Category: Fact Check

After a mass shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, left one woman dead and more than 20 people injured, President Joe Biden said “gun violence “is ripping apart” families and American communities daily. 

On Valentine’s Day, the sixth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, Biden reeled off a list of other shootings in the headlines, including three police officers wounded in Washington, D.C., and four students wounded at a high school in Atlanta.

“We’ve now had more mass shootings in 2024 than there have been days in the year,” he said.

Feb. 14 was 2024’s 45th day. The Gun Violence Archive, a frequently cited source, showed 49 mass shootings as of Feb. 15.

We fact-checked similar comparisons in 2022 after the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school massacre and in 2023 after a mass shooting at Michigan State University.

This common talking point is rooted in an American reality. But it isn’t as precise as it sounds. 

One issue, from a fact-checker’s perspective, is the lack of a universal definition for a “mass shooting.” Politicians often cite reliable sources for this claim, but the organizations that track mass shootings use different criteria.

Mass shootings are a small slice of gun deaths overall, which includes homicides and suicides. 

“The public should view these incidents as one piece of the gun violence puzzle, not the only piece,” said Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government.

Mass shooting definitions vary based on numbers injured, killed

Different groups measure mass shootings based on the number of people shot, injured or killed. Some groups exclude gang violence or domestic violence, keeping the focus on events when a shooter fired a gun at random in public. 

• The Gun Violence Archive, a data collection and research group, defines mass shootings as incidents in which at least four people are injured or killed, excluding the shooter. The archive counts 49 mass shootings in 2024, backing up Biden’s math. 

• USA Today, The Associated Press and Northeastern University’s mass killings database tracks incidents in which four or more people, excluding the offender, were killed within a 24-hour time frame. (This database tracks incidents where the offender used a firearm or other weapons.) There have been seven mass killings so far in 2024. 

• Mother Jones’ open-source database tracks shootings with at least three victims killed, while excluding shootings from some “conventionally motivated crimes,” such as armed robbery or gang violence. This database was last updated Dec. 6, 2023. There have been no mass shootings in 2024 that meet the Mother Jones database’s definition. 

The federal government uses different thresholds, too. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, an act of Congress defined “mass killings” as three or more killings in one incident. 

But the FBI since 2013 has defined a mass shooting as four or more deaths, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service mirrored the FBI’s metric in 2015.

This means the Feb. 14 Kansas City shooting, which killed one person and injured 22 people, is counted in the Gun Violence Archive, but not in all datasets.

Whatever the definition, the number of mass shootings has generally been increasing. 

The Gun Violence Archive found 656 mass shootings in 2023, fewer than 2021, but up from 272 in 2014. The USA Today, AP and Northeastern University database found 2023 had the most mass shootings (39) and the most public mass shootings (10) since it began tracking in 2006.

Experts put mass shooting definition in perspective

Gun violence experts generally agree that citing any database requires context about the definitions.

James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist, said the Gun Violence Archive data has value, but it’s hard to compare the shooting in Kansas City, when one person was killed while many others were injured, to Uvalde, where 20 people, mostly children, were killed.

When people hear 49 mass shootings, Fox said, “they think these things like Uvalde and school shootings (are) happening every day. They are not.”

Two well-known advocacy groups — the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety — cite the Gun Violence Archive. 

“We choose to use this definition because we believe it more fully captures the broader burden of mass shootings in the U.S., including the burden of nonfatal injuries,” said Kelly Drane, the law center’s research director. (The law center is led by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was injured in a mass shooting in a supermarket parking lot in 2018 that left six people dead.)

Drane said that a mass shooting definition of four or more people killed would exclude the Michigan State University shooting that killed three people and wounded five more. 

“The impact of this shooting on the victims and the broader MSU and Michigan community was and is significant,” Drane said.

Schildkraut said the archive’s broad count does not account for context, putting mass public shootings in the same category as shootings among gangs or family members.

“In reality, however, these contextual differences have important implications for how we prevent and respond to these incidents,” Schildkraut said.

Mass public shootings are often premeditated, which creates a longer window for prevention than a spontaneous fight. Policies such as “red flag” laws, which allow courts to remove guns from people who could pose a threat to themselves or others, are helpful prevention tools for premeditated shootings but not for spontaneous ones, Schildkraut said.

Mass shootings are the most visible gun deaths, but not most common

Gun violence researchers point out that mass shootings generate significant public attention even though they comprise a fraction of gun-related deaths.

In 2021, about 3% of gun homicides were from mass shootings with at least four people shot. Using the more narrow definition of mass killings involving four or more people killed, that drops to slightly less than 1%, Fox said.

Preliminary data shows that gun deaths, excluding suicides, declined for a second straight year in 2023. The Trace, a news website that covers gun violence, wrote that nearly 3  in 4 U.S. cities experienced a year-to-date drop in homicides, citing data from 175 cities. 

Schildkraut is waiting on final data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and additional research about what contributed to the change.

Suicide has long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths, according to April 2023 research by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan source of analysis.

Polls show a significant percentage of people say they avoid attending certain events due to fears of gun violence or have considered avoiding such events.

“They are a particularly visible manifestation of a very large problem,” said Garen Wintemute, director of the University of California, Davis’ Violence Prevention Research Program. “They are uniquely capable of mobilizing public opinion in support of evidence-based measures that would have broad beneficial effects.”

Mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, New York, led Congress, under Democratic control, to pass the first gun control action in decades, Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

“If that hadn’t happened, would the bill have passed or been as much of a priority?” Schildkraut said. “Hard to say, but the occurrence of Uvalde certainly did facilitate the interest in getting it across the finish line.”

RELATED: Ask PolitiFact: What does the data show on deadly shootings by 18-to-20-year-olds?

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RELATED: Poll data backs Kamala Harris’ claim that 1 in 5 Americans have lost a family member to gun violence

Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, said “all Republicans should oppose” a bill that would provide $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. 

Why? He claims the legislation — which the Senate passed with a 70-29 bipartisan vote — could be weaponized against former President Donald Trump, should he win a second term.

“Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine,” Vance wrote in a Feb. 12 X post. The post included screenshots of a memo he said he’d sent to his Republican colleagues. 

He titled the memo, “The Ukraine Supplemental Includes a Hidden Impeachment Clause Against President Trump.” In it, Vance broke down his argument. 

I just sent the below memo to every one of my Republican colleagues in Congress.

Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine.

We must vote against this disastrous bill. pic.twitter.com/uKqet9s0xd

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 12, 2024

The bill includes about $60 billion to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. Vance’s memo focused on two lines of funding: $1.6 billion for “foreign military financing in Ukraine” and nearly $14 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the U.S. Defense Department’s effort to help Ukraine’s defense.

“These funds expire on September 30, 2025 — nearly a year into the possible second term of President Trump,” Vance wrote in the memo. “These are the exact same accounts President Trump was impeached for pausing in December 2019.” 

Vance argued that if Trump withheld the funding after becoming president, it would amount to “the same fake violation of budget law from the first impeachment, under markedly similar facts and circumstances.” On those grounds, he said, Democrats would again impeach Trump.

Some Republican members of Congress and conservative political commentators and publications amplified Vance’s argument. 

“JD is correct,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., wrote in an X post. “This bill is an impeachment trap.”

We searched the bill’s text for the words “impeach,” “impeachment” or “remove,” and found no results. But Vance argued the clause was hidden, so we unpacked his argument and still found it flawed.

The bill merely dictates how money should be spent. Because it is the president’s job to spend congressionally appropriated funds, whoever is elected president in 2024 will be responsible for spending the money allocated in the bill, if it becomes law. The bill does not target Trump; it would apply the same way to President Joe Biden, should he be reelected. 

The bill appropriates money. It doesn’t change impeachment laws, procedures

Matthew Green, a politics professor at the Catholic University of America, told PolitiFact that “impeachment is basically irrelevant” to the supplemental appropriations bill.

Several things have to happen for Vance’s impeachment scenario to come to fruition. 

“The bill involves impeachment only if (a) it becomes law, (b) Trump is elected president, (c) Democrats win control of the House, (d) Trump decides to ignore the law, and (e) Democrats decide to pursue impeachment in response,” he said. 

Currently, the Republicans have a narrow House majority; Democrats control the Senate 51-49. If Republicans retain control of the House, it is unlikely the bill would factor in impeachment proceedings against Trump because the Constitution grants the House the “sole power” to initiate impeachment proceedings and a simple majority vote is required to impeach. 

Trump said he believes he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine quickly, and Vance argued in the memo that the bill is an attempt “to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy” or provide grounds for impeachment if he pursues it anyway.

Vance’s office pointed PolitiFact to a portion of a Jan. 26 Washington Post story mentioned in the memo. It read, “Not incidentally, a U.S. official said, the hope is that the long-term promise — again assuming congressional buy-in — will also ‘future-proof’ aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former president Donald Trump wins his reelection bid.”

Vance argued that the excerpt shows “that tying President Trump’s hands on foreign policy is very much top of mind for Biden administration officials.” Vance’s office also pointed to two former Trump administration officials, who appeared to agree with Vance’s interpretation. 

But it is the elected president’s job, no matter who it is, to spend the funds appropriated by Congress, said Gregory Koger, director of the George P. Hanley Democracy Center and political science professor at the University of Miami. The Congressional Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974 underlines that responsibility.

“This is not a ‘trap,’” Koger said. 

If Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, it will be his job, Koger said. Same with Biden.

Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and author of a book about the history of impeachment, told PolitiFact that the funding bill “declares that money should be spent for a particular purpose.”

It “does not target any president or either party,” he said. If passed, it would bind the next president. 

“Any president, regardless of party, could, in theory, be impeached for a sufficiently unambiguous violation of law relating to a matter of sufficient national importance,” Bowman said.

Bowman said that the funding provisions “are no more a ‘hidden impeachment clause’ than any provision of any bill.” 

Trump’s 2019 impeachment was about more than withholding Ukraine aid

Responding to a conservative think tank’s critique of Vance’s stance, Vance also argued that “the legal ‘core’” of Trump’s first impeachment “rested on” paused aid to Ukraine. None of the previous supplemental Ukraine aid bills, he said, have included “sunset dates stretching into a potential future presidential administration.” 

In the bill, some of the money earmarked to support Israel and Taiwan also has a Sept. 30, 2025, sunset date.

Trump’s attempts to withhold Ukraine aid were part of his 2019 impeachment, but his impeachment was about far more than withholding that funding. 

In December 2019, the House impeached then-President Trump on two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined by other Democratic leaders, announces that the House is pushing ahead with two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Dec. 10, 2019. (AP)

The abuse of power article focused on Trump’s alleged efforts to coerce Ukrainian officials into investigating a potential political opponent, Biden, by withholding military aid and a sought-after White House visit. 

The House approved that charge by a vote of 230-197. No Republicans voted against Trump. 

Experts told PolitiFact that Vance’s characterization of Trump’s impeachment was misleading.

“Donald Trump was not impeached in 2019 merely because he had a difference of opinion with Congress over spending priorities,” Koger said. “He was impeached because he was holding Congressionally allocated funds hostage to extort a political favor from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.” 

It’s likely Congress would consider this type of action “unacceptable no matter which country was involved,” Koger said. In that way, “it is not the legislation that ‘traps’ Trump; it is his own behavior.”

Bowman said that Trump’s 2019 withholding of military aid violated law because a president must, by law, spend congressionally appropriated funds once legal conditions are met, which was the case in 2019. Per the Impoundment Control Act, presidents must inform Congress of their intent and reasoning for withholding or pausing aid. In 2019, Trump did not do this, Bowman said.

That law violation, the defiance of Congress, the harm to U.S. security interests and Trump’s personal motive were all part of the first impeachment article, Bowman said.

If Trump, upon reelection, wanted to withhold money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine, he could adhere to the Impoundment Control Act and inform Congress. If Congress passed a bill agreeing to withhold the aid, there’d be no basis to impeach him. If Congress refused within 45 days to pass a bill agreeing to Trump’s plan, “he’d have to provide the aid,” Bowman said. 

“If Trump simply ignored the aid authorization legislation and the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act and withheld congressionally mandated aid despite the clear commands of Congress, could he be impeached for that, even without the element of corruption?” Bowman asked. “I think so, but it would be a less compelling case than the 2019 affair.”

Our ruling

Vance argued that the Ukraine supplemental aid bill “includes a hidden impeachment clause against President Trump.”

The bill does not target Trump or say anything about impeachments. It dictates how money should be spent. Experts said it is the president’s job to spend congressionally appropriated funds, so whoever is elected in 2024 will be responsible for spending the money allocated in the bill, if it becomes law. 

What could lead to an impeachment scenario is if Trump gets reelected and does not follow the law, but that’s not because of a hidden trap in the funding bill, experts said.

We rate that claim False.

In the historic Feb. 13 impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, House Republicans said the Homeland Security secretary “willfully and systematically refused to comply with immigration laws” and “breached public trust” by falsely telling Congress the U.S.-Mexico border was secure.

This is the second time in U.S. history that a Cabinet member has been impeached; the first was in 1876, when Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached for corrupt kickbacks.

We reviewed what the articles of impeachment say Mayorkas did or did not do and found the articles misconstrued what is possible under immigration law and congressional appropriations.

Constitutional scholars, former Homeland Security secretaries and immigration experts have criticized the impeachment, saying the articles cite policy disagreements rather than impeachable offenses, which include “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Refusing to comply with immigration law by not detaining people

House Republicans said Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to comply with the law by refusing to enforce a detention mandate. This charge lacks context about the federal government’s capacity to detain migrants who cross the southern U.S. border.

Federal immigration law generally requires that people who enter the U.S. illegally be detained while they await court proceedings.

Immigrant detention can involve multiple federal agencies. People who are apprehended at the border are temporarily taken into custody by Border Patrol agents as they decide next steps. Some people are transferred from temporary border holding facilities to detention centers across the country operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But there’s not enough detention space for the large number of migrants who cross the southern border.

“Due to consistent and significant funding shortfalls … DHS has never had ‘sufficient detention capacity to maintain in custody every single person,’” U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2022 opinion about the program known as “Remain in Mexico.”

In fiscal year 2023, Congress allocated money for immigration authorities to detain 34,000 people. That year, Immigration officials encountered migrants 3.2 million times — a number that represents events, not people. If one person tries to enter the country three times and is stopped each time by border officials, for example, that equals three encounters, even if it’s the same person encountered.

Although immigration law requires that people be detained, courts have long debated whether people can be indefinitely detained, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Mounting backlogs of millions of immigration cases mean that court proceedings can take years to resolve. And not every country will accept its nationals who have been deported from the U.S.

So, even if there were enough detention space, there likely would be legal challenges to holding people for extended periods.

Impeachment articles say Mayorkas made false statements to Congress

The impeachment articles also said, “Mayorkas knowingly made false statements to Congress that the border is ‘secure’ … and that DHS has ‘operational control’ of the border.”

The missing context is that given the legal definition of operational control, no administration has ever achieved it.

Operational control is a legal term that was defined by Congress in the 2006 Secure Fence Act. The law tasks DHS with preventing all illegal entries into the U.S., including “terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.”

During an April 2022 House committee hearing, Republicans questioned Mayorkas about whether he had “operational control” of the border.

“Will you testify under oath right now? Do we have operational control, yes or no?” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asked Mayorkas during the 2022 hearing.

“Yes, we do,” Mayorkas responded.

Roy read the 2006 legal definition of operational control and asked, “Do you stand by your testimony that we have operational control in light of this definition?”

“I do, and Congressman, I think the Secretary of Homeland Security would have said the same thing in 2020 and in 2019,” Mayorkas responded.

Roy switched discussion topics before Mayorkas could elaborate.

In March 2023, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told a House committee that the Biden administration did not have “operational control” over the southern border. Soon after, Senate Republicans pressed Mayorkas to assess the issue again.

“Do we or don’t we” have operational control, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Mayorkas.

Mayorkas said when gauging operational control, he does “not use the definition that appears in the Secure Fence Act.”

“So, the way I define it is maximizing the resources that we have to deliver the most effective results, and we are indeed doing that,” Mayorkas said.

Impeachment uses program termination as evidence; Supreme Court signed off

House Republicans said Mayorkas “breached the public trust” by refusing “to control and guard the boundaries and borders of the United States against the illegal entry of aliens.”

As evidence, the articles of impeachment cite Mayorkas’ termination of Migrant Protection Protocols. The Trump-era program, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” sent some migrants seeking asylum back to Mexico to await immigration court proceedings.

Mayorkas ended the program. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ending it did not violate immigration law.

House Republicans cited a lower court’s ruling forcing Biden to restart the program as evidence that Mayorkas failed to fulfill his duty to secure the border, and that ending the program increased illegal immigration. But the impeachment articles don’t acknowledge the Supreme Court’s decision that allowed the program to end.

Also, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute has raised doubts about the program’s effectiveness at lowering illegal immigration.

RELATED: GOP claims that Homeland Security secretary is ‘responsible’ for fentanyl crisis are False

RELATED: Ask PolitiFact: What branch of government is ‘really’ responsible for the crisis at the border?

Un video en Instagram sugiere falsamente que están matando vacas para dejar de vender la carne del animal y más bien vender carne sintética. 

La publicación incluye el audio de un hombre llorando por sus supuestas vacas diciendo, “¡Ay me mataron todas las vacas!”, “ay yo no se que sera…”. 

La imagen de vista previa del video muestra un pedazo de carne y un titular que dice: “Carne sintética ya inició una guerra silenciosa?”. También muestra una imagen de Bill Gates, un multimillonario estadounidense y co-fundador de Microsoft Corp., quién ha dicho que producir carne sintética en laboratorios podría ayudar contra el cambio climático. 

Pero esta publicación es engañosa.

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).

Screenshot de la vista previa del video en Instagram

La publicación muestra imágenes de vacas muertas en un campo con un subtítulo que dice: “millones de vacas mueren en extrañas circunstancias por todo el mundo”.

Sin embargo, ni Gates ni vendedores de carne sintética están relacionados con las muertes de las vacas en la publicación. 

PolitiFact hizo una búsqueda de imagen inversa y encontró que uno de los videos en la publicación sucedió en Paraná, Brasil en 2022 por un descarga eléctrica. 

Traducimos un artículo de un medio de noticias en portugues al español con Google Translate, el cual muestra el video original y explica que una tormenta hizo caer ramas sobre un poste, enviando energía al suelo y haciendo que las vacas murieran por una descarga eléctrica. No encontramos ninguna evidencia de que estas vacas fueran matadas por vendedores de carne sintética, ni por una razón extraña. 

El artículo explica que la razón por la cual se ve a las vacas siendo recolectadas y sepultadas en zanjas es porque no se puede consumir su carne cuando mueren en tales casos. 

Otra búsqueda de imagen inversa nos condujo al segundo video en la publicación. Este evento sucedió en Texas en 2019, cuando un rayo tocó una cerca de metal en donde las vacas estaban, electrocutando a 23 de ellas. 

Timothy J. Jorgensen, un profesor de medicina de radicación y director del programa de salud física de graduados en Georgetown University, explica en un artículo que aunque han disminuido las muertes de humanos por rayos, estás siguen siendo común en los animales, especialmente en los que son de gran tamaño, como los de pastoreo.

Jorgensen dice que los animales no tienen la opción de buscar refugio cuando sucede una tormenta y que los que tienen cuatro patas pueden estar más a riesgo de electrocución. Ya que las patas pueden actuar como electrones y completar un circuito eléctrico en el piso, que va por sus cuerpos y luego al suelo, aumentando su chance a heridas o la muerte. 

Aunque la publicación en Instagram sugiere que mataron a las vacas para así vender carne sintética, estas murieron al ser electrocutadas durante diferentes incidentes. Los cuales sucedieron en diferentes partes del mundo en 2019 y 2022.

Calificamos la publicación que muestra vacas muriendo “en extrañas circunstancias” para reemplazarlas por “carne sintética” como Falsa. 

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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

Last week, after the chief executive of one of Nigeria’s largest banks died in a helicopter crash en route to the Super Bowl, social media users claimed that President Joe Biden planned the accident to destabilize the global economy and help him win the 2024 presidential election. 

In a Feb. 15 Instagram video, a woman says, “I find it very weird that no one is talking about how there were six Nigerian billionaires who died in a plane crash mysteriously while on their way to the Super Bowl and how Biden just posted this cryptic a — message right after they died. Authorities are investigating it, which means to me they may suspect foul play.” The post’s caption says, “This young woman is referring to the real meaning behind Joe Biden’s cryptic tweet after the Super Bowl.”

In a Feb. 12 Instagram video, a man suggests that Biden orchestrated the accident to create a financial crisis leading up to the 2024 election, pointing to what he says are a series of similarities when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out before the 2020 election. 

Both posts refer to a Feb. 11 tweet from Biden’s official X account that shows the president with glowing red eyes and includes the caption, “Just like we drew it up.” The image was a joke and referred to a conspiracy theory that the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl win was planned so Taylor Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs player Travis Kelce, could endorse Biden for the 2024 presidency. 

Aviation experts told news outlets that poor weather — not Biden — likely was to blame for the fatal helicopter crash. 

The Associated Press reported that on Feb. 9, Herbert Wigwe, the CEO of Access Bank in Nigeria, his wife and son, two pilots and the former chair of the Nigerian stock exchange, died in a helicopter crash in Southern California’s Mojave Desert. The plane’s destination was Boulder City, Nevada, 26 miles southeast of Las Vegas, where Super Bowl LVIII was played Feb. 11.

An accident investigation is ongoing, but aviation experts told AP that the flight should have been canceled because of poor nighttime weather conditions in the desert. A mix of rain and snow during the flight could have led to low visibility, and there are few lights in the Mojave Desert. 

“If I were in charge, I certainly would have said ‘No, thank you’” to flying, aviation safety consultant Pete Field told AP. 

Gary Hufbauer, a Peterson Institute for International Economics economist, said the claim that the helicopter accident was planned to create a global financial crisis is “bizarre.” The Nigerian CEO’s death would not affect the global economy, he said.  

Wigwe and his associates were flying in a helicopter privately chartered by Orbic Air. Harvard University Risk and Audit Services found that flying on a chartered aircraft is more dangerous than flying on a commercial aircraft because charter operators are less regulated. 

In 2013, a lawsuit was filed against Orbic Air, claiming one of its helicopters was negligently operated after a man died in a crash, CBS reported at the time.

We rate the claim that Biden’s tweet is proof that a helicopter crash that killed six Nigerian billionaires was planned by Biden Pants on Fire!  

The field of candidates vying for the nation’s highest office in 2024 is shrinking. Of 20 Republican, Democratic and independent candidates who had been pursuing the parties’ nominations in 2024, only eight remain. 

But the race hasn’t narrowed quite as dramatically as one Feb. 15 social media post suggested. 

“2024 Presidential Candidate Abruptly DROPS OUT — ‘I’m Done,’” read text above pictures of the two leading candidates: incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the current Republican front-runner.

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.)

People who encountered the post might have believed Biden or Trump dropped out of the race. That’s False.

(Screenshot from Facebook.)

Both Trump and Biden were still running for president when the post was published Feb. 15, and that remained true when this article was published Feb. 16. 

On Feb. 14, Trump held a campaign rally in South Carolina, 10 days ahead of the state’s Republican primary. Biden’s reelection campaign released a new campaign ad Feb. 16. 

The Facebook user who posted the image shared a link in the comments to a story on the website Conservative Brief. The preview for that link seemed to again claim that one of the leading candidates had exited the race.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

Clicking the link showed the article was about self-help author Marianne Williamson, who had been running for president as a Democrat. “Marianne Williamson has suspended her 2024 presidential campaign, leaving President Joe Biden with one challenger in the Democratic primary,” the article read. (The remaining Biden challenger is Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.)

Williamson said Feb. 7 she was suspending her campaign. 

We rate the claim that Biden or Trump dropped out of the race False.

A social media post alleged that an influx of immigrants is bringing a livestock disease eradicated since 1929 back into the U.S., but that’s news to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

A Feb. 15 Instagram post used a meme from “The Simpsons” with text misspelling “vaxxed” and “unvaxxed” that said, “The people who forced you to get vaxed to keep your job let in 17 million unvaxed and unemployed.”  The post’s caption read, “They’re bringing different diseases in. Foot and mouth disease is back. We got rid of that fifty years ago.”

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.)

The claim is wrong on two points. First, it vastly overstates how many people have entered the U.S. illegally under President Joe Biden, as PolitiFact reported in January. Second, foot-and-mouth disease has not been detected in the U.S. since 1929.

(Instagram screenshot)

There have not been 17 million people “let in” to the U.S. in recent years. Since February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office, there have been about 8.8 million nationwide encounters with migrants at U.S. borders, data through January 2024 shows. That figure counts encounters, not people; some may have tried to enter multiple times.

About 2.3 million people were released into the U.S. at the southern border under Biden’s administration, Homeland Security Department data shows. Another 356,000 children were let in and placed in government custody. There have been more than 3.7 million expulsions, removals and returns under Biden, the data shows.

The claim that foot-and-mouth disease is back as a result of migrants entering the U.S is inaccurate, said Lyndsay Cole, a spokesperson for the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

“There are not currently any cases of foot-and-mouth disease in livestock in the United States,’” Cole told PolitiFact.

Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious viral disease that affects livestock, such as cows, sheep, pigs and other animals with divided hoofs, according to the inspection service.

It can spread quickly among livestock, but it is not a public health or food safety threat for humans, Cole said. She said the agency conducts about 2,600 investigations yearly into foreign animal diseases to safeguard the nation’s livestock supply, and that foot-and-mouth disease has not been detected in the U.S. since 1929.

It’s very rare for humans to get the virus, perhaps through a lab accident or direct contact with an infected animal, but humans can still transmit it, said Donald Forthal, a professor at the University of California, Irvine’s Center for Virus Research.

“Humans can carry the virus, for example on soiled shoes (and) clothes,” Forthal said.

To keep foot-and-mouth disease from entering the U.S., the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sets regulations for trade and agricultural products brought into the country, and works closely with U.S. Customs and Border Protection at border crossings to inspect imports of livestock and plants, Cole said.

The inspection service’s website says CBP screens cargo and prevents travelers from bringing in “any products of concern.” Travelers must declare all food items and plant and animal materials upon entry and report recent travel to farms and livestock facilities.

There is a similarly named common childhood viral illness called hand, foot and mouth disease that may have been confused with the animal disease. They are completely different viruses. 

Hand, foot and mouth disease is common in children under 5 years old, although anyone can get it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s contagious and causes sores and rashes, but it’s usually not serious, the CDC said.

Hand, foot and mouth disease usually spreads in the late summer and fall. It’s already common here, Forthal said. 

“Anybody traveling with the infection could spread it,” Forthal said. “Since it’s a common infection here and elsewhere, migration from outside of the U.S. is not at all necessary for spread.”

An Instagram post’s claim that 17 million immigrants let into the U.S. has resulted in the reemergence of foot-and-mouth disease in the country is wrong. There are no current cases of foot-and-mouth disease. The claim is False.

A photograph that claims to show World Economic Forum leader Klaus Schwab in a garter, fedora hat and white gloves at a nude beach has resurfaced on Instagram. But that person is a Florida resident, not Schwab. 

An Instagram post shared the photograph with text that said, “Klaus Schwab. Founder of the World Economic Forum. Just so we know who we’re dealing with…”

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.)

A Google reverse-image search showed us that the picture has been shared across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and blog posts for years. The earliest version of the photograph we could find was from a Free Earth Memes page in October 2018. 

An article by a Greek fact-checker identified the person in the photograph as Max Schwab, not Klaus Schwab. 

We found images of what appeared to be the same person wearing a blue fedora hat and blue gloves on a Facebook page called “Only in Key West!” from 2019. 

Many of the comments on the post identified the individual as a local who frequents Key West, Florida, in eccentric clothing. “It’s good to see Max is still in Key West haven’t seen them for a while,” one comment said.  Another said, “This guy is legit …you see him everyday in a different color outfit (if you wanna call it that) & often riding a bicycle … only in Key West!!!” 

Klaus Schwab lives in Cologny, Switzerland, according to his bio on a Davos Klosters tourism page. 

A 2010 Facebook image posted by a user named Max Schwab shows a person photographed next to Key West’s famous Southernmost Point marker wearing only angel wings and crocs. 

We rate the claim that this photo shows Klaus Schwab at a nude beach False.