Category: Fact Check

NASA satellites have made it easy to find authentic photos of Mars, but some social media claims say these aren’t actually images of the red planet. 

A Feb. 21 Instagram video claims NASA is altering photos of Earth’s landscapes to make them look like Mars. 

The video shows two identical, side-by-side photos, one labeled “Mars” and the other labeled “Devon Island,” the world’s largest uninhabited island located in the Arctic Archipelago.

“The photos have a little bit of Photoshop … allegedly this is Columbia Hills, Mars,” he said. “Clicking auto-tone in Photoshop, looks identical, the landscape does.”

This 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.)

NASA has said in prior news reports it is not passing off photos of Canada — or any other country — as Mars. 

The photo labeled Mars in the video appears on NASA’s website and is from 2004, according to the agency. The “Columbia Hills” refers to a range of low hills inside a crater on Mars’ surface, named to honor the Space Shuttle Columbia whose crew perished upon reentering the earth’s atmosphere in 2003. 

The photo labeled “Devon Island” in the Instagram photo is identical; there’s no evidence it’s from Canada. A reverse Google image search does not link the photo to any existing photos in Canada.

NASA does field research on Devon Island because the landscapes are similar to Mars. The island, which is in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Canada, hosts the Haughton-Mars Project, which includes a research facility NASA uses because it mimics Mars’ environment. 

“Devon Island’s barren terrain, freezing temperatures, isolation, and remoteness offer scientists and personnel unique research opportunities,” according to NASA’s website.

A similar conspiracy theory surfaced in February 2021, claiming that NASA had released fake photos of Mars that were really images of a Bulgarian rock formation. That claim was debunked by USA Today, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. NASA confirmed in 2021 that it took none of the photos. Another debunked claim in 2022 alleged that NASA said photos from Ireland were from Mars.

We rate the claim that pictures of Mars are actually Devon Island, Canada, False.

In the aftermath of the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade shooting, some social media users wondered why local authorities and news outlets have not released certain information about the juvenile suspects.

One of them was Kyle Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he was arrested in the high-profile fatal shootings of two men during a 2020 protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was acquitted of charges in 2021.

“I am trying to comprehend why the government was quick to reveal my name after I defended myself, but they still haven’t released the names of the Kansas City shooters,” Rittenhouse posted Feb. 20 on X.

Authorities charged four people, two adults and two minors, in connection with the Feb. 14 shooting in Kansas City, Missouri.

Several other social media users besides Rittenhouse saw a double standard between the details released in this shooting — the adult suspects are Black, while the juveniles’ races are unknown — and other high-profile, but noncriminal, incidents involving white minors. They mentioned Nick Sandmann, a high schooler whose encounter with a Native American man went viral in 2019, and Holden Armenta, a 9-year-old who was criticized by the news outlet Deadspin for wearing black and red face paint and a Native American headdress to a 2023 Chiefs game.

All of these cases involved different circumstances that determined whether identifying information about the minors was released. For example, Missouri law does not allow for juvenile defendants to be identified, except in more severe criminal cases, while Wisconsin law treats all 17-year-olds as adults in criminal prosecutions. 

Regardless of whether local authorities release identifying information about minors, four journalism ethics experts told PolitiFact that newsrooms must consider the ethics of publishing such details.

What we know about the Kansas City shooting

The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office said an argument and gunfire broke out at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade, leaving one woman dead and 22 other people, most of them children, injured.

Lyndell Mays, 23, and Dominic M. Miller, 18, were arrested on charges of second-degree murder, armed criminal action and unlawful use of a weapon.

On Feb. 16, before the adult suspects were publicly identified, Jackson County Family Court said two juveniles were arrested on gun-related and resisting arrest charges. No further details about the juveniles have been released.

Juvenile court records are typically not disclosed to the public under Missouri law.

“They shouldn’t have their lives derailed because of one bad decision,” said Clark Peters, a University of Missouri associate professor specializing in criminal and juvenile justice.

The ultimate decision to identify a juvenile suspect in Missouri lies with the juvenile court judge, Peters said.

If juveniles are charged with a felony, such as murder, a judge may decide to prosecute them as an adult. In this case, a judge may decide to allow identifying information about minors to be publicly released.

The two juveniles involved in the Kansas City shooting have not been charged with felonies. The Jackson County Family Court said additional charges were expected as the local police investigation continues, but the court did not say who may be charged or what the charges may be.

What happened with Rittenhouse and the other minors?

Rittenhouse claimed he acted in self-defense when shooting three people during a night of protests in Kenosha. In November 2021, a jury found him not guilty on counts of first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree attempted intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment.

Rittenhouse was prosecuted as an adult under Wisconsin law, which requires all 17-year-old criminal defendants to be charged and prosecuted as adults. In adult court, the criminal defendant’s name is publicly released at the time of arrest.

In Sandmann’s case, there was no crime. His name rose to national prominence because of a 2019 viral video that showed an encounter between Sandmann, then a Covington Catholic High School student, and a Native American protester.

Sandmann sued several news organizations, including The Washington Post, USA Today publisher Gannett Co. and CNN, for damages following media coverage of the event. Sandmann privately settled with The Washington Post and CNN; the lawsuit involving Gannett was dismissed.

Armenta also went viral online because of a photo taken of him during a Chiefs football game. Soon after, Deadspin ran a story accusing Armenta — without naming him — of wearing blackface. Deadspin included a photo of Armenta showing only half his face, which was covered in black paint. (The other half not seen in the photo was painted red.)

The child’s family is suing Deadspin for defamation. Deadspin has since updated the story to remove the photo and mentions of Armenta.

The ethics around naming children in news stories

When deciding to name a minor suspect, news organizations should weigh a person’s right to privacy and the public’s right to know, said Kellie Stanfield, an associate professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Missouri.

John Watson, an associate professor of communications law and journalism ethics at American University, said this is especially important to prioritize minimizing harm when children are involved.

“The potentially massive and long-term harm to children is probably never ethically justified given that they should not be held to the same standards of publicized accountability as newsworthy adults,” Watson said.

Experts said some of the questions journalists should consider are:

• Does the public need to know the minor’s identity? Why or why not?

• Would shielding the minor’s identity lead to public harm?

• Does releasing the minor’s identity give readers a deeper understanding of the context of the story?

“Each circumstance, obviously, is different and might change what a journalist would ultimately decide to do. But the key thing … is to remind oneself that we are dealing with human beings and not just reporting information,” said Aly Colón, a media ethics professor at Washington and Lee University.

Journalists should also be transparent with the public about this decision-making process, said Kathleen Culver, professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Oftentimes, newsrooms can be so insular. We’re just having these discussions of ethics among ourselves, rather than inviting people from the outside into the conversation,” Culver said. “If you are transparent with your audience about why you make those decisions, it’s going to result in more trust of your organization, not less.”

O.J. Simpson, Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg are among the high-profile celebrities whom lawyer Johnnie Cochran Jr. defended in court. But Cochran’s legal work to advance slavery reparations before his 2005 death has become fodder for a baseless conspiracy theory. 

“Before Johnnie Cochran mysteriously passed away he was sueing (sic) the government for slavery reparations,” read the caption on a Feb. 22. Instagram post. Comments on the video suggest a conspiratorial link between his death and the reparations work.

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.)

Cochran’s death at home in Los Angeles is hardly a mystery. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2003 and died from its complications in March 2005 at age 67. In 2007, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles opened the Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center in memory of Cochran, who had received treatment at the hospital.

Cochran was part of a group formed in 2000 called Reparations Assessment Group, which hoped to pursue reparations from local and national governments and public and private companies that benefited from the enslavement of Black people.

In 2003, the group filed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims and descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a mob of white people killed hundreds of residents in the predominantly Black community of Greenwood, nicknamed America’s Black Wall Street. The lawsuit against the city of Tulsa, its police department and the state of Oklahoma was dismissed by a district federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

There is no evidence Cochran’s death from cancer is in any way associated with his work in this area. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!

During a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump told voters their jobs were in danger. Immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. southern border would take the rallygoers’ jobs, he said.

“The biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border, because you’re not gonna have your jobs anymore,” Trump said at the Feb. 17 rally, later adding “The truth is, though, when you have millions of people coming in, they’re going to take your jobs.”

Michigan union membership is dropping, in line with national trends. But Trump is oversimplifying the role immigrants are playing in this complex U.S. employment landscape.

Economy and labor experts told PolitiFact immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border likely aren’t taking Michigan’s union jobs. Instead, newly arrived migrants are likelier to work in jobs that Americans don’t want, such as day laborer positions. These aren’t union jobs.   

Some labor experts have found a correlation between an increase in immigration and a drop in unionization. However, they said that’s not evidence that immigrants are “taking” union jobs. And immigration and labor policy specialists disagree about the reasons behind this correlation. 

Michigan is following national trends as union membership drops

The number of employees in Michigan has grown over the past 10 years, yet union membership has dropped, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative Michigan think tank. The number of employees has gone from 3.9 million to 4.4 million, while union membership has dropped from 631,000 to 564,000, the center reported.

One reason for the drop, said Illinois State University labor expert Victor Devinatz, is a 2012 Michigan right-to-work law that said nonunion employees in unionized workplaces could not be required to pay dues or join a union. 

Economic researchers have found that these laws usually lead to decreased union membership. In 2023, Michigan repealed the right-to-work law.

These trends aren’t unique to Michigan, said Steve Delie, labor policy director at the Mackinac Center. Nationally, union membership is also dropping.

“Given that unionization has been trending negative for decades, it seems that workers have decided unions aren’t serving them well,” Delie said. “Some workers may disagree with a union’s political views and activities, others may believe that they would do better bargaining on their own behalf.”

But U.S. laws and employers’ actions have figured prominently in unionization’s decline, labor experts told PolitiFact.

Right-to-work laws, such as the one in Michigan, create “free riders,” people who receive union benefits without having to pay union dues or fees, said Devinatz. 

“Extremely weak US labor laws, employers’ virulent opposition to unions, globalization and technological change in the workplace have also negatively impacted union organizing efforts and have led to a decline in union density,” Devinatz said.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump listens as an autoworker he invited to the stage speaks at a campaign rally in Waterford Township, Mich., Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The trend between a rise in immigration and a drop in unionization 

There’s a clear correlation, experts told PolitiFact, between immigration and unionization; as immigration rises, unionization drops. But experts diverged as to why those numbers move in concert. 

American workers abandon jobs when wages are lower and working conditions worsen, wrote Ruth Milkman, chair of City University of New York’s labor studies department, in a 2019 article. As a result, employers hire new workers, often immigrants, to take open jobs.  

“Thus, the employment of immigrants did not cause the labor degradation in the industry,” Milkman wrote of construction jobs. “On the contrary, it was the result of the employers’ anti-union campaigns.”

Devinatz agreed with Milkman. 

“The wave of immigrant workers, who often earn low wages, is a result of the neoliberal restructuring of the economy,” he said. “Over the last several decades, employers implementing forms of subcontracting while simultaneously working to undermine unions have created much more demand for low-wage labor. This demand has resulted in millions of immigrant workers entering the lowest rung of the US labor market in order to perform jobs that US workers were unwilling to do.”

Devinatz said that immigrant workers, especially those who are in the U.S. illegally, are less likely to join unions than their U.S.-born counterparts. Language barriers, employer intimidation and U.S. court decisions all factor in this, he said. 

But a 2022 working paper from the libertarian Cato Institute found that immigration has contributed to the drop in union density. The paper’s authors said this is partly because immigrants are less likely to join unions and because immigrants diversify workplaces making it harder to get enough people together to begin collective bargaining. 

“They have different interests. They have different desires, they have different demands. And so one of the effects of increased diversity is a lower rate of union density,” said Alex Nowrasteh, Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies and one of the paper’s authors.

Nowrasteh said his paper isn’t evidence that immigrants take union jobs, as Trump claims. However, if immigration lowers unionization, then in the long term, as immigration increases, there could be fewer unions and therefore fewer union jobs. 

“That doesn’t mean, of course, fewer jobs overall. It just means fewer unionized jobs in the private sector,” Nowrasteh said.

Historically, unions were hostile toward immigrants, Milkman said. But over the last few decades “there’s been growing recognition that it’s in the interest of U.S. farm workers to unite with, rather than try to exclude, immigrant workers.” 

Experts say immigrants in the U.S. illegally aren’t ‘taking’ Americans’ jobs 

Unemployment in the U.S. is historically low, said Nowrasteh. And employers say they’re in need of workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

“The latest data shows that we have 9.5 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6.5 million unemployed workers,” wrote Stephanie Ferguson, global employment policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

Immigrants are coming to the U.S. to fill open and available jobs, said Nowrasteh. 

“There is not a fixed number of jobs in the United States economy,” he said. So, as more immigrants come and purchase goods and services, they create more job opportunities “for others, including native born Americans.” 

Economy and labor experts said it’s highly unlikely that immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border are taking Michigan union jobs. That’s because people who recently crossed the border illegally don’t have work permits to legally work in the U.S. Asylum seekers must wait six months after applying to become eligible for work permits. 

Most immigrants who recently crossed the border are likely to work “in the ‘informal’ sector, getting paid under the table in cash rather than with paychecks, said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University. These jobs might include agricultural, construction or service work. 

“Illegal immigrants do not tend to get higher paying jobs with benefits typically associated with unionized workplaces,” Wheaton said. 

This is particularly true in Michigan’s private sector, said Amelie Constant, a University of Pennsylvania labor economist. Most people work in the auto industry and many workers have lost their jobs because of automation, she said. The ones who remain “are rather skilled in the sense that they are the ones who manage the robots.”

Union jobs are “more desirable. … People who already have those jobs are not giving them up. And if they’re in a union, they can’t be easily fired either,” Milkman said. “So immigrants basically have access to jobs at much lower levels in the labor market, not those jobs.”

Our ruling

In Michigan, Trump said “the biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border, because you’re not gonna have your jobs anymore.”

However, economy and labor experts told PolitiFact that immigrants who recently crossed the U.S. border illegally are unlikely to take union jobs because these jobs are highly competitive. Instead, they tend to work in nonunion jobs that Americans don’t want, such as day laborer positions.   

Union membership has been dropping in Michigan and nationwide for years. And experts agree immigration and union membership numbers move in concert: as immigration rises, unionization drops. Some experts said immigrants have filled jobs left by union workers who disagreed with their employers’ labor practices.

One study found that increased immigration reduces union density because immigrants are less likely to join unions. In the future, this could mean that more immigrants would lead to fewer unions. However, one of the study’s authors said that’s not evidence that immigrants are “taking union jobs.” 

The statement contains an element of truth — there’s a correlation between union numbers and immigration — but it ignores critical facts about the nature of the job market and the pressures already facing union membership. We rate this claim Mostly False. 

Imagine: You try to sign into Facebook, and the platform asks for government identification before you can proceed. Then YouTube does the same. And TikTok, and X and Reddit, and the list goes on. 

Social media posts claim that a Senate bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, would mandate that social media platforms, websites and apps use this method to verify users’ ages.

“Hey (by the way) everyone should be panicking about this,” read a Feb. 16 X post with 1.8 million views as of Feb. 23. “This bill would require everyone to upload your government ID in order to use most sites on the internet. You can forget about your silly lil stan/fandom accounts if this passes.”

Another X post with 1.7 million views as of Feb. 23 focused on the potential implications for online activism. 

“If you care about Palestine you NEED to pay attention to KOSA, I’m so serious,” the Feb. 17 post read. “It’s a mass censorship bill & forces everyone to upload their govt ID online to access anything. Say goodbye to being anonymous online. Say goodbye to organizing online. #KOSA”

Social media users have made similar claims about the bill for months. 

The claims ignore critical facts.

The Senate bill, S1409, does not require social media platforms, websites or apps to use government identification to verify people’s identities.

If the bill becomes law, though, some experts said companies could possibly use age verification methods, which could include government-issued identification. 

What does the Kids Online Safety Act require?

The Kids Online Safety Act, sometimes called KOSA, would require social media platforms, websites and apps to take steps to reduce and mitigate harms such as sexual exploitation and online bullying that minors might experience online. Sixty-two senators from both parties have co-sponsored the bill, meaning it will likely head to the House, where its fate is uncertain. The bill’s introduction in 2022 followed months of congressional investigation into how technology and social media companies manage children’s safety.  

The bill would cover social media platforms, video games, messaging apps and video streaming services that connect to the internet and are used — or are “reasonably likely to be used” — by minors. It would require that companies: 

• Provide safeguards that limit other users’ ability to communicate with minors or access minors’ personal data.

• Provide parental tools to supervise minors’ use and to provide minors with default settings with the most restrictive privacy and security safeguards. 

• Provide features that would let minors more easily delete their accounts and the data linked to those accounts.

• Provide features that would let minors set time limits for use.

One section of the bill requires a federal study of “methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.” 

Facebook’s Messenger Kids app is displayed on an iPhone in New York, Feb. 16, 2018. (AP)

We contacted Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the bill’s lead sponsors, and a Blumenthal spokesperson pointed us to information about the bill on Blumenthal’s website.

The website answers questions about whether the bill would require age verification or force users to provide their driver’s license or government ID to create social media accounts.

The answers to these questions is no, both on Blumenthal’s website and a similar section of Blackburn’s website. The bill “does not impose age verification requirements or require platforms to collect more data about users (government IDs or otherwise). In fact, the bill states explicitly that it does not require age gating, age verification, or the collection of additional data from users,” according to both Blumenthal’s and Blackburn’s sites. 

We verified that the bill says nothing in the legislation should be interpreted as requiring companies to: 

• Collect “any personal data with respect to the age of users that a covered platform is not already collecting in the normal course of business.”

• “Implement an age gating or age verification functionality.”

Experts also told PolitiFact that the bill does not require websites or social media platforms to verify government IDs. 

Experts don’t rule out age verification if left to the companies 

The bill would require companies to treat adults and minors differently for features and functions such as default safety settings and who can contact them through their accounts. 

The bill “does not have an age verification requirement, but most of the bill would only apply to users who are known to be 16 or younger,” said John Perrino, a Stanford Internet Observatory policy analyst. He said that if companies must determine who is under a certain age, it raises “legitimate privacy concerns,” but added that platforms can use other methods that do not include verifying government IDs to determine users’ ages. Those include self-reporting and face scanning tools, some of which are already in use.   

Caitlin Chin-Rothmann, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank that receives some funding from tech platforms, said, “It is possible that companies could extend some KOSA provisions to all users regardless of their perceived age.”  For example, platforms could mitigate “content that glorifies eating disorders, suicidal behaviors or substance abuse” for people of all ages, Chinn-Rothmann said.

To offer parental controls, as the bill requires, companies would have to identify both parents and minors, and “the only way to authenticate that relationship is through identity verification for both users,” said Shoshana Weissmann, digital director and Fellow at R Street Institute, a think tank that receives some funding from Google. 

On their websites, Blumenthal and Blackburn wrote that the bill says online platforms must provide the safety and privacy protections “if an online platform already knows that a user is underage.” 

“Online platforms often already request a date of birth from new users, either for advertising and profiling the user, or for compliance with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,” the sites read. “Online platforms also frequently collect or purchase substantial amounts of other data to understand more about their users. But if an online platform truly doesn’t know the age of the user, then it does not face any obligation to provide protections or safeguards under the bill or to collect more data in order to determine the user’s age.”

Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, a nonprofit organization that opposes child-targeted marketing and supports the Kids Online Safety Act, said some of the bill’s protections apply only when the platform knows users are minors. The bill defines “knows” as having “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.”  

“If a platform has used technology to determine a user’s age for purposes of delivering advertisements or ensuring advertiser brand safety, it must also apply that determination to KOSA protections,” Hinkle said.

Weissmann said the data on who is a minor “is nowhere near” cut and dried, and the issue likely would result in litigation. Weissman and R Street Institute have opposed the bill.

“I’m sure I could be flagged as a minor on some platforms where I search for SpongeBob clips and memes,” she said. “Meanwhile, a minor might be searching for information about cancer or even jobs that might make them appear more like an adult.”  

To avoid lawsuits and liability, platforms covered in the law would likely require all users to verify their ages, Weissmann said. 

Chin-Rothmann said because there are few “robust technological methods” for accurate age verification that also protect privacy, verifying government IDs might be the “most straightforward and low-cost” age verification method for platforms to use. 

Our ruling

An X user says the Kids Online Safety Act “would require everyone to upload” government identification “in order to use most sites on the internet.”

The Senate bill does not include that requirement or say social media platforms, applications or websites must collect more user information than they already do. 

Experts did not rule out that companies could turn to methods such as requiring government identification because of the law, but that is speculation. 

We rate this claim False.

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

A Nevada database glitch led to misinformation about the state’s Feb. 6 presidential preference primary and voter fraud.

A Feb. 19 Instagram post shared a screenshot of an X post that says, “Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter found vote by mail to be ‘the largest source of potential voter fraud.’ The media will try to gaslight you into believing there are no issues with it but they are misleading the American people.”

The X post shared a link to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article, and text with the article link said, “Numerous Nevada voters looked at their voter history and found that their mail ballots were counted in the recent primary, even though they didn’t participate in it.” 

(Screengrab from Instagram)

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 full Review-Journal article explained that a database coding glitch occurred but did not affect election results. 

In Nevada, all voters receive mail ballots for each election they are qualified to participate in, unless a voter opts out. A majority of voters in Nevada cast ballots by mail.

The Instagram post linked the recent Nevada database glitch to voter fraud, but Nevada election officials said the two are unrelated.  

“I want to be clear that this issue had nothing to do with the tabulation of votes or results of any election,” Secretary of State Francisco V. Aguilar, a Democrat, said in a Feb. 22 statement. “There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in our state, now or ever.”

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, posted Feb. 19 on X, “The voter history glitch on the website does not impact vote tabulation, which happens at the county level,” and shared a link to an article with that information. 

Both the Instagram post and the X post it shared were from Sean Parnell, a former Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump before dropping out in 2021. Parnell is a U.S. Army veteran who hosts a podcast. We contacted Parnell for comment but did not receive a reply.

Other people echoed Parnell’s claim. Elizabeth Helgelien, a Nevada Republican congressional candidate, said in a Feb. 18 X post that her online voter history showed she voted in the primary, although she did not. Helgelien said “voter fraud” appears to be happening in Nevada. 

Nevada secretary of state’s office said glitch occurred 

Nevada held its presidential preference primary Feb. 6. President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary while “none of these candidates” received the most votes in the Republican primary — more than former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Former President Donald Trump did not appear on the ballot because he competed in the caucus instead.

About two weeks after the primary, voters notified the secretary of state’s office that, although they did not participate in the primary, the state’s website showed in their vote history that they had cast mail ballots.

The secretary of state’s office said in a Feb. 21 memo that a miscommunication in computer code caused the glitch, “based on the state and counties interpreting the same data in different ways.” 

Nevada has a “bottom-up” voter registration system in which counties send copies of their voter registration files to the state nightly via a secure upload. The state then stitches together 17 files from different systems and combines them into a statewide file.

The counties use the mail ballot code “MB.” Until the 10th day after an election, the state database interprets “MB” to mean that a mail ballot has been sent to a voter. After the 10th day, the system interprets the “MB” code to mean the mail ballot was counted.

In prior elections, counties took steps to ensure that this code was applied only to ballots of people who had voted. But some of those steps did not happen after the Feb. 6 presidential preference primary, the memo said.

The coding issue didn’t affect the election results, the memo said. 

Bottom-up systems have not been considered a best practice for decades, and the state will move to a new “top-down” system before this June’s primary election, in accordance with a 2021 law passed by the Legislature. 

Voter fraud occasionally occurs, but on a very small scale and not enough to change the outcome in a presidential election. After Biden won Nevada in the 2020 presidential election, the state’s Republican party shared a story about a Republican voter, Donald Kirk Hartle, who claimed someone cast a mail ballot in his dead wife’s name. Hartle himself later pleaded guilty to one count of voting more than once in an election, because he had cast the ballot in his dead wife’s name. 

The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud shows only one other Nevada voter fraud conviction since 2020. Craig Frank was convicted in 2021 after voting in both Nevada and Arkansas during the 2016 general election.

Election website glitches or clerical errors occasionally have happened in other jurisdictions. But these problems are typically from human error, and do not signal fraud.

Instagram post cherry picks one sentence from 2005 report

The Instagram post says that the “Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter found vote by mail to be ‘the largest source of potential voter fraud.’” 

Republican critics of voting by mail, including Trump, pluck one sentence from a 2005 report Carter co-wrote that said, “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

Although the nearly 20-year-old report generally communicated a dim view of absentee voting, it didn’t call for its elimination. Instead, it recommended ways to improve security and called for further research. 

Since then, security improvements have been implemented, including:

• Some states have passed laws to limit who can return a mail ballot on behalf of another voter.

• States have added technologies so voters can track their own mail ballots. 

• Many states are part of a consortium to share voter registration data to flag outdated registrations, reducing the chance that a mail ballot is sent to someone who has died or who is no longer eligible to vote at that address.

In 2020 and 2021, Carter defended the use of voting by mail. He said that given advances in the process, he believed it could be conducted “in a manner that ensures election integrity.” Carter said he had cast mail ballots for years.

Our ruling

An Instagram post said a Nevada database glitch showing voters cast ballots when they didn’t is evidence that voting by mail is “the largest source of potential voter fraud.”

A database coding glitch issue meant that some Nevada voters saw an inaccurate vote history online — showing their mail ballots as counted even if the voters did not vote —   after the Feb. 6 presidential preference primary. The Nevada secretary of state said the glitch was unconnected to vote tabulation and did not affect the election results.  

The post’s quote comes from a report Carter co-wrote in 2005 that highlighted mail voting’s vulnerabilities but did not call for its elimination. Since then, security improvements to voting by mail have been implemented. 

Carter has since said that voting-by-mail safeguards have advanced, that mail-in-voting can be done safely and that he votes by mail himself.

We rate this statement False. 

RELATED: Ask PolitiFact: What steps do election officials take to prevent fraud?

Elon Musk says people in developed countries should have more babies. The Tesla CEO, who has fathered 11 children, is now warning women about what he says are birth control’s dangerous side effects.

“Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide,” Musk wrote Feb. 16, on his platform, X. “This is the clear scientific consensus, but very few people seem to know it.” To support his claim, Musk shared two links about a 2017 study from Denmark that said hormonal birth control could be linked to higher suicide risk. 

But experts in reproductive health and contraception research criticized Musk’s conclusion, and said the single study, which has noted limitations, is far from “consensus.” 

Using hormonal contraception, such as birth control pills and intrauterine devices, can come with psychological side effects. But experts said that the overall risk of severe side effects is low. Musk’s post ignores that many women also take birth control to treat painful periods and health conditions, such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome. 

The Denmark paper showed an increase in suicide risk in people who used hormonal contraception, “but in no way can it definitively claim the birth control was the cause; rather, it is a correlation,” said Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, a board-certified OB-GYN and social media educator based in Portland, Oregon. “This study was a registry review, not a blinded randomized control trial, so this can only tell us association, which is interesting but in no way should broad sweeping conclusions a la Elon be made.”

Registry studies use databases to evaluate specified outcomes in certain populations and are often considered observational.

We emailed the X press account for additional evidence and received an automatic reply: “Busy now, please check back later.”

What is hormonal birth control?

Hormonal contraception refers to birth control methods that contain estrogen and progesterone, or progesterone only, to prevent pregnancy. These methods can block the release of eggs from the ovaries, thin the uterus’s lining, or thicken mucus in the cervix to keep sperm from reaching the egg.

Hormonal birth control methods, which include the pill, ring, patch, shot, IUD (intrauterine device) and implant, are considered more effective — around 90% to 99% depending on correct and consistent usage — than almost all nonhormonal methods that prevent pregnancy without changing or affecting a person’s natural hormone production or period cycle. Nonhormonal methods include condoms, diaphragms and contraceptive gels.

Hormonal birth control, like many other medicines, has beneficial effects and potential risks that affect people differently. The most common side effects are nausea, headaches, breast tenderness and irregular periods. These usually subside, doctors say, within a few months once hormone levels balance out. 

What the study and other research says about birth control and depression, suicide risks

The 2017 study that Musk referred to was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry by researchers in Denmark who used a national registry that tracked women ages 15 and older who were living in the country from 1996 to 2013. 

The paper analyzed prescriptions along with deaths and medical records with “suicide attempt” coding. It found that women who had used hormonal contraceptives had up to triple the risk of suicide as women who never took hormonal birth control. In a 2017 Time article that Musk linked, the researchers noted that the absolute risk of suicide “was still extremely low.” 

The study’s lead author, Charlotte Wessel Skovlund, told PolitiFact that Musk had a short post that sums up her findings in a “very unnuanced matter” but affirmed her studies found those risks for depression and suicide.

Skovlund said the studies were observational, and could, therefore, “only see if there is an association between hormonal contraception and the different depression parameters, not a causal link.”  

Other researchers and reproductive health experts said the results warrant further study but aren’t conclusive and don’t represent scientific consensus.

“When looking directly at that data, we are talking about an extremely small number of people,” said Dr. Michael Belmonte, an OB-GYN and complex family planning subspecialist based in Washington, D.C. The data shows that among the 475,802 women sampled, there were 6,999 suicide attempts (1.47%) and 71 suicides (0.01%). “While this study has found an association, it is unable to say that hormonal birth control is the cause,” Belmonte said

The study focused solely on suicide and suicide attempts, not depression or weight gain. A separate study by the same authors found an increased prevalence of depression among hormonal birth control users. Belmonte said other studies that have examined this are mixed, “without consistent evidence of mood effects.” 

Two contemporaneous reports also cited the study’s limitations, including a November 2018 paper that Musk linked. The paper said the analysis lacked information on “risk factors” that may influence the relationship between contraception and suicidal behavior, such as relationship status, domestic abuse exposure and family history of mental health diagnoses.

In a July 2018 letter, biomedical experts in psychiatry and psychology noted other concerns.  The suicide risk seemed to be higher for former hormonal birth control users, compared with recent or current users, they said, suggesting that “factors other than hormonal contraception medications are at work.” The study also didn’t specify which psychiatric diagnoses were controlled for, including substance use disorders and mood disorders.

The letter’s authors said the study doesn’t allow for attributing an association specifically to hormonal contraception because it didn’t compare hormonal birth control users with people who used nonhormonal methods. It cited a 2013 study that found a lower suicide risk among hormonal contraception users than for those using nonhormonal methods or no contraception.

Nearly all forms of birth control involving estrogen can increase the risk of serious health problems, but researchers and medical experts say risks are rare. Some research also suggests that birth control may increase the risk of some forms of cancer, while decreasing the risk of others. 

Research shows the pill, patch, ring, and IUD are unlikely to cause any weight changes, while the birth control shot and implant may cause some people, but not all, to gain weight. 

Dr. Jenni Villavicencio is an OB-GYN and senior director of public affairs at the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit organization specializing in abortion and contraception science. She said decades of rigorous research show that “any method of birth control is safe for use in individuals with depressive disorder.” 

“It’s advisable for people experiencing mental health or mood challenges to seek care from an expert as well as ongoing monitoring when starting any new medication,” Villavicencio said. 

Besides preventing pregnancy, hormonal birth control can also offer different health benefits, such as lightening periods, easing cramps and treating polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS.

Lincoln, the Oregon-based OB-GYN, said the Denmark study didn’t address how many birth control users deal with painful and heavy periods, painful sex and other debilitating health issues. 

“All things that alone can increase risk for undiagnosed mental health disorders and — you guessed it — suicide risk,” she said.

The study’s researchers said women should be “informed” about these “little-recognized potential side effects.” Lincoln said doctors routinely do this already, and discuss with patients concerns about depression, anxiety or thoughts of self-harm. 

Our ruling

Musk said there is “clear scientific consensus” that hormonal birth control makes people gain weight and doubles the risk of depression and triples the risk of suicide. 

Musk referred to a single 2017 study that experts said is limited and does not prove a causal relationship. 

Research shows that most types of hormonal birth control do not affect weight, though some can. Medical experts and contraceptive researchers said there is mixed data on hormonal birth control’s side effects, including depression, and that the overall risk of suicide is low.

Musk’s claim ignores that many women use birth control to treat painful periods and other disorders, as well as the negative mental health outcomes that can arise from unplanned pregnancy.

We rate his claim False. 

RELATED: More access to contraception increases abortion demand? No, that’s not right 

Are Americans paying nearly $500 for an inhaler that would cost just $7 overseas?

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., says there is a vast difference in the cost of prescriptions in the United States and the rest of the world. 

“Big drug companies charge as little as $7 for an inhaler overseas and nearly $500 for the exact same one here in the US,” Baldwin said Feb. 1, 2024 in a Facebook post. “That has got to end. We’ve got to hold Big Pharma accountable for their price-gouging tactics. I won’t stop fighting until we do.”

That massive cost difference piqued our interest.

How much would patients pay? 

When we asked for backup information, Baldwin’s campaign staff directed us to drug pricing websites, news articles and news releases on the cost of Combivent Respimat (ipratropium bromide and albuterol), which is a combination medication used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). 

Combivent Respimat is available only as a brand-name medication and not available in generic form, according to Medical News Today, which pointed out that the actual price a patient would pay for the medication depends on type of insurance plan, location, and pricing at the patient’s pharmacy. Medicare does cover Combivent Respimat. 

According to Drugs.com, a pricing website, Combivent Respimat costs about $525 for a supply of 4 grams, depending on the pharmacy. 

It’s also important to note, that on a practical basis, because of insurance and Medicare coverage, few people in the United States would actually pay $500 out of pocket

“Quoted prices are for cash-paying customers and are not valid with insurance plans,” the website says  says. 

Another online drug pricing guide, GoodRx, puts the price of Combivent Respimat between about $477 and $584 at Madison, Wisconsin, pharmacies:

So, Baldwin is on target on the cost in the US.

What about overseas?

According to a Jan. 8,  2024, news release from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, Combivent Respimat sold for just $7 In France.

Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, sent letters to the CEOs of four pharmaceutical companies announcing an investigation into the high prices the companies are charging for inhalers. Baldwin and Democratic Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Ed Markey of Massachusetts also signed the letters.

The letters were sent to the four biggest manufacturers of inhalers sold in the United States – AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Teva.

“It is beyond absurd that Boehringer Ingelheim charges $489 for Combivent Respimat in the United States, but just $7 in France,” Sanders said in the news release.

The news release said the Committee’s source for the price of Combivent Respimat in France was the Navlin international drug pricing database. 

Baldwin, in the news release, accuses companies of  “jacking up prices and turning record profits.”

Experts weigh in 

Dr. William B. Feldman noted that Baldwin is referring to list prices here — which are the prices that uninsured patients in the U.S. pay and the prices to which out-of-pocket costs are often tied.

“Manufacturers give sizable (confidential) rebates to insurers, and so the net prices for inhalers in the U.S. are below list prices — but still much higher than the net prices abroad,” Feldman said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. 

Feldman, who works at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said a key reason inhaler prices remain so high in the U.S. is that there is very little generic competition. 

“Brand-name manufacturers have erected large patent thickets that keep generic competitors off the market,” Feldman said. ” Inhaler prices are low elsewhere, in part, because governments negotiate prices based on the value of the drugs compared to existing therapies.”

David Kreling, professor emeritus in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the U.S. price quoted by Baldwin sounds about right.

“The $500 number may be in the ballpark for U.S. patented (brand-name, newer) drugs,” Kreling said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. “That would be consistent with my understanding of market data on sales by firms in the U.S. Things in the $7 range, here, only reside within the off-patent generic drug market (where we have low prices, sometimes at or near lowest in the world).” 

Our ruling

Baldwin said “big drug companies charge as little as $7 for an inhaler overseas and nearly $500 for the exact same one here in the US.”

Our review, and that of experts, found the numbers checked out.

Experts cite a variety of reasons for the price differences, including very little generic competition in the United States, and few people in the United States would actually pay $500 out of pocket because of insurance and Medicare coverage. 

For a statement that is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, our rating is Mostly True.  

A New York City-funded pilot program will give prepaid debit cards to some migrants sheltering in the city’s hotels to pay for food. But those debit cards are not worth up to $10,000, as social media users have claimed. 

In an Instagram reel, a person says, “While the city is currently crumbling under the weight of the illegal aliens, they decided it would be a brilliant idea to give out prepaid debit cards with up to $10,000 on them. And by the way this is taxpayer money going to the illegals with no form of identification, no restrictions and no fraud control.” 

The user then directs people to read the full article on The Gateway Pundit, a conservative website that regularly publishes misinformation. 

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.)

Elon Musk, the CEO of X, amplified the claim by sharing a post on X with the mispunctuated comment “Wow” that said, “Breaking News: Mayor Adams plan is to give Illegal’s $10,000 each with No ID check required, No Fraud control and No Restrictions.” 

A New York Post article also made the inaccurate claim that the pilot program would give migrants up to $10,000 each. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Feb. 5 during a press conference that the prepaid debit cards are part of a pilot program intended to distribute food in a cheaper and more efficient way to migrant families sheltering in New York City hotels.

New York City has a legal mandate to provide shelter to those who need it for 30 days. Kayla Mamelak, Adams’ deputy press secretary, told PolitiFact the right to shelter also includes providing meal services. Nonperishable food boxes are currently delivered to those sheltering at New York City hotels. 

Mamelak said the cards would give each person about $12 to $13 per day and can be used for only 28 days. She added that the cards’ use is limited to supermarkets and bodegas, or small stores. 

“Those in the program are signing an affidavit saying they’re only going to use it on food, baby supplies and hygiene supplies,” she said. 

Adams has estimated the debit cards will save the city approximately $600,000 a month, or $7.2 million a year. 

William Fowler, a spokesperson for the city’s Housing Preservation and Development department, told PolitiFact that the debit cards will go to 500 families with children sheltering at New York City hotels. He said the cards’ allowance for the 28-day period varies by family size and makeup. 

Fowler sent PolitiFact a graph with varying allotments for the cards. A family of four receives a $1,195 allotment for 28 days. Pregnant people and children ages 5 to 17 are given an additional $36 during the 28-day period, and children younger than 5 are given an additional $100 during the 28 days. For example, a family of four with two 10-year-olds would receive $1,267.

Fowler added that the debit card allotments are similar to the amount of money given through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and that the cards have the same industry standard fraud restrictions as any debit or credit card. 

We rate the claim that New York City is giving migrants prepaid debit cards of up to $10,000 without restrictions False.