Category: Fact Check

Are Democratic presidents better at creating jobs and driving the economy? Democrats have been making this argument for more than 14 years, to Republicans’ chagrin. Former President Bill Clinton famously ticked off the “jobs score” favoring Democratic presidents in his 2012 Democratic National Convention speech.

We caught the latest iteration on X, in a post by Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist in Washington, D.C.

“Since 1989 and a new age of globalization began, 51 million jobs have been created in America. 49 million, 96%, have been created under Democratic presidents,” Rosenberg wrote in the March 8 post. “Essentially all of them. Over 35 years.”

The talking point still has merit. But it ignores caveats around divided governance and lucky timing.

The official source of employment numbers, tabulated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that the number of jobs created since 1989 — under Republican Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden — is 50.6 million.

Of that number, 97.4% were created under Clinton, Obama and Biden. Rosenberg told PolitiFact that he used numbers starting in February of a new president’s term; we started in January. The difference is minor.

Some economic research supports the notion that the economy under Democrats has performed especially well.

A 2014 paper by Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found a performance gap between the parties that was “startlingly large” over a wide variety of economic metrics.

“The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real (gross domestic product) and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns,” Blinder and Watson wrote. “Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics.”

The paper’s 2014 conclusions “hold up very well if you add in Obama’s second term, Trump and Biden,” Blinder told PolitiFact for this article.

What is the catch? 

Attributing job creation to policies or presidents isn’t as clear as it might seem. The Republican Congress of 1995 to 2001 might deserve a share of the credit for the job growth under Clinton — as could the Democratic House that served during Republican President Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency.

In crises especially, the parties have historically worked together. When faced with the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, George W. Bush and Trump “chose the policy responses that Democrats favored,” said Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist.

Another factor is timing.

There’s the small difference that Democratic presidents have held the presidency for a little over 19 years in that period, compared with 16 for Republicans. 

In addition, Rosenberg chose a favorable time frame for Democrats. 

If you go back to the first president to serve a full tenure during the modern age of employment statistics — Republican Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s — the economy has added 107.7 million jobs. 

Of those, 70% emerged under Democratic presidents and 30% under Republican presidents. That’s not as dramatic an edge as the 96% to 97% over the past 35 years, but it’s still a better than 2-to-1 margin for Democrats.

Job creation under each president also depends on luck. 

Events elsewhere in the world beyond the control of any president can impact the U.S. economy, from oil price shocks to wars.

Harry Truman, a Democrat, saw employment numbers that benefited from the post-World War II demobilization of troops. Democrat Lyndon Johnson took office right as the first wave of baby boomers turned 18.

In one recent example, the number of jobs created under Trump would have been higher had a once-a-century pandemic not hit during his fourth year in office. Biden has jabbed Trump over job losses in the final year of his term without any mention of COVID-19.

Two earlier Republicans, the Bushes, both left office with the nation mired in a recession, which hurt their employment totals. By contrast, their Democratic successors, Clinton and Obama, surfed the economic rebound to robust job creation figures over two full terms.

“Particularly the pandemic and the financial crisis were global in nature, and you can’t pin their roots on the president or even the U.S. as a whole,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum. “The numbers are what they are, but the implication that somehow the Democrats deserve full credit is a bit too facile.” 

Rosenberg told PolitiFact that Democratic presidential policies have paid economic dividends, but he acknowledged that timing does play some role.

“While I argue that most of the difference is based on policy choices, it doesn’t mean luck and serendipity aren’t factors,” he said.

Our ruling

Rosenberg said, “Since 1989 and a new age of globalization began, 51 million jobs have been created in America. 49 million, 96%, have been created under Democratic presidents.”

His numbers for the past 35 years are on target. A longer look finds a smaller discrepancy, but the Democratic edge is still better than 2-to-1.

Policies may have played a role, but so have timing and events beyond any president’s control.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

A Facebook post used two screenshots from a video to imply that President Joe Biden behaved inappropriately with his granddaughter.

The two images appear to show Biden touching the girl on her chest and then kissing her on the mouth. “His granddaughter, dude,” read text over a third image, a scene from the 1998 comedy movie “The Big Lebowski.”

The March 18 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 Facebook post plays into repeatedly debunked claims that Biden is a pedophile and touches or kisses children inappropriately.

A reverse-image search shows the photos are from 2022, when Biden’s granddaughter, Natalie, who had just turned 18, voted for the first time at a polling station in Delaware.

(Facebook screenshot)

News photos and video from the event tell a different story than the Facebook post. In the video, Joe Biden announces to those watching that his granddaughter is a first-time voter. When she emerges from the voting booth, people nearby applaud. When Joe Biden emerges from his voting booth, a poll worker hands him an “I voted” sticker.

This NBC News video shows President Joe Biden placing an “I voted” sticker on Natalie Biden’s shirt, then kissing her on the cheek.

With news media, poll workers and voters watching, Natalie Biden placed a sticker on her grandfather’s jacket. He then asked her which side she wanted her sticker on, and she pointed to a spot on her upper left chest and said, “This side.” Biden placed the sticker there, then kissed her quickly on her left cheek.

Other news photos after the pair voted show an “I voted” sticker on Natalie Biden’s shirt above her chest.

President Joe Biden and his granddaughter Natalie Biden leave a polling station after voting, Oct. 29, 2022, in Wilmington, Del. Each is wearing an “I voted” sticker. (AP)

The Facebook post’s claim that photos show the president touching his granddaughter inappropriately is Pants on Fire! 

TMZ posted a video online March 18 that it said showed Princess Kate and Prince William recently visiting a business near their home in Windsor, England. But the grainy footage didn’t quell conspiracy theories about Kate’s whereabouts. 

A March 18 Facebook post shared what looked like a screengrab from the TMZ video, but the image showed a woman whose face isn’t Kate’s.

“Another stunt double,” text over the image read. “Kensington Palace continues to insult our intelligence.” The caption included the hashtags “#whereiskate,” “#bodydouble” and “#coverup.”

(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.)

We reviewed the video shared by TMZ, along with still images from the footage that the site posted, and the original video does not show the image being shared on social media — the image is altered with another woman’s face. 

The Sun reported onlookers said the Princess of Wales looked “happy, relaxed and healthy.”

“A witness at the farm shop in Windsor said: ‘After all the rumors that had been going around I was stunned to see them there,’” the tabloid said.

We rate claims that this image shows a Princess Kate body double False.

 

ST. LOUIS — In early February, abortion rights supporters gathered to change Missouri history at the Pageant — a storied club where rock ’n’ roll revolutionary Chuck Berry often had played: They launched a signature-gathering campaign to put a constitutional amendment to voters this year to legalize abortion in the state

“We have fought long for this moment,” the Rev. Love Holt, the master of ceremonies, told the crowd. “Just two years after Missouri made abortion illegal in virtually all circumstances, the people of our state are going to forever protect abortion access in Missouri’s constitution.”

The ballot measure — which would allow abortions until fetal viability — outlasted 16 other related proposals and months of litigation with Republican state officials. Next, its supporters must gather more than 171,000 valid signatures by May 5.

Missouri is one of 13 states weighing abortion-related ballot measures, most of which would protect abortion rights. Abortion rights supporters hope to build on prior ballot wins in seven politically diverse states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and Vermont — since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned federal abortion protections, handing authority back to states.

In a presidential election year, national strategy also steers the money. The success of initiatives could hinge on a state’s relevance to broader party ambitions. Democrats are focused on where anger over the abortion rollback could propel voter turnout and spur party victories up and down the ballot, including in key races for the Senate and White House. Those wins would help guard against what Democrats see as a bigger threat: a national abortion ban.

Republicans are quieter about their national strategy around abortion. But at the state level, the groups mounting opposition campaigns are putting foot soldiers on the streets to deter people from signing ballot petitions.

Abortion rights supporters have raised millions more for ballot campaigns than have opponents, according to a KFF Health News review of campaign finance records in multiple states.

Still, they “don’t have unlimited resources,” said Craig Burnett, an associate professor of political science at Hofstra University and expert on ballot initiatives. They must consider, “Where am I going to get the best bang for my buck here?”

Think Big America, a nonprofit founded by J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ billionaire Democratic governor, is giving money to abortion rights initiatives in Arizona and Nevada and plans to do so in Montana, senior adviser Mike Ollen said. All are states where abortion remains legal to varying points in pregnancy, but each could have an outsize impact on the national political balance.

Arizona and Nevada are presidential swing states viewed as crucial for President Joe Biden to win reelection. They and Montana all have races that could flip control of the U.S. Senate from Democrats to Republicans in 2025.

Ollen said electoral consequences are “part of the calculus” for Think Big America. “We want to make sure that we protect abortion in the states that we’re going into,” Ollen said. “But we’re also not naive to the threat of a national abortion ban.”

About a fifth of key voter groups — Democratic women, women who live in states where abortion is banned, women who plan to vote for Biden, and women of reproductive age — identify as abortion voters, new polling from KFF shows.

Anti-abortion groups have pressured Republican candidates to support a national ban. Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump quietly supports a 16-week ban with some exceptions, The New York Times reported.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s largest anti-abortion groups, said it plans to spend “$92 million and reach 10 million voters” to back candidates in the political battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who would “protect life across America.” It will focus on “low turnout and persuadable voters to win the presidency and a majority in Congress.”

Ballot initiatives are one way for voters to assert their power over the political whims of state legislatures or courts. They are often viewed as more stable and harder to undo.

Abortion rights supporters must fend off statehouse maneuvers by Republicans to thwart ballot initiatives, such as proposals to change how ballot measures are approved or to buttress rules on collecting signatures. Politicians are appealing to the courts to beat back abortion rights.

In Montana, abortion is legally protected as a fundamental privacy right by a 1999 court ruling. Still, supporters are seeking to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution with a ballot measure.

Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who has unsuccessfully asked the courts to overturn the 1999 precedent, rejected the draft initiative because it places “multiple distinct political choices into a single initiative.” The initiative’s backers, led by Planned Parenthood of Montana’s chief medical officer, Samuel Dickman, have asked the state Supreme Court to overturn Knudsen’s ruling and allow them to start gathering signatures.

Democrats hope the ballot question will drive voter turnout and boost reelection chances for incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester against the likely Republican candidate, Tim Sheehy.

Tides Foundation, a social-justice-focused charity based in California, is monitoring ballot campaigns in Montana, Arizona, and Missouri, said Beth Huang, its program officer for civic engagement and democracy. It has granted funds in Florida and is in the process of approving funds for Colorado and Nevada, she said.

As a public charity, the group “legally cannot consider the partisan implications on any set of candidate elections” in funding decisions, she said. It will fund only ballot measures that would allow abortions at least until fetal viability — generally about 24 weeks — the standard under Roe v. Wade. A proposed initiative in Arkansas is off the table because access would go to 20 weeks.

“We are not interested in policies that do less than reestablish Roe,” Huang said.

In South Dakota, Dakotans for Health wants to reinstate abortion rights in the state. But an anti-abortion campaign says out-of-state money pays for signature drives that pressure people to sign the petitions without providing sufficient information on the measure. The Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill to let people remove their signatures from such ballot petitions. An emergency clause would put the bill into effect immediately if the governor signs it — ahead of the deadline to place the abortion question on the November ballot.

Critics of other states’ measures see other avenues for defeat.

Gregg Keller, a St. Louis-based Republican political strategist, said Missouri’s proposed amendment goes further than the measure passed last year in Ohio. For example, abortions could be allowed after fetal viability to protect the mental health of a pregnant person.

If opponents can get out the word that this goes further than what was done in Ohio and other states, “we have a chance of actually beating this thing,” Keller said. “If they are able to raise money. That’s a big if.”

Ballot supporters here raised $4.2 million as of March 12, according to campaign finance records. Money has come from national groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fairness Project, which has supported ballot efforts on various progressive causes. Kansas City-based Health Forward Foundation has also donated.

So far, opponents of the Missouri measure have raised $55,000, nearly half of which comes from the Catholic Church, according to campaign finance records.

“We went into this knowing that we were going to be outspent,” said Missouri Catholic Conference Executive Director Jamie Morris, who said he didn’t know whether the church would spend more. “We’re still going to be out trying to educate the faithful as best as we can, with the resources we have.”

Abortion Action Missouri Executive Director Mallory Schwarz said the coalition backing the state’s abortion measure is confident it will hit the signature goal by the May deadline.

If that happens, it will be up to outgoing Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who supports Missouri’s near-total abortion ban, to decide whether to put the measure before voters in the state’s August primary or the November general election.

Keller, the GOP strategist, said the governor will face tremendous pressure to put it on the August ballot. Five of six statewide offices are on the November ballot, as is Republican Josh Hawley’s U.S. Senate seat. An abortion ballot measure could overshadow those campaigns — just based on the war chests in play: Hawley’s 2018 campaign spent about $11.5 million, for example, while the three political action committees backing Ohio’s abortion amendment last year spent more than $50 million.

“I am telling anyone who is running as a Republican this year that if you want to be able to make your case about how and why you deserve to be elected, and you want to be able to get your story out,” Keller said, “then clearly you would not want to have a $50 million ballot initiative on in November.”

This story was republished from KFF Health News; KFF Health News Rural Health Care Correspondent Arielle Zionts and Mountain States Editor Matt Volz contributed to this report.

 

 

It took a New Orleans street magician only 20 minutes and $1 to create audio that sounded like President Joe Biden discouraging Democrats from voting in the New Hampshire primary.

The robocall was found to be a product of artificial intelligence, and soon after, the Federal Communications Commission banned AI-generated voices in robocalls. 

But identifying AI-generated audio in the wild is easier said than done.

We tested four free online tools that claim to determine whether an audio clip is AI-generated. Only one of them signaled that the Biden-like robocall was likely AI-generated. Experts told us that AI audio detection tools are lacking in accuracy and shouldn’t be trusted on their own. Nevertheless, people can employ other techniques to spot potential misinformation.

“Audio deepfakes may be more challenging to detect than image or video deepfakes,” said Manjeet Rege, director of the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of St. Thomas. “Audio lacks the full context and visual cues of video, so believable audio alone is easier to synthesize convincingly.” 

The challenge of identifying audio deepfakes

Many people have called a business or government agency and heard an automatic response from a synthetic voice.

But only recently did people start using the technology to create deepfakes, said Siwei Lyu, a computer science and engineering professor at the University at Buffalo.

Lyu said audio deepfakes typically fall under two types: text-to-speech and voice conversion. The biggest difference between the two, he said, is the input. Text-to-speech systems enable computers to convert text into what sounds like a spoken voice. Voice conversion, by contrast, will take a person’s voice and manipulate it so that it sounds like another person’s voice, retaining the emotion and inhalation patterns of the original speech.

Creating deepfake audio is an attractive alternative to creating deepfake video because audio is easier and cheaper to produce. 

For example, online startup ElevenLabs, offers a free plan to people seeking to convert text to speech. The startup has gained prominence in the industry and was recently valued at $1.1 billion after raising $80 million in venture capital funding. Its paid plans start at $1 per month and its products also include voice cloning, which allows users to create synthetic copies of their own voices, and a tool that can help people classify whether something is AI-generated.

“The rise of audio deepfakes opens up disturbing possibilities for spreading misinformation,” Rege said. Aside from making it possible for machines to impersonate public figures, politicians and celebrities, falsified audio could also be used to trick security systems that make use of voice authentication, he said. For example, a Vice reporter in February 2023 demonstrated how he was able to trick his bank’s authentication system by calling its service line and playing clips of his AI-powered cloned voice.

Rege warned that fake audio could have implications for court cases, intelligence operations and politics. Some potential scenarios:

• Using fake audio recordings to prompt authorities to pursue false intelligence targets.

• Submitting fake audio recordings of defendants confessing to crimes or making incriminating statements

• Impersonating public officials’ voices to spread disinformation or obtain sensitive information

Rege and Lyu said synthetic audio is created using “deep learning” technology that trains AI models to learn characteristics of speech based on a large dataset of diverse speakers, voices and conversations. With this information, the technology can recreate speech. 

PolitiFact identified TikTok and YouTube accounts that uploaded videos that perpetuated false narratives about the 2024 election using audio that expert analysis showed was generated by AI.

Because audio is one-dimensional and more ephemeral than images and videos, Lyu said, it’s harder to determine when it’s not real; this makes it more effective at misleading people. It’s harder to review a piece of audio to check for signs of AI generation. You can pause a video or inspect an image you encounter online. But if you pick up a call, you might not realize you’re listening to AI-generated audio or get to record it. Without a digital copy, it would be hard to analyze the audio. 

Detection tools fall short

With audio deepfake technology evolving quickly, the tools designed to detect them are struggling to keep up.

“Detecting audio deepfakes is an active research area, meaning that it is currently treated as an unsolved problem,” said Jennifer Williams, a lecturer at the University of Southampton who specializes in audio AI safety.

Many online tools that claim to detect AI generated voices are available only with a paid subscription or upon demo request. Others ask customers to send the audio file to an email address.

We looked for free options. 

V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University computer science professor, launched his own AI audio detection experiment at the Northwestern Security & AI Lab, which he leads. The group tested 14 off-the-shelf or free, publicly available audio deepfake detection tools, he said. The research is not yet publicly available, but he said the results were discouraging. 

“You cannot rely on audio deepfake detectors today and I cannot recommend one for use,” Subrahmanian said.

We persevered, anyway, and found three free tools: ElevenLabs’ Speech Classifier, AI or Not and PlayHT. We also tested the DeepFake-O-Meter, which was developed by the University at Buffalo Media Forensic Lab, which  Lyu heads.

For our experiment, we obtained a copy of the fake Biden robocall from the New Hampshire attorney general’s office and ran it through the four tools.

In the robocall that circulated before the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, a Biden-like voice told Democratic voters that voting in the primary “only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again.” It encouraged people not to vote until November. Soon after, security software company Pindrop said it found a 99% likelihood that the audio was created using ElevenLabs — a finding that magician Paul Carpenter later confirmed, telling NBC News that it took him less than 20 minutes and $1 to make. 

ElevenLabs has its own AI speech classifier — released in 2023, before the robocall circulated —  that measures the likelihood of an audio clip being created using its system. We uploaded the audio clip we obtained from the New Hampshire attorney general’s office to ElevenLabs’ speech classifier. The result? It found a 2% probability — “very unlikely” — that the audio was created with ElevenLabs.

(Screenshot of ElevenLabs page)

It’s unclear why ElevenLabs returned such a low result. Pindrop also experimented using ElevenLabs’ tool and said it returned an 84% probability score that the audio was created using ElevenLabs. Lyu said audio file compression and other factors can destroy signatures or features that detectors use to detect AI generation. And we do not know whether Pindrop used the same audio file. (Pindrop has its own audio deepfake detection system, available upon demo request.)

We did the same test using AI or Not, a tool American tech company Optic developed. The result said the audio clip was “likely human.”

Anatoly Kvitnitsky, AI or Not’s chief executive, told Politifact that the audio sample “had a lot of noise associated with it,” making its AI origins less able to be detected without linguistic experts. “AI was only confirmed when the creator of the recording admitted to it being AI,” Kvitnitsky said.

(Screenshot of AI or Not page)

We also tested the audio using PlayHT, but it displayed an error message every time we upload the fake Biden audio.

(Screenshot of  PlayHT page)

We contacted ElevenLabs and PlayHT for comment but did not hear back.

Lyu said deepfake audio detection has fewer available services than images and videos. He said this is partly because deepfake images and videos were developed earlier.

Rege said although researchers have also developed open-source tools, the tools’ accuracy remains to be seen. 

“I would say no single tool is considered fully reliable yet for the general public to detect deepfake audio,” Rege said. “A combined approach using multiple detection methods is what I will advise at this stage.”

The University at Buffalo Media Forensic Lab’s DeepFake-O-Meter has not officially launched, Lyu said, but people need only create an account to use it for free. The DeepFake-O-Meter returned a 69.7% likelihood score of the Biden audio being AI-generated — the most accurate result among the tools we’ve tested.

(Screenshot of DeepFake-O-Meter page)

What to listen for in potential audio deepfakes

Subrahmanian said audio calls requesting money, personal information, passwords, bank codes or two factor authentication codes “should be treated with extreme caution” and warned people never to give such information over the phone. 

“Urgency is a key giveaway,” he said, “Scammers want you (to) do things immediately, before you have time to consult others or think more deeply about a request. Don’t fall for it.”

Lyu and Rege said people should watch for signs of AI-generated audio, including irregular or absent breathing noises, intentional pauses and intonations, along with inconsistent room acoustics.  

They also said users should seek to verify the audio’s sources and cross-check the facts.

“Be skeptical of unsolicited audio messages or recordings, especially those claiming to be from authority figures, celebrities, or people you know,” Rege said. 

Use common sense approaches and ask questions like who or where the call came from and whether it is supported by independent and unrelated sources, Lyu said.

In an interview with Scientific American, Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley, computer science professor, also stressed provenance — or basic, trustworthy facts about a piece’s origins — when analyzing audio recordings: “Where was it recorded? When was it recorded? Who recorded it? Who leaked it to the site that originally posted it?”

When it comes to legal matters, financial transactions, or important events, Rege said, people can protect themselves by insisting on verifying identities through other secure channels beyond audio or voice.

“Healthy skepticism is warranted given how realistic this emerging technology has become,” Rege said.

As the 2024 presidential election nears, some social media users are resurfacing the claim that proper identification is not required to vote in the United States.

A March 9 Facebook post shared a list of 65 activities that require “valid IDs,” including driving a car, buying alcohol or cigarettes, boarding a plane and applying for a job.

The only thing that doesn’t require a valid ID, the post says, is “voting.”

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.)

(Screengrab from Facebook)

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate until this month, in 2022 shared a similar claim that voter ID was not required; we rated that Mostly False.

Has much changed since then? Not really. Voter ID laws vary across the country, but in most states, voters must verify their identity in some way at the polls.

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 36 states have laws that require or request some form of identification to vote in person. Those laws applied to about 62% of registered voters in the 2022 election, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The laws in these 36 states vary as to whether they are strictly applied and whether a photo ID or another form of identification is accepted.

Ten states — Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin — have what the conference labels as “strict” photo ID laws. This means that voters who lack acceptable photo IDs must vote a provisional ballot and take additional steps to verify their identity after Election Day for their ballot to be counted.

Three states — Arizona, North Dakota and Wyoming — have “strict” ID laws, according to the conference, but photo ID is not the only identification accepted. In Arizona, for example, a recent utility bill or bank statement are acceptable forms of ID.

In 23 states, the voter ID laws are what the conference considers “nonstrict,” meaning in most cases, voters without acceptable identification can cast a regular ballot without having to take further action after Election Day. For instance, a voter without proper identification may sign an affidavit or poll workers may vouch for a voter’s identity.

Eleven of these “nonstrict” states accept only photo IDs; the other 12 states accept photo IDs and other forms of identification.

The remaining 14 states and Washington, D.C., do not require any form of identification to vote at the polls, NCSL said. These states and Washington, D.C., which together accounted for about 38% of registered voters in 2022, use other methods to verify voters’ identities, such as matching voters’ signatures or asking voters for personal information.

Federal law requires first-time voters who register to vote by mail and didn’t provide proof of identification at the time of registration, to show a valid photo ID or another form of ID, such as a current paycheck, bank statement or government document that shows the voter’s name and address, the conference said.

States have different laws and procedures for verifying the identity of voters who cast mail ballots.

In 22 states, voters applying for a mail ballot must show ID, provide an ID number, such as from a driver’s license or Social Security card, or obtain a witness or notary signature, according to the Voting Rights Lab, an organization that tracks state election laws and proposed legislation.

In 21 other states, the Voting Rights Lab said, voters requesting mail ballots must verify their identity using personal information, such as date of birth, address or signature.

The remaining seven states and Washington, D.C., have universal mail voting, so ballots are automatically sent to voters ahead of every election, without voters needing to request them, the Voting Rights Lab said.

Election officials in every state use signature verification to validate the identities of voters who cast mail ballots, the National Vote at Home Institute said.

After the 2020 election, many Republican lawmakers sympathetic to former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud have pushed for tighter voter ID requirements to combat fraud, which national experts have said is isolated and rare. Democrats and voting rights advocates have criticized some state voter ID laws, particularly ones with narrow lists of acceptable types of ID, as overly burdensome.

Our ruling

A Facebook post claimed that valid IDs are not required to vote in U.S. elections.

But there isn’t a total absence of voter ID laws in the U.S. In 36 states, voters are required or requested to present some form of ID to cast a ballot in person. These laws applied to about 6 in 10 voters in the 2022 elections. The remaining 14 states and Washington, D.C., use other methods to verify voters’ identities.

Federal law requires first-time voters to present valid ID when requesting mail ballots, and almost half the states have additional ID requirements for voters applying for mail ballots.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

Publicaciones en Facebook ofrecen a hispanos borrar sus deudas con un supuesto programa para luchar “contra la recesión”, pero este programa no es real, ni tampoco los videos que lo promueven. 

“A todos los hispanoamericanos se les borraran sus deudas hasta este sábado 16 de marzo, he aquí porque quieren luchar contra la recesión que se avecina”, dice el video en Facebook del 13 de marzo.  “Así que es mejor que presente la solicitud mientras todavía ofrecen esto al público”. 

La publicación muestra a la presentadora de Univision, Karina Banda, supuestamente dando la noticia del programa de deudas. Pero el video alteró la voz de Banda. 

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).

PolitiFact no encontró ningún anuncio oficial del gobierno federal de Estados Unidos, ni artículos de medios verídicos que hablaran de tal programa de alivio de deudas. 

Hicimos una búsqueda de imagen inversa y encontramos el video original de Banda en la página de Instagram del programa de Univision Desiguales. En este ella tiene el mismo vestido y fondo que en el video en Facebook, pero ella no habla de borrar deudas, sino de los temas de opinión que iban a discutir en su programa el 7 de marzo. 

También notamos que los movimientos de labios de Banda en el video en Facebook no coinciden con lo que ella supuestamente dice. 

Aunque Banda trabaja en Univision, la publicación en Facebook usa imágenes falsas de CNN para decir que esa cadena de televisión reportó sobre el alivio de deudas. PolitiFact hizo una búsqueda de imagen inversa de la imágenes de CNN en la cual una mujer supuestamente hablaba sobre el programa de deudas para hispanos y no encontramos nada sobre el tema. Tampoco encontramos ningún logo de CNN que dijera “El programa termina el 16 de marzo”.

Otras publicaciones en Facebook — ya no vigentes — mostraban al periodista Fernando del Rincón de CNN Español, y a la Dra. Ana María Polo del programa de Caso Cerrado de Telemundo, supuestamente diciendo lo mismo sobre el alivio de deudas. Pero el audio de Polo y del Rincón también fue alterado. Ellos no han dicho lo que las publicaciones alegan.

(Capturas de pantalla de publicaciones en Facebook).

La publicación que incluye a del Rincón decía que él estaba en Estados Unidos. Pero el video fue grabado en la Ciudad de Guatemala el 20 de agosto de 2023, cuando él cubrió las elecciones en ese país.

(Captura de pantalla de una publicación en Facebook falsa vs. el video real en YouTube).

En relación al video de Polo, un vocero de Telemundo le dijo a PolitiFact que la cadena de televisión no tiene ninguna asociación con la página que publicó el video. 

Notamos que las publicaciones llevaban a un mismo enlace en donde supuestamente las personas deben responder preguntas para ver si califican para el programa de alivio de deudas. Pero este tiene un mensaje de descargo de responsabilidad que dice: “Este sitio web no está afiliado al programa Affordable Cares Act ni a ninguna otra entidad gubernamental”.

Las publicaciones urgían a los usuarios a aplicar al programa de borrar deudas, ya que supuestamente estaba disponible hasta el 16 de marzo, pero expertos han advertido sobre este tipo de tácticas engañosas.

“Nunca hay ninguna emergencia en internet que no pueda esperar un día”, dijo Melissa deCardi Hladek, una profesora asistente en el Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. 

Existen compañías privadas que asisten con el alivio de deudas, pero es ilegal que te cobren antes de ayudarte, y no pueden garantizar eliminar tus deudas, según la Comisión Federal de Comercio (FTC, por sus siglas en inglés).

Nuestro veredicto

Una publicación en Facebook dice, “a todos los hispanoamericanos se les borraran sus deudas hasta este sábado 16 de marzo, he aquí porque quieren luchar contra la recesión que se avecina”.

PolitiFact no encontró programas oficiales del gobierno federal que ofrezcan tal servicio a hispanos en Estados Unidos. 

La voz de Banda fue alterada para aparentar que ella habló sobre este supuesto programa;  sus movimientos de labios no concuerdan con lo que decía el video. En el video original, Banda hablaba sobre los temas que iban a discutir en su programa de televisión en Univision, no sobre un programa de borrar deudas.

Así que calificamos esta declaración como Falsa. 

También lee:

Ni los bancos están liquidando deudas en tarjetas de crédito, ni Jorge Ramos lo cuenta

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.

 

Muchos usuarios en redes sociales han desatado rumores sobre la salud y bienestar de Catalina, la princesa de Gales (casualmente conocida como Kate Middleton en inglés). Una publicación en Instagram dice que la cadena de televisión del Reino Unido hasta cambió el color de su logo — a un color de luto — debido a una noticia inminente.

“Kate Middleton desaparecida por meses… la familia real se ha negado a subir una foto de ella que no este editada, el logo de la BBC en negro como cuando falleció la Reina Elizabeth II y los rumores de un supuesto anuncio que saldrá mañana en la BBC. ¿¡Que está pasando?!”, dice la publicación en Facebook del 17 de marzo. 

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).

Otra publicación en X del 17 de marzo dice “QUE LA FOTO DE PERFIL DE LA BBC HA CAMBIADO A NEGRO DEP LA KATERINA, lo que se viene”.

Estas afirmaciones son falsas. La BBC tiene diversas cuentas en redes sociales. Por lo general, la cuenta principal del servicio público británico de radiodifusión utiliza su logotipo sobre fondo negro al menos desde 2019. 

El 17 de enero, el palacio de Kensington confirmó que Catalina se había sometido a una operación abdominal programada y que no volvería a sus funciones reales hasta después de Pascua, a finales de marzo.

Una foto de Catalina y sus tres hijos publicada por el palacio de Kensington el 10 de marzo por el día de la madre desató todo tipo de rumores después que se comprobó que fue manipulada. 

Aunque históricamente la marca de la BBC era su logotipo sobre fondo rojo, por lo menos desde el 2019 su logotipo principal es negro. La cadena utiliza diferentes colores para las distintas secciones. Por ejemplo, su logotipo de noticias es rojo, mientras que el de deportes es amarillo. 

Una búsqueda en Wayback Machine — una página web que archiva páginas en internet — muestra que por años, el logotipo de la BBC ha sido negro.

Olga Robinson, editora asistente de BBC Verify, el departamento de verificación de la BBC, dijo en una publicación en X que el rumor del cambio de logo es falso. 

Robinson incluyó una captura de pantalla mostrando la lista de cuentas de BBC donde se ve una variedad de colores para sus diferentes logos. PolitiFact replicó la búsqueda en Instagram y los resultados también mostraron los diferentes logos de la BBC.

(Captura de pantalla de las diferentes cuentas de la BBC en Instagram).

No es la primera vez que se rumora que la BBC cambió su logotipo a negro; esta misma declaración falsa surgió antes del fallecimiento de la Reina Isabel II en 2022.

Calificamos la afirmación de que “la BBC de Londres puso su logo en color negro, y se espera un comunicado relacionado con la desaparición de Kate Middleton” como Falsa.

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.

As thousands of tourists make final travel preparations before the April 8 total solar eclipse, law enforcement and first responders in towns and cities along the eclipse’s path of totality are also solidifying their plans. 

In McCurtain County, Oklahoma, the plan includes calling in National Guard troops — a fact that’s causing some social media users to claim something other than just a total solar eclipse is coming.  

“The National Guard is going to be here now for the solar eclipse,” said a person in a March 15 Facebook reel. “This article today was released in an Oklahoma newspaper saying that they will have guardsmen present in McCurtain County for the solar eclipse. But things get much weirder. The 22 members of an elite chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear unit will be housed in Broken Bow in addition to 110 to 150 Oklahoma highway patrol troopers.”

The reel’s caption said: “This eclipse is waaaay BIGGER than we thinking… “

Others on Facebook, Instagram and X shared similar sentiments, with some including photos of a newspaper article. 

“Why would any town need the national guards, present, for a solar eclipse?” a Facebook user wrote March 14. The post had some punctuation typos in it that we corrected here for understanding, but its message was: “Unless something is happening that they are not telling us about. Too many warnings from media and people going on about this eclipse event. We have never had eclipse warnings before and being told to stock up on food and supplies, etc.”

These posts were 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 posts call to mind similar foreboding claims we have checked warning people of alleged emergencies and doomsday scenarios that have sometimes linked the size or intensity of a law enforcement response to a false or unproven scenario.

Located in the state’s southeastern corner, McCurtain County is solidly within the upcoming solar eclipse’s path of totality, making it an area viewers might flock to on April 8. Officials expect crowds of tourists and increased traffic and, as in other places along the path of totality, they have encouraged residents to prepare by buying fuel and groceries ahead of time. 

This image from the NASA Eclipse Explorer website shows the path of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse over North America. (NASA via AP)

Because of the anticipated visitor surge, McCurtain County’s emergency management officials also requested support from the Oklahoma National Guard.

In public statements, the Oklahoma National Guard said it would be supporting local officials because of crowds. Oklahoma National Guard’s 63rd Civil Support Team members will be “available to assist local government agencies” during the eclipse, according to a March 18 statement. 

Lt. Col. Jabonn Flurry, commander of the 63rd Civil Support Team, said McCurtain County officials requested support because up to 100,000 additional people are expected to visit the area to watch the eclipse. McCurtain County’s estimated population was 30,660 people as of July 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“This influx of visitors has the potential to overtax local resources and thanks to the training and experience our Guardsmen have working alongside local agencies all across Oklahoma, the CST is uniquely qualified to support our fellow Oklahomans,” Flurry said. 

The 63rd Civil Support Team has hundreds of hours of training for responding to emergencies, including those involving hazardous materials, which would free up local responders to “continue their assistance to citizens and the expected increase of visitors,” the Oklahoma National Guard said in its statement.

But the plan is precautionary. PolitiFact contacted McCurtain County’s Emergency Management Agency and received no response.

Lt. Col. LeeAnn Tumblson, an Oklahoma National Guard spokesperson, said nearly 20 unit members would provide support that day. 

“It is not unusual for the 63rd CST to be a part of something like this,” Tumblson said. “The CST often partners with other first responders to provide an additional level of protection for the public during large sporting, gaming, and gathering events.”

In 2023, the 63rd Civil Support Team participated in 15 civil support missions for events such as the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon and football games at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University, Tumblson said. 

In the past, the Oklahoma National Guard has responded to floods, wildfires, winter storms and tornadoes. In June 2020, 250 Oklahoma National Guard troops supported local law enforcement officers during President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This multiple exposure photograph shows the progression of a partial solar eclipse over the Gateway Arch in St. Louis on Aug. 21, 2017. (AP)

The Aug. 21, 2017, eclipse’s path of totality did not cross through Oklahoma, but other states’ National Guard members signaled their readiness to support local authorities if needed. In Oregon, the 2017 eclipse coincided with peak fire season, and National Guard members prepared to fight fires, with 150 soldiers authorized to help local authorities.

Our ruling

Facebook posts said the Oklahoma National Guard’s assistance for the April 8 eclipse signals something “bigger” is underway.

Officials in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, anticipate thousands of eclipse viewers and requested support from the Oklahoma National Guard. National Guard troops often support local and state authorities. We found no evidence that requesting National Guard support signals something “bigger” than the eclipse is on its way.

We rate these claims False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird and Staff Writer Loreben Tuquero contributed to this report.

RELATED: Some communities brace for April eclipse viewing crowds, but not everyone needs to stockpile

Two of the five Great Lakes — Erie and Ontario — border New York state. And a New York state legislator recently touted the lakes’ importance to the continent’s and the world’s water supply.

New York State Assembly member Patrick Burke, whose Buffalo-area district almost touches Lake Erie, introduced a bill this month that would create a “Great Lakes Bill of Rights” to give residents “a role in the decision-making process regarding current and future projects that impact the ecosystem.”

In a press release introducing the bill, Burke wrote that the Great Lakes account for “over 20% of the world’s freshwater and over 80% of North America’s freshwater.” 

Official data says Burke is correct. 

Burke’s office did not answer a request for comment.

How great are the lakes?

Besides Erie and Ontario, the Great Lakes include Superior, Michigan and Huron to the west.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Great Lakes account for 21% of the world’s freshwater and 84% of North America’s surface fresh water. That’s in line with what Burke said.

Such percentages may sound like a lot, but Joseph Atkinson, the director for the Great Lakes Program at the University at Buffalo, told PolitiFact that even such large reserves cannot last indefinitely without careful conservation.

“if you start diverting the water from the Great Lakes to other areas of the U.S., depending on how much is moved, they won’t be able to provide as much fresh water as they would if the water remained where it was,” Atkinson said. If the water being removed “exceeds the water coming in, the water levels will drop indefinitely.”

Besides providing fresh drinking water, the Great Lakes provide energy through hydroelectric power.

The Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station and the Lewiston Pump Generating Plant are New York State’s two largest hydroelectric power plants, according to the New York Power Authority. Both are near Niagara Falls, which is formed by the Niagara River; the Niagara River carries water from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario.

“The hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls was one of the first in the country, and it’s still a pretty large contributor to New York’s power supply,” Atkinson said.

Conservation efforts

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, signed April 15, 1972, involved pledges by Canada and the United States to protect the Great Lakes. 

The agreement sets limits on phosphorus levels flowing into the lakes. Too much phosphorus would make the lakes subject to too much growth by algae and other invasive plants, Atkinson said.

“It’s very important to conserve the Great Lakes,” Atkinson said. The lakes, he said, “are essential to our existence.”

Our ruling

Burke said the Great Lakes account for “over 20% of the world’s freshwater and over 80% of North America’s freshwater.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the Great Lakes account for 21% of the world’s freshwater and 84% of North America’s surface fresh water. That’s in line with what Burke said.

We rate the statement True.