Category: Fact Check

President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address lasted about one hour and seven minutes.

During the speech, Biden occasionally paused for applause or diverged from his planned remarks to spar with GOP lawmakers in the audience. 

But there was no intermission, despite a social media post’s claim that Biden’s team was planning untraditional pauses in the speech. 

“White House announces there will be 2 ‘intermissions’ during tonight’s State of the Union,” read an X post screenshot shared March 7 on Instagram. That X post, also dated March 7, was written by Sean Spicer, former press secretary to former President Donald Trump.

Spicer posted on X at 9:41 a.m. Eastern Time and clarified soon after that it was a joke — but not before social media users moved to share the post without context.

Not long after Spicer’s initial post, another X user asked: “Is this a joke? Please say this is a joke.” 

Spicer replied: “Joke right now. But I won’t put it past them.”

(Screenshot from X.)

Images of his X post that did not make clear it was a joke 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.)

(Screenshot from Instagram.)

“So the docs said he doesn’t need a cognitive exam and he’s not too old…” read the caption on the Instagram post, referring to Biden’s recent physical. “But they will need to break this state of the union up.” 

As they pursue second terms, both Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, face concern from voters over their respective ages and health and fitness. 

As for claims about a State of the Union pause, however, we found no news reports or announcements on White House communication channels that Biden would have any intermission during his address. 

Since Biden’s speech has happened, we can also confirm: There was no intermission. 

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Fact-checking Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address

RELATED: Fact-checking Katie Britt’s immigration claims in Republican 2024 State of the Union response

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rebutted the unfounded theory that the Biden administration is allowing migrants to illegally enter the U.S. to increase the Democrats’ chances of winning elections.  

“Is it the policy of the Biden administration to allow as many migrants to come across the border in order to change the political dynamics, the electoral dynamics of America?” CNN’s “State of the Union” host Dana Bash asked Mayorkas on March 3.

“Of course not, and the facts indicate that that is absolutely false,” Mayorkas said, citing his agency’s deportation statistics as evidence. “Since May of last year we have removed or returned more individuals than in any year since 2015 and we haven’t even run 12 months.”

Bash cited comments from former President Donald Trump, who said during a campaign rally that “Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” and that Biden wants to “nullify the will of the actual American voters.”

“Over the last three years we’ve removed, returned, or expelled more people than in all four years of the prior administration,” Mayorkas continued. “You know, the facts matter. And the rhetoric, we should brush aside.”

Facts matter to PolitiFact, so we fact-checked Mayorkas’ comments. We found that his cautious wording — focusing on specific metrics — accurately reflected the available data. But someone hearing his claim might conclude that he meant all sorts of deportation efforts. And it’s not true, looking more widely, that the past nine months of data exceeded any single year since 2015. Fiscal year 2022, during the Biden administration, would have been the highest, because it included a public health policy that allowed quick expulsions of migrants.

Here’s an overview of deportation jargon, the numbers over the past few years and their context amid increasing illegal immigration. 

What ‘removed or return’ represent and how it’s flowed over the years 

The federal government classifies deportations as the removal of noncitizens from the U.S. It tracks it in a few different ways:

• Removals: When people are sent out of the U.S. via an official court order and often penalized for illegal entry. This can include people who have lived in the United States for years and people who recently arrived.

• Returns: When people are returned to their home countries without legal penalties and without being placed in formal removal proceedings. This happens at the border.

• Title 42 expulsions: These happened from March 2020 to May 2023 under a public health policy. Some people arriving at the border were not let into the United States and were expelled without legal penalties.

Mayorkas was careful with his terminology. He is on track that there have been more returns and removals in the past nine months than in any full fiscal year since 2015, according to DHS data. 

From May 2023 to January 2024, the latest available data, there have been 520,000 returns and removals. The next highest number is the 518,000 returns and removals in fiscal year 2019, under the Trump administration.

But to someone who is unfamiliar with deportation metrics and jargon, it could sound as if the past nine months of returns and removals exceeded any full year since 2015. If we include Title 42 expulsions, the numbers change. 

From fiscal years 2015 to 2024, “returns” and “removals” were the lowest in 2020 to 2022, because most people encountered at the border were turned away under a different enforcement strategy — expelled under Title 42. In 2020 — removals, returns and Title 42 expulsions added up to 608,000, and increased to 1.4 million in 2022.

A time frame Mayorkas focused on in his comparison — the past nine months — did not include any Title 42 expulsions. The administration stopped those expulsions in May 2023. Title 42 expulsions also weren’t available for the majority of the fiscal years Mayorkas included in his comparison.

Removals and returns have increased, but so have encounters 

Since the public health expulsion policy ended, removals and returns under Biden have increased. But so have Border Patrol encounters with people trying to cross the U.S. border. As a result, returns and removals are low as a proportion of the total number of these stops.

For example, in fiscal year 2015, there were about 592,000 apprehensions and 453,000 returns and removals. From May 2023 to January 2024, there were 520,000 removals and returns but 2.6 million encounters. (DHS started using the term “encounters” in March 2020 to include apprehensions under immigration law and expulsions under Title 42).  

We asked immigration experts why returns and removals haven’t kept up with the increase in encounters, and what that disproportion tells us about the Biden administration’s efforts to remove people who are here illegally. 

The rise in returns and removals under Biden’s administration shows “increased effort, even if appropriations ultimately set a hard limit on how high it can go,” said David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said absolute return and removal numbers matter more than their proportion to encounters because “DHS has no control over the number” of people who show up at U.S. borders.  

Congressional appropriations determine return and removal capacity

The numbers tell us only part of the story, immigration experts told us. 

The mismatch between returns and removals, and encounters under Biden’s administration is “primarily a reflection of the mismatch in resource allocation by Congress, which has failed to adequately fund the immigration system in its entirety,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 

That removals and returns have not kept up with the increase in encounters shows that “there are hard limits to the amount of enforcement that can be carried out absent additional funding from Congress, changes in the laws, or changes in international diplomacy,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant-rights advocacy group. 

Migrants’ nationality influences how easily they can be deported 

Under Biden, the nationalities of people encountered at the border have increased, the Migration Policy Institute wrote in a January report. And to deport people, the U.S. needs a working relationship with their countries of origin.

China, for example, does not take back its citizens, even if U.S. authorities order their removal. People from countries that don’t cooperate with removals must be released because they legally cannot be indefinitely detained.

Mexico also plays a key role in the U.S. government’s ability to remove Venezuelans and people from other countries who would otherwise be difficult to deport from the U.S. because of fraught diplomatic relationships.

Mexico has agreed to take 30,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans or Haitians a month who arrive at U.S. borders and are removed.

“Without this collaboration, the U.S. would severely struggle to implement returns and removals at the current rate,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said.

Our ruling

Mayorkas said, “Since May of last year we have removed or returned more individuals than in any year since 2015.”

He’s right about this precise data. Over the past nine months, immigration officials have carried out 520,000 returns and removals, more than the previous high of 518,000 in fiscal year 2019.

But someone who is unfamiliar with deportation jargon could conclude that the past nine months have accounted for the largest number of times people have been sent out of the country since 2015. That’s not the case when accounting for expulsions under a public health policy that lasted from March 2020 to May 2023. In fiscal year 2022, people were removed, returned or expelled 1.4 million times.

Mayorkas’ statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.

As he has done on several occasions, President Joe Biden used the State of the Union address to tout his administration’s efforts to cut the federal deficit.

During his March 7 address to Congress, Biden said, “I’ve been delivering real results in fiscally responsible ways. We’ve already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion.”

Biden has presided over smaller deficits than former President Donald Trump’s administration saw in its final year. However, Biden’s remarks omit important context about the unusual federal spending that both presidents approved to stabilize the country during the coronavirus pandemic. 

“President Biden has presided over declining deficits, but that’s because the deficit started staggeringly high because of the pandemic,” Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks federal spending, told PolitiFact this month. “If you compare the deficit to pre-pandemic levels, they are incredibly high. Some of that is still residual effects from the pandemic response and higher interest rates, but it is also from increased spending and decreased revenues.”

What is the deficit? What is the debt?

The deficit isn’t the same as the debt, although the terms are related.

The federal deficit is calculated by subtracting federal spending from federal revenue, primarily tax collections, for a given year. If revenue exceeds spending, there’s a surplus for that year; if spending exceeds revenue, there’s a deficit. (There hasn’t been a federal surplus since 2001.)

The national debt is the accumulation of all past deficits, minus any surpluses. 

A smaller deficit does not mean the federal debt has shrunk; only a surplus can do that. A smaller deficit means only that the debt grows more slowly than it did before.

So, the debt has continued to rise under Biden. When Biden entered office, the broadest measure of the federal debt stood a little below $27.8 trillion. Currently, it’s around $34.4 trillion, an increase of almost one-fourth in a little more than three years.

The debt also rose under Trump, by about $7.8 trillion over his four years in office.

How big has the deficit been in recent years?

Biden’s claim about the annual deficit, meanwhile, leaves out important context.

During Trump’s presidency, the deficit rose from $666 billion in 2017, his first year in office, to $984 billion in 2019, his third year.

But the coronavirus pandemic sent the annual deficit into record territory. In 2020, Trump’s fourth year, the deficit skyrocketed to $3.13 trillion, largely because of government stimulus payments, unemployment insurance expansions, business operation grants and increased funding for public health.

The deficit remained high in 2021, another significant pandemic year. That year, a newly elected Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided more money for the pandemic response. In 2021, the deficit fell but remained historically high, at $2.78 trillion.

The deficit declines were greater during Biden’s second and third years in office, as vaccines and therapies cut the risks associated with COVID-19 and the economy opened. The deficit was about $1.38 trillion in 2022 and $1.7 trillion in 2023.

The $1.4 trillion decline in the deficit from 2021 to 2022 was larger than any previous one-year reduction in the deficit. The decline from 2021 to 2023 was almost $1.1 trillion. 

How much credit does Biden deserve for reducing the deficit?

Although Biden often touts the federal spending from bills he’s signed — including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — he’s also tried to promote the argument that he’s been responsible with the public purse.

The White House told PolitiFact that Biden’s administration deserves some credit for successfully tamping down the pandemic, partly because it embraced and promoted  vaccinations. 

Also, White House officials say that key legislation Biden signed, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, was written in a way to boost federal revenue enough to balance out the spending increases. The Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Biden signed in 2023 as a negotiated way to lift the debt limit, included spending curbs that were designed to reduce deficits from 2024 to 2033 by a collective $1.5 trillion, according to Congressional Budget Office projections.

However, the pandemic was an extraordinary historical occurrence that provoked an aggressive, and temporary, government response. The other bills Biden signed, although large in dollars, are phasing in their spending over a decade.

The deficit, even at its reduced levels, remains higher under Biden than it was pre-pandemic. The deficit in 2022 and 2023 under Biden was higher than in each of Trump’s first three years, partly because of bills such as the 2021 American Rescue Plan.

The same pattern emerges when the deficit is compared with the U.S. gross domestic product, a common measure of the economy’s overall size. The deficit peaked at 14.7% of gross domestic product in 2020 and fell to 5.4% in 2022. That was still bigger than the highest pre-pandemic percentage under Trump, 4.6%.

Our ruling

Biden said, “We’ve already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion.” 

The annual deficit did decline by $1.4 trillion on Biden’s watch, from 2021 to 2022. That was larger than any previous one-year reduction in the deficit. Looking at the two-year period from 2021 to 2023, the deficit declined by less, but still by almost $1.1 trillion.

However, the pandemic was an extraordinary historical occurrence that provoked an aggressive, and temporary, government response.

On Biden’s watch, even this reduced deficit is larger than any of the deficits on Trump’s watch. And the federal debt has kept rising, just more slowly than it did during the pandemic.

We rate the statement Half True.

Does a traffic court judge have the power to remove a presidential candidate from a primary ballot? 

On Feb. 28, Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie R. Porter issued a ruling to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot for Illinois’ March 19 primary. The ruling was put on hold to give Trump’s team time to appeal — and the case will not proceed after the Supreme Court halted a similar effort in Colorado.

Some social media users are questioning her ability to make such a decision.

“The ‘Judge’ who took Trump off the ballot in Illinois is a traffic court judge who presides over ‘minor traffic violations and Class A Misdemeanors,’” read a Feb. 29 Instagram post by Ryan Fournier, a conservative commentator. “A traffic court judge … You can’t make this up.”

(Screenshot 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.)

Although Porter previously served in the traffic division, her current role in the county division encompasses a broader scope of cases.

Porter won a 2022 election to become a Cook County Circuit judge. According to the Illinois State Constitution, circuit courts have jurisdiction on all matters except those with jurisdiction reserved for the state Supreme Court, namely, General Assembly redistricting and ruling on the governor’s ability to serve or resume office.

Cook County’s Circuit Court has three departments: county, municipal, and juvenile justice and child protection.

Porter is a circuit judge in the court’s county division under the county department. The county division handles the following: 

Porter was previously in the traffic division, according to an archived copy of her page captured Dec. 20, 2022. 

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that disqualified Trump, effectively halting all efforts, including that of Illinois, to remove him from the ballot.

We rate the claim that an Illinois judge ordered Trump’s removal from the state’s primary ballot while serving as a “traffic court judge” False.

Joe Biden utilizó su discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión en 2024 para adoptar una postura de lucha. 

Biden no dijo el nombre del expresidente Donald Trump en sus comentarios, pero invocó con frecuencia el historial y las propuestas de Trump, refiriéndose a él normalmente como “mi predecesor.” 

Algunos republicanos criticaron a Biden desde que entró a la sala. La representante Marjorie Taylor Greene, republicana de Georgia, cuestionó a Biden por el asesinato de la estudiante de enfermería de la Universidad de Georgia Laken Riley. Un inmigrante ilegalmente en el país es acusado de la muerte de Riley.

Biden se presentó como protector y defensor de los estadounidenses y su prosperidad, promoviendo políticas para aliviar los préstamos estudiantiles y reducir los precios de los medicamentos recetados.

Biden reiteró su llamado a los congresistas republicanos para que aprueben la ayuda a Ucrania, que está luchando contra una invasión rusa. 

También pidió a Hamás que liberase a los rehenes israelíes en Gaza, a la vez que anunció un plan para construir un embarcadero temporal para ampliar la ayuda humanitaria a los palestinos atrapados en el fuego cruzado.

Hemos comprobado declaraciones clave sobre inmigración, economía, crimen y derechos reproductivos.

Inmigración 

Dialogo sobre Laken Riley y el inmigrante acusado de su asesinato

Durante años, los republicanos han culpado a Biden de la inmigración ilegal, históricamente alta bajo su mandato. Algunos republicanos llevaban pins rojos y blancos que decían “Alto a la crisis fronteriza de Biden”. 

Cuando Biden entró en la Cámara de Representantes, Greene le entregó un pin con un texto que decía: “Di su nombre: Laken Riley”, la estudiante de la Universidad de Georgia asesinada. 

Mientras hablaba de seguridad fronteriza e inmigración, Greene interrumpió a Biden y le retó a decir el nombre de Riley. 

“Lincoln Riley, una joven inocente que fue asesinada por un ilegal”, dijo Biden, pronunciando mal el nombre de Riley.

Algunos demócratas de alto nivel le criticaron por utilizar la expresión “ilegal”, argumentando que es deshumanizadora.

“Debería haber dicho indocumentados”, dijo en CNN la ex presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, la demócrata Nancy Pelosi de California.

“Permítanme ser clara: ningún ser humano es ilegal”, publicó en X la representante Ilhan Omar, demócrata de Minnesota. 

Durante la respuesta republicana al discurso de Biden, Katie Britt, senadora de Alabama, dijo que el presidente “optó por liberar” a EE.UU. al hombre acusado de matar a Riley.

“Fue brutalmente asesinada por uno de los millones de inmigrantes ilegales que el presidente Biden decidió liberar en nuestra patria”, dijo Britt.

José Ibarra, el hombre acusado del asesinato de Riley, cruzó ilegalmente la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México en septiembre de 2022. Ibarra fue puesto en libertad condicional, lo que le permite ser liberado en los EE.UU. a la espera de nuevos procedimientos de inmigración, de acuerdo con el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés).

Biden no decide quién entra en el país. Los funcionarios de fronteras deciden a quién dejan en libertad porque carecen de recursos suficientes para detener a todas las personas que cruzan ilegalmente las fronteras estadounidenses.

Economía 

“La inflación ha bajado del 9% al 3%, ¡la más baja del mundo!”.

EE.UU. tiene una inflación más baja que la mayoría de los países industrializados avanzados, pero no ocupa el primer puesto a nivel internacional.

Biden tiene razón en que la inflación ha bajado del 9% en el verano de 2022 a poco más del 3% en la actualidad, en medio de fuertes subidas de los tipos de interés por parte de la Reserva Federal.

En diciembre de 2023, siete países de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico  — Canadá, Dinamarca, Italia, Letonia, Lituania, Países Bajos y Corea del Sur — tenían tasas de inflación inferiores a la de Estados Unidos. 

Veinte países miembros de la OCDE tenían tasas de inflación superiores a las de EE.UU., entre ellos Francia, Alemania y el Reino Unido, que pertenecen al G-7 de economías de élite.

Crimen

“América es más segura hoy que cuando asumí el cargo “, dijo Biden, afirmando que el año antes de convertirse en presidente, “los asesinatos subieron un 30%”, “el incremento más grande en la historia”.

El crimen violento ha disminuido recientemente en los Estados Unidos, y Biden se atribuyó la responsabilidad. 

Es verdad que los homicidios incrementaron un 30% en 2020, y fue considerado el incremento anual más significativo en más de una década. Pero Biden ignoró que el aumento coincidió con la pandemia de COVID-19.

Promocionando su Acta del Plan de Rescate Americano de 2022 como “la mayor inversión en seguridad pública jamás realizada”, Biden señaló la tasa de homicidios de 2023. “El año pasado, la tasa de asesinatos vio la disminución más pronunciada en la historia. Los crímenes violentos cayeron a uno de los niveles más bajos en más de 50 años. Pero tenemos más por hacer”.

Los crímenes violentos han disminuido desde los récords de 2020, pero esto es por varios factores, dicen expertos, algunos que están fuera del control de Biden. 

Usando datos de cientos de ciudades, criminalistas estimaron que los homicidios en 2023 disminuyeron alrededor de un 12% comparado con 2022. Los números son considerados preliminares, pero los analistas de crimen dicen que si los números finales se mantienen igual, esto representaría una de las mayores disminuciones de homicidios en un solo año desde que se comenzaron a llevar registros de delitos en Estados Unidos.

A pesar de la disminución, los datos muestran que se espera que la tasa de homicidios de 2023 sea aproximadamente un 18% más alta que en 2019, antes de que la pandemia comenzará. 

La implementación de algunas legislaciones pudo haber ayudado a hacer que la tendencia disminuyera, dijeron investigadores. Estas son el Acta del Plan de Rescate, que incluía financiación para iniciativas comunitarias de seguridad pública, y la Ley Bipartidista de Comunidades más Seguras de 2022, que financió ayuda a estados para reducir el uso de armas de fuego.  

Otros factores contribuyentes probablemente incluyen un alivio de las disrupciones sociales por la pandemia y los esfuerzos individuales de las ciudades en respuesta a los aumentos en homicidios. 

Derechos reproductivos 

“La Corte Suprema de Alabama cerró los tratamientos de fecundación in vitro en todo el estado, a raíz de una decisión de la Corte Suprema que anuló Roe vs. Wade”.

El 16 de febrero, la Corte Suprema de Alabama dijo que los embriones congelados deben considerarse niños. 

La decisión no tiene el poder de terminar los tratamientos de fecundación in vitro (FIV) en todo el estado. Pero provocó que varias clínicas suspendieran los tratamientos de FIV mientras analizaban la decisión y las posibles responsabilidades.

Desde entonces, los legisladores de Alabama han aprobado leyes para proteger a los proveedores de FIV de la responsabilidad civil o penal, en un intento de proteger los tratamientos de fertilidad tras la creciente reacción. Dos clínicas anunciaron que reanudaban sus operaciones después de que la gobernadora republicana Kay Ivey firmara la ley.

La senadora demócrata Tammy Duckworth de Illinois, quien tuvo dos hijas fecundadas in vitro, presentó un proyecto de ley federal similar para proteger la fecundación in vitro. Pero la senadora Cindy Hyde-Smith, republicana de Mississippi, lo bloqueó el 28 de febrero, diciendo que era una “gran extralimitación que está llena de píldoras venenosas que van demasiado lejos — mucho más allá de garantizar el acceso legal a la FIV”.

Loreben Tuquero y Marta Campabadal Graus, redactoras de PolitiFact, han contribuido a este reportaje.

Una versión de este artículo originalmente fue escrito en inglés y traducido por María Briceño y Marta Campabadal Graus.

Read a version of this article in English.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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A social media post claimed clips of President Joe Biden and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton saying similar words 17 years apart shows that their words are “all scripts and copied, all fake.”

The Jan. 24 Instagram post toggled between clips of speeches by Biden and Clinton, who used similar phrases such as “come too far from where we started” and “nobody told me the road would be easy.” 

One commenter on the Instagram post said, “Check it out on how criminals sound the same.” Others accused Biden of “plagiarism…again,” a reference to a 1987 speech in which Biden was accused of lifting words from a British politician.

The Instagram 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 clips shared in the Instagram post omitted the portions of Biden’s and Clinton’s speeches that explain why their words were so similar: They each are quoting from the lyrics of a gospel song.

Longer footage from the Biden and Clinton speeches shows that.

On Jan. 8, Biden was speaking at a political event at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine church members were killed in a 2015 racially motivated massacre.

Near the end of his speech denouncing white supremacy, Biden quoted from the James Cleveland gospel song, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” 

“Folks, my fellow Americans, this is a time of choosing, so let us choose the truth. Let us choose America. I know — I know we can do it together. And as the gospel song sings, ‘We’ve come too far from where we started. Nobody told me the road would be easy. I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me.’ My fellow Americans, I don’t think the good Lord brought us this far to leave us behind.”

On March 4, 2007, Clinton, then a New York senator running for president, spoke at First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, on the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when Alabama state troopers attacked civil rights demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Near the end of her speech, Clinton, who spoke about voting rights, also quoted from Cleveland’s song.

“We have to stay awake. We have a march to finish. On this floor today, let us say with one voice the words of James Cleveland’s great freedom hymn, “I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me.”

Biden has quoted from the gospel song on several occasions when talking to predominantly Black audiences: a January 2023 event honoring Martin Luther King Jr.; a February 2023 Black history month reception; a 2023 Juneteenth concert; and at a 2020 Souls to the Polls event in Philadelphia.

We rate the claim that video of Biden and Clinton speeches prove their words “are all scripted and copied” False. 

Executives at Erewhon, an upscale organic grocery store chain in California with a devoted following, have talked about expanding east to New York City.

But a social media video has misleadingly convinced some Brooklyn, New York, residents that the trendy store already opened its doors there.

A Jan. 30 Instagram post claimed to show an Erewhon store in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. “The Bushwick Erewhon finally opened this week,” a narrator in the video said.

“It’s beautiful inside, but the prices are crazy,” said the narrator, who led viewers on a tour inside the store, showing $10 cereal, $7 oat milk, $12 cartons of eggs and a $20 beet, ginger and spinach smoothie.

The video is from Hotspot NYC, an Instagram account that bills itself as “Yelp for hot people.” An account by the same name also shared the video on TikTok, where it had more than 27,000 likes.

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.)

But Erewhon has not opened in New York. There are no Erewhon locations outside of California, the company’s website shows. None of the chain’s 10 locations match the building and location seen in the Instagram video. And the video’s creators said it was a fake. 

The store’s exterior sign is the first signal in the video that something is amiss. The Erewhon sign moves slightly at the video’s beginning, an indication that it was added digitally.

Some commenters on the post believed the video was real, but others accurately said it showed a City Fresh Market in Bushwick.

“Bushwick and (Erewhon) being in the same sentence doesn’t make any sense. Gentrification has gone wild,” one commenter said, with more than 4,300 people liking the remark.

Other evidence in the Instagram footage: a menu board at a cafe inside the store reads, “City Fresh menu board.” And when the narrator holds up what he said was a $20 beet smoothie, the real store sign reading “City Fresh Market” is visible in the background.

We found other images online that show the City Fresh Market storefront with the same buildings in the background as seen in the video.

Erewhon does sell a $21 smoothie, but it doesn’t list the Cap’n Crunch cereal seen in the video among its available products.

The New York Times wrote about the video, saying it had amassed more than 1 million views on Instagram and 600,000 on TikTok. The City Fresh Market’s manager, Dulce Simono, told the newspaper she has tried, but failed, to get the TikTok video removed.

The Times interviewed Stanley Vergilis, Hotspot’s founder, and Joey Cannizarro, its social media manager. They said the video was intended to show the Bushwick store’s prices were overpriced, similar to Erewhon’s, and that they use the videos to call attention to their business. 

The Times reported that Cannizarro, a Bushwick resident, had visited an Erewhon location in California and “noticed some items cost about the same as similar products sold at his local City Fresh,” and the video was intended to highlight Bushwick’s gentrification. 

Hotspot’s website and social media accounts don’t clearly state they are producing digitally altered videos.  

We rate the claim that the video shows an Erewhon grocery store in Brooklyn Pants on Fire! 

A recent Instagram clip showed President Joe Biden speaking about where he and former President Barack Obama stand on something that sounds like gibberish — and misleads about the date he said it. 

The Feb. 29 Instagram video showed former Fox News host Tucker Carlson describing Biden’s quote: “In a rally in Michigan on Saturday, Biden muddied the waters for the very first time. He announced his support for something called ‘badacafcar.’ In fact, he said it’s a fundamental human right.”

The video cut to a clip of Biden speaking. “Barack and I think it’s a right for people to have ‘badacafcar,’” the caption accompanying Biden’s speech read.

Some of the post’s top comments showed people questioning why he mentioned Obama, who stepped down from office in 2017.

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.)

Biden did stumble over his words, but the incident isn’t recent; it’s from an excerpt of a “Tucker Carlson Tonight” episode that aired Nov. 1, 2020.

Biden was speaking at a rally in Flint, Michigan, on Oct. 31, 2020, three days before the 2020 election. At the 57:35 mark in this C-SPAN video, he says, “Donald Trump thinks health care is a privilege,” and then says the quote shown in the clip. C-SPAN’s transcript reads, “Barack and I think it is a right for people to have health care.” 

This clip of Biden stumbling over his words isn’t from “a rally in Michigan on Saturday.” We rate that claim False.

RELATED: Biden’s verbal blunders: Separating the real from the fake

As U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., delivered the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address, she pointed out a place his governance and his campaign clash. 

Criticizing Biden’s foreign policy, she described how China spreads “propaganda” through the likes of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. 

“And what does President Biden do? Well, he bans TikTok for government employees, but creates an account for his own campaign,” she said March 7. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Britt is correct in saying that Biden’s campaign uses TikTok, even after he limited its access for federal government employees.

In signing the Consolidated Appropriations Act in 2022, Biden generally barred federal government employees from using TikTok on agency-owned devices. There are exceptions for law enforcement, national security interests and security research.

NBC News reported in 2023 that Biden’s campaign would not be on TikTok, citing three anonymous sources. But on Feb. 11, on the day of the Super Bowl LVIII, “BidenHQ” posted its first TikTok video — a cheeky reference to the Taylor Swift-as-CIA asset conspiracy theory.

Wired and The Associated Press reported that the campaign uses a separate device specifically to log into and access TikTok, isolating it from communications on other devices.

In recent days, the White House has embraced a bipartisan bill that would prevent ByteDance-owned apps from appearing on app stores or U.S. websites. This means ByteDance would need to sell TikTok or face a national ban. 

We asked Biden’s campaign for comment on this and didn’t hear back.

PolitiFact has a fact-checking partnership with TikTok; you can read more about it here.

Britt said Biden banned government employees from using TikTok while using it for his campaign. The ban on the app applied to devices owned by agencies. With that note, we rate this claim Mostly True.

RELATED: US frets about TikTok feeding data to China; banning app won’t end the threat, experts say