Category: Fact Check

A fundraising ad for U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., shows a photo of Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, behind bars, swarmed by flying bats.

Rosendale, who is eyeing a challenge to incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, maintains that a Montana biomedical research facility, Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, has a dangerous link to the pandemic. This claim is echoed in the ad:

“It’s been revealed that Fauci brought COVID to the Montana one year before COVID broke out in the U.S.!,” it charges in all-caps before asking readers to, “Donate today and hold the D.C. bureaucracy accountable!”

The ad, paid for by Matt Rosendale for Montana, seeks contributions through WinRed, a platform that processes donations for Republican candidates. Rosendale also shared the fundraising pitch Nov. 1 on his X account, and it remained live as of early February.

Rosendale made similar accusations on social media, during a November speech on the U.S. House floor, and through his congressional office. Sometimes his comments, like those on the House floor, are milder, saying the researchers experimented on “a coronavirus” leading up to the pandemic. Other times, as in an interview with One America News Network, he linked the lab’s work to COVID-19’s spread.

In that interview clip, Rosendale recounted pandemic-era shutdowns before saying, “And now we’re finding out that the National Institute of Health, Rocky Mountain Lab, down in Hamilton, Montana, had also played a role in this.”

Rosendale’s statements echo broader efforts to scrutinize how research into viruses happens in the United States and is part of a continued wave of backlash against scientists who have studied coronaviruses. Rosendale is considering seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Tester, in a toss-up race that could help determine which party controls the Senate in 2025. Political newcomer Tim Sheehy is also seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate.

Rosendale proposed amendments to a health spending bill that would ban pandemic-related pathogen research funding for Rocky Mountain Laboratories and cut the salary of one of its top researchers, virologist Vincent Munster, to $1. The House has included both amendments in the Health and Human Services budget bill that the Republican majority hopes to pass. A temporary spending bill is funding the health department until March.

We contacted Rosendale’s congressional office multiple times — with emails, a phone call, and an online request — asking what proof he had to back up his statements that the Montana lab infected bats with COVID-19 from China before the outbreak. We got no reply.

Kathy Donbeck, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Office of Communications and Government Relations, said in an email that the ad’s claims are false. Interviews with virologists and a review of the research paper published shortly before Rosendale’s assertions support that position. 

Where this is coming from

Rosendale’s statements seem to stem from a Rocky Mountain Laboratories study from 2016 that looked into how a coronavirus, WIV1-CoV, acted in Egyptian fruit bats. The work, published by the journal Viruses in 2018, showed the specific strain didn’t cause a robust infection in the bats. 

The study did not receive widespread attention at the time. But on Oct. 30, 2023, the study was highlighted by a blog called White Coat Waste Project, which says its mission is to stop taxpayer-funded experiments on animals. Some right-wing media outlets began to connect the Montana lab with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Rosendale’s office issued an Oct. 31 news release saying the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China “shipped a strain of coronavirus” to the Hamilton lab. “Our government helped create the Wuhan flu, then shut the country down when it escaped from the lab,” Rosendale said.

It’s a different virus

Rocky Mountain Laboratories is a federally funded facility as part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the nation’s top infectious disease research agency, which Fauci led for nearly 40 years.

According to the study and Donbeck’s email, the Montana researchers focused on a coronavirus called WIV1-CoV, not the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. They’re different viruses.

“The genetics of the viruses are very different and their behavior biologically is very different,” said Troy Sutton, a virologist with Pennsylvania State University who has studied the evolution of pandemic influenza viruses.

In a review of media reports on the Montana study, Health Feedback, a network of scientists that fact-checks health and medical media coverage, showed the virus’s lineage indicated that WIV1 “is not a direct ancestor or even a close relative of SARS-CoV-2.”

Additionally, the description of the coronavirus strain as being “shipped” suggests that it physically traveled across the world. That’s not what happened.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology provided the WIV1 virus’s sequence that allowed researchers to make a lab-grown copy. A separate study, published in 2013 by the journal Nature, outlines the origins of the lab-created virus.

According to the study’s methodology, the researchers used a clone of WIV1. An NIAID statement to Lee Enterprises, a media company, said the virus “was generated using common laboratory techniques, based on genetic information that was publicly shared by Chinese scientists.”

Stanley Perlman, a University of Iowa professor who studies coronaviruses and serves on the federal advisory committee that reviews vaccines, said Rosendale’s claim is off base.

He said Rosendale’s focus on where the lab got its materials is irrelevant and serves “only to make people wary and scared.”

Rosendale’s efforts to prohibit particular research at Rocky Mountain Laboratories appear ill-informed, too. Rosendale targeted banning gain-of-function research, which involves altering a pathogen to study its spread. In her email, NIAID’s Donbeck said the Rocky Mountain Laboratories study didn’t involve gain-of-function research.

This type of research has long been controversial, and people who study viruses have said the definition of “gain of function” is problematic and insufficient to show when research, or even work to create vaccines, could cross into that type of research.

But both Sutton and Perlman said that, any way you look at it, the Rocky Mountain Laboratories study published in 2018 didn’t change the virus.It put a virus in bats and showed it didn’t grow.

And it had no effect on the COVID-19 outbreak a year later, first detected in Washington state.

Our ruling

Rosendale’s ad said, “It’s been revealed that Fauci brought COVID to the Montana one year before COVID broke out in the U.S.” The campaign ad and Rosendale’s similar statements refer to research at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories involving WIV1, a coronavirus researchers say is not even distantly close in genetic structure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused COVID-19. 

Rosendale’s claim is wrong about when the scientists began their work, what they were studying, and where they got the materials. The researchers began their work in 2016 and, although they were studying a coronavirus, it wasn’t the virus that causes COVID-19. The Montana scientists used a lab-grown clone of WIV1 for their research. The first laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 was not detected in the U.S. until Jan. 20, 2020.

Rosendale’s ad is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!

President Joe Biden says he has done everything under his authority to try to reduce illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border, and that he’ll be able to do more once Congress passes a new bill. But Republicans disagree.

Biden said Jan. 26 that he’s waiting for a bipartisan bill being negotiated in the Senate to give him more resources and “a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.”

Although the bill’s text remains under wraps, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says Biden doesn’t need new authority to decrease illegal border crossings. Immigration law and recent Supreme Court precedents already give Biden the authority to secure the border, Johnson said in a Jan. 27 X post.

So, who’s right? Is there more Biden can do? Or is it on Congress to update immigration law, which hasn’t been changed in decades?

In his X post, Johnson quoted section 212(f) of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which says a president may “suspend the entry” of or impose restrictions “he may deem to be appropriate” if someone’s entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Johnson has a point that the law gives the president the ability to stop entries. But immigration experts say there’s more to it: That same immigration law also says people can come to U.S. borders and ask for asylum, even if they cross into the U.S. without authorization.

Former President Donald Trump invoked the section of immigration law that Johnson cited when he tried to block people from seeking asylum. But courts stopped his efforts because they were at odds with the immigration law’s asylum section. 

Immigration law both restricts and empowers the president

Immigration experts told PolitiFact that although the power vested by section 212(f) is broad, it can’t be used to override other parts of immigration law.

Many administrations have used that authority, to varying success.

Trump invoked the provision more than two dozen times, including to temporarily ban the entry of citizens from mainly Muslim-majority countries. After multiple versions of the ban, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately allowed Trump to carry out this executive order, saying that the order did not conflict with immigration law.

But Trump failed when he tried using this authority to stop illegal immigration, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant-rights advocacy group.

In November 2018, Trump invoked the provision to deny asylum to people who illegally enter the U.S. between ports of entry at the southern border. 

A federal judge temporarily blocked this effort, saying Trump’s executive order “irreconcilably conflicts” with immigration law. The law says people must be physically present in the U.S. to seek asylum, regardless of their immigration status or how they entered. 

An appeals court sided with the lower court, and the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to block the appeals court’s ruling.

“No president has the authority to simply shut the border to migrants,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

The travel ban legal precedent is different from the illegal immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a Migration Policy Institute policy analyst. 

With the travel ban, the court was dealing with people who were outside the United States. With the southern border, people already on U.S. soil are allowed to seek asylum. 

Although 212(f) “does, on its face, give sweeping powers to the President,” that power “does not and cannot operate in isolation from our other domestic and international legal obligations,” said Lindsay Harris, the International Human Rights Clinic director at the University of San Francisco. 

Asylum law provisions are “very much in tension with efforts to ‘shut down’ the border,” Harris said. 

“Closing the border arguably would violate” domestic and international asylum laws, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University immigration law professor.

Johnson lists other presidential authorities, Biden is already using some of them

Johnson on X listed other actions he said Biden could take to reduce the number of immigrants coming illegally into the country. But Biden is already using several of those mechanisms. The problem is that immigration officials “cannot keep up with demand, which speaks to the need for increased avenues for legal immigration,” including family and job sponsorships, Bush-Joseph said.

Johnson’s list included:

• Expedited removal: Biden is using it to quickly deport people who arrive at the southern border. However, people can be exempt from expedited removal if they can prove a credible fear of returning to their home country and therefore apply for asylum.

• Mandatory and discretionary detention: Biden is also using this, allowing immigration officials to decide which migrants to detain and release while they await court hearings. There is not enough detention space to detain all migrants who reach the border.

• Ending “catch and release”: The political term refers to immigration authorities stopping and releasing immigrants so they can await their court hearings outside of federal custody. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have followed this practice for decades (including the Trump administration), because there’s limited detention space. 

• Reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” program: The Trump policy required certain asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting their U.S.-based asylum court hearings. Biden ended the program. Mexico in February 2023 said it would not agree to the program restarting. 

Bush-Joseph said that adding more asylum officers and judges could help alleviate the border situation.

Biden said he’s requested congressional funding for 1,300 additional Border Patrol agents, 375 immigration judges and 1,600 asylum officers.

Despite any effort by Congress or the Biden administration to mitigate illegal immigration, there are larger issues that will still drive people to U.S. borders, experts say. Violence in other countries, political persecution and climate change-related displacement are some of those factors, Harris said.

“The U.S. is simply not immune to global increases in forced migration,” she said.

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

Taylor Swift is promoting false claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent — at least according to an altered photo that’s getting a lot of online attention.

The picture shows Swift holding a flag that reads, “Trump won, Democrats cheated!” We’ve seen it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. 

“Is this real?” conservative activist Benny Johnson asked on X when he shared the image.

No, it’s not.

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

(Screenshot from X) 

The photograph has been digitally manipulated. We found the original photo on Getty Images’ website, and it shows Swift, without the flag, standing with her hands clasped at a Sept. 24 National Football League game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Chicago Bears in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Comments on the posts showed that some users viewed the posts as satire, but others were confused. “Ok are you for real? So who side are you on?” one commenter wrote. Another said, “First thing she’s done that I liked! I hope the chiefs lose!” 

PolitiFact has previously debunked multiple claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Joe Biden won the presidential election by 74 electoral votes and with 7 million more popular votes than former President Donald Trump. 

Swift is dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and they have been recent targets of conservative conspiracy theories, including that Kelce’s team advanced to the Super Bowl so that Swift could endorse Biden in 2024. 

Vivek Ramaswamy, a former 2024 Republican presidential candidate, posted Jan. 29 on X  endorsing the conspiracy theory and the post received 2.7 million views that day.

Swift has not endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. She endorsed Biden in October 2020. 

We rate the claim that Swift was photographed holding a “Trump won, Democrats cheated!” flag Pants on Fire! 

Could a nine-day winter stretch of overcast skies be evidence of a widespread government plot to block out the sun and poison people while mitigating climate change? 

That’s the claim in a Jan. 29 Instagram post reviving a decades-old conspiracy theory that the government is spraying the skies and poisoning the population under the “disguise of helping to reduce climate change.” 

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 Instagram post has a video panning an overcast sky with the text: “POV: we are on day 9 of no sun.” (POV stands for “point of view.”)

The post’s caption, which  intentionally misspells words to skirt the platform’s rules about spreading climate change falsehoods, says: 

“A method is provided for mitigating g|0ba| warming. In such method, fine particles can be injected or dispersed into the stratosphere.

“It’s happening right before our eyes and people still refuse to question the abnormalities. We are being p0!soned under the disguise of ‘helping reduce c|!mat€ change.’

Next time someone calls you crazy or thinks it’s impossible for them to be tampering with our environment/weather, send them this.”

This is conspiracy theory stems from a method of solar geoengineering, called Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, that Harvard researchers are studying on a small scale. 

The experiment would spray aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect some sunlight back into space to minimize global warming. The Instagram post includes a link to a U.S. patent  related to this research on Google Patents.  

Similar claims that the skies are being sprayed by the government have surfaced over the years, including a claim in 2022 that Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates hatched a plan to block out the sun. Another claim in 2023 said former CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged the government was involved in a large-scale effort to block the sun.

In 2022, Congress directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to study change mitigation technologies’ risks and hazards. A spokesperson for the office confirmed to PolitiFact in 2023 that the plan would not involve releasing materials into the atmosphere. 

We rate the claim that the skies are being sprayed to block the sun False.

There is a lot of debate on how to defend the U.S. southern border, but Texas tractors aren’t lining up en masse to do so.

A Jan. 25 Facebook reel shows a video panning across lines of tractors stacked on a hillside, many with protest signs on their vehicles.  A caption under the video says “Texas tractors defend border!” 

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

The reel’s video is from farmer protests in Germany in January. More than 2,000 farmers in multiple cities in Hessen, central Germany, protested the federal government’s subsidy policy from Jan. 8 through Jan. 21, according to a report from a local TV station, Hessenschau. 

Multiple videos of the Germany protests are on YouTube and on TikTok. 

We rate the claim that Texas tractors are defending the border False.

¿Miembros de empresas farmacéuticas golpearon a un doctor en la televisión por curar la hipertensión? No, no te dejes engañar por estas publicaciones falsas. 

“Escándalo en directo, un famoso médico fue atacado por miembros de empresas farmacéuticas por revelar una cura secreta para la hipertensión”, dice el video en Facebook del 27 de enero. 

La publicación también muestra al Dr. Marco Albuja, un doctor ecuatoriano con un programa televisivo llamado, “Hacia un Nuevo Estilo de Vida”. Albuja supuestamente dice en el video: “No me cansaré de decir la verdad, aunque intenten matarme la próxima vez. Le garantizo que si empieza el tratamiento con nuestro medicamento, su tensión arterial volverá a la normalidad en 48 horas”. 

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).

Pero el video es engañoso. Las imágenes de la pelea pertenecen a otro suceso. El video también modificó las voces de la reportera y de Albuja, presentando los videos fuera de contexto.

Albuja en su programa televisivo da consejos para mejorar el estilo de vida y la salud de la población hispana. Él también tiene centros médicos en Quito, Ecuador. 

El video comienza con imágenes de hombres supuestamente golpeando a Albuja, mientras que otros intentan separarlos. Aunque la publicación añadió el logo de la televisora ecuatoriana, Teleamazonas, este video no muestra ni a Albuja, ni sucedió en Ecuador. Hicimos una búsqueda imagen inversa y encontramos que las imágenes son de un programa de televisión ruso del 2018 donde se discutían temas políticos. 

También encontramos que la voz de la presentadora que supuestamente reportó sobre el ataque a Albuja fue alterada. La presentadora y reportera de Teleamazonas, Belen Merizalde, no reporto sobre Albuja siendo atacado, ni una cura secreta para la hipertensión. 

PolitiFact hizo una búsqueda de imagen inversa y encontró el reporte original de Merizalde (minuto 7:50),  donde se le ve usando la misma blusa que en el video en Facebook. Pero reportaba sobre el asesinato de unas personas en Durán, provincia de Guayas en Ecuador, no sobre Albuja. “Nueva Balacera”, dice el titular detrás de ella.

La publicación en Facebook muestra a Albuja supuestamente hablando sobre la cura para la hipertensión, pero su voz fue alterada ya que no concuerda con sus movimientos de labios ni gestos. Las imágenes también fueron editadas y presentadas fuera de contexto. El video original es de 2022 y muestra a Albuja hablando sobre cómo el ejercicio puede ayudar a prolongar la vida, no sobre una cura secreta para la hipertensión.

Albuja publicó un video en la página oficial de sus centros médicos en el 2022 advirtiendo sobre publicaciones que falsamente usan su imagen para vender productos sin permisos, ni registros sanitarios. El video también dice en su subtítulo: “Recuerda el Dr. Albuja no vende cremas, pastillas, ni medicamentos para ninguna dolencia”. 

Él también publicó un video en enero de 2023 desenmascarando a estafadores que ofrecían productos médicos usando su nombre.  

Cuando tratamos de ir al enlace en la publicación que revelaría la supuesta cura para la hipertensión, este no funcionó. 

Calificamos la publicación que dice que Albuja “fue atacada por miembros de empresas farmacéuticas por revelar una cura secreta para la hipertensión” Falsa. 

Lee también: Los Estados Unidos no firmó acuerdo con Ecuador para enviar tropas al país debido a la delincuencia

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.

Organizar un funeral no suele ser algo agradable o barato, por lo cual una publicación en Facebook da esperanzas de cómo facilitar este proceso.

“Nuevo beneficio de plan de entierro que cubre el 100 % de sus gastos funerarios”, dice el video del 11 de enero. También dice que las personas mayores de 55 años pueden recibir un beneficio funerario de $25,000.

Pero no existe un nuevo beneficio que cubra el 100% de los gastos funerarios.

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).

La publicación lleva a los usuarios a una página web llamada Prime Select Benefit en la cual hay un cuestionario preguntando la edad y luego un formulario para dejar los datos personales.

PolitiFact no encontró ninguna funeraria con el nombre de la publicación en Facebook. 

La empresa y la oferta de la publicación tampoco son conocidas por Jessica Koth, directora de relaciones públicas de la Asociación Nacional de Directores de Funerarias.

El costo de un funeral varía, pero en 2021 un funeral con velorio y entierro tenía un costo medio de $7,848; mientras que el costo medio de uno con cremación era de $6,971, según la Asociación Nacional de Directores de Funerarias.

Una búsqueda en Google, páginas web del gobierno federal y medios de comunicación de nuevos programas o ayudas aprobados por el gobierno tampoco confirmó lo que anuncia la publicación en Facebook. 

Hay algunos programas gubernamentales que proporcionan ayuda para funerales y entierros, pero están dirigidos a personas muy específicas. Por ejemplo a las víctimas de catástrofes, los veteranos y ciertos ancianos. Pero estos programas no son para todos los americanos de más de 55 años, ni cubren el costo total del funeral, ni ofrecen $25,000 como dice la publicación. 

También hay programas estatales que ofrecen prestaciones para cubrir algunos de los gastos funerarios. Maine  ofrece subvenciones para ayudar a pagar la incineración y el entierro a través de su programa de asistencia general. La ayuda máxima es de $1,125 para entierro y $785 para incineración. (En Maine en 2021, el costo medio de un entierro o cremación con velorio fue más de $7,000).

Calificamos la declaración de que un nuevo beneficio cubre el 100% de los gastos funerarios de los americanos mayores de 55 años 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.