative had zero followers, suggesting what researchers call “inauthentic amplification” — accounts created solely to boost the narrative.

Cohen said that the Ukrainian captain claim was promoted by a known element of the Russian disinformation ecosystem, SouthFront, a website the State Department described in a 2020 report as “a multilingual online disinformation site registered in Russia.” 

Where were misinformers most successful and why? 

Most researchers identified Telegram, 4Chan and X as places where this misinformation flourished most, crediting those platforms’ permissive policies about what can be posted and X’s reputation as the go-to platform to discuss breaking news events. 

It’s hard to definitively say where misinformation was worst, because not every platform shares the same data or is easily searchable, experts said. 

Conspiratorial content might have been more contained to fringe platforms once, but such theories are now widespread on platforms including X and TikTok, said the ADL’s Aniano. 

Memetica analysts observed conspiratorial content about the bridge collapse right away on all social media platforms, but especially X, Telegram and TikTok, Cohen said.

Misinformers can use events like the bridge collapse as “another plot point in their broader narrative that the mainstream media is not to be trusted, that our government is not to be trusted, that experts like us are not to be trusted, and that there is always an active attack against America happening,” Aniano said. 

In this image taken from video released by the National Transportation and Safety Board, the cargo ship Dali is stuck under part of the structure of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after the ship hit the bridge, March 26, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP)

Once misinformers seize on an event, experts said, they often assign blame to entities — people, groups, countries — that have also been in recent news headlines.

“Given that the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine are ongoing and continued funding to support these various efforts remains a major wedge issue in the United States, it makes sense that they would become fodder for conspiracies and false claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in foreign policy and the artificial intelligence and emerging technology initiative. 

Wirtschafter said she suspects this “will likely continue to be the way that these types of narratives take shape — by leveraging prominent and polarizing political topics in times of uncertainty and incomplete information.”

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

RELATED: Edited Wikipedia entry doesn’t prove Israel caused the Baltimore bridge collapse

RELATED: No, the captain of the container ship that hit the bridge in Baltimore wasn’t Ukrainian

RELATED: Baltimore bridge collapse: A cyberattack, a movie and other false claims about the ship accident

The sun surely warms the Earth. But a widely shared social media post says the sun — not human-caused climate change — is why scientists are detecting changing global temperatures.

“Finally the truth! … Climate change is cyclical and it’s because of our Sun,” the March 19 Facebook post claims. Not because of us,” said the post, which  includes a screenshot of a March 19 X post from Robin Monoti, an Italian architect and film producer who vocally opposed lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The idea that CO2 causes climate change is another laughable myth,” Monoti said. “The Sun is not static, the real reason of changing temperature is that the Sun-Earth distance varies due to what is known as solar-inertial motion.” He called global warming a “historical con by the oligarchic class” to increase taxes.

The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The distance between Earth and the sun can affect the Earth’s long-term climate. However, climate scientists agree that the sun does not significantly shift the planet’s modern trend toward ever-warming temperatures.

“The warming we have seen over the last few decades is too rapid to be linked to changes in Earth’s orbit, and too large to be caused by solar activity,” according to NASA. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which includes scientists from 195 countries, said “it is unequivocal that humans are causing the warming. Changes in the sun’s activity and volcanic eruptions are not the cause of the warming trend.”

“Global warming” and “climate change” are sometimes used interchangeably, but global warming is a “symptom” of climate change. There is international consensus among climate scientists that human activity is leading to increased carbon emissions and carbon traps heat and warms the planet. Carbon dioxide emissions come from a range of industries, including energy, through power plants; agriculture; and transportation. 

Carbon dioxide emissions, methane and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and worsen global warming.

“Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities.”

Methane is responsible for about 30% of global warming according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Agriculture is the main, but not the only, source of methane emissions.

These emissions have an everyday impact: the World Meteorological Organization said 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded.

The idea of the Earth-sun distance causing global warming is not new and has gained recent prominence. 

In 2020, the journal Scientific Reports retracted a 2019 paper that it published that gave credence to the Earth-sun distance idea. Withdrawing the study, the editors said “post-publication peer review has shown that this assumption is inaccurate. … As a result the Editors no longer have confidence in the conclusions presented.” The retraction notice said one of the original study’s four co-authors backed the decision to withdraw it.

We rate the claim that the Earth-sun distance is the cause of global warming False.

The solar eclipse on April 8 has become a figurative launching pad for misinformation about what will happen when the moon passes in front of the sun. 

One recent Instagram post makes claims about a literal launching pad, potentially leading social media users to worry that NASA’s plans for the celestial event are sinister. 

“As if this eclipse can’t get any stranger, NASA will launch three rockets at the eclipse on April 8th,” the March 28 post said. “The NASA project is called Atmospheric Perturbations Around the Eclipse Path, or APEP, which is the name of an Egyptian serpent deity that eats the sun and embodies chaos. Apex is also called Aphophis, which is where the word Apophenia comes from. Ironically, Apophenia is the name given to the beginning stages of schizophrenia, where everything is perceived as synchronistic. So is this ritual, and all its synchronicities, a ritual causing mass psychosis?”

No.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

NASA plans to launch three sounding rockets during the eclipse “to study how Earth’s upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet,” according to the space agency’s website. “The Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) sounding rockets will launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study the disturbances in the ionosphere created when the moon eclipses the sun.” 

The ionosphere is an electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere that reflects and refracts radio signals, and impacts satellite communications, according to NASA. Better understanding this could help predict disturbances to keep communications running smoothly.

The sounding rockets were previously launched during the October 2023 solar eclipse.

The mission’s acronym was chosen because it’s the name of the serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, according to NASA. According to legend, Apep occasionally pursued Ra, the sun deity, and nearly consumed him, resulting in an eclipse.

There’s no evidence to support the idea that this scientific mission will cause a mass psychosis. It didn’t in 2023, and it’s not expected to now. 

We rate that claim False.

 

After President Joe Biden said the federal government would pay to replace Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, a project estimated to cost from $400 million to over $1 billion, some social media users questioned why the company that owned the ship isn’t footing the bill.

Biden, in March 26 remarks after the accident, said the federal government “will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge,” and he expected congressional support for that effort.

On social media, users expressed outrage.

“That ship was commissioned by a Danish company. It was operating under a Singapore flag … President Biden thinks the American taxpayers should foot the bill to clean up the mess and rebuild the bridge. I think there’s a foreign company that owes us a bridge!” read three Facebook posts that shared the same graphic.

“Why are WE responsible for paying for this!! Make it make sense!!” another Facebook post said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., criticized Biden, writing in an X post, “Why add a billion dollars to US debt when the big insurance companies exist for precisely this purpose?” 

The ship that struck the bridge was owned by Singapore-based company Grace Ocean Private Ltd. It was managed by Singapore-based ship management company Synergy Marine Group and chartered by Danish shipping company Maersk. 

Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group filed a court petition April 1 seeking to cap their liability at about $43.6 million.

The federal Department of Transportation on March 28 announced $60 million in “quick release” Emergency Relief funds for the Maryland Department of Transportation Department to begin rebuilding the bridge, describing it as an “initial down payment of funds.”

Getting the bridge repaired and the Port of Baltimore open to ship traffic is an economic imperative for Maryland and for the U.S., Maryland and federal officials said.

The bridge carried more than 30,000 vehicles a day, state officials said. The Port of Baltimore in 2021 was the 17th largest in the U.S. for annual total tonnage of cargo, U.S. Department of Transportation data shows. 

Maryland’s Democratic governor, Wes Moore, said March 31 on “Fox News Sunday” that the bridge collapse isn’t affecting Maryland’s economy alone, but also states across the country. 

The support Baltimore has received “isn’t because anyone is trying to do Maryland a favor,” Moore said. “It’s because the national economy relies on the Port of Baltimore being up and running,” 

Where will the money come from and will feds foot the entire bill?

The federal government stepping in to pay to rebuild the bridge doesn’t necessarily mean taxpayers will cover the entire bill. 

When reporters asked Biden March 26 whether the company that owned the ship should be held responsible, Biden said, “That could be, but we’re not going to wait if that happened. We’re going to pay for it to get the bridge rebuilt and open.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a March 27 news briefing that “any private party that is found responsible and liable will be held accountable” for the bridge accident.

Analysts say insured losses including for bridge repair and business interruption could amount to up to $4 billion. But lawsuits in similar disasters have taken years to settle.

Peter Knudson, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson, said its investigation is expected to last one to two years.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” that “The federal government will pay 90% of the costs,” and he plans to introduce legislation to cover the other 10%. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a March 27 MSNBC interview, said money from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law could help pay some of the costs, but said she expected insurance to cover those costs partly. 

Buttigieg said March 31 on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that more than the initial $60 million in emergency released funding will come, but “it is possible we may need to turn to Congress to supplement that fund. That has happened in the past.”

Although some Republicans in Congress have expressed opposition to paying for the repairs, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an April 1 radio interview that the federal government will pay “the lion’s share” of the cost to replace the bridge.

Buttigieg pointed to bipartisan support for a $250 million reconstruction package following the 2007 collapse of the Interstate N35 in Minnesota. 

The bridge’s August 2007 collapse near downtown Minneapolis took down 111 vehicles, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The NTSB concluded that the probable cause was “inadequate load capacity, due to a design error” of some of the bridge’s structures. 

With the state estimated to lose about $60 million in economic output in 2007 and 2008 because of the bridge’s absence, Congress three days after the bridge’s collapse authorized the reconstruction funding. Two days after that, former President George W. Bush signed it into law. The bridge was completed in 13 months.

URS Corp., the engineering company tasked to evaluate the bridge before it collapsed, agreed to pay $52.4 million to the tragedy’s victims.

Federal government has paid up front for similar disasters

Steve Ellis, president of the Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent group that analyzes federal spending, said the federal government often intervenes after disasters to pay for the immediate response.

“In this case, where there are other insured actors, like the shipping line, the federal government should go after them for reimbursement and penalties,” Ellis said.

Andy Winkler, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s infrastructure project, said the Biden administration’s quick offer of assistance in the Baltimore bridge collapse does not preclude the federal government from recouping costs should a private sector party be found responsible. 

Here are some examples of the federal government paying up front and seeking reimbursement later:

A plume of smoke rises April 21, 2010, from fires on BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP)

Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez oil spills: Ellis and Winkler each pointed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and Ellis also noted the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska as examples of the federal government contributing to upfront costs and recovering moneymore through settlements with the companies responsible. Those settlements took six years to reach in the Deepwater spill and two in the Exxon spill.

The Deepwater spill, triggered by an oil rig explosion that killed 11 people, was the largest U.S. marine oil spill ever, releasing about 130 million gallons of oil into the sea and soiling five states coastlines. The federal government reached a $20.8 billion settlement with BP, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history, that was approved in 2016 by a federal judge.

“The federal government provided assistance, including funding to support cleanup efforts, all while aggressively pursuing compensation for all damage,” Winkler said.

Before Deepwater Horizon, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill had been the worst in U.S. history. An Exxon oil tanker struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the water. Exxon agreed to pay $1 billion in fines and damages, the Enviromental Protection Agency said in 1991. Overall, Exxon said it has paid $4.3 billion after the accident in compensatory and cleanup payments, settlements and fines.

A black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 6, 2023, as a result of the controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk Southern trains. (AP)

East Palestine train derailment: In 2023, after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, the state led the initial emergency operation with federal and local support. 

Days later, the EPA ordered its operator, Norfolk Southern, to reimburse the agency for cleanup.

Norfolk Southern claimed that companies responsible for the destroyed tank cars and spilled chemicals should share cleanup costs, which it said amounted to more than $1.1 billion. But in March, a federal judge ruled that solely Norfolk Southern should fund the cleanup.

The $1.1 billion figure reflects any costs charged to Norfolk because of the derailment, along with the more than $104 million paid directly to residents and the East Palestine community, Norfolk spokesperson Connor Spielmaker told PolitiFact.

The EPA told PolitiFact in an April 1 email it will send Norfolk Southern a bill for all of its personnel, time and resources spent.

Washington highway bridge collapse: In Washington state in May 2013, the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge in Mount Vernon, about halfway between Seattle and the Canadian border, collapsed after a wide-load-bearing 18-wheeler crashed into the bridge. A month later, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration released $15.6 million from emergency funds to pay for the repairs, but required the state to seek reimbursement, The Seattle Times reported. 

In 2019, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Mullen Trucking and Motorways Trucking, the  two companies responsible for the crash, were responsible for paying $17 million to pay the repair costs instead of taxpayers, The Seattle Times said.

PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

RELATED: Baltimore bridge collapse: A cyberattack, a movie and other false claims about the ship accident

Social media users are claiming a recording device on the Dali was intentionally stopped before the cargo ship collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. But this is misleading.

A March 28 Instagram post shared a Fox News report in which a National Transportation Safety Board official detailed the events preceding the March 26 bridge collapse. In the video, the official says the ship’s sensor data ceased recording for about a minute before the collision.

Text on the video read, “Nothing to see here! Black box on ship stops recording right before crash, then turns back on right after.”

The post’s caption said, “They are hoping you will not notice this.”

(Screengrab from Instagram)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The pause in sensor data recording before the bridge collision is still under investigation.

The post mischaracterizes what the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency, said about recorded data from the ship. During a March 27 briefing, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation into the bridge collapse, gave the timeline of events preceding the bridge collapse based on preliminary data from the ship’s voyage data recorder, or VDR.

The Instagram post called this device the ship’s “black box,” which is a term sometimes used to describe an aircraft’s flight recorder. But voyage data recorders provide fewer data points than flight data recorders, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said. Voyage data recorders are “basic” and show “a snapshot of the major systems on a vessel,” she said.

The Dali’s voyage data recorder includes audio recordings and information about ship speed, engine rotations per minute, rudder angle, ship heading and alarms, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

Based on this information, the agency said the Dali left the Port of Baltimore at 12:39 a.m. and entered the Fort McHenry Channel about 30 minutes later, traveling at about 9 miles per hour.

Then, at about 1:25 a.m., “numerous audible alarms were recorded on the ship’s bridge audio. About the same time, VDR sensor data ceased recording. However, the VDR audio continued to record using the redundant power source,” National Transportation Safety Board Chief Investigator Marcel Muise said at the March 27 briefing.

About a minute later, at 1:26 a.m., “the VDR resumed recording sensor data,” Muise said.

Then, the National Transportation Safety Board said the ship’s pilot made steering commands and ordered the anchor to be dropped. At about 1:27 a.m., the pilot made a mayday call and said the Dali had lost power and was approaching the bridge. The agency is investigating what caused the ship’s power loss.

At 1:29 a.m., audio recordings reported sounds consistent with the bridge collision. And, a few seconds later, the pilot reported the Key Bridge was down, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

Based on this timeline, the Dali’s voyage data recorder briefly stopped recording sensor data, but not audio, about four minutes before the ship crashed into the bridge. The outage lasted for about a minute. Officials said the voyage data recorder was working when the collision occurred.

We rate the claim that the ship’s “black box” stopped recording “right before (the) crash” then turned back on “right after” False.

RELATED: Baltimore bridge collapse: A cyberattack, a movie and other false claims about the ship accident

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